Another Radio Interview

Been meaning to update people to the fact that I did another radio interview. Like the BBC one I did (and still need to somehow get into digital 101010110100101000.. format from cassette) this interview was only broadcast locally but still I’m sure there were a couple (dozen) ears tuned in between the hours of 8:30 to 9:30pm on Bellows Falls Community Radiostation; Wool.fm. This interview I am almost certainly going to be able to obtain a straight digital copy of to share it with all.

The interview went well and it was a jolly fun hour of waffling, who doesn’t want to talk about themselves to an interested audience eh?

Unlike the BBC interview, the show was done live and on the spot as opposed to when the BBC chap came with a recorder and mic to ask me some questions and then took away a CD of my music to intersplice with a monologue of yours truely, totally only 4 minutes. This time I got a full hour to myself and was able to play whole songs all the way through.

I was interviewed by a ‘Maya Costley’ who I had met previously at one of the Drum Jams (will have to talk about those sometime too). She had an air of youth about her, I was surprised to find out later she had and raised kids as usually she hides an amiable and pretty face under funky large skullcaps or various other headgear,  I had assumed she was quite young but today I was able to spot the odd strand of white hair.  She’s very nice.

Maya works at the Community radio station and was starting to pursue more local music acts for the show and thought I would make an interesting subject to drill.

Drill me she did, we got to talk about all manner of things from growing up in England and getting a ‘British Education’ to how I come to be sat in the chair talking about my lifes aspirations. I think it best to let the interview speak for itself when I upload a copy asap.

After the interview I showed maya how to use some computer software to edit audio material as she needed help with a previous interview project of hers, in fact the Bellows Falls Studio has this impressive audio workstation which apparently know one uses any more(!). It was just sat there, a whole mini studio begging (me) to be fondled and used for bloodthirst creative audio endeavours. I was told I was welcome to use it anytime and even invited to have my own radio show! I guess the interview went better than I thought! I am tempted of course but don’t know how long I will be in the area for..

“Not to worry” says they,

“Record some shows for us on the road!”.

You know what? That’s a jolly good idea. So watch this space for ‘Myles’ travelling radioshow’. Just need to obtain a microphone and audio interface for the laptop.. Mmmm.

Alas the rest of the week was quite boring, a lot of paperwork related infiltrations of local post offices and banks to sort out other things that needed erm.. sorting out.

Also had some really warm days where I just was lazy… aah bliss.

Oh yar wrote some new tunes too, if you’re all good boys and girls I may share with you a sneak preview..

Now to edit the timestamp of the post to make it look like I am keeping on top of my blog… (oops).

Boston & Back (Pt II)

After trampling all over Boston, we were getting quite hungry and so made our way to ‘Government Center’ which is where the City Hall was. Getting off the tram, we were treated to a troupe of breakdancers performing in the sqaure and so watched them for a while. I thought they were pretty good and liked some of the coorindated dances they had going with up to 6 of them grooving to the gettoblaster at the same time. Skill wise I have seen a lot more impressive breakdancing in videos and from researching the passing interest in the dance form online, but still it was great to see it for real in the flesh. Bet ya didn’t know I took some breakdancing lessons at University? I don’t know if I can still do some of the spins and I seem to get dizzy more quickly these days if I bounce my head around, possibly a sign of my worsening hearing condition, related to the pressure imbalance in my head? Meh

For food we entered this long thin building which contained about 35 different food stalls up and down the whole length, take away foods from all over could be had from Greek cousine, Thai to brick oven pizzas and fish and chips. Mmmm, mouth watering stuff. Right in the middle of this ‘food market’ there was a large circular eating area with two floors so you could sit down and munch away. This is precisely what we did, I went for Thai..

An amusing incident was when I had to pay for the Thai meal with a $20 Travellers Cheque. This part was fine but I had to sign and date it as usual, didn’t know the day and so asked the lady behind the counter what the date was. 9 30 she said,

It wasn’t so bad with the being an ‘outsider amongst deaf peers’ really but when we all got back to Davids apartment Karl told me that Susan and David had decided I was mad at Karl for some reason, I quickly dispelled the rumour and said it was just a little difficult for me to participate in conversations thus I was being quiet a lot of the time. Certainly no-ones fault and definitely a temporary issue. Karl was happy to hear that I wasn’t angry or any such thing and agreed that I would be fully participating soon once I had learnt more ASL. He gave me a hug and went off to prepare for going out to the clubs tonight.

