in the eye of the beholder

Boomerific ramblings about revolutionaires and royals across the pond be damned, there is much more to life, though one might say that my life is nothing thrilling, as there are no fabulous wardrobes, love life drama, or exploding sports cars. My days of ridiculous adventuring seem to be behind me now, and will be saved for future Not-So-Great-American-Novel fodder and stories for the next generation of nieces and nephews.

But I don't need much to keep me entertained and inspired, just a cup of tea and some people-watching, some clay or paint or ink at my disposal, going down to the West Side Market or the lake, driving around with good music though I try to conserve that precious gasoline.

While I was mediocre with effort as an undergrad attempted art student, I feel like I've figured out my aesthetic sense since then, hovering between the starkness and grit of monochrome and the brilliant splashes of color that characterize the paintings piled up in my front room.







It can't be all melancholia, because the seasons have slowly shifted into budding and brilliant hues and we were lucky to escape the concrete and steel for the oasis under glass and the accompanying statuary and tulip bulbs. Some more crackerific types avoid this lovely place because it's in the hood. It's their loss because not only is this fine establishment free, they sometimes hook you up with hothouse fruits.









And in other news, while I don't really know much about jazz, I know what I do like and I love Regina Carter and her violin very much. Especially when she covers Amadou & Mariam and her current project includes a kora player. I don't know anyone else anymore who likes this kind of thing so I'll probably go by myself.

a new way of seeing

It's been a good few days, reconnecting with a childhood friend I haven't seen in eight years and finding that we picked up even better than we left off, hanging out with the radio people at Edgewater, chilling on front porches and balconies, drinking sangria with ice, dogsitting and conversating and playing with the new camera.

I finally sprung for a Canon Rebel with the funds I'd saved up towards an upright bass. I realized quickly that I really had no clue what I was doing with it, having been in point-and-shoot land for so long.

We went to Chinatown on Friday night, which I wish had more in it, but we saw the same officer who hassled him pulling people over and we decided to make ourselves scarce and went down to the factory buildings by Superior to shoot. I got a quick crash course on how to use the camera, but my night shots still need some work. We were both tired from long days of work so after hitting up the Flats too late to catch any good light, that was pretty much it for us.





I've gotten accustomed to the zoom lens, so it's an adjustment to have to move around to get the shots I want.





I finished out the weekend with dinner with one of my dear fellow artistically minded friends pondering and laughing and trying to solve all the world's problems over beans and rice, thankful that when I moved back here, I've been able to rebuild my life even better than when I left it.

bright lights

This weekend's gone so much better than the last. It helps to have no expectations and anticipations and see what happens.

I walk the dog and come back to a missed call from one of my picture taking crew who's thankfully isn't blaming me for ruining his pristine record and we kept it legit, shooting photos of the funwall, the bridges, walked over the Abbey bridge and down the hill from Tremont before heading over to Edgewater as the sun set and the water was this deep epic blue as the sky burned red and orange.









We got some amazing shots and I learned more about how to use my camera but I couldn't help stiffening every time a police car went by.

Stopped over to see my mom in the morning, came back and got some groceries and snarky comments at the African/Caribbean mart where I ran into Alex and the other Burundians who reminded me that "only foreigners shop here," as I loaded up on plantains, hot sauce from Barbados, Jamaican grapefruit pops, and ginger tea.

The Our Lady of Mount Carmel Italian festival/carnival was going on tonight so I rode my bike down there to observe the festivities, which did not disappoint. Found it a bit ironic that the raffle item this year was Lady Gaga tickets but I did get to take pictures of carnies, witness a dance-off, which was very entertaining and everyone there looked really Italian, and watching teenagers interact with each other made me so glad I'm not their age anymore.



Pope Benedict was there too, hanging out next to the Freedom Fries.



And might as well throw Martina Topley-Bird, Tricky's muse in there too.



Sunday was hanging out with good people watching the World Cup final and going to my cousin's graduation party out in the exurbs. I have culture shock every time I go out that far away from the city, it's such a different world than the one around me.

