6/6/14 Onederlust day 1: Providence

Onederlust Day One (in Providence!!)

Missing my first ride
                  The first day of the tour has come and gone, much like the sleep that kicked off the first of many nights to come!  Grandma and I both turned in around 11:30 and woke up at 5:30 Friday morning so I could catch a 6:45 train from Inwood to Penn Station.  It was one of the only trains that she could get me to the city in time due to her work schedule.  I showered, changed, packed and she graciously made me a delicious and simple breakfast, peach preserves on a bagel and a cheese omelet.  While I'm scarfing this down, a testament both to her great cooking and my voracious appetite, talking between bites, I look up to respond to her sudden gasp, and see the clock is reading 5 minutes to the time we have to leave on the train!  So we jumped in the car and headed to the train station anyway, where I was thankfully able to jump on a slightly later train.  Grandma bid me goodbye with grandmotherly kisses and hugs and I attempted to read on the train.

Penn Station at 8am
     I made a little headway reading the CSFTS: Inspiration For Writers on the train, but admittedly, I dozed off more than I'd have liked.  Does reading do that to you as well sometimes?  I arrived in NYC at 8pm, Penn station was packed full of people like sardines, a cliche I'll only utilize because all of them stretching and swimming through the hallways on autopilot, mouths yawning wide, reminded me of fish in a tank dumbly waiting on flakes of food.  I scolded myself for my cynicism, suppressing a yawn and continued on, but was that observation all that inaccurate?  The women were made up, dressed up and beautiful, and young men trying to look older in their suits, not yet grown into their wall street roles, their briefcase arm slumping asymmetrically with a lack of practice.  As hard as I tried, I couldn't get a smile returned to me, not to be deterred, despite a 3 1/2 hour wait for my bus, I emerged to the bustling city street, always disoriented by its cartoon-ish proportions and after 20 minutes arrived at the bus stop.

"There's something about you I knew I could trust" -Kareem
   I waited in the shade sitting on a broken cement pillar and read while I watched the passengers of earlier buses get on and off buses.  Soon the area was vacant and an mid-age looking man with a vibrant friendly energy about him asked me if I was waiting on the Providence bus, then placed his Adidas bag down.  He struck up a conversation asking me how long I've been waiting.  He whistled when I told him, and we laughed.  He was a Muslim from Philly, where he "flipped" houses for a living to keep food in his four babies' mouths, and was going to visit a friend in Rhode Island.  Would I believe it, he was 52?! I said that I couldn't believe it, and so we spoke of the importance of taking care of your body (all while obese people chain-smoked and waddled around our area, orbiting the hot dog trucks and pretzel carts perched with greedy clever eyes near the lines of bus patrons.)  He had to get some breakfast from one of those aforementioned trucks, leaving his bag back with me to watch?  He returned to his bag fine and me just sitting and reading, I looked up and smiled as I saw him plucking pieces of bread from his breakfast sandwich and liberally throwing them to the dirty pigeons that bobbed and cooed across the pavement stupidly.  I made a note in my notebook, You can tell a man is a good man if he trusts easily and he treats animals well. Again, having to go to the bathroom, he asked me if it was alright if he left his bag with me, I assured him it would be no problem, reminding him that regardless of my potential covetousness of his bag's contents, I still had to get on the same bus as him!  We shared a laugh and he promised to be back, when he returned around the corner he had two waters, one was shockingly offered to me! I thanked him, and finally we exchanged names.  Kareem, was my morning line-waiting partner in crime, and without knowing anything about me (even my name!) he trusted me with his belongings.  I marveled aloud at his trusting nature and his kindness, even telling him about my note about his feeding of the pigeons.  "I don't know Bruce, I didn't even know your name but there was just something about you and I knew I could trust you. As for the water, I had to do you a favor back."  Then he told me how the Koran tells us to be kind to animals and told me about his family.  We boarded the bus where I helped him to charge his phone since his outlet was defunct and I read.

