Arco, non possiamo partire

Ploy told me I must go to Arco for the rocks. So we went. We found rocks. We also found the nicest, most perfect and most generous host ever, named Roberto. Roberto has many jobs. One of his "offices" is at the top of a 2300 meter mountain, as the chef of a refugio there. Another office is in the gorgeous lake of Garda, where he teaches sailing. Another is at his home - engineering work. He's a cartographer. He organizes tours to Iceland and Scotland... He leads a pretty magical existence. We didn't see him all that often as he'd wake up at 8 to work all day in the lake, then rush back to do some enginering, then off again for a meeting on his boat, then a party of some kind. We broke his washing machine and he tried to get away with having us not pay for it. But we did.

Arco proved impossible to leave. One day world class climbing, one day stupendous hiking, climbing, hiking, climbing... and it being Italy, we even had food to consume. Though admittedly nothing mindblowing. Arco could have been a perfect place to busk, I think, with the plethora of climber tourists (all Germans, because Germans) the beautiful walking street (there are about 5 streets in the town), and the gorgeous weather. Unfortunately I never got around to it, as we generally got back home past midnight after our outdoorsy activities and searches for sustenance.

Italians live so beautifully. So fully. Ever night for our week in Arco, there was a festival or celebration or concert of some kind. For a town of 10,000 or so. Many of these events involved music. A vegan festival with buskers, for instance, who played "occidental" music awfully and were getting all the tips - made me feel extroardinarily bitter about that part of busking - if a group of westerners appropriates ancient "world" music from the "east" into an awful mishmash of stereotyped sounds played extraordinarily badly, they get tips for being different, and cool, and authentic. If an easterner plays ancient western music (say Bach), well and tastefully, no one really cares. Yes, I am bitter. But even Brent said that I play way, way, way better than the trio droning away on some awful gypsy/persian/russian mix tune, or the Heng and Harp players (who plucked/banged at random), the jazz band that couldn't keep time, and nights later the pop group that couldn't sing in tune, in time, or even in words. Sometimes the world likes to remind you how stacked it is. How the privilege of being born an inoffensive colour pervades everything. It made me understand why I've never met a solo black traveler in all my years wandering. My stereotypes are positive, on the whole. How much would it suck to have to travel with suspicions and fear. Could a black person busk in Europe?

Another note, spurred by a night of youth music in Arco: isn't it fascinating how much money and resources we will happily invest into youth art and music? We will happily pay quite a lot of money for tickets to youth butchering classics. Then, at some arbitrary age when youth are no longer counted as youth, we stop the support. Seems a bit backward. We support the untrained music and not the true experts. I felt very happy to witness so many opportunities for musicians in Arco. I only wish some of these opportunities went to actual musicians.

In between the climbing, cycling, hiking, being terrified on via ferrata ing, drawing, and eating, I did find some opportunities to practice and perform. Another couchsurfer in Arco (who couldn't host us), Monica, comes from an extraordinarily musical family. We spent a lovely afternoon eating risotto with them and playing their various instruments and hearing them sing. That morning, Monica met us by the castle, where I played violin in front of one of the most gorgeous vistas of all time for the others who happened to wander up to. I first asked permission from the nearby food stall, which was granted very enthusiastically. I played most everything, even mucking around on the Chaconne and Ysaye Sonatas. The tourists nearby dallied until we left, applauding me after songs though I wasn't performing for them on purpose. More to practice and enjoy the wonderful place. Monica sang Stand By Me with me. Two women stayed nearby a long time, watching and listening. A large group of Germans enjoyed Ue Wo Muite Arukou. Many bravos from the few Italians who came up. All in all a very lovely unintentional money-free busking experience. Afterwards I did some cartwheels.















Earnings: 0€, 40 minutes

Loro Ciuffenna OP

Side note from Brenty:

When Terrence and I stayed in Montevarchi (staying with our friend Cesare, as he is one of the most hilarious peoples we have ever met), we went to a little town called Loro Ciuffenna. It was stupidly beautiful. There was a little stream running through a mini canyon in the pueblecito. There were miniature islands, trees (TWEES), beautiful rain clouds, other things, and Oxford commas. SOOOO PWETTTYYYY.