So go out we did, all dressed up and ready to party, however it wasn’t to be. We knew it would be difficult to find a club to get into with David not quite 19, but unfortunately everywhere we went to said, 19+ or 21+ only, so poor David couldn’t get into anywhere! I’m nut sure if it’s related to the fact that we were trying to get into gay bars as there were two bisexuals among us (not me, I’m pretty straight I reckon), however it’s more likely to do with the 21 being the drinking age in the States.

Well it was a bummer not getting to go into a club, we instead decided to go grab something to eat at a 24 hour supermarket, Karl and Susan had Sushi, David and Meg (oops forgot to introduce her too, she came out clubbing with us and was a 2nd year video art student friend of David, she was hearing but learning signing too.) had Ben and Jerrys. I had a chocolate sundae pudding. Weird what you can get at these hours in the supermarket..

It wasn’t such a bad night out but we had a long trek back as surprisingly the Tram services stopped from around midnight or so. With aching feet we got back to campus and went to bed.

Running out of time writing this entry here at Bellow Falls Community Radio Station… what am I doing here? That’ll have to wait till another blog post I’m afraid 😉

So the following morning (this would be the Sunday Oct 1st), we packed our things back up and Karl drove us back to Vermont. Not before stopping off at the Cheesecake Factory mind you! Yum yum, supreme cakes that I got to munch on the roads back home.

Crashed out at Karl and Susans place as we were all pretty knackered. Got to talk to Karl some more about his life and past relationships which really helped give me food for thought about what I am looking for at the moment. For your information I haven’t been one looking for ‘fun’ with girls and have been on the hunt for more serious relationships but so far no luck there, usually the nice ladies I ask out are taken. I won’t bore people with the failed attempts to court ladies in the past but might talk a little more in the future about some things I’ve observed or learnt so far and my own thoughts on that huge word; ‘love’.

Karl took me home after his days work on Monday to Putney.

Gotta dash now though, plenty more to say, not enough time in the day wot wot.

Boston Ho! (Pt I)

Oooarrgh, well brain information overload this weekend and unable to contain all it for later consumption blog-wise however I shall try and recollect some of the best bits for ya all, but quickly to catch up:

“Side-notes”; The workshop went rather well if a little needlessly hectic on my behalf, made one or two tiny errors when instruction the kids what the do in the exercises (e.g. tearing up all the paper into ‘frames’ when folding them and tucking into each other book style would have been much better) but everyone was remarkably patient with me and for that I am grateful. To my surprise, I was handed a money order check for $200 as gratitude from Austine School for my efforts. I was all set up to do it voluntarily but being rewarded money for my time and ‘skills’ *cough*.. was an extra bonus 😉

That’s not all, the day afterwards, apparently a little review and evaluation was performed by the students to say how they enjoyed the Camp and I was informed that they enjoyed doing my workshop the most out of the other 4 activities they did also! So I must have done something right.. 🙂

Highlights of the day would be the kids understanding a lot more about the concept of animation and video art than I expected, seeing some excellent flipbooks, chipmunks, and being asked what the ‘name of my car was’ by a small and intriguing girl with a face and demeanour of someone much, much older.

For your information, the car search still continues..

So the Leadership Camp drew to an end and Karl, Susan and me went home to pack and prepare for Boston.

We took about just over 3 hours to get to Boston, much of the journey I dozed off in the back of the car wishing I had my new camera as I watched the sun set through the rear window. The cloudscapes were sheer bliss providing a softly evolving illuminated backdrop for the wispy green mountains. Such is the rural landscape of Vermont and Massachusetts, green trees turning orange as they coat the hills and occasionally you can spot mist rise from the valleys.

Driving through the Streets of Boston was a wake-up call to the fact that I was suddenly back in a City environment, an extreme contrast to the idyllic towns and villages that dot Vermont, that said, the places we drove through seemed quiet, I was expecting more hustle and bustle to match the skyscraper-ed street blocks but the general pace of things seemed very laid back to me especially compared with ‘neighbour’ NYC.

Quickly we found the campus for the “School for the Museum of Fine Arts” which is where the friend of Karl was studying and who we were to stay with for the weekend.

