artist Elena Yeung

I screwed up the booking with the Slice, so I had to cancel.  Crap.  Wrote down the wrong date, or I wrote down the right date but then it morphed back into the wrong date somehow, and screwed up the band's schedule.  I've never done that before, doesn't seem like a good sign.  Time to get a booking agent.



I’m really tempting fate.  I may have really fucked it up this time.  My cat has worms.  This is a semi-regular occurrence, being an inside/outside cat who also happens to be an incredible hunter (she brought a WEASEL into the house once).  The unfortunate aside to this is that she doesn’t take to swallowing de-worming pills gracefully.  In the past it’s been a bloodbath, usually mine, as I’m trying to pin down flailing clawed limbs while prying open an angry mouth lined with sharp little teeth.  I’ve just read Peter Levine’s ‘The Tiger’ and I quake at the thought of increasing the mass of my domestic pet by a factor of fifty.  

My most recent coping strategy has been to recruit my co-worker Steve, ply him with beer and get him to pin down the body while I attend to the mouth.  It’s been a mildly successful endeavor.  But now, at the beginning of spring break and Steve heading to Florida for two weeks, my cat has acquired an infestation so pronounced that even those with stomachs of iron would be disturbed.  Her entire back end is dotted with evidence.  And she’s getting skinny, not a good sign.  My original line of defense was to get the liquid de-wormer, a more expensive but peaceful alternative, but the vet’s office was closed for the weekend.  Tarnation!  As I was ruminating over liquid solutions, I recalled a small vial of ‘Para-Cleanse’ I’d purchased for personal use, during my obsessive cleansing days…

The cat is already heavily suspicious once I try to crank open her mouth, but with a quick squirt, in went an unmeasured dose.  Hmm, the bottle recommends 8 drops for an adult (assuming to be 150 lbs)… 

Waking up the next morning, the evidence was on the floor.  Cat vomit everywhere (it happens, but this was more than usual).  And the incriminating evidence in one annelid, long, whitish in colour, striated like an earthworm, one end flattened into a spade-shape, reminding me vaguely of the flatworms we studied in Grade 9 science.  I’ve never seen that before. 

My initial reaction was complete revulsion, and to squeeze another dose of the tincture into the cat.  Almost immediately after I regretted it.  Did it work just fine, and have I over-medicated her?  What if I’ve messed up her digestive system? 

Watch, wait, and paper towels.

 

After 18 months, I’ve finally developed some itch to start songwriting. That’s no exaggeration…I recall literally squeezing “Train” out of my brain in October 2010 in the push to get ‘one more decent song’ on the new CD. Since then, until now, I have felt no desire to create any new music. I haven’t had such a long dry spell since I began to write music seriously. I wasn’t particularly concerned – there has been no shortage of other aspects of my music to work on, and the extra creative juice might have even been distracting – but I was surprised. Had I really exorcised all my demons and childhood traumas so thoroughly as to have scoured the closet clean? And yet I felt no burning desire to get a some theme off my chest. It was a curious feeling. But now, no more. Perhaps it’s the kid-song stint, but I’ve found myself singing out loud during my sessions at work. All well-known classic kid songs, but with some modifications. And of course, there is my tuneless riffing of ideas in a sing-song voice. Which I now realize is essentially my key to songwriting. It happened last week that I was trying to occupy a particularly active 2-year old with a tow truck and a fire engine, hopelessly disproportionate to each other. There was no way in hell that tow truck could tow the fire engine, but it didn’t stop us from trying. And then it dawned on me: I didn’t know of any tow truck songs. There may not be any songs about tow trucks in existence, in fact. But there should be. There it stewed in my head, until last night I found myself tossing and turning at all hours, trying to find the proper melodic lilt that would suit the nature of play with a toy tow truck. It is an arduous task; I was reminded of St. Antoine Exupery’s dilemma of trying to determine whether the sheep had eaten the flower. It is so easy it is difficult, yet so insurmountably difficult that in fact it is effortlessly easy. I think I have a chorus, or a first verse, or something scratched out, but nothing worth presenting at this time. But I feel it moving within my mind.