In other news, I asked Cesare and his friend how old the place was, and this was the conversation:

Cesare: Oh, I think it is pretty old. Like 12th-13th century.
Me: Wow.
Mario: actually, I think it might be older.
(Looks up on phone)
Mario: Yeah, looks Roman.
Me: Holy balls old.
Mario: Wait, never mind, Etruscan.
Me: Wat.

Soooooo yeah. A beautiful rittle town in Italy that is over 2000 years old. (at least according to Livy, which is mind blowing in itself). And not even a tourist attraction. Italy OP.

La Spezia with a Spanish accent

Brent and I have such vastly different styles of travelling that sometimes we collide hotly. On reaching La Spezia, I wished to busk and do things, while Brent wished to sit in the park and read. So we both did what we wanted to. My busking in general has been limited by an attempt to find a middle way for our journey. Brent likes nature with no people. I like cities. Brent likes to do nothing. I like to do all the things. Brent likes to see historical buildings. I like to see new buildings. Brent likes silence. I like conversation. Brent prefers to consult a map. I prefer to ask someone on the street.

The net result being that we spend most of our time doing that one thing we both do best. Eating.

I wandered around La Spezia a few minutes and happened upon a Kung Fu show, replete with cheesy Wong Fei Hung music on repeat. Seeing as I'd just added Wu Xia music to my repertoire, I took that as a sign and set up for a quick pitch on a street around the corner. In the forty five minutes on 28.8 before meeting our host, I played through most of my easier repertoire. Starting, of course, with the Wu Xia music and progressing without a break into the Silk Road theme and into Erhu classics. It occurred to me while I played to add a Miyazaki set. I still haven't yet done this. My very first tip came courtesy of a group of four ~9 year old boys on bikes. One of my most memorable tips. As they slowly approached, one told his friends to wait and they didn't, yet still stopped to fish for a Euro coin to give me. He narrated the giving of his coin as he bent down, and sported a lovely shocked expression when I responded in Italian. One of his friends circled back and upon seeing the exchange also tipped. Both shy, sweet, awkward and generally lovely.

Aside from this the pitch went rather uneventfully, having chosen a largely untraficked side-street (as I am prone to do). Bach went a bit better, and the Gm improvisation off of Vitali went superbly, both to a combined audience of around 6 passersby. A lady tipped during the Chinese amalgamation. People cast very confused looks as I played my Irish and Scottish sets. My only other tips came from a young girl who sprinted to and from me as sent by her family (strollers and the like braked for her return) and a young black man. One family watched me for about 20 minutes from about 50 meters down the alleyway during my vocal set without a tip.

Interesting note: no purse clutches, it seems, when I busk with the violin. As opposed to my last foray into busking years ago. A change in times or a change in instrument reception?

I think I'll write about the Cinque Terre here, briefly. This was when we decided that Italy was broken and needed to be patched. We wanted to hike between little Italian towns and eat food in each one. We only managed four of the five, thereby making our visit the Quattro Terre, but managed a success nonetheless. Cute brightly coloured towns perched above or surrounded by sheer sea cliffs, hugging the unlikely sites at the feet of steep hills. Lush green trees, dark brown rocks, deep blue water, bright red, cheery orange, aged yellow buildings, cobblestone streets, white sea foam and clouds. It's rather unfair, really. Italy = overpowered.



Earnings: 6,80€, 45 minutes

P.S. Post so named due to the way I pronounced La Spezia in Grosseto, leading to Francesco laughing at my Spanish accent when I speak Italian, particularly pronounced with words like La Spezia, which I voiced rather happily with a royal lisp.

Lerici we roll along

LERICI - you (or y'all) mayn't have heard of it, but it is a quite cute rittle Italian town near La Spezia. Quite cute. Its adowable!

