day 60

day 60!!!!

it's really late and I'd like to go to sleep but I need to upload this file from my recorder, so, this seems like a good idea.

recently:
train from wroclaw to budapest got weird and Charlie got really sick and was puking every 30, very confusing midnight train delay in the Katowice station, cold as fuck ambiguous style and finally getting on the train to Hungary.  seated in a semi private car with some old dude that was creeping me out while Charlie tried to sleep off his sickness and I kept awake drinking bison grass vodka while skethy old dude said things in a language I don't understand and then delivered a MASSIVE box full of ___???? to someone in Ostravia(?) at 2 or 3 AM then got back on the train and continued to creep me out until we arrived at Budapest at 8:30 AM.

spent the day walking-the-fuck out of beautiful Budapest, started out nicely snowy then devolved into sock-soaking, grey slush-water-rain which is significantly less aesthetically pleasing and really wettens the body and the mood. right off the bat we stumbled upon a HUGE cemetery which is truly one of the most stunning, heavy and beautiful places I have seen. just endless stark white fields of epic statues, tragic monuments, willows, urns, etc.  we witnessed part of a funeral rite/procession which included some very sad, slow and faint music, a man slowly walking an urn to a pedestal, and an epic fountain.  seems like a nice way to go.  i wish we had a million pairs of dry socks and a nice camera because i could have spent all week wandering around that place. we then crossed the Danube River via the Elizabeth bridge, then back again on the Chain bridge.  man, that is a nice looking city. i scored four different kinds of paprika and we ate some mediocre chinese food.

We picked up our bags and took a tram to the venue, the Coxpon Ambient bar.  We walk in and it is a really, really mellow coffee shop, people are smoking hookas, there are amorphous throw pillows strewn about, there is terrible 'ethnoambient' music playing, and a couple is making out HARD at one table. we get some coffee and wait for dude to arrive.  after a while we realize that we are not in fact playing at the cafe, but there is a whole venue in the basement. so, we go down to the basement and there's a whole bigger floor with a sound system and, miraculously, even MORE throw pillows, shitty psychadelic neon-rave 'art', and a somehow even stonier 'chill' aesthetic, as if we had stumbled upon P.M. Dawn's secret '69 opium den.

the show ended up being totally enjoyable and our new friend Kalman was a great host.  a man arrived quite before the show started with his boss' camcorder. the guy was a bit drunk and really weird and basically started filming and getting into a really awkward interview type scenario right after meeting. i told him i really didn't want to be filmed without asking and it got weirder but manageable. he opened a bottle of vodka, expressed his confusion that i wasn't well into my 40's with a big beard, more weird comments, and eventually the show started.  no issues.   fast forward a couple hours, after the vodka bottle emptied and some fairly alarming mutterings on his end, he was literally charging at me during my performance, holding a table over his head and clearly intending to smash the table over my own head (though it was a really sloppy, very drunk charge). Charlie and some folks intervened and I stopped the music and walked up to him to try to diffuse the situation in the calmest way.  fucking weird. the vibes were THICK and after lying on the groud crying/howling/muttering/??? he was taken home and Charlie and I chilled with Kalman until going to Vienna today.

on the train to Vienna we saw some wild rabbits, deer and pheasants and it was really nice.

-g