Over the past few months I’ve been getting inundated with networking sites that I’ve supposedly signed up for but haven’t activated my account. Really? I manage to update my facebook status about once every two months. I don’t twitter or tweet. I’ve given up on myspace. Do I really look like someone who wants to be LinkedIn or Friendsited? I don’t even have enough time to hang out with my real live friends satisfactorily. Just ask them. And because I have such little time to be online, I’ve found it takes an inconveniently long time to get on these websites and finally figure out how to close these accounts. They don’t want you to close the accounts, of course, so it takes a good 15 minutes searching around to figure out how it works. If I watched TV, it would probably be the same 15 minutes I would have wasted watching commercials. It seems these days we’re expected to waste time, either voluntarily or involuntarily in some form of media. At least, so long as we’re engaged in said media. Opt out. Occupy RealSpace.

No, I haven't had a writing fit recently, these are two blogs I cobbled together over the last couple months and just never had enough time online to post them. This one's only about 90 days old... It’s done. Kootenay concerts are all played, I get my weekends back. And what did I do with my first days off? Got my tires and rims all switched to their proper places, stocked up on groceries, visited an old friend and jammed bluegrass tunes I haven’t thought of for a long time, played her my new CD complete with recaps of stories from New York, which inspired a groov-o-ramic Motown dance party. It brought to mind the question I’m always asked: How did you get into playing bluegrass? My new answer would have to be: I spent most of my life hanging out with white people. If I had more contact with black culture, I’m sure I would have been chasing after the Motown sound, I would have dug down to those roots and found something I could relate to, just as I have found in bluegrass. If and when the time comes to take a nice long break from the banjo, I think that’s where I’d go. But what would I play? As much as I enjoyed the narrow focus the bluegrass banjo offered, I’m not sure how transferrable that skill is. Learn jazz chords on the guitar? Regress to my classical piano skills? Pick up something totally new? Hmm. The sleeping dragon tosses in restless slumber.

I was playing in Nelson last week and noticed out of the corner of my eye a young man with big dark eyes standing on the side, watching us play intently. As we’re packing up, he comes up and says, “Do you recognize me?” I don’t. “Really? Come on. I’m from Carberry.” I suck at this game, I tell him, recalling how both two other Carberry natives have had to identify themselves to me in the past year. “That’s okay. I’m a patient man.” He looks casually off to the distance, then back at me as I stare at him. Big brown eyes, a saucy jut of the chin. He is enjoying himself, taunting me, shrouded by my own poor memory. He tosses out clues. He’s two years younger than me. I can’t recall anyone two years younger than me, except my best friend’s little sister, and her best friend. I can’t remember any boys in the class. What was he know for in high school? “For being a badass,” he replies. Did we even use the term ‘badass’ back then? It suddenly strikes me that as much as my hometown shaped me, I remember very few clear details. Finally someone else comes up to him and says “Hi, Mark.” I still don’t have a clue. That’s the name of a kid who lived a short ways from us, but it’s not him. “No! The other Mark,” he says, becoming slightly impatient. There was another Mark? “For God’s sake, I lived a mile down the road from you.” But I’ve got the other Mark stuck in my head now and my mind is once again immobilized. He lived ¾ of a mile west of us…”No! The other way!” he says. Then the picture of a house comes back to my mind, blurrily…one we passed on rare occasion if we happened to take that way into town. Mark Saunders. I recall the chin. He used to have a perm, back in the 80’s. Didn’t ask if he had any hair left under that toque. You weren’t a badass, I chided him. You were a little cutie. You charmed all the teachers. There was something about you that made us all want to… I pinch his cheek, scuff the top of his head. “Yes, that’s true,” he remarked thoughtfully, and slowly some vague memory of him solidifies in my brain. On the drive home, I find I cannot recall ever having a single real conversation with him growing up. In fact, I am hard pressed to think of more than 12 people that I ever had any meaningful interaction with during that ‘formative’ time. Maybe it wasn’t that formative, after all.

