Date: Tue, 30 May 2000 16:04:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Steev Hise To: europe2000ATdetritus.net Subject: Report 6: Postscript hi everyone, I have decided not to come home, and right now I'm in Amsterdam looking for an apartment. Haha, just kidding! I'm actually back in San Francisco, safe and sound, though I lost a bag of English tea somewhere over the Atlantic, somehow. A few words about my last couple of days: Saturday night Vicki and I went to a pub in Brighton called The Lift, where some friends of hers were meeting us and had attested to the quality of the event that would happen there. At first we were a bit worried because the sign said "Brighton Poetry Slam". There was poetry for awhile, and I will just summarize by saying that if it wasn't all in an english accent I would have left early. However, after the poetry was this crazy sort of open mike jam session. A house band whose name I forget played these sort of funk jazz grooves and anyone could just go up and grab a mike and start rapping or singing. Sounds horrid, I know, but somehow it just worked and turned out to be really great. A really big high point was this guy Jamie who was set up at the bar with a G3 Powerbook using some kind of pitch shifting software to mess with his voice. he would sing through it these sort of appalachian R&B vocalizations along with the band. It turns out he and the keyboard player are a band called Super_Collider, which are fairly big in the "electronica" scene, i'm told, at least locally. All in all I was really impressed that there seems to be some sort of really creative underground music scene happening in Brighton. (All I knew before about the town was what I saw in "Quadrophenia"- btw, Vicki insisted we find the famous alleyway from that movie, which we eventually did after several wrong turns in the rain...) Anyway, the next day, sunday, we were a bit hung over but thanx to something called "Health Powder", a british thing that fizzes up in water, we were soon ready to catch the train into London. We went to the famous Rough Trade record shop and i sold some of my CDs to them, and bought a few if theirs, including the new Stock, Hausen and Walkman. We wandered around Soho, and met Vicki's friend Simon (a member of Coil) at his workplace, a porn shop in Soho's seedier section. He finished there and we went to dinner with him and his boyfriend Steve. There I had authentic english fish and chips, and witnessed some strange english deserts - vicki and steve had "fruit sponge and custard", which is this sort of cake submerged in warm custard. I had apple pie, also submerged in custard. I must be the only american to visit london and not see Trafalgar Square. But we ran out of time, needing to get the train back to Lewes at a reasonable hour since we had to get up at 5 the next morning so i could get to my plane on time. I will definitely have to come back to England and spend more time in London. The next day i was indeed up at 5, got on a train to london, then the tube to Heathrow, then on to the plane. Virgin Atlantic turned out to be much more comfortable than Continental, perhaps because they're British. They give you a stylish vinyl sack with all sort of Virgin-brand goodies like mints and a pen and notepad and bright yellow socks. They fed us 3 times and there were about 12 inflight movies to choose from. AND, over Greenland their little display that showed where we were showed a little cartoon of Elvis. So *that's* where he is!! Oh, speaking of Greenland, it's very beautiful from the air, lots of snow and ice and mountains, and flying over it I found went very well, somehow, with listening to Cafe Tacuba on my portable CD player. Other music listened to during my trip include: Elliot Smith, Jos Smolders, Xper, and Melted Men (who seem to be the Athens, Georgia version of Stock, Hausen and Walkman, to my ears. very entertaining). Movies watched during the trip: The Talented Mr. Riply (good) and American Beauty (seen it before, but still *excellent*, even on a tiny LCD screen). Getting off the plane and heading for customs, it felt good to be back and be able to use the special line "for U.S. citizens only", after seeing all those lines in other places "for EU Nationals only". Now it's been about a day, I'm still a little jet lagged, and I'm still in the hyper-aware travelling mode, as if I'm still in a new place, noticing things that seem new but are not. "Culture Shock", I've realized, is not a sudden, monolithic experience, but a slow cumulative effect that builds over several days, a process of many many small differences accumulating. Dumb little things like the direction that bathroom stalls open in or how much you're supposed to tip. Here's a few things I will summarize that i've observed: - the days are really really long. I didnt realize this before, but most of Europe is much further north than most of the U.S. Hence it doesnt get dark till about 10:00 this time of year. It must be miserable in the winter, sunsets at 3pm or something.... - The English drink tea, of course, but the few times they drink coffee it is much more like american coffee than continental europe. There, when you order coffee, you get espresso. - Everywhere i went, when you thank a waiter or waitress they reply with "please", in whatever language, instead of "you're welcome." I guess it's short for "please, it's nothing, don't thank me", etc. - The English say often "cheers" instead of "thank you". - California is much, much sunnier than anywhere in Europe. Amazingly so. - Lots of young women in europe wear really tight pants. There are also far less fat people than in the U.S. Well, that about wraps things up. I will probably be scanning my photos and putting them online in the next week or so. I also have 11 minidiscs full of field recordings (that's 11 x 74 minutes!!). Selected bits will be used as source material for musical projects, other sections might get put online relatively as-is. These reports along with other writing will probably get put on the web soon as well. I will keep you informed about all of these developements as they occur. Thanx for reading, and thanx to those of you who wrote with your feedback, comments, and support while i was travelling. If you can, the next time you go to someplace interesting, keep me informed like i have tried to do here. ( I should acknowledge that these reports were inspired by my friends Ed, Jon, and Mykle's various entertaining electronic travelogues from places like Thailand, Austria, and Brazil; thanx guys!) Best wishes, smh Steev Hise, Head Chump steevATdetritus.net http://detritus.net/steev ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Governments exist only to protect the rich against the poor." -John Cage -----------------------------------------------------------------