I was frustrated this week because I sometimes wish that life wouldn't be as crazy as it is, that other people my age are buying houses and taking their kids to t-ball games while I'm doing whatever I'm doing, but then, well, I guess I wouldn't have as many stories to tell, would I?

sweetness

This is pretty awesome.

Broken Fingaz -Graffiti Stop Motion from Broken Fingaz on Vimeo.

people, places, things

In order to keep myself sane, with the chaos going on with me right now, I'm currently housesitting for some friends again, finding that having that kind of space to myself and a big dog to walk does wonders.

Lindsay and I had a Cleveland adventure on Saturday, made a detour on the way to the West Side Market to a metalworking shop on west 17th off Abbey where they build awesome stuff out of leftover scraps like these:





Got lunch at the West Side Market Cafe and then continued on to Suite Lorain where I found an original re-elect Richard Nixon "Now More Than Ever" bumper sticker for my cousin, earrings, and black and white photos for future art project purposes.

Went to the Cleveland Handmade Market at the Lake Erie Screw Building where we got all inspired to do artistic things and I found a reprint of a concert poster of the Who for a show my dad went to back in the day where the James Gang and James Taylor opened, and James Taylor was booed off the stage.

The weather was icy so we gave up on driving out to "the end of civilization" on Mayfield Road, and cruised around Parma and Old Brooklyn looking at Christmas lights before hitting up Parmatown Mall, which is a great place to do Christmas shopping because no one goes there anymore.

Yesterday I went out after church and took pictures inside St. Theodosius because I was feeling all Christmasy and old school. I love that every inch of that building is handpainted and every time I've gone in, it smells like incense. Most of my photos didn't come out because of the smoke but still, it's a beautiful place.

bohemian like you

So I come back to the daily world and my head is spinning because there's just too much to think through and it's just so overwhelming.

But I try not to get too much into my own existential dilemmas on here. Let me just say that I'm still in love with my city and that I still find driving in the suburbs and the whole concept of guy/girl relationships frustrating.

Went up to the lake to chill. It's beautiful there, but I kept thinking about how everything is changing all the time.



I sometimes feel like the unofficial Cleveland tour guide, took a friend of mine to the West Side Market for lunch and then to the Glass Bubble Project.

I love the inside of this place and want to make cool things like this someday.



It was raining but we drove out to Cleveland Hts anyway, hung out in Coventry until the rain stopped, giggled at old records with fabulously bad covers. Picked up this gem out of the dollar section.



Once the rain was gone, it was beautiful so we walked down the hill to the Hessler Street Fair and I felt like I was back in Kent almost. I'm not really around hippies and other arty types much anymore, but we got to see Tarace Boulba parade down the street and lots of hippies dancing.



I ended up coming back Sunday with some other friends for more hanging out and yummy Caribbean jerk chicken and rice. There was nowhere to sit so we had a picnic on the trunk of Mukhtar's Crown Vic in the parking lot before heading back for hanging out and listening to Kent sing Kanye West songs opera/Broadway style.

Totally irrelevant random picture from the festivities:



As Muk says, "for all of your poster-sized Barry White needs!"

assimilation

It's like I have a whole new family of younger siblings now from another continent. I'm hanging out on the porch, having dinner, taking the kids to class, trying to figure out how to get the older brother's computer to work.

I've got one of the girls in my car on the way over and she likes the Amadou & Mariam I have on the stereo and says it reminds her of Africa and starts talking about singing and dancing and her dad cutting down palm trees and how she misses it there so much. I can't even imagine what that would be like.



I had music practice for church after tutoring class last night and a couple of the kids begged me to let them come too. I checked first with the parents, and brought them along. They were all shy at first, sitting in the pews watching everything, but my roommate brought them up to sing and when we were done, we let them play with our instruments.

I have never seen two kids more happy than when they were given free reign over the drumset and the djembe. They have better rhythm than I do, and me and Joe were actually able to play along with them. Seriously awesome.

From March & April

where the streets have no name.

I spent my day off pretending that I really didn't have a cold, popping cough drops, drinking orange juice, and going out on photography adventures with Mukhtar. He had to work later on that day, but we hit up a few spots and got some good pictures.







