Through the Looking Glass

Road: Like Willie Nelson and Canned Heat

I made a comment yesterday that came from taking stock of my activities over the last couple of weeks: I haven't devised, made, revised and crossed items off so many lists since Patricio and I planned our first big odyssey, namely, our big, fat, Mexican wedding. What is going on? What has happened to the Mexican Alisa who has become so comfortable with mañana? I'll tell you. What's happened is vacation.

Yet this is no ordinary trip, no traditional and easy jaunt with minimal plans. We didn't accompany my in-laws to Acapulco last week. Nor are we heading to Cancún with Patricio's brother, Beto, and his family later this month. No long weekend in Vallarta, or even a leisurely trip up north. This year, it's not a matter of throwing a swimsuit, sunscreen and flip-flops into a bag with a few changes of clothes and a book.

This year, Alisa and Patricio are going to be groupies.

The sound of that word may bring to mind, among other things, road trips by day and dance-filled concerts by night, and that's exactly what our vacation promises, as we travel through southern Mexico and Central America with the members of Mitote Jazz.

Veterans in the art of music tours, Cipriano and Isabel--the ensemble's master duumverate--have lined up a series of concerts along the Pan-American Highway, culminating in Nicaragua for the celebration of Isabel's 60 magnificent years. And on the off chance that you're itching to buy a plane ticket to Central America within the next few weeks, you can easily coordinate your trip with a ours by taking a look at the tour schedule here.

It's the road trip Patricio and I have dreamed of since the idea was a baby one, way back in 2006. But road trip, for Alisa, equals a whole world of imagined contingencies. And Alisa doesn't want to find herself without those flip-flops, an extension cord, or Cipro, you know, on a quiet stretch of road in Guatemala. So planning and planning has been the order of these days, and in a few hours, that planning will happily end. Because at eight in the morning, our vacation begins.

We groupies even have our own name. We're Mitoteros. On the road. Again.

Masiosare

The neighborhood had been quieter since last Thursday, since school was out to bridge the long  weekend between Mother's Day on the 10th and Teacher's Day, yesterday, on the 15th. Today sounded more like a Monday than a Wednesday, with snare drums rattling in accompaniment to discordant bugle blasts, not too long after eight in the morning from the Margarita Maza de Juárez elementary school across the street.

The first day of the school week always begins with a woman's voice over a loudspeaker directing a patio full of uniformed children. To those of us on the other side of the high walls--that line of cinder block around the complex of two-story green and white buildings, emblazoned with the unintentionally-rendered but nevertheless menacing face of President Benito Juárez's wife--the muffled, monotonous, and yet undeniably commanding voice drapes itself over our homes. I sometimes liken it to the sound of a muezzin's call to morning prayer, only that this voice is calling the kids to begin their rendition of the Mexican national anthem.

It's always an earnest, endearing and slightly comic performance, with the loudspeakered voice all but drowning out those of the children, and the haphazard sounds of drums and bugles played by the few remaining students doing their best to approximate the anthem's official rhythm and notes. A tune that couldn't possibly be more classic in its embodiment of the march tradition, it sounds both weary and hopeful coming from the school's little ritual of ceremony and practice.

We hear it at midnight, too, on those nights driving home after a late movie, the radio tuned to Horizonte or Reactor. Every television or radio station must play it at the beginning and end of their broadcasts, turning the minutes and the airwaves after twelve into a choral interlude. Click here to hear it, and go ahead: imagine being in the car with us on those windy roads home. And if you like, you can read along to the lyrics here, too.

I think you'll agree that it's not the type of anthem (or as it's actually called here, a hymn) that would easily prompt soccer stadiums to invite musical superstars in for a Beyoncé-style, roof-raising, lax-tempoed, improvised-vocal-flourished rendition. And so, the pregame performance usually goes like this. It might be more rigid, but it's certainly still regal. The salute even seems more formal, the right hand placed not with the palm flat over the heart, but rather with the palm facing the floor and the thumb-side to the chest.

Almost any song collectively known and sung, especially about one's country and its autonomy in particular, tends to rally up emotions in just about any citizen. Mexico's anthem is not exception. And yet still it gives pause to think about the nature of the lyrics: imagery of war, cannon-fire, soldiers and blood that become a necessary means to certain ends: the ideas of victory, glory, honor, union--and liberty. It's all nothing if not sobering. Violence and peace are virtually, paradoxically inseparable.