My boss wants me to buy an iPad. So everyone will be on the same technology, he says. It’s a good deal: if I buy one personally, he’ll reimburse me $300. But wait. Why would I want an iPad? How exactly will it enhance my life? I haven’t had many dealings with this new hot item, just seen people play games, read books, check their email, watch movies, watch youtube, go on facebook. Last month at Lake Louise, I even saw a woman holding her up to take photos. (This did not serve to impress me.) I’m not convinced. I don’t surf the web for pleasure. I try to check my email once a day or less. Facebook, every two days or less, sometimes not even once a week. I don’t watch movies. I like reading books printed on paper. Staring at screens for too long make my eyes go wonky. I’d rather play my banjo than play computer games. I like scratching out ideas with a paper and pencil. Ah, but I’m blogging, you say. Which is true, but I’m typing all this out on Word, at home, offline. I’ll upload it some other day, when I’m in town and have some free time. I’ve adapted my lifestyle so that I can work offline most of the time, jump onto the internet for a concentrated hour or two, and then get on with the rest of my life. And though I realize that this is not the norm of my generation, I really don’t feel it’s dysfunctional. I don’t hate technology; I just don’t see the need to be constantly attached to it. Besides, this laptop suits my needs. Most of my techno time involves inputting and using programs I couldn’t access with an iPad, not surfing. As I listened to my boss, I considered meeting him halfway and purchasing an iPod Touch, which is the same technology, but more portable, so that it could come in handy as a camera, videocamera, sound recorder, and other various tools that would be practical in its pocket-size. I listed out all the applications that I could possibly find useful. And when the only ones I found that would actually be of use to me – the camera and video camera – I had to wonder if I wasn’t better off taking my 300 bucks to buy a decent camera. The sound recorder isn’t as good as the portable recorder I have, the tuner isn’t as good as my tuner. It’s like buying a swiss army knife instead of a bunch of basic utensils for your kitchen. Sure, it can be your can opener, and knife, and corkscrew, and spoon, and nail clipper, but sometimes don’t you just want some separate stuff that will do each job well and efficiently? And geez, how portable does this stuff have to be? People are raving about how portable their iPads are, how they no longer have to lug around their laptops anymore, as if we were carrying old non-flatscreen-desktop monitors and CPUs around. I choose when to carry my laptop around, and I don’t begrudge its weight. When I want to travel light, I don’t bring any of that stuff. Just a scrap piece of paper and a pencil in case something comes up. The verdict: Screw all that junk. When my current computer is ready to retire, get a MacBook Air, or whatever is even lighter weight and more powerful by then.

I went to the Foothills Acoustic Music Institute’s music workshop this past weekend to teach a Bluegrass Ensemble class. A great community of enthusiastic musicians and committed volunteers, it was a really fabulous time. Except I was deathly ill pretty much the whole time. It started with a small tickle in my throat as I drove to the camp, turned into full sinus congestion that night (ie., not breathing and therefore not sleeping), and then climaxing to a full-on fever with chills and sweats Friday night. Even now in the aftermath, I’m tapping this out at 2 am because my persistent hacking cough will not allow me to fall asleep. I did expect sleep deprivation as part of this gig, but yike. I do have to say that the camp was very fun despite this, and students, instructors and board members were all offering me drugs and homeopathic remedies of all sorts, to which I am eternally grateful. I still managed to power through, pacing my voice so that it was starting to give out by Sunday morning and gave out completely that evening after camp was done. I was hoping to go to bed early, but the miserable ritual of trying to clear my sinuses adequately kept me up until almost 10. At which point, my teenage buddy Blake, whose family’s house I was gratefully crashing at, asked if I’d mind coming along so he could drive his girlfriend home. He doesn’t have his full driver’s license yet. Sure, I say in a cracked whisper. On the way back, he asks if I’d mind if he stopped at 7-Eleven to grab a slurpee. Who am I to say no? I might as well stock up on fisherman’s friends. But when I get inside, I realize I had dumped my purse out at the house and forgotten to put my wallet back inside. And the credit/debit machine doesn’t work. I ask Blake if he can pay for me, but he only has enough money for his slurpee. There’s a group of random teenagers floating around the slurpee machine, about to leave, and a girl says loudly, ‘Come here’. Her friends are ahead of her, so I’m not sure whom she’s talking to. But she beckons and gestures for me to put the lozenges on the counter. Really? She nods impatiently. I thank her profusely, genuinely touched by this young person’s random act of kindness. No problem, she says. You sound like you really need it. True enough. That girl has earned mega-karma points, said Blake. I have to agree – though I am also grateful for the gestures made by the great folks at the FAMI camp, it was particularly touching to receive this kindness from a person who I will probably never see again, completely outside any of my circles of community, who I likely have nothing in common with aside from basic demographics. We’re people, and we both know that getting sick sucks. But this certainly helps it suck just a little less.