Usually there's no one around when we go on adventures like these, just the occasional kids wandering around like us, but there seemed to be people everywhere this time around.

We encountered a wild dog, random vagrants, and shady junkyard creeps who assumed that my parked car was fair game ("oh I'm sorry... looked like a piece of junk to me") but that didn't stop us from taking some good photos and chilling at the West Side Market, sitting on the balcony enjoying falafel and spinach pies from Maha's.

I'm an amateur who can't afford crazy good equipment and considers the upgrade from disposable to digital something epic. But I get endless inspiration from this place where I've spent most of my life and I honestly get uncomfortable in areas where there aren't rusty bridges and old buildings and the possibility of undiscovered corners and small wonders.

starting it off right...

New Year's Eve was not as epic as it probably was for some, as me and the roommate came home from work too tired to think about going out anywhere. So we had a couple people over, picked up some pomegranate 7-up because there was no more sparkling grape juice, and watched a Bollywood movie.

I had taken the previous day off to hang out with Ryan and one of his awesome friends so I was ready for a chill night.

Hung out on New Year's Day with the family and the future in-laws. My dad had Friday off so we went down to Hoopples to hear Glenn Schwartz play. I've always heard he was an amazing guitarist and the preaching isn't going to bother me as much as it would some, so we finally satisfied our curiosity.



When we got there, he'd just started, and was whispering hymns and old blues tunes into the microphone, crazy preaching about repentance, the blood of Jesus, and loose women and how we've polluted the earth with our cars, but as he got going, it was amazing to watch him shred away as he climbed up on his amp and dragged the strings of his guitar across the signs hanging from the wall. We watched his first set, but then he started ranting about women and Dad and I figured we'd quit while we were ahead. Still, I don't know how I went that long without seeing the guy play because it was one of the most powerful things I've ever seen.

Here's David Byrne's film of it last time he came through.

I still haven't processed that night completely, it reminded me of walking into a short story by Flannery O'Connor where everyone involved is messed up in one way or another but there's something kind of redemptive about the whole thing in spite of ourselves.

Friday, we went to Oberlin and found cool jewelry and hung out with my friend Naomi, and I got to see her baby girl for the first time. We came back and watched 'Black Orpheus' which was sad as anything especially knowing the original story.

But the ending is beautiful.



The highlight of the weekend though was the birthday party for the kids I hang out with on Saturdays. We had a New Year's/birthday party for them (if you don't know your birthday, you're given January 1 when you go through immigration).

I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being over 200 people, between the volunteers and refugee families from two different churches on the west side, seemingly everyone in this city from that tiny country.

my first time enjoying skewers of goat meat fresh off the grill



The kids love it too:



We did games, and they made us all this food, and two pinatas got destroyed, but the best part was watching the kids get to sing.

Click on this one to watch

From

I'm still in awe. 2009 has started way more interestingly than I ever dreamed.

rust belt christmas

This Christmas was the Christmas that my sister got engaged and the car crash that left me in a state of thanking God and awe at still being alive.

We were on our way to get some Ethiopian food on the east side Tuesday night and got no further than the Cleveland-Lakewood border when my friend started skidding on the ice and we spun across four lanes of interstate traffic before getting rear-ended on the other side of the road by the on-ramp.

As scary as it is to feel like you're on a Tilt-a-Whirl but with huge cars sliding towards you, I felt this weird sense of peace as my roommate and I prayed and realized that even as we weren't in control at all, God definitely was.

It looked like it was going to get ugly when the one guy got out of his car and started screaming at my friend about how his car was brand new and he was a Cleveland cop and that we were all in trouble but when I started dialing 911, he shut up pretty quickly. Didn't ask us if we were ok, just ranted about how his shiny new Ford Fusion was smashed up.

Meanwhile, we're standing on the side waiting for the real cops to come as cars slide like bowling balls down the highway. When they told us to move the car off the road at the next exit, we refused saying there was no way we were getting back on there.