David was a quirky fellow, I was surprised by the age gap between him and Karl but I found out that they had met when David were at a Summer Camp.  At 18 David was a well travelled fellow having already visited 15 countries,  details are a little sketchy as I tried my best to keep up with the conversation but when deaf people get together they tend to sign away at the speed of light and change topics at the turn of a .. er, whats the word.. hmm, meh… oki, at the turn of a turtle. Thus poor old me with 2 weeks ASL learning under my belt was a little overwhelmed.

In fact much of the weekend I experienced almost exactly the same situations of being left out when in group conversations, this has happened all my life among hearing peers because I find it difficult to hear what people say and as soon as the topic starts bouncing around I am lost without my contextual recognition. So it was a little depressing to experience the same thing among deaf peers but I kept reassuring myself that this was only temporary and it was just a matter of time before I could fully participate when I have learnt a lot more sign.

At least this time everyone could understand my troubles a little better this time and so made more of an effort to pause and tell me what the topic was and ask me some questions in super slow-motion signing. Thanks guys 🙂

We went out that Friday night to mooch around, found our way to what I was told to me the famous ‘Newbury Street’ known for upper class toffery. Again I got the feeling that the streets were quiet, not much going on, this would be about 10:30pm mind. Many of the shops were closed save for a the bars and restaurants. We did finally find an open Candy Store and proceeded to gorge our eyes on the sugary possibilities. I spied a table in the middle containing exclusive and rare ‘imported chocolates and sweets’ essentially containing my typical diet back in England from the age of 6-10, Cadbury’s Flakes and Kinder Eggs anyhow, awesome stuff.

The sweetie attendant kept offering us some freebie samples whilst at the same time nagging not to ‘mix the walls’ referring to the fact that the different sweets on different walls were priced differently. I proceeded to joke with her about the fact that ‘all local kids must be insominacs seeing as the Candy Store was the only place open within sight at this late hour.’, well it got a giggle.

After candy we visited a park where I was slow-mo sign informed ‘Good Will Hunting’ was filmed, having not seen the film yet I couldn’t comment much on this trivia, prompting the others back into their discernible conversations, and thus I descended into quiet gloom as I am prone to in a moonlit park such as this. It was silly of me as I battled against not being able participate fully in signed conversation versus the knowledge that I would be able to in the near future if I stick with it. I tried to stay positive but lagged behind the others as they continued on.

We got back to campus about 1am, since David is a fresher and living in the halls of residence we had to keep handing in a form of ID to the guard in reception until we wanted to go out. I was a little worried about leaving my Drivers Licence like that overnight but I can report that I got it back each time without fuss.

I slept on the couch in a communal apartment whilst Karl and Susan got a blow up mattress in Davids room. Zzzzz… Continue reading

Dell Inspiron E7015

IT’S HERE!

laptop

“Dell Inspiron E7015”

I don’t have much time but I’m sat here on my new laptop that arrived ahead of schedule using the wireless internet at Austine School for the Deaf. In 2 and a half hours I will be giving my presentation to a group of deaf kids and then getting them to make some animations as part of the workshop.

I hope it will go ok, I showed Karl my PowerPoint presentation but it turned out I had gone far too indepth into the subject matter so we radically stripped it down to something much more simpler, which works out better for me because I’m hoping to sign in ASL to these kids, bit of a tall ordeal considering I only started learning it 2 weeks ago. Hehe.

After today I ride back with Karl and Susan and prepare to go to Boston for the weekend. I have more to say but it will probably have to wait till tonight / tomorrow.

Und Tschüss!

Karl & Susan, pt II

Hullo folks,

Saturday was groovy, went to a ‘music party’ at a house of a family obviously very into world music, many musicians showed up and so we all played upbeat jigs and folky songs. I didn’t have my guitar so drummed along on the various percussion they had laying around. The family’s music room was jam packed with instruments from all over the world, very very cool. People were playing all sorts of things that I’ve never actually seen but only heard of being used musically e.g. spoons, jews-harp, jugs, a part of a glass organ? Others played fiddles, mandolins, banjos and guitars. Oh and someone whistled into a mike. Mostly the men played instruments whilst many of the ladies danced around in the middle, however we did swap around some. Awesometastic fun, not quite experienced anything like it, felt like from another time if you know what I mean? One very happy house in the middle of another nowhere.