Journey to and arrival in, Providence
  On the bus, mostly I read, much of the first chapter emphasized the importance of persistence in the writing and publishing business.  The second chapter I found interesting and it was several anecdotes regarding the topic of "making time for writing".  There was a great quote utilized:
                                              "It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants.  
                                                The question is: what are we busy about?" 
                                                            -Henry David Thoreau 
With this in mind, I was reminded to keep a strict schedule of productivity in life especially with all of this down time on tour, and in between reluctant naps I worked on some new lyrics to songs.  I listened to some music, practicing lyrics to Creative Differences: A Split, and The Vigilance Committee's "Lost Again" as well as Rush's "Fly By Night" and "Grace Under Pressure".  When I arrived in Providence, I sat on the sidewalk for about a half hour, hugged Kareem goodbye, probably never to see him again.  Sad I thought , but also beautiful to connect with people so strongly in such a brief time.  I spoke to my friend Mojavi on the phone, and he looked for people to connect me with in Albany when I arrive there on the tenth, as I had performance plans but yet to acquire a place to stay!  I'm lucky to have him as a friend, he is an enthusiastic supporter, a great poet and a really adamant promoter of the arts and artists, it seems he and I will be collaborating in the future in some shape or form!  Owen D.o.drent, came to pick me up, we hugged, rapped, laughed and caught up.  He blasted grindcore music which I will never understand the purpose of (sorry grindcore fans).  We went back to his house and I was greeted emphatically by his dogs and family.  His mom, adorably framed the note I left her on the back of one of my AllOne flyers and put it on the piano in her living room!  Owen, inspired by some of Guy Fieri's Diners, Dives and Drive-Through episodes we watched, made me a crazy Bacon, cheddar and tater tot sandwich on a bagel "as energy food for Everett".After an hour passed, I got changed and we headed to the event.

Everett
 Everett is a beautiful little independently operated dance and art school in Providence that was founded in 1986.  It looks like a cabin or some sort of Frank Loyd Wright building set back modestly in a parking lot at the base of a steep hill that is Duncan Street.  Every first Friday of the month, they have an "open stage" event, where they charge five dollars entrance fee (a small favor to ask considering what they offer the community and that they're run entirely on donations).  Owen paid my way through like a gentleman and we stuffed ourselves into the venue. They invite performers of all sorts of talents and ages to go up and perform.  July and August they are not open, so the stage room was packed full of easily 120+ people with little sitting or standing room left, as this was the last "Open Stage" event of the season.  There were tons of incredible dancers  individuals as well as teams (one duo of kids could not have been more than 9 years old) a couple of rappers, a singer-songwriter named Bianci with a beautiful voice.  Owen and I initially planned to do the full version of his song "Walking Nightmare" (click that to see a video of him performing that piece on his own at the event several months prior) that ends with a poem I wrote, and then I'd go on to do "Quality Vs. Quarantine" with assisted vocal layers by him, but as there was so little room we decided to combine our sets and do the title track from our project "Creative Differences".  Thrown off by the sudden switch and unrehearsed, I feel I could have done a bit better it was a great experience to see all these people and an interesting way to start off the trip.  The closing act was the son of Cambodian parents who experienced the poverty and bombing done in the area in wartime and famine and strict dictatorship-type ruling and he presented a segment of his mult-genre one-man-show that made use of storytelling, documentary style footage, dancing and spoken word poetry to tell his story.  It was a genuinely wonderful presentation, where the tale, the message and the performance were blended nicely and in a way that was like watching a person literally give their all into representing a struggle.  It was a humbling and beautiful experience.

To NYC
         This was the first time that Owen and I had seen one another perform and the first time that we had performed together, as well as the first time his parents had seen him perform, so that was a great experience.  When we got home, his mom had made us a delicious steak, peppers, onions, spinach, provolone and tomato sauce sandwich which I opted to save the for morning (and did not regret, as it was superb, thanks Mrs. L!)  Again, I woke up at 5am, took a shower, woke Owen and he dropped me off, now here I sit cramped on the bus, my fingers dancing along a keyboard racing a dying laptop battery trying to nudge my sleeping neighbor clad in a stuffy business suit.  I think I will read and nap.  I will arrive in New York city where I intend to meet my good friend Doug Widick and go on some fun adventures and see his hip-hop improvisational comedy skit group North coast!

"The only way to know if you can trust someone is to trust them" -ErnestHemingway  (paraphrased)

Go connect with people... Trust me!
-AllOne

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