Open mic, October skies, and Oregon traffic

Fall has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, and we are welcoming the season with open arms. On local television news, in addition to the forecast including a much greater percentage of rainy days, you will find that most stations include a "color" forecast. The color forecast describes the peak time for the fall leaves changing colors.

The prognostication that I caught puts the peak season in the latter two weeks of October, but as you might imagine, the guess is highly subjective (seems fitting that the weather person does the guesswork). It is already in full swing at our place, and is lighting up the hillside across the Willamette.

Paul and Sharon - The visitors from Hell
Just kidding.

Paul and Sharon were here for 5 days on their fall tour, and we couldn't imagine a more enjoyable visit. We spent the days and evenings touring the city and the fall-colored trails, making slow-food style dinners at home, playing music, and discovering pumpkins growing on the cedars outside. Our evenings typically consisted of reveling in the clatter of laughter, the hum of conversation, and satisfied polishing off of the contents of wine glasses. We went for a walk at Tryon Creek, had a soup night where 3 soups and a salad were the courses, had family meetings over the pros and cons of living here, a shellfish and salmon extravaganza courtesy of Tony's fish market, and many points between. It was exactly what we hoped for, and precisely the thing we miss most about being so far away from all of our closest friends in such distant places.

Sharon is really smitten with Portland, and definitely has a longing for the cooler climate, slower pace, and cleaner air that the Northwest provides. Back home, Sharon has a typical L.A. commute to her place of business; I say typical because if you live in L.A. and have to work a day job, odds are you are going to be sitting in 45 minutes or more of traffic to travel just a few miles. Some folks are lucky enough to live near their work, but in Los Angeles, that is an increasingly rare (translation: expensive) luxury. In Portland however, we definitely have traffic, but nothing like the world-class crunches on the 10, 101, 105, 110, and 405 that are part of the normal L.A. commuting routine. For example: on the way to the Portland airport, we were driving at 6:15 PM on I-205, going 55-60mph the entire way. No slow downs for high traffic volume; no incomprehensible merging bubbles; and despite ongoing construction, just smooth sailing on the second major North-South freeway in the Portland. Admittedly, sometimes its worse (and it is always worse on I-5), but for the most part we have very little to complain about. Its a simple formula: Less People = Less Traffic. It might have an urban planning mathematical modifier or two, but really, it all boils down to that.

In driving around (while I'm on the subject), Paul and Sharon discovered for themselves that the 43 is as quick a route in town as highway 99, and is orders of magnitude more beautiful. The 99 reminds me of the redundant, run-down sections of the 99 heading out of Seattle in either direction.

Who wants to play a driving game?
Let's play a little imaginary driving game, shall we? C'mon kids, everyone can play!

Close your eyes, sense your fingertips, and breathe deeply. Now develop this mental picture in the plastic trays and chemical baths of your mind: From Gladstone heading north, the 99 essentially goes like this: car dealership, discount nachos and ribs joint, apartment complex, car dealership, car dealership, mattress outlet, run down thrift store, vacant strip mall, burger joint, car dealership, vacant car dealership, dilapidated used furniture store, Denny's knock-off restaurant, tanning place, scary chinese food, run down bar, Wendy's, car dealership, car dealership, weird statue of Liberty replica, tanning place, Blockbuster video, recently vacant Taco Time, creepy adult video store, Office Max. Vary the pattern a little, throw in some rain and virtual tumbleweeds, and then repeat. Good. Still with me?

Now I want you to visualize the soothing sounds of waves of ambient, soft ocean shores and bamboo breezes. Picture the 43 through West Linn: a meandering road that tiptoes through a few townships and a lovely groomed college campus, a handful of well-appointed houses nestled among fir and sycamore trees, with a candle dancing softly in each window to the sound of deep toned chimes, all ensconced in lush hillsides with panoramic vistas of the softly gurgling river.

And 3...2...1...we're back.

Which highway sounds more appealing? If you guessed the 43, you may have a future in uh, imaginary gameshows?

Its always about the music, dude
Shifting gears (ha), after playing music and talking about playing music, Paul and I decided to do an open mic on Saturday night. I called around and did some digging on YouTube if you can believe it, and we settled on the Bullseye bakery and cafe in Old West Linn. There are of course other venues with open mics around Portland (like the Trash Factory), but in addition to most being mid-week, many of the opportunities were a bit too hipster-oriented to try out our little music/poetry experiment for the first time. I believe the phrase, "we might be eaten alive" came to mind.

The "featured band" was a group of early teen kids doing rock covers primarily, and they did a great job. Certainly reminded me of when I was doing that sort of thing in my mid to late teens. They did Freebird, I kid you not. After they played for an audience of their friends and family, many of them hung around for our handful of musical oddities.

I did one of my singer/songwriter-type songs (Stars), and then Paul and I did 2 loop-based poetry things. I looped sounds from the marimba and a few of Jonah's shaker toys, plus my guitar, and Paul read poems from his time in central America and New Zealand. We finished off our mini-set with Ordinary Day, complete with Paul improvising backing vocals and at one point, when I forgot to sing, Paul singing solo.

The kids that stayed were respectful and positive, although it was weird to sing to an audience of text messagers and last year's trucker hats. But it was a great time. We were nervous as hell, and the looping thing went awry at one point with a loop of the marimba feeding back on itself (which sounded surprisingly similar to what I imagine a 50's midwestern tornado siren sounds like), but all in all it was a great experience. Definitely learned a few things, and it motivated us to really want to do more. The loop/poetry combo works really well, and building the loops live is both challenging for me and (I think) entertaining for the audience.

Ready, set, Fall
After the departure of our friends, things are settling back into our fall routine. I am mentally preparing for the imminent doldrums of rainy days, and believe it or not I'm looking forward to having a reason to spend time indoors. My strategy is to make the most of the time by turning my focus to projects that I've put off all summer long because the summer weather is so enticing here. I am working on several new projects including art creation and direction for a video game project for the Xbox 360, building my own dry erase wall in my office (hopefully today), and honing the music that Paul and I recorded.

My list of sanity projects for the winter includes, so far: learning to cook Indian and Thai food; building shoji screens for the kitchen and possibly Japanese style benches for the back deck; painting Rothko-esque pieces for the house; pulling together story ideas that I've been tracking for the last 6 months into something cohesive (a screenplay or novella); creating 40+ characters for the games I'm collaborating on; and if I'm really ambitious, building a wood-fired oven outside to cook bread and pizza. We shall see. But what it all adds up to in my mind is a good way to spend a winter season, holed in and enjoying the quiet time of rainy days and a wood stove.