Someone I cared very much about committed suicide recently. The extra dig for me was that I actively discouraged any further contact in his last few months. It had been the prudent thing to do, it was out of respect for him and his life goals. What I didn’t realize was how close he was to the breaking point, and that he would not reach those goals anyways. But as many times I play out how things could have turned out better, there is truly nothing else I could have done to help the situation. I spent my birthday with his close friend. I can’t say it was good way to spend a birthday but it was necessary. I heard the details of his death, which helped because it made the whole situation more real for me – I was still in complete disbelief – but on the other hand it illustrated just how alone and hopeless he felt. Just the thought of this still overwhelms me with great sadness. That afternoon I couldn’t think straight. Any plans of doing errands in public were shot. I drove home and went for a run, along my regular route, right by his house. Every time I passed it, I wondered how he might be doing and if he was getting closer to where he wanted to be. As much as I have wanted to knock on his door and ask how things were going, I stayed away. But now the house had sold, the new owners would take possession any day now. So this time, I walked right up the driveway. I walked around the house. I talked to my friend. I apologized for not being able to help him more. I forgave him for his own shortcomings, and told him I respected his decision, as much as it saddened me. And I thanked him for allowing me into his life for that brief time. Then I cried for the next two days. And then I tried to turn my attention back to finishing the CD. I told someone recently, I hardly noticed that my birthday went by, but suddenly I feel older.

This evening I have plans. The Persuasions are giving a short performance at a Baptist church near where I live, and after that I am meeting Steve’s friend Hannah, who is going to introduce me to her friend Ian, who plays guitar and knows of a bluegrass jam in Brooklyn. I have no idea what I am in for. I arrive at the church and meet two more members of the band, Joe and Raymond. We sit in the pew and chat and it’s taking a much longer time to start than we’d anticipated. Finally, the band strikes up, the choir walks in, and here I must expose my ignorance. The music, the voices, the congregation, the way everybody looked, it was as if I was on a movie set of any number of those scenes with a black gospel choir. The choir leader, young and handsome and charismatic and free-styling over the funky choir riffs, the way people in the congregation jumped up, clapped, danced, waved their hands, shouted “Praise the Lord!” “Praise the Lord!” I realized how completely ignorant of black gospel music I am, and wondered what the hell I was doing trying to write gospel songs that imitate old negro spirituals, and recruiting a famous singing group to record it to boot. I am so completely out of my element. If I weren’t sandwiched in between the Persuasions, I would have felt like I had no business being there. We were sitting in one of the front pews, and I couldn’t help thinking that all the folks behind us were wondering what this asian girl was doing sitting with those black guys in suits. Well, the music was amazing, truly designed to lift your spirit and move your body. But unfortunately, I had to leave before it ended – Hannah had agreed to meet me outside the church at 8:30. More adventures were to be had elsewhere. I was told later that the service really reached its climax a good hour later, and finally ended around 10. Hannah and I hit it off immediately, which wasn’t really a big surprise. Meeting her and Bernard, I develop some more insight into Steve, the mutual friend who set up these social contacts - the crazy libertarian who left for Canada, disgusted by American politics (and now Harper has a majority…the irony). The bigger surprise was that Ian and I hit it off musically right away, and we sat in his apartment playing Gillian Welch songs, becoming increasingly mellow until we finally mustered our efforts and he took us to Sunny’s, a bar in Red Hook that has a weekly bluegrass jam. We were all quite content staying in the apartment hanging out, but we all agreed that it would be A Good Thing To Do While Visiting New York. The bar is a little gem on a cobblestone street, and everything was dark so I don’t remember anything else except the bright red door. It was a good old standard open jam scene with a variety of pickers, mostly guitar players, couple mandos, one other banjo player and an autoharp. Now this, I realize, is my element. I can read the situation, I know the protocol, I know where I stand. We stayed until 2:30, wandered the streets until we came across the closest subway station, which isn’t that close at all. Hannah and I take the same train, and we sit together trying to keep our eyes open. I get to bed around 4. Another successful day in the city.