Oh Maya was there also, she asked me again if I could come in and broadcast some of my music or playing, I told her that I can bring in a CD of music and talk about how I compose, she seemed happy with that and so we exchanged emails. Got back late after all that.
Right, onwards, I spent Sunday-Monday with Karl and Susan at their place, the main reason for me staying over was to plan for a workshop I have been asked to do.

A workshop you ask? Although I mentioned it in the previous post let me elaborate. You might remember I mentioned going up to Visit ‘Austine School for the Deaf’ a few more posts ago, well Karl as a teacher there, is organising a ‘Leadership Camp’ and asked me if I would do a presentation and activity with about 30 deaf high schoolers as part of their Leadership weekend. I was surprised by his request but interested in seeing what I could do.

His idea was that I could talk about being a deaf student at University in England and show the high schoolers what my animation degree was like. With that in mind, Karl asked if we can do something interactively with the kids so they get to have a hands on experience.

As I said before, the act of animating is very, very time consuming and I’ve only been given 1.5 hours to do it all in! None-the-less, this is what I did with Karl, brain-storm a little and do lots of thinking. Finally after a few experiments it was decided that if I could split the workshop into two halfs, I could introduce the students to the basic principles of animation via pen and paper and drawing keyframes to create a very shot and simple flipbook. Then using that as an introduction to the methodology behind 2D animation, I would take them to the Computer Labs in Austine and load up either some animation software, or even a basic online ‘flipbook creator’. There is a flash online-based one that allows you to draw into the computer in black and white line-drawings and then play them back in sequence.

Go and have a go now! It’s a lot of fun!

http://www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbook/flipbook_maker.php

Some awesome ones have been made so far by other people:

http://www.fabrica.it/flipbook/topvoted.php

I’m going to stress the point of how computers today have really helped the animation industry by allowing the workflow to be much quicker and far fewer stages required to create an animation than say in the old Disney days.
So with the plan of what to do with the deaf students sorted, all that is left for me to do tomorrow is make a quick PowerPoint presentation and burn some examples of my animations I’ve created at University to a CD to show them on the day.

Karl and Susan spent the rest of Sunday evening teaching me more ASL of which I tried to my best to assimilate even though I was quite tired from stressing over this workshop!

Karl and Susan Signing

“Karl and Susan Signing”.

Karl also cooked us a spicy chicken-sausage risotto thing served with 2 slices of pineapple, a surprising and interesting meal, he could definitely open a restaurant I told him. I did the dishes afterwards to show my gratitude despite their grumbling that I didn’t need too, har!
Since Karl and Susan are both profoundly deaf, they have a fully equipped out apartment Continue reading

Snakes! Frisbee Golf!

Hmmm, the other day I was making lunch in the kitchen here as the sun streamed in through the windows along the wood floors, when behind me came an unexpected visitor. He seemed the slippery sort so I got my father to help me eject him from the house. Not before taking a picture first though of course.

Slipper Snake Fellow

“Unexpected Snake Fellow”.

A first for the blog, a short movie!
Snake movie (right click save as).

“Slithery Snake Movie”, captured with the Fujifilm camera.

OK so it’s not exactly a huge man eater, the movie is in .wmv format because I only have access to ‘Windows Movie Maker’, sorry Mac-Linuxy people, will rectify matters when my laptop is delivered.

This place is surrounded by all sorts of insects and small critters, not for those with quesy dispositions!

I went outside afterwards because some of the locals were playing ‘Frisbee Golf’ where they would trample all over the hills here and aim their frisbees at Chucks Sculptures, the objective being to hit the target sculpture in least number of throws. They very kindly welcomed me to the game and let me have a go. The frisbees were quite small and hard to throw straight but I started to get the hang of it after a while.

Only trouble was it was easy to lose the frisbee in the thick overgrowth of the hills and surrounding woods so most of the game is actually spent looking for your frisbee instead of chucking it around, in fact we lost one when headed straight into the woods for a huge oak tree as our target, doh.

Whilst trampling around I spotted a Praying Mantis and then a snake about 4x the size of the one above, pretty groovy huh? Didn’t have the camera with me unfortunately then as it’s a little too big to carry around just like that. However that said I have my eyes on the camera I will buy which is really small but still full featured.