Nobody was hurt too badly and we walked up the hill to a White Castle and I was craving everything on the Church's Chicken menu but decided against it and Kristy and her dad showed up to pick us up. In the meantime of Triple-A towing Daniel's car, her dad made a new friend that we gave a ride to.

But it really was a good few days here, the usual good food and good times with the family. I'm realizing more and more that these things are not something that everyone has, when I talk to friends who say that they spent Christmas alone. If you've got no one to spend the holiday with and it doesn't have any spiritual significance for you, that's got to be depressing as hell.

In the coming years, when this wouldn't involve inviting a crowd of lost souls over to my grandparents' or whatever, I'd like to at least make this time less solitary for others.

Checked out that Faberge/Lalique/Tiffany exhibit at the art museum, which is the first time I've been there in forever. The new wing feels so different, but the exhibit was great even though I couldn't look at the Faberge eggs without thinking about how the Romanov family died a few years later. As far as modern art goes, I love the whole Art Nouveau era and still don't understand why it fell so drastically out of favor. The museum store isn't as cool as it used to be though, because it now sells things like this:



Otherwise, totally loved the momentary thaw, spent the day with Kristy doing our usual running around with cameras taking graffiti pictures, hanging out at the West Side Market, getting cold at Edgewater Park. We revisited the Fun Wall, but someone painted over the building down there with that nasty gray color.



Still some good stuff around, but I wonder if the legendary spot's days are numbered.





Sunday, my roommate's sister was in town and we ended up hanging out with people from church doing the potluck thing, watched the Browns lose pitifully, still finding ways to laugh. Her sister and another good friend of ours were Steelers fans so they were entertained. I still still can't totally hate on Pittsburgh due to some kind of misguided Rust Belt solidarity I inherit from my dad, so I hope they do well since we were hopeless this year.

Had dinner with the Ethiopians, watched cute little kids run around, joked about how we nearly killed ourselves earlier in the week in pursuit of savory dishes and injera, and ended up with beautiful jewelry and scarves that our friend's wife brought back for us.

I only work 2 days this week, which still feels weird. But I do get to see a very dear friend tomorrow that I haven't seen in two years, and that's going to be a wonderful thing

everything old is new again, or my year in music 2008

Unlike the previous post, this has nothing to do with Autotune or bad holiday music.

I don't really have a year-end favorites of 2008 because I hardly listened to any new stuff this year and overdosed on obscure Numero Group discoveries, old favorites doing new things, and a lot of trip-hop and African pop.

So, here's a very limited sample...

The Gutter Twins - Bete Noire
(As if there hasn't already been enough Lanegan/Dulli love here)


Funkadelic - I'll Stay
(favorite Funkadelic with Eddie Hazel cut outside of 'Maggot Brain')


The Dirtbombs - various live
I used a really bad comparison to describe the awesomeness of their live show like seeing Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana at the same time.


Cafe Tacuba - Encantamiento Inutil
(video is lame but the song is gorgeous)


Digable Planets - black ego
(this was the soundtrack to several lazy sunny Saturdays driving around Cleveland in search of graffiti and adventure)


The Roots - Rising Up
(favorite cut off the new record)


Randy Watson Experience - Morning Bell
(awesome chilled Radiohead cover, thanks to ?uestlove & friends)


Diplo - Sara
(don't know why I didn't get this earlier)

rock and/or roll

So when someone asked me what I did this weekend, I had to think a second, because I'm sleepy as anything and that extra day makes everything blurry.

We ended up going to the Tremont art walk to see his friend's stuff, which was pretty cool, fashioning a living room on a footbridge over I-90 was something I never thought of but was completely amazing.



Watched some African kids dance and some capoeira guys do their thing, walked from Tremont downtown across the Lorain-Carnegie bridge, got there just in time for Joe Satriani.

While some of it was a smidge too 80's for me, I really enjoyed it, and realized I had never heard anything by him, ever, probably got him mixed up with Steve Vai. The guy is crazy gifted, and kept it interesting style-wise, with elements of blues, jazz, flamenco. He looked like he was having a great time too, didn't seem pretentious at all. And it was free.