But not many of us think about that in too much depth when it comes right down to the singing. In fact, it's no secret that many children and even adults--those who have likely never seen the lyrics in writing, who haven't worked out the full meaning of the sometimes archaic wording--can misunderstand what they've learned to sing. Perhaps it's an urban legend, but plenty of people have heard of birth certificates boasting the name 'Masiosare.' It sounds pleasant enough, doesn't it? But it comes from the middle of the anthem's first verse: "Mas si osare..." is the phrase, meaning "But if [someone] should dare...". I can understand hearing that and then thinking it might name a certain 'Masiosare,' but I'm doubtful of the claim that anyone would name their child after the [someone] in that line, who in the second half is revealed to be an "enemy outlander."

And yet, who knows? All things are possible. A popular sushi chain here even serves up a delicious Masiosare Roll...If anything, it's proof that the national anthem holds a firm place in the national consciousness--something also confirmed almost every week of the academic year, right across the street from our house.

Pedro Infante, Que Cante, Que Cante

Just like Patricio and I are prone to spontaneous bursts of dance, the cat and the car's interior are also often witness to our impulsive bits of song. And the top three melodies, with lyrics we'll sometimes change, would be recognized by almost any Mexican citizen who happened to hear us through an open window. When the skies are overcast and the clouds look heavy, one of us is bound to take on an exaggerated tenor and deliver the prediction that "Parece que va a llover" (It looks like it's going to rain). Or when the mood strikes us, or to better call the other in from a different room, the register runs higher and out comes a vocal shower of "Amorcito corazón" (My little lovey heart). And sometimes, an almost pouty "Pero te quiero más que a mis ojos" (But I love you more than my own eyes) will find its way into the air between us. They're all perfect for our purposes, and they're all cultural references with one thing in common: an icon whose death happened fifty years ago yesterday.

Pedro Infante sang each of those lyrics in movies still so popular that they're played in rotation (along with around 60 others) each weekend on major network television. A toda máquina, the Pepe el Toro trilogy, and Tizoc are the ones we pull our own top three from, but I'd also be telling the truth if I said that Patricio knew about a dozen other Infante songs in their entirety, by heart.

Just say the name "Pedro Infante" to someone here, and lyrics, images and sentimental ties will come to the listener's mind. Everyone has a favorite movie to name, or three, and though some love his memory a great deal more than others, it would be a rare and astonishing thing to find a person who frowned at the invocation. Actor and singer, with a voice that still wields the power of swoon, he's the one person an aunt of ours said would have made her consider acts of adultery. My mother-in-law can go glassy-eyed when she hears him, my father-in-law will belt out "Efigenio El Sombrerudo" at a party with his best imitation. Patricio's daughter, even as a little girl, couldn't have been a more rapt audience when watching his films.

He's something much more than anyone I can think of in American culture; it's a delicious coincidence that his last name literally means "prince." He's like a bigger-than-life soup of Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Robert Redford well-simmered together. And unlike Elvis, whose life also ended too soon, Infante hasn't become an icon of kitch. He's as classic as a Redford, or a Humphrey Bogart, perhaps. But for many, like Elvis, Infante continues to live. He was even said to have moved right here to Nicolás Romero, spending the rest of his days in peace. Our friend, Laura, knew the rumor all to well--she and her father made nothing less than a pilgrimage here when she was a girl, only to find an old man to dash their hopes and disappoint them both.

His lyrics and lines, not to mention his charisma and his rags-to-riches story of fame, continue to maintain thick, solid roots throughout popular Mexican culture, fifty whole years after the ill-fated flight he was piloting in the Yucatán. Only a few years back, supporters of López Obrador claimed that "¡Peje el Toro es inocente!"--a reference to one of Infante's most famous characters, Pepe el Toro, framed for a crime he didn't commit.

And much like Pepe, Infante's record has been washed virtually clean by his fans. His machismo may have been enormous, some illicit connections may have been true, too. But he's become a legend here, and the legendarily good find their faults falling away, far in the background.

And what's left is the stuff of spontaneous, joyful song.

Decemberist

Mornings seem so easy to fill, with drowsy attempts at keeping eyes open, stirring cinnamon and sugar into a white oatmeal bowl, reading a chapter from a book, re-reading a note from a friend, and turning on the day's music. Even now into the afternoon, The Decemberists are enjoying a strong, non-stop monopoly of sound in the house. After listening to their NPR live concert, I wasn't ready for Colin Meloy's voice to stop, and tapped into itunes for their songs I had waiting at the click of the mouse. It's the right kind of December day to be listening to the month's namesaked band. Some of their lyrics are eerie enough to send the skin a good goosebump or two, or perhaps an odd shiver of recognition, and shivering is undoubtedly what this month has been marked by.