Fujifilm FinePix F30

“FujiFilm FinePix F30”

I think it’ll make a great blogging camera, plus it has some of the best low light performance for its class. check out the review of it here: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0602/06021403fujif30.asp

A bit of a short and disjointed blog entry for today, however I gotta go and fix some food, shower and prepare some animation workshop materials before Karl gets here at 4pm!

More on that later…

Ciao!

Scrubbin’ Sculptures, a Caterpillar and Karl

Funnily enough after battling with ‘the-worst-digital-camera-in-the-world’ I found a good Fujifilm digital camera here in the house! I guess had my host (Chuck) been here, he would have told me about his own camera, doh, however he has been away for 10 days but gets back from a business trip tomorrow. I had a sneak look at the camera anyway and took a couple shots, it’s quite a nice camera indeed, and so todays blog posting has some better pictures.

Wednesday 20th was split into 3 chunks. The morning found me lazing about on the couch, watching TV whilst practicing my ability to dodge adverts by flipping channels back and forth.
However, in the afternoon when it had warmed up a little, I got on with the given task of scrubbing down a collection of sculptures that are due to be shown at an exhibition sometime soon. I had been asked to clean off the bird droppings and dirt.

Dirty Sculpture

“dirty sculpture”

I spent a few hours on that, but it was fairly back-breaking stuff as there were 15 of them and each had to be rolled around and maneuvered so that I could get at their multiple undersides.

15 Sculptures (c) Chuck Ginnever

“15 ‘Rashomon’ Sculptures”, the work of Chuck Ginnever.

Just after cleaning the sculptures, I turned around and spotted a caterpillar making its way along a concrete wall.
“Pah that is an easy crawl thought I� and so proceeded to make things a little more trickier for it with some obstacles and a ‘reset zone’ where-upon I carried the ‘pillar back to the start a few times to see if he would get better and faster at traversing the course. The exercise was slightly voided since caterpillar got spooked a couple times by some militant ants and either froze or shot off in a completely different direction. None-the-less he achieved his original destination in the end albeit with an amusing roll and bump down the slope at the end.
I was having so much fun that I completely forgot to take any pictures of the little hairy feller, but never mind, I present here instead, a picture of the wall and an animation demonstrating roughly the path of said caterpillar.

Path Wall

“Path of mentioned caterpillar”.

The previous night Karl had asked me online what I was doing today because he wanted to ask me about a ‘Leadership Camp’, because every Wednesday night my father likes to goto the Jazz Jam at the Vermont Jazz Center I told Karl he could meet me there at the Jam and then we could talk some more.
Lo and behold Karl was there at the Jazz Jam and we sat and listened for a little whilst I showed off the new ASL I had learnt so far. Cool thing about signing is that it doesn’t matter how loud the environment is, you can talk away freely over music and loud noise without any such problems with understanding each other, that is once you’ve learnt the language sufficiently that is! I have a long way to go but Karl was very patient and spelling out words for me that I did not know. What Karl wanted it turned out,, was for me to take part in a weekend of activities that he was organising on behalf of Austine School for the Deaf, in fact he wanted me to give a presentation and host a workshop for about 30 deaf students, they would be from the 3 surrounding deaf schools (Connecticut, Manchester and Brattleboro). Well golly, I was a little taken aback, what could I possibly share with these budding deaf students? Karl went on the explain that the idea of the camp was to give deaf high school students of ages from 1420 some inspiration for going on to further study. Karl had a Principle from the only deaf University in the World (!) attending to give a talk and another graduate ex-student like me to give a presentation. So it seemed to be that I could give a talk to the deaf students myself and tell them about what it was like for me to goto University in England and explain what I did, how I did it, and what I want to do next. Here comes the worrying bit.. Karl stressed repeatedly that my presentation and workshop should be interactive with the students so that then can essentially have a go at what I did at University..
“OK sure, so I did a Computer Animation degree, Karl wants me to show the kids how to animate�
“Wait-a-sec, how long do you want me to do this workshop for?.� To which, Karl whips out some poster print-outs that outline the schedule for the weekend. My name was already on there!

2:30 – 4:00pm: Activity w/ Myles de Bastion.

!!!

This guy moves fast..