Anyhoo, Terrence and I had arrived to La Spezia on the 25th of May. We ate our faces off, met our Couchsurfers, and went to their super nice home on a hill above Lerici. (They and their home were so nice, in fact, that we spent the next day doing nothing in their home :D. (They were the kind of people that have traveled the world, figured out what they want, and have gone and gotten it. Inspiring to say the least (more nested parentheses)))

The night of the 26th, we attempted to cook them food. Unfortunately the food (my half at least) was barely edible, and for this I am extremely sorry. :'(. Moop.

On the 27th we went to La Spezia but stopped for a while in Lerici first. In which (this is the part that I'm sure you've all been waiting for!) Terrence busked! Hooray!

Terrence found a cute* litte street (very puppy) upon which to play, and broke out his violin. After a bit, an old dude dropped some cash (money green) from a window above, and a woman from a fruit store donated a bit too. But then it started drizzling: Terrence frantically packed up his violin, and we went to go eat. We looked at the clouds and decided that it was probably going to rain for the rest of the day.

Food was the remainder of our fail dinner. Edible, but barely. Though the view made up for it. Italy being Italy. And beautiful.

Since we are awesome weathermen, the rain stopped in a half hour, and the sun appeared briefly. Thus we returned to the street. Terrence played more. I took pictures at his behest. (It was the best!) A puppy lady came out on to her doorstep to wait for a ride and kept us company for a while. Terrence improved in G-minor (or so he tells me) and money flowed like spice. The old puppy dude listened more. Twas quite preasant.

And then we took some buses (more than we should have, sadly) to La Spezia, and the rest of our extremely slow travels through North Italy.

-Brent.

* perhaps I'm using the word "cute" too much, but I cant help it. From now on, I'll use the word "puppy" instead.





























Earnings: 10,15€, 1.2 hours

Follonica Flow

Brent and I greeted the morning by hugging a lot. Then we emerged from our tent on the beach under the wooden hut and drew stuffed animals in the sand. I would post photographs of said occurrences, but that would require access to a computer with an SD card reader or a USB port, but in addition to being bereft of home internet, Europe also seems to be populated only by computers sporting floppy drives.

At any rate we managed to make it halfway to Follonica by catching a ride with the second car that appeared after we stuck out our thumbs. A great opportunity to practice speaking Italian with the German tourists in the car. Because Germans. Auto stop went very poorly after that. Also, I had to pee. It seems that Italians (and Germans because Germans) come in two varieties. Extraordinarily nice or extraordinarily mean. As our friend Cesare explained to us, Italy would be amazing if not for all the Italians. Anywho, we waited about two hours, across the street from a fruit stand that wouldn't let me use the bathroom. I needed to pee. Peeeeee. Waiting went something like this.

Audi
Audi
Mercedes Benz
Audi
Audi going at antisocial speeds
Some kind of convertible
Rich Germans in some other kind of expensive car but I don't know car brands so yea
Italians driving a produce truck pointing to communicate something we didn't understand. Audi
Shiny car
Jumping up and down because I had to pee.

We even had Eli and Zebra hitchhiking for us to no avail. Eventually a bus wandered by and happily it was flag down able.

I forgot to mention why we came to Follonica (and thus Grosseto) in the first place. The mother of my violin student in Bangkok once told me her favourite restaurant in the world happens to be in Italy. So we ate there. It was pretty tasty. Polpo and Risotto Nero and Pesce Carpone con verdure.

Now to the theoretical purpose of this blog post. I decided to busk while Brent internetted in the cafe during breaklunch the following day. I laid out my violin case a pace ahead of me, making sure to stay a bit clear of the dog poo to the left, while remaining under the awning that likely drew the dog there in the first place. Violins don't like sun. I started with two one euro coins for seed money. I've been starting each pitch with small amounts this way. Mostly so I don't have to subtract a lot to figure out how much I earned. Likely not the most scientific approach. As I rosined my bow, a man told his son to watch! He's preparing the violin! And I knew a lovely pitch would ensue.