I've written about the cold here in Mexico's high plains before, but that was the rainy season chill, and for someone attuned to the nuances of nippy temperatures, this decembery cold is quite another thing. It hovers inside our house in highs of sixty degrees. I bless the person who brought space-heaters into the Mexican market; we can, at least, keep one room at a time in a state of comfort above seventy.

Granted, this cold lacks the winds that will buffet a bare face in New York. The lack of it, keeping the smog over the city like a sinister sister cat of Carl Sandburg's "Fog," is a happy advantage to living within a valley. And though the outside temperatures don't often drop far below those thirty-two degrees, houses aren't much made for fooling the skin of its freezing force.

The majority having been built of concrete, brick or cinder block walls, insulation is merely a dream and central heating even less than that. And so many in the mountains to the north and to the west are constructed of materials even less able to keep the cold at bay. The weather may not be North Dakota cold, but holding off a thirty-five degree night with a small stove and a drafty set of walls is a yearly losing battle for the very young and the very old and the respiratory health of them both. Patricio and I are fortunate enough to have that small heater we can move from room to room, an electric blanket in the night, small luxuries of heat when our fingers begin to feel a bit like ice.

And these decemberist cold days have led us to ideas much less chilling, hoping for a day to come when Insulating Concrete Form (ICF) technology would arrive in full force here in the high Mexican plateau, inexpensively allowing residents to build strong homes that feel more cozy than cold when the calendar reads December. It's humanitarian architecture, something viable and desperately needed. And it's a tune I'm sure we'd all like to sing to.

Metal Matters

It's true, I haven't been punished in a long time. I've suffered consequences, of course, like those suffered after telling the woman with the scissors to "go even shorter," or those that happen after deciding that devouring a third, thick disc of cinnamoned chocolate is, really, a good idea. But I haven't done much to merit castigation--or its Spanish equivalent, castigo--since I parked my car on Spring street in a dubiously-marked no-parking zone. One hundred and five dollars later, I've tried keeping to the general straight and narrow.

But like most of us, even if it doesn't mean hair shirts, flagellum or a cilice--or even a string of rosary beads, for that matter--I've certainly been known to be hard on myself. Like the day two weeks ago when half of our zaguán, or tall metal gate, gave a slump to the center and would no longer close. Patricio flexed his biceps and got to work with the welder to fix it, but dropped the tiny, steel hinge ball in the tangle of green grass. Working his hands through through the blades nearest the ground, like searching for a lone tick on a wily gorilla's forehead, he was lambasting himself for a split-second fault of the hand.

Eventually, he found it, but not before my own personal reproof could put me in a figurative corner. "With a magnet, we could find that thing in a matter of seconds," Patricio said, and my mental Rolodex flipped back twelve months ago to the days I packed his belongings and we moved into our own little house. Clinging fast to his old wallet chain, curled around a collection of keys in the back of a dressing table niche, was a pair of huge magnets, perfect for finding steel balls in the grass.

I marched inside the house and took the key/chain box down from the closet, sure I'd find those thick, metal discs and sure to relieve Patricio of his grass-combing. But they weren't there. I even checked twice. And I realized that those magnets had probably gone into the black, plastic bags that went out to the curb. I walked back out into the yard, dragging my feet with and with a face full of compunction.

"I think I threw them away," I said.

"Oh, I doubt that," he said, "I know you'd never throw anything of mine away without asking."

Um, right. Of course I didn't inherit the habit of throwing things out from my dad. I remembered the day we returned from a Wyoming vacation to find that he'd had enough of our five cats and had taken them all to the pound. (We got four back). I'm not sure it made it any easier for me to see that Patricio chose gracious denial in the face of what was likely the case: that I'd thrown his good magnets out, and who knows what else that he might ask about someday. Contrition was certainly the word for the afternoon, though it did end happily with the zaguán returned to working order.

I managed to punish myself mentally over some metal, and soon discovered that metal can also by punished. In the world of penitence through prayed rosaries, bells rise up to a quasi-human status, names, potential for punishment, and all.

