the byron time warp is having an effect on me..
i could be leaving in two and a half weeks. down to sydney with charlie, in her van, to meet lenny. i've spent two and a half months here already. it feels like both a day and a lifetime. i reckon it'll be strange sleeping in a room indoors again. but i'll be back soon enough. can't wait to show lenny everything and bring him into this place.

Everyone Deserves Music.

Met Michael Franti tonight. He was debuting his documentary film- "I Know I'm not Alone". I recommend everyone should see this film. Then he answered some questions and played us some rockin tunes. And I got to thinking about how much all of these issues are someone else's issues; they are problems that we internalize that are not ours. Byron is a place where people from all over the world come together. my friends here are from Australia, Ireland, England, Canada, Israel, France, Scotland, Turkey, etc. etc. We are different religions, different races, different languages, different cultures. We do not take issue with each other. We do not have unresolvable differences that take us to war. These are other people's issues.

My friend Tomer is 26 years old. He and the other Israeli boys have all arrived here after having served their time in the Israeli army. They have seen and done things that most of us cannot even imagine, and would probably not want to imagine either. None of them wanted to be there or do those things. Every day they too told themselves that would not cross those lines; would not fight someone else's battles. But the next month they'd be ordered to do something worse. Instructed to stand guard and follow orders.
Politics can not be a religion.
God is too big for just one religion.
The world is too big for one land without borders.
Everyone deserves music- even our worst enemies.

It's been an eventful morning
and it's only ten o'clock yet.

Today our sweet James leaves for the bush. He arrived here at the Arts Factory 9 months ago to stay with his older brother Cockatoo paul, who works here as a musician and hosts the Tuesday talent show with me. Cocka's best friend Brown Snake is taking James out into the bush for several months, to build a camp. Later Brown Snake's wife Lisa and two year old son Jungamara will meet them there. 100 km away from anything on arid australian desert land they will build something out of nothing, hunt and cook their own food, and find their own water. He may even find his totem name. This will be a life experience for James- a chance to turn around his life, and a process that separates the boys from the men.
We wish you all the best James.

44 days to go

hosted my first tuesday night talent show.
it went fairly well considering we were rained out and had to have it indoors in a cramped hot room. it's a bit hard to yammer on about mostly nothing on a microphone for a prolonged period and still appear funny. however- now i'm getting paid for 3 more hours a week, and i get to keep playing music.

said goodbye to some close friends today. living here means making friends is both a very fast and very fluid process. faces come as quickly as they go.

my baby arrives in 44 days :)