I am, of course, clairvoyant. The abundance of children tilted public perception highly in my favour. Once again my rationale for beginning a career I children's music evinced sanity. I began with some Irish reels and noticed a fellow dancing in the cafe down the street. Almost all my tips came from families. A mother smiling at her chldren's enraptured expressions and pressing a coin into each of their hands then encourage them to come up shyly and drop said coins. They might miss the case, grin embarrased, and replace them intently with the focus that only children have. Or a family huddling around their stroller a few paces in front of me, discussing how many coins to give me. A little frightened boy with a kind father encouraging gently but insistently. Couples walking past and choosing coins in my always worn glasses non existent peripheral vision before doubling back with smiles.

A little girl in a black dress
A man with a salt and pepper beard and a bright orange shirt holding his hand to his heart with a little bow.
A couple dawdling across the way by the forest green shop front.

The Poland experiment unfortunately proved true once again- despite killing the Gm improvisation to such an extent that even Brent said he liked it, I received no tips for it and almost all my tips for Ue Wo Muite Arukou and my fledgling, nervous, slightly squeaky erhu set. I notice how introverted I become when playing violin, as opposed to my extroversion with guitar. Interesting how each instrument has its own character.



















Earnings: 12,20€, 50 minutes

Grosseto ly ignored

I'm sleepy. But my Terrence insists that I write another blog post for his silly blog, so here goes.

T and I had just spent the night sleeping in the Civitavecchia train station, because we are awesome at scheduling trains. We went to Grosseto that day where we found both one of the best board games ever invented (sheepland) and our Couchsurfer. And then Terrence played music in da streeeeeeets. We'll get back to that. But first, before: after he finished we at last began to go to a restaurant where we ate a redonkulous amount of tasty food and the best tagliatelle that I have ever had. And then camped on da beach. In Italy. Because things and stuff.

Anyhooooo: (yawn) moo.

Mur.

Moving on.

Music and things.

Moo.

Terrence tried to set up to thingy thingy in a picturesque stweet, but there were traffic and thangs, so we moved to an adjacent street. Which was also pretty, because everything in Italy is pretty. The quality of the music was better than normal, I would say, except that there was a piece in which T sped up randomly. Also he played some stuff that he had practiced while we had been waiting for our train in Rome, which shows some impressive memorization skillz. Our host watched patiently with me, and took us afterwards to a stupidly awesome meal. So mur.

Sadly, the 1337 musiks went largely unappreciated. Looking through the notes that Terrence has here it seems that he felt unappreciated and that people were "cruelly mocking" him, rolling their eyes at him, and generally being unfriendly. I didn't feel that way, but I wasn't the one under the microscope, so to speak. I was just chillin on the side enjoying my daily dose of classical music. There were a couple tips from people who passed by several times, but that was it. Anyway, there was one dude who said (in Italian to our friend) that "[terrence] was wasted here". Which, in some senses (monetary, skillwise) was right. But we enjoyed ourselves, which is all you can really ask for, I guess.

There once was a pitch in Grosseto
Where stuff was played with strings and a bow
Some people stopped
Others just gawked
And then off for pane and Polpo!

















Earnings: 1,96€, 1 hour

P.S. from Terrence:
I'd always wondered why most of the Italians I meet have such awful taste in music. Now I know. Below is an actual list of songs played at the Comix Cafe in Grosseto. In 2014. Unironically.
Mambo No. 5
Closing Time
Wonderwall
All Star
Creep
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
Sister Hazel song with "hard to see what it is I see in you"
Closer
Black Hole Sun
My Sympathy
What is Love?
Genie in a Bottle
Hit Me Baby, One More Time
It's Been One Week

Case closed

When in Rome, Day 2

Brent and I will be trading off some of the posts, if I ever get around to them (seeing as we are traveling sans computers and no one in Europe seems to have wifi). Wat.