The Catedral Metropolitana that presides over the north end of Mexico City's Zócalo boast 30 different bells. Symbols of God's voice, the oldest, Doña María, left the foundry in 1578. The largest, Santa María de Guadalupe--a youngster at 215 years--weighs in at 13 tons. Not all the bells are rung every day, marking the hours of services or calls to prayer. And some, the punished, might not ring for years.

One of the bells, an esquila that rings with the centrifugal force of its turning, pushed on by human hands, is known as la castigada. She was punished with silence for fifty years after knocking her pusher in the head and sending his soul heavenward. It wasn't until the next jubilee year that she was allowed to ring again, though always with her scarlet cross. Perhaps being la castigada made her really seem more human, but she was certainly the bell that evoked the most tenderness from me. The tour of the cathedral's belfries is well worth it--to see the city from a bell's eye view and hear the angelus rung midday. But it was the penitent bell that made the trip unforgettable, to see that the voice of God had suffered in silence, too.

(More silence from this blog, as well, until next week. We'll be in the mountains of New Mexico, and thankful. A happy Thanksgiving to you, too!)

free admission

a brief, improvised concert just happened outside, the kind i think that björk or john zorn might try to replicate. the rhythm, syncopated, came from the empty lot behind the patio wall, as neighborhood boys pounded nails in their playhouse fort. something like melody, on the atonal side, came courtesy of a small child's frustrated cries. perhaps his wish for a merengue was denied--those hardened sweet froths packed down into wafer cones. the merengue merchant, indeed, made his way down the street, sing-yelling his quarter note announcement, a three syllable counter-melody that peaked in the middle like whippy egg whites. together, the neighborhood rooster and the hedge's laughing bird cried the counterpoint's third strain, punctuated by the passing gas truck's loud, raspy honk and the man bawling out its contents like a horn's nasal refrain. as a jet roared off toward the airport to the south, it's trailing white noise quieted everything to an end. it was a jewel-like, avant-garde afternoon concert--enough to elicit a brisk round of applause.

wonderland's graffiti room of sound

late sunday morning, heavy-lidded from a delicious saturday night, patricio and i saw the city without traffic. driving toward cousin blanca's house with the first half of mexico vs. iran on the radio, we imagined the streets and highways forever free of backed-up lanes, and it was beautiful. beautiful, like those three goals mexico made that morning, making us bounce around on couches while we yelled, hands punching the electrified air. it seemed the whole city saw it happen somewhere--anywhere but out driving.

late sunday afternoon, sprawled across pedro and laura's lawn, patricio and i helped pull up clover while eating slices of pineapple. we talked about politics and people, and election's possible outcomes. we imagined a mexico with a government that got it right, and it was also beautiful, like the enormous bowl of ceviche we spooned into that evening, covering crackers with that mix of mexican seafood and sauce.

and that late, delicious, saturday night? we spent it at a place--though built above ground--that feels subterranean like the white rabbit's hole, and a haven for mexico's underground sounds. driving south toward coyoacán, we pulled up to the curb in colonia roma, in front of el foro alicia. a glance at the lineup was all we needed as a reason for us to stay; we'd heard nothing but good about cabezas de cera, and we wanted to hear if the hullabaloo was true. we had no idea what fun we were in for.

el alicia has been a fixture here for ten years now, and counting down. housed in an old, two-story warehouse--service elevator and fiberglass sheet ceiling, too--the walls are painted, to the last bit of space, in gigantic, graffiti art murals. the stairwell to the second floor stage is a slim, square, vertiginous spiral. the bar occupies a corner, stocked to the ceiling with boxes and boxes of beer. it's a mental reference salad of both CBGB and the nuyorican poets cafe, and maybe the mercury lounge. but its a space all its own, where an upcoming band can play and make its mark.  (you can see a post-show video of the concert space here, highlighting the graffiti all the way to the wonderful abominations that are the bathrooms. but it's long, and shot by a very drunk canadian. if you're in the mood for listening to him, great! but let's be honest: muting the video makes it a million times better).

the man behind all the music is nacho pineda, and on saturday night he filled the house with a wall of sound, french and mexican, and one hundred percent sublime. minuit guibolles opened for cabezas de cera, both groups formed by super talented boys with stage presence oozing out their eyeballs. punk, jazz, gallic, middle-eastern, and metal: it was all a part of the playlist. even the dreadlocked hipster cynics slouched in the seats up front became part of a captive, hypnotized crowd. who knew a bagpipe or an 'ud could be so heavenly cool?

