good morning ~

(click the link / moonrise to listen)

My Big Breaksleeping alongside other sleepers

today’s track is a somewhat predictable combination of flavors - chopped breaks plus chopped piano improv, two things I keep going back to the well on

got a couple of events to plug - - first up, this coming Saturday in Catskill Human Behavior will be paying tribute to Arthur Russell and raising funds for the Columbia County Sanctuary Movement, an org that is providing crucial support to those in our area terrorized by ICE. We’ll start by screening the Arthur Russell documentary Wild Combination at the Community Theater, then we’ll move on over to the Avalon for covers by a bunch of local greats and disco dancing. I’ll be playing a couple of songs and introducing the film. A wonderful evening, to be sure - you can get tickets for both the screening and the concert on the Community website.

By the way, don’t think I’ve ever shared this with you - if you want to read my undergraduate thesis on the life and work of Arthur Russell you can do so right here.

second thing: my duo record with John Thayer comes out soon and the day after it drops we are doing a very special, extremely intimate release show at Thump in Greenpoint, a very well-appointed recording studio. This is probably the one time we’ll ever have the actual gear we used to make the record on stage with us. You can RSVP via Handstamp and here’s the flyer:

One of my great pleasures in life lately is when Gracelee and I carpool to Albany - there is no sweeter reward for spending a day in the office than waiting on the sidewalk in the government plaza and seeing your wife pull up in the Subaru. We left straight for Hartford the night before her interview and as we drove east the freezing wintry mix started sticking to the car and the road, getting real nasty. At one point it got so hard to see through the ice on the windshield that we pulled off into a rest stop and worked at all the ice on the car with a little squeegee scraper, the best tool we could find in the gas station. The car looked candy coated, a thick layer of sugar adhered to its exterior. Much later than we anticipated we pulled into the hotel and gingerly we tiptoed across the sloping tundra of the parking lot, felt like we barely avoided personal injury.

Inside the hotel it was warm and inviting, the kind of place that was probably top-shelf fancy in 1994. Years of people coming to Hartford for conferences and weddings had worn down the sharper edges of the place and amid the colonial inspired, stain-proof furniture in the lobby area they offered coffee table art books, hot water for tea, and an area for a jigsaw puzzle. The interior of the elevator is wood-paneled in a way you don't see often anymore and inside the room there were two surprisingly fresh cookies in a plastic sleeve awaiting us on the bed. Nothing like a little highway peril to make an arrival feel delicious. We luxuriated in the room, falling asleep to the sound of Murder She Wrote on the TV stashed away in a cabinet.

Between a sculptor/professor and a musician/freelancer we find ourselves in hotels with surprising regularity, a funny perk of what is otherwise a pretty frequently challenging financial lifestyle. Performances, sculpture installations, wedding gigs, touring, guest lectures, conferences - all have provided us a night or two in a bed that isn't ours. And we savor those opportunities, often turning them into working micro vacations. We're both more comfortable, I think, going somewhere with a specific task or purpose in mind - the one time we did chose to go on a real vacation together on purpose we got the flu, almost like our immune systems didn't know what to do with relaxation. I think everyone enjoys getting put up, but our joint enthusiasm for tagging along and taking the nights at the hotel when they're on offer has really made it a fun part of our life.

A hotel is a fascinating place, all those dreams happening under one roof. Feels like I'm always the very last guest to check in and I always savor my encounter with the overnight clerk - 100% of the people working the guest desk after 10pm are fascinating. Behind every door a sleeper, each with their own rhythms and idiosyncrasies. Hotels feel ancient to me. We've been renting a place to slumber for the night for thousands of years and it's more-or-less the same - money exchanged, rest for the weary. A million reasons to lodge for the night, what will all my fellow travelers get up to after their breakfast of overly sweet yogurt, half a bagel, and broadcast news that is always too loud? A certain tenderness to seeing a stranger in their jammies, struggling with the ice machine or shuffling down the hallway. Yes, I do wish there was a deeper convention of camaraderie - feels like in addition to the "do not disturb" knob sign there should also be one that says "we are interested in making small talk" one that would encourage fraternity between the guests. But I'll take riding the elevator together, I'll take my eavesdropping during the continental breakfast. Little glimpses of other people's lives - hey, we all gotta sleep.

In the morning always an act of supplication - may I have late check-out? May I sleep a little longer? May I linger just an hour more in the hospitality, in your wonderful amenities? After dropping Gracelee off for her long day of meetings I had the whole day in front of me and a few more hours to burn at the Inn. First things first, another cup of coffee - somehow always both watery and burned. And then I began my hunt for the fitness center, a labyrinthian voyage through the banquet rooms, past the pool, and down a flight of stairs. I worked up a sweat on the world's creakiest treadmill, savoring the solitude of that underground lair. The tight, drop-ceilinged room felt like it was nestled deep in the earth - I noticed that I couldn't get a cell signal and opted out of an unsupervised sauna session. Then I ascended back to the room, beeping the keycard and availing myself of the scalding hot, firehose shower, working up a delightful lavender-mint foam in the roar. I took a zoom meeting with the camera off while squeezing every last drop of complimentary moisturizer I could find onto my rosy corpus and sent emails nude from bed until the last possible moment. I hung in the lobby a while longer and waited for a convenient moment to ask the lady working the desk for her help in purchasing a hotel-branded, bright orange coffee mug, six dollars charged to the room.

At some point years in the future we will have a friend staying with us. We will have made them feel extraordinarily warm and welcome in our home. They will have had a wonderful night's sleep and in the morning I will offer them a cup of very fancy coffee. It is then that I will reach into the cabinet to pull out the mug I brought home from the hotel, the illustration of a duck on its side a reminder, an artifact of this one night we spent, sleeping alongside other sleepers.

But what about you? When was the last time someone else booked you a hotel? What’s your go-to from a continental breakfast? Do you also enjoy getting glimpses of other people’s lives?