Hostels are awful. Especially when the owners speak horrible English but are too proud to admit that they have an communication problem. Brent and I wanted to be rid of Thousand Sunny as quickly as possible (nothing untowards happened to us, but hostels have people and people suck). We ended up with a random stretch of free time between Vatican-ing and sleeping in train stations which I took as a busking opportunity. Generally the rule that I divined 3 years ago was that city centers suck, and that the further afield you go, the kinder and more generous the people get. So I had high hopes for the metro station at Aurelia-Cornelia on Thursday the 22nd of May.

I set up in an inter stairwell passageway with excellent acoustics, midway down or up. After my re-entry-into-busking-pitch nerves were done away with at Arco della Pace, as described by my brother, I felt far less nervous during my set up. The passersby were poorer, mostly immigrants it seemed, reminding me of the makeup of Nørrebro in København. That´s the only similarity I would be able to draw, it appears. Everyone looked at me suspiciously. Mean glances abounded. I played much more cleanly, with only a few squeaks, but the looks continued to be very unfriendly. Brent began by sitting beside me, knees pulled up to his chest and head down next to his forest green backpack, copious pockets overflowing with a tent that shouldn´t be there in it´s broken tentbag, sandals, a red poncho bag, dirty socks, a book. After a few pieces I realized much of the distaste was directed at him, and so I asked him to move to the other side. He maintained his hobo-esque posture, however, and much of the passersby´s attention remained diverted to him.

I played an hour. An experiment with Bach´s Chaconne went awry, especially as my mind decided to forget the thing with the added stress of street performing. It´s incredible how much memory and technique suffer when subject to scrutiny, perceived or real. I remember three tips. A lady with a nice smile, bending at the waist. A girl with curly dark hair. A smartly dressed young man (as they all seem to be in Rome, gorgeous and effortfully stylish).

In the evening, with an hour to kill between trains, I practiced another hour at the train station at Aurelia at midnight. Playing without the added stress of an audience felt good. Brent critiqued freely.









Earnings: 3,00€

When in Rome, Day 1

Tuesday, May 20th. Terrence's first pitch in years. Thoughts from his brother. Short sentences.

Terrence and I had started the day by saying goodbye to our dearest mother as she took the train to the airport, although in reality, I said goodbye to her while he slept his face off. After we reattached his face to his body, we went wandering aboot Rome and did stuffs before we went to a horrible hostel. And finally, he played music in the streets at poor unsuspecting bystanders. Long sentences.

Setting the scene: Dusk. Verrrry pictueresque. Good quiet location. Three people chatting on arrival. Consent asked for and given for "sonar"-ing the violin. Violin played. Tips from passersby. Mass confusion. Sentence fragments.

As I had never seen Terrence played in the street before, this was a first for me. Apparently he gets nervous before playing in public in front of random people (I had just assumed that he had balls of steel and IDGAF-ed). These nerves did show themselves as there was some uncleanliness in bowings that don't appear when he is playing by himself. But still, I was pleasantly surprised.

It seems that Terrence's skill at making screechy noises while pulling horse remains across metal wires has improved greatly. I have heard many horrible buskers, and Terrence was not one of them (I have also heard many mediocre buskers, and he was not one of those either). His repertoire was good and completely memorized, allowing him to make eye contact with his audience while he was playing. The acoustics of the street that he picked were nice. The music was played well and tastefully. The time was right. The sky was not peeing on us. My tummy was full. Life was good.

Sadly, not much money (according to him) was procured. But there were few passers-by, which really just sucks for them rather than sucks for him, as he was definitely superior to most of horrible buskers that one generally finds in cities around the world - you know, that whole 20+ years of practice thing. (although people will always stop to watch someone spraypainting things though) Anyway, one woman stopped to listen from her window. Some coins dropped from a window above. Twas nice. Etc.

All in all, it was quite a beautiful performance. The music was good; the city was being cute and lovely; the italians was being friendly; etc. Not a thing was missi

Asdf,
Tewwence's Bwenty.

ssippi.













Earnings: 4,82€, 45 minutes