patricio and i imagined ourselves moving inside the music, and it was beautiful. really beautiful, like the tapestry pinned up behind the stage, full of shapes and colors like the people and sounds in front of it.

but i found out today that within a year, el alicia will probably close. in an interview with la jornada, pineda said that "we're tired of fighting with the authorities, we're fed up with it...it's tiring to work fourteen-hours every day, from sunday to sunday... but the real reason we're tired is that one friday the office of the municipal treasury arrives with a fine, on saturday a city inspector slaps on another one, the week begins with a lawsuit and on tuesday we get a citation from the borough....sometimes i think the authorities see independent (underground) culture as their enemy, and it's tiring, irritating and bothersome."

granted, there don't seem to be fire escapes, extinguishers, or toilet cleaning liquids anywhere near the building. i can see why the place would be a magnet for municipal molestation. but it's concerts also add immeasurably to the city's creative culture, without so much as a peso of arts-promoting subsidies. it's a testament to love, to listening and to hard work, and to offering something--many things--new.

i imagine the country's capital without el foro alicia, and it isn't at all beautiful. not beautiful, like alice's wonderland, existing forever only in the intangible world of a young, curious girl's dreams.

crying it out on a virtual shoulder

it ended too soon. two and a half hours of singing and swaying with ten thousand other people, joy on their faces even when chorusing melancholy verses, was simply not enough. and i realized this morning, the songs still in my head, that it opened a flood gate i've been sandbagging for awhile now.

i miss my friends. i miss them terribly. for the first time, since we said goodbye to eric and terry on the fourth of january, i was with a group of people--an immense one--that shared something very passionately in common. i wasn't prepared for that to happen. it was wonderful, and it was heartbreaking, because today i feel very alone.

i didn't want that concert to end, willing one more song, sending my heart out on every lyric sung with everyone around us. but it had to close, just like every email or phone call or comment i receive, leaving me happy and sad at the same, bittersweet time.

finding friends has been so hard here, making more acute my awareness of the ones i have and love fiercely, very far away. i almost unbearably miss my conversations with rachel, with coffee at hand and the new york times spread across the living room floor. i miss stepping into aida's art room in the late afternoon, sitting on those small benches around the large, low table and making plans, plans for things to see. i miss ashley and sandra and bethany, and their laughter and loveliness, and the way they make everything seem so special. i miss sitting in central park with beth, saving a shady spot for friends before opera becomes free for the evening masses. i miss dinners with hilary, and those movies in bryant park, and her healing, loving, musically cadenced voice. i miss beer with all of the most dear-to-my-heart men at the czech, picnic-tabled beer garden. i miss karaoke. i miss kc's sharp, dry wit. and i miss so many other people and their charms who filled my life with big, big happiness. i miss having the freedom to see erin for a weekend, or carissa, nancie, christi and tim, or maeve and allison and vicky. i miss wine tasting with hugo and alexandra, i miss everyone at buckley, and i miss those book groups with becky and suzanne, and cheese fests with aliki and tara. and even those who i haven't lived close to in years and years and years, i miss them more, too. and i miss my mom and dad.

patricio is my best friend. he's my media naranja. he bought me a pair of binoculars to see the stage better; he is more than i ever dared ask for. but somehow, over the course of 29 years, introversion couldn't keep me from loving a lot of people very, very deeply, and their physical distance is harder on me than i imagined it would be by now. because my "now" is in a place where it takes a long time to get anywhere, to go to a workshop, to attend a lecture, to find a place to volunteer. and most of the time, i'm happier to stay at home and let the internet keep me connected.

last night, though, i was reminded how meaningful personal contact is, how much friendship helps me define who i am, and how, in spite of my daily gratefulness for getting to be with and love my husband every day, i yearn for a web of friends here. last night showed me that they are out there.

the last song cerati sang before the curtain closed was one called, "puente"--a love song, not necessarily about a lover. he sang it to the crowd. we sang it back, and i sing it's magic to all my friends, past, present, and future.

here's the translation. if you want, you can click here to hear him sing as you read:

today i searched for you in the rhyme that sleeps with every word. if i kept something quiet, it is because i understood everything except distance. i rearranged your atoms in order to make you appear. one more day, one more day...above, the sun. below, it's reflection. see how my soul is bursting. now you're here, and the step we took: it's cause and it's effect. cross over the love, i'll cross my fingers. and thank you for coming, thank you for coming. adorable bridge created between the two of us. cross over the love, i'll cross my fingers. and thank you for coming, thank you for coming. adorable bridge, cross over the love, over the bridge. use that love, use that love, as a bridge.