Saturday, another ridiculously beautiful day. I have stuff to deal with for other songs on the CD, so I’m holed up in the apartment messing with recording software, rather than running around exploring the city. Poor me. Bernard was sweet enough to buy some basic groceries for me before I came, as there isn’t a good grocery store in his neighbourhood, insisting that I eat everything as he is likely to be gone for several weeks and everything will otherwise spoil. I found myself diving into several of his other staples though, so today I decided to make an expedition to Central Park about half an hour away, followed by a visit to a grocery store to replenish some other supplies. Central Park is one of the few New York landmarks I have heard of, and I’ve heard people rave about how wonderful it is. But to me, it was just kind of blah. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great to have such a large green space in the city where you can actually get away from traffic noise and the sight of any buildings – in fact, not great, but essential. I guess that’s it – to me it’s like people are raving about an essential thing, like having a toilet. To wander far into the park, it just feels like that – I’m in a park with a huge pile of other people. I’m of course closer to nature than amid the traffic and concrete, but I don’t feel that close to nature. It’s a contrived, planned, manicured public park. It’s too perfect. It’s not really nature. I don’t think I saw any bugs. Of course I’m a snob about this. This is why I live where I do, and that’s why I write bluegrass songs. So in my wanderings, I didn’t bother going deep into the heart of the park, and instead enjoyed the juxtaposition at the edges of the green adjacent to the city. Grocery stores are built in levels here, like department stores, with narrow escalators and signs demarcating what grocery items are on each level. It’s a strange vibe, frenetic shopping for basic survival goods. It feels like being in a discount clothing store with people muscling around grabbing desperately at items, except it’s food. There’s a vaguely competitive feeling that I haven’t felt in a grocery store before. I walk back to the nearest subway stop with grocery bags in hand, and get asked for directions to the store I just left. I’m tickled to be able to give them. Especially because she sounded like a New Yorker. I know exactly where I’m going and take on the bored, languid air of a city resident who’s just bringing home some groceries and toilet paper.