It took me back when I was 15 and spent my lonely summers attempting to learn every Led Zeppelin riff in my parents' basement and digging through old copies of Guitar World, back before I discovered punk rock and decided I didn't care about Lydian modes anymore.

Otherwise this weekend... hung out with the little kids who were being all crazy, spent some time with the sisters, went on an early morning take-pictures-of-weird-stuff venture, which was very successful.



the weirdest backyard pet grave ever besides this one:



Creepy zombie plaster couple.



Ice Cream truck parking lot



King Kong shakes his fist at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo:



Giant Inflatable Fish!

social adrenaline

Got to paint this weekend, realized my need for some acrylic paint because the guache isn't cutting it for what I'm doing now. Also took some random Cleveland shots in the hour or so before sunset when the light is just beautiful.

A friend of mine was in town this weekend before heading back to Jordan so a group of us ended up going bowling Saturday night at Twin Lanes which is probably my new favorite spot in Cleveland for such things because it's cheap fun and stellar people-watching. I'm notoriously bad at bowling (my lifetime average hovers around 50) but it was good just hanging out.

My friends who just got married had us over for dinner last night. It's been awhile since I laughed as hard as I did at their table, hearing wild stories that really should be in a book somewhere because they're just so good. They're amazing people and I'm glad that they're just around the corner from me.

From there, I ended up driving over to the east side to hang out with the guys because I haven't seen them in forever and it's always such a good thing. Every time we hang out, he always has some Youtube goodness for me. The last time it was Balls of Steel and the Ice-T/Soulja Boy feud, this time it was late 1950's R&B and SHAKER HEIGHTS!



Enjoy.

wade in the water

My weekend was pretty low-key, sleeping and hanging out with the extended family. My cousins are all getting older and going off to college so there's fewer of us, but those of us who are there have a good time together. Working on an Ethiopian song with our friend Exodus for Sunday morning, learning lyrics in Amharic, trying not to butcher the pronounciation. Beautiful stuff, realizing how locked into Western music my playing is as I find myself discovering new chord voicings and rhythms.

But this weekend finished out beautifully with two of my favorite people at Edgewater Park. I never knew about the trail down to the beach from the top part until yesterday. Even though it's September, it still felt like summer, and we hung out there until almost sunset, leaving our shoes on the shore, rolling up our jeans, and walking along where the waves meet the sand, digging our feet in, letting the water wash over, writing words in the sand.



It was one of those moments that just felt like perfection, with the light golden over the skyline and the sun setting behind us.

the days are numbered

I've never been one to do anything really crazy, but I have always been a sucker for abandoned and forgotten places. One of the best ones within driving distance is Chippewa Lake Park, which has been abandoned since the late 1970s.

When I was in college (grad school actually), my roommate and I drove over there with her camera to check the place out. We tried to get a couple guy friends to go with us but no one was free, and this whole venture took on a cliche horror movie feel (two college girls enter an abandoned amusement park and encounter a psychotic killer, etc, etc...).

The area itself feels like one of those photos you see of Appalachian regions in southern Ohio, with lots of trailers and rickety houses and stray animals everywhere. The park itself turned out to be more or less an open secret. Getting in was no trouble because there were people-sized holes conveniently cut into the fence all around. You could see the turnstiles through the bushes, and the frame of the old rollercoaster towering over the trees.



Further in, you could follow the pavement through the park, past the ballroom that had burned down, to the ferris wheel, the doodlebug ride, and the midway, full of collapsing stands.





What was so creepy about this place, though, was how abruptly it seemed to have been abandoned. Maintenance vehicles rusting away, all the rides still intact as nature took them over. I was completely jumpy the whole time, wondering if anyone was in these abandoned buildings, how fresh those other footprints were, but we had no such encounters.



I just found out today that someone has bought this property and plans to turn it into a resort with shopping, spas, resort hotels. I wonder who's going to drive this far and if they'll be able to handle the incredible amount of mosquitoes.

So if you're looking to explore this place, it's probably better to do it sooner rather than later.