gaspar, gustavo, same difference today

it turns out that i'm getting a christmas eve day on the first of june. or given that i'm in mexico now, it's an epiphany day--like the sixth of january, but without the coat-wearing, chilly winter weather. either way, today feels like that because it's heavy with delicious anticipation, a day that took a long time to become present tense, and a day when, primero Dios, i'll be opening a present in a matter of hours.

only this time the wrapping is a tall set of doors. it's a gift all my own, though i'll share it with a few thousand others. and the santa claus/three kings figure isn't from the north pole or the ancient orient at all. he's still a he, but he's from argentina, and he'll be giving us all his new songs.

tonight i get to hear gustavo cerati in the auditorio nacional.

i feel like i'm seven-years-old inside. and why not? i'll be watching and hearing a legend sing in the same building where i sit. cerati once sang the group soda stereo to greatness; i haven't yet met a mexican citizen under the age of fifty who can't sing along lustily to de música ligera. but it was his solo album "bocanada," borrowed for a day from the incomparable hilary, that turned my previous ideas of latin music into a pile of ashes, winging itself up again in gorgeousness, in the span of fifteen songs. it was, indeed, an epiphany--one of the joycean kind.

i know people devoted to U2, or radiohead, or cerati's british compeer, that pope of mope, morrissey. and i understand. it's easy to lay down undying loyalty, especially to the latter two. but i like cerati's world best.

a very happy epiphany.

*lots of links here today. if you choose to click on only one, make it this. it's the view he'll have landing in mexico city, to the tune of his single, "rio babel"--from that album "bocanada."

more than twenty million to prove it

i was used to the idea. and i took it for granted: water cities were where the world converged. it took a port, or at least a beach's proximity, to render real diversity possible. with a few small, landlocked and lucky cities raising their flags of exception, it was the urban docks that could become the continents' doormats. ah, me: yet another preconceived idea that's recently been, so to speak, blown out of the water.

mexico city sits high up in the middle of the country, a house built on the sand of a long-dry lake bed and submerged rivers, 250 miles from either sea. a water city it isn't--at least not since the spanish decided a center-of-a-lake city wasn't quite what they had in mind for their "new world" capital.

but a place of convergence it is.

perhaps not the melting pot of nations one might imagine, it is still one of latin america's greatest cultural crucibles. and what sets it apart from the greatest of water cities is this: not only does it connect people and ideas from the earth's four corners, it seems to connect people and ideas along the city's tumultuous time-line. it boasts the unusual history of being a central space where one highly developed civilization built their empire directly on top of the conquered one, and where both still exert a strong influence over the way life plays itself out right now. many pyramids became cathedrals, but a strong parallel lies in that building technique. the same temple stones now form catholic walls, just as ancient beliefs now mingle with more contemporary ones.

this pluralism seems most fully represented in the very heart of the city, the zócalo. this expansive plaza, surrounded by architectural manifestations of church, state and business--or what keeps the country ticking--is a public space at its best. political protests are a permanent fixture in front of the presidential palace. homages to communist leaders sit opposite the church towers. drums are beaten and auras are cleansed; approximations to aztec dancers perform both daily. día de los muertos is celebrated with marigolds and skulls while clay crucifixes are sold on the edge of the square. tourists and residents mingle in equal proportions as they pass each other by. the enormous mexican flag, eagle of tenochtitlán at its center, presides over it all.

patricio and i were part of the convergence on friday night, two of thousands in a concert crowd, there for free music from a few beloved mexican bands. picture it: in american terms, it was like dancing to green day, nickelback and system of a down playing live in front of the white house, st. patrick's cathedral rising up behind the stage. the whole concert was honoring the lyrical legacy of johnny cash. a little marijuana wafted on the breeze. vendors navigated the crowds, selling cigarettes, peanut brittle and trident gum. a good percentage of the crowd, young and old, had a lot of native american running through their blood. a best western hotel, housed in a building a couple centuries old, has dozens of windows directly facing the concert space and the white house beyond. music blasts into the guests' rooms on into the midnight hour. no one complains about the noise.

and the only water in sight is in the bottles for sale in a vendor's little box.