Friday at noon I have my first rehearsal with the Persuasions in Brooklyn. From Harlem, Googlemaps tells me it should take about 45 minutes. Bernard suggests I give myself an hour to an hour and a half. Just in case you get on the wrong train. Good idea. But in spite of all my anxieties about negotiating the subways, I pick up the system very quickly and make it to the rehearsal, 45 minutes early. It’s a beautiful sunny day (I’m told this is the first nice weather the city has seen after a long winter) so I wander around a bit. It’s a fairly industrial area, gas stations and tire shops. I find a deli and buy an apple and an orange. Dave Revels and Jimmy Hayes show up. This is how they usually approach a song, with the two of them first working out ideas before presenting a more fleshed-out idea to the rest of the group. Dave has a lot of ideas, aspects of the song, aspects of gospel music that I just haven’t considered. We try things out and after only two hours have a fairly clear plan. We part ways with plans to meet with the full group on Sunday. Jimmy drops me off at the north point of Prospect Park, where I decide to wander around and eventually walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Jimmy’s infectious bass and Dave’s supporting lines ring in my ears, and I’m feeling high as a kite. I can’t believe this is my life. As I orient myself and cross the street, I see a man sitting on a park bench absentmindedly holding a trumpet. He has a wide, friendly face and watches the passersby. Our eyes meet, and because I’m so happy I keep looking and smile. We get chatting and introduce ourselves. You know Spike Lee? He asks. That’s my nephew. I have no way of knowing if he’s lying about that, but there’s no point in me gushing over that or asking for some inside dirt, so I just say, you must be really proud of him. He plays a bit of a jazz piece for me before I continue on my excursion and we wish each other well. It’s my first random conversation with someone in New York. I cross the Brooklyn Bridge, and then the road twists around so I get disoriented, find the police headquarters and sit on the bench and eat an orange while I study my map. People in New York are friendly, Bernard said over and over again. If you need directions, just ask. So a young guy with a backpack walks by and I ask him if he can show me where I am on my map. He re-orients me, and I thank him. He starts to leave, then turns around and says, hey, if you’re a tourist, and you’re looking for something to do, you should come to Pianos. My band is playing there tonight. So it starts another conversation, it’s acoustic folk music, he plays standup bass, I tell him I’m a banjo player, and it turns out they’ve been lamenting the loss of their banjo player recently and have been hoping to recruit another one. What are the chances? Apparently quite good, in New York. I weave my way to Chinatown, where suddenly I don’t feel like a tourist. Sometimes I wonder if I like coming to places like this so I can pretend to be a real Chinese person, try to ‘pass’. I buy a freshly decapitated salmon head and some veggies and find my way to a subway station. It took me longer than anticipated to get home, but I steamed up the works and felt pretty pleased with myself. Charlie the bass player had said they’d be playing from 8 to 9, and it was already 8, so I wondered if it was worth trying to go out to see them. The debate ended quickly. When else will I get a glimpse of New York night life? I take the subway back to lower Manhattan but get disoriented again (I have a lot of trouble orienting myself when I come out of the subway exits), and wander for a good 20 minutes or more trying to find the place. Finally I do. The bouncer asks to see some ID (Woohoo!) and says the band is probably finished now, but lets me in anyways. I get upstairs just as I hear them introducing their last song. The place is packed – so this is where all the young white people are. Standing room only. I’m wearing my trendiest clothes, which are not nearly trendy enough. I’ve decided to cut out alcohol (as well as dairy) for the purposes of keeping my voice clean for recording, so I don’t get a drink and feel a bit out of place just standing around by myself. But the band’s set ends and I go up to Charlie, who recognized me immediately, gives me a hug and thanks me for coming. I brought him a CD, as proof that I actually do play the banjo, and he gives me the band’s latest release in exchange. My first full day in New York. A raging success, I’d say.