Apart from being completely taken aback, it suddenly began to dawn on me a major problem, 1.5 hours to teach 30 kids how to animate? If you aren’t aware of this, the art of animation is one of the most time consuming things you can do as a creative profession, each stage takes a lot of time, concentration and (for the best results) specialist equipment like Lightboards, Graphics Tablets, Scanners, Cameras, Render Farms, etc etc. You need a lot of time, resources and endless patience to complete an animation. Thankfully these days you can do a lot of the work straight into the computer and skip past many of the stages that cel-based animation houses used to have to do back in the pre-Pixar ‘Disney Era’. But even so this requires at least a computer per artist and plenty of time.

OK, so we’re not looking to create a block-buster full length animated feature movie here, but the ideal would be to have each kid make their own small animation sequence, the simplest form of animation that springs to mind is good ol’ pen on paper cards which are then stacked and flipped through with the thumb to create a flip-book, I’m sure a lot of people have tried that at least once? Trouble is, it’s very difficult to make and view a convincing animation with this method for a number of reasons, one is the fact that altough paper is nice and easy to see through so you can trace your previous drawn frames, it doesn’t the type of flexibility when stacked into a flipbook that you need to rapidly flick through the pages in succession. Card has this elastic flexibility but you can’t see through it without the aid of a back lit surface such as a lightboard that professional animations use.
To get to the point, I feel that the kids are going to be disappointed by their hours work invested into a flimsy flipbook that doesn’t flip, hardly the way to inspire kids about animation!

Oh dear..

My brain starts to go into overdrive thinking of solutions to this near-impossible conundrum and as I sit here typing I have to admit I still haven’t decided on the best way to do it. Any animators out there, feel free to suggest something!

However I need to decide something by tomorrow because Karl needs to order in the materials I need, and thus I feel a bit pressured there. Shall have to email him and voice my concerns.

Aside from debating about the workshop, I enjoyed a tea (strawberry mmmm), and a couple shots of Jagermeister (Mmmm!!) with Karl when we went out to a bar afterwards. It appeared to be an Open-Mic night in the bar and had people taking in turns to get up on stage with an acoustic guitar and warble away, I didn’t pay much attention though as I had to concentrate more on what Karl was signing to me, it had been a long day too so my tiredness made things slightly more difficult, none-the-less we got to have a very nice chat and I found out a lot more about him and how he grew up in Boston but was actually from South Africa. I really like him and hope we can remain good friends in the future even if I move away from here.
Better end the post for now, will report back on the workshop and other things when I know more!

Good night all.

Cousin Once-Removed ‘Isabel’ and a Drum Jam

Good day,
This ‘dodgy’ camera actually has quite a feature set to my surprise, you can change the exposure, white balance and jpeg picture quality (super fine, normal), wow, and also it records movies! Unfortunately I only have an 8mb SD card to play with which is good for about 10 pictures at a time, not so useful.. 🙁

Here are a couple shots I’ve taken with it, note that I had to bump the saturation up in Photoshop

Chucks Farm House Valley

Farm house I am staying at and the view over a valley opposite.

Last Monday evening there was a surprise phone call from ‘Isabel’, she apparently is my Grandfathers niece and thus is a distant relative of mine that I never knew I had. She phoned because she was in the area and was staying at the Putney Inn. She was part way through a trip to visit more of her friends and family and would only be around for that night only, hastily leaving the following morning.
I have never seen my father in such a hurry to change his clothes and clean himself up to be presentable. He usually has no sense of urgency and his personal appearance is a lower priority for him. None-the-less, that night we were out the door within 20 minutes and scooting off down the tree-lined dirt roads avoiding the pot holes and probably going faster than my fathers Nissan pick up truck can really cope with.
Meeting my cousin (once-removed?) Isabel was certainly an interesting experience, she was jolly and up-front, the type of person who will really tell you what she honestly thinks. She told me that she was the big mouth in the family and proceeded to prove this as she dished out the family dirt and secrets that were presumably meant to be kept inside the family. I liked Isabel, not just for being honest but she was easy to talk to and seemed ‘real’ if you know what I mean?
So before even our meal had been served I was versed in who the crazy ones were and those who have had nervous break-downs so far, I’m sure you get the picture..