I have two flights to New York with a stopover in Salt Lake City. Both times I share the row with a couple travelling together and we make small talk. Two women on their way to a massive women’s conference. A married couple going to Europe for two weeks for the husband’s MBA program. They’re all amazed that I’m flying to New York to record a song for a CD, and wonder aloud if I’ll be famous, so they can say they remember sitting on the plane with me. They’re also so excited that this is my first time in New York (okay I was there when I was three, but I don’t remember anything so it really doesn’t count). The newness and excitement, and a bit of nervousness, which I hadn’t really allowed myself to feel while I was getting everything in order, are beginning to permeate. I’ve memorized the instructions Bernard gave me to get to his apartment. But I don’t understand the automated MetroPass stands, and I don’t realize that the Long Island Railroad is a separate entity with separate ticketing, except at that one point in the airport you can buy all those things in one go. I get busted on the train and have to pay a way higher rate to the conductor. Bernard sends me a text asking if I’ve arrived, and my phone doesn’t allow me to respond. I have loads of stairs and subway turnstiles to drag my suitcase and bags through. I’m really glad I didn’t bring the banjo. New York is muggy as hell. It reminds me of Hong Kong. I climb out of the designated subway stop and manage to find the street. It’s pretty, quiet. The stone steps with the heavy banisters remind me of Sesame Street. I find the building number. There is someone coming down the stairs, so I stand back to make way with my luggage. But the person stops midstep. I look at him through the glass, and he looks at me, and I imagine my expression matched his, inquisitive, friendly, vague recognition, familiar but entirely unfamiliar. A faint smile creeps up, and he holds the door open. It’s Bernard. Bernard carries my suitcase up the five flights of stairs, which I think should earn him enough karma points to find enlightenment by his next life if not the end of this one, and proceeds to show me around, spewing out a wealth of information about the city. He has to leave tomorrow morning to go back to work, this time flying to Oklahoma City. I hang around him in the apartment like a lost puppy dog as he’s packing, trying to absorb all the information he’s given me, fearful that I’ll forget some important piece of information essential to my survival and the welfare of his apartment. “If you need any help, just call or email me,” he says. “Even if you’re lost, give me a call, tell me what the cross streets are, I can probably help you out.” And so in this way, after hanging out with him for perhaps a total of 6 hours in person, Bernard became my virtual tour guide during my entire stay.

Okay, I have to confess, I've been mostly blogging on the myspace page. But I promise I will now post blog entries on both pages, now that I'm slightly more internet-savvy and the extra screen time isn't quite the hardship it used to be. So to bring you up to speed, I have to tell you about the coolest thing that has ever happened in my life to date: The Persuasions agreed to record with me on an original gospel song! I met them at Dawson City Music Festival in 2009, but really only hung out with Gil and BJ, who were fill-in singers, not regular members of the group. I debated about asking them about my song all weekend, and finally on the very last night, when we were having supper in Whitehorse before flying back to our respective cities on Sunday night, I timidly said, "I have this song that I wrote...it's meant to have the feel of the old negro spirituals, but I usually write bluegrass songs...I don't suppose you could give me some pointers on how to do the arrangements?" It didn't work out quite that simply. There were lost emails, lost CD-R's in the mail, misunderstandings of timing, but finally, finally, they got the song in their hands and sometime in early March I got the YES, we like your song and would be happy to record it with you. Right then and there, I could have died of happiness. But then my friend Steve said, "Great. So are you going?" It hadn't occurred to me - in this day and age, recording and collaboration can all happen through the ethernet. But he said, no, you should go. New York is awesome in the spring. And...with quick reference to some airline websites, flights from Spokane are cheap right now. And I'll find you a place to stay with some of my friends. The idea terrified me initially, but a few days later the realization that this was the opportunity of a lifetime sunk in. I couldn't NOT go. So, a couple frenetic emails later, the flight was booked and the couch-surf was arranged. Ta-da.

Yike! It's been a while but I've finally updated this page, with all my spring and summer dates. It'll be a busy, exciting time!

Oh crap, has it really been two years since I've posted to this blog? I hate to say it, but the majority of my blogging happens at www.myspace.com/elenayeung. Don't know if I can really split my train of thought into two different websites...

Mmm, two solid weeks of being around great friends, new amazing people, constant sleep deprivation, and jamming until every muscle in my body is screaming.  And now...back home, preparing to enter back into what has been my 'normal life'...it all seems to be fading into a dream-like memory.  In fact, being in such a surreal state such as in 'bluegrass heaven', it's hard to believe looking back that all that fun did in fact exist. 

 What's left?  The path ahead, the resolve to return to my metronomic meditations, and to not allow myself be strayed or intimidated by hot licks and flashy playing.  Keep the core solid.