She also invited me to her home in Buda, Texas which I will certainly be visiting probably in Spring when I start journeying out West. I’ve always wanted to visit Austin which is renowned for its music. Some of my favourite guitarists have come from there; Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons and Stevie Ray Vaughan to name a few. Must be something in the water over there.
We decided to get together again the following morning for breakfast and to see her off but left her at the Inn that evening because my father wanted to go to the ‘Drum Jam’ in Bellows Falls, although we invited Isabel, she declined and preferred to get an early night anyway.

The drum jam was fun, I had actually gone the previous week as well but forgot to mention it here, it’s held every week in the studio of a woodworker artist friend of my father, the work-tops are pushed aside and out come the drums, congas, bongos and sticks.
That night there were about 9 or so of us making a lot of racket. Someone would lead with a beat and then we’d all join in to add our own beats to interweave an ulterior tangle of rhythmic sound.
If I can I will see if I can get an audio recording of a session to give you a better idea, probably when my laptop arrives (still 3 weeks to go.. Hmmpf).
Oh ya, I met a girl called Maya at that Drum Jam, it was her first time there but we got talking a little at the end, turned out she does some radio broadcasting in Bellows Falls and always has local musicians coming in to play live over the airwaves, she asked if I could come in the following week and do something, I’m intrigued, but as to what I can ‘play’, I’m not sure yet, I’m more of a composer than a performer you see. Currently I only have my CD of music and an acoustic guitar with me, but there could be some possibilities though, wish Maya had been more specific about what would be suitable..
Anyways, if I am able to put together a performance then I will no doubt let you guys know.

Which also reminds me that, as some of you may already know.. Continue reading

Bowlin’ Rollin’ & Photograpic Cajoling.

Let’s see, I have a few days to catch up on here.

A photo! (finally)

“*Gasp* can it be, a photo??”

Yup I went bowling on the Sunday in a bid to meet more deaf people locally, my father took me there and drove off to do some work presumably. I was fairly early but when I went in I spotted a couple of guys signing away, a younger jolly looking lad and an older feller in donning a cap over his white hair and weather tanned skin. As before I went up to them and attempted to introduce myself. I was able to finger-spell my name out to them and tell them that I had been invited by the deaf people I had met already. They were familiar with the names I gave them and said that I would be able to fill in for a team member who would not show up. All good and well so far!
Shortly after that people started turning up, and gradually the place seemed to be teeming with people signing to each other whilst putting on their bowling shoes and limbering up. Must have been 25 or so of us suddenly taking up half the bowling lanes in the place!

I spotted Kelly from the other night and went over to say ‘Hi’. She recognised me straight away and said it was good to see me there. She then introduced me to the chap in charge of the whole bowling bonanza called Ken who then assigned me to 3-person team.
I hadn’t been bowling in years so suffice to say I was more than rusty and ready to embarrass myself.

Embarrass myself I did on a few occasions but I also get in a few nice full strikes in there too! My team were pretty patient and were kind enough to give me plenty of bowling tips however it seemed that the more I thought about my technique, the worse I did! Oh well.. 😉

After 2 hours we had managed to play 3 games, it was enjoyable but I hadn’t been able to talk to people and socialise as much as I was hoping to, if I had to attribute that to any reason I would say it was because everyone was pretty competitive about their game and that didn’t leave a lot of room for getting to know people better and learning more ASL from them. Oh well, it was still a good experience on the whole. Oh yea my father sure took his time to pick me up, I was the last to leave! Mmmmm a car to call my own.. *daydreams*.

Thus onto Monday where I, yes indeed, I got my hands on not just any camera but quite possibly the worst piece of photographic technology I’ve ever used, but none the less, images! Read on! Continue reading

McNeils

Thus, as recommended by Karl and Susan, I made my way (with my Father kindly driving me there) to McNeils in Brattleboro at 8pm the Friday evening.

You would think it’d be relatively easy to spot some deaf people chatting away in a bar wouldn’t you? Just look for people signing avidly to each other. However most notable when we walked in was an absense of any such signing from anyone.
Hmmm, maybe they were at another bar? So we had a quick mosey around to the other local bars but either the deaf groups were not talking to each other or there was no-one out tonight.
As my father and I walked back to McNeils, I must admit to feeling a little deflated.
However, lo and behold as we walked back up the street, there, stood outside McNeils were some people signing! Continue reading