A Day In Trapani; Bonding Music And Life

DISCLAIMER:

I do not intend to speak on behalf of Azamara Club Cruises.  As an employee of Azamara Club Cruises, I hereby state that all views and expressions of opinion I hold are solely my own, and do not reflect or represent the views, values, beliefs, opinions, and company policies of either Azamara Club Cruises or Royal Carribean Cruises Ltd.  

Additionally I neither own nor claim any legal rights to the links provided in this post.

An introduction:

This piece was something special at the time, but none of my posts will probably ever be this long. However, this post is essentially of the framework for the rest of the blogs to come.  The one major difference is that this post plays out like a story, whereas the future posts will be more general.  But, rest assured, the similarities will include: the music I was listening to at the time and how it impacted my overall impression of my surroundings; people-watching and its insights; a bit of history about the area; places of note to visit; and overall feedback, knowledge, and insights gained from that day.
I hope to show, with this, one of my most profound experiences in traveling.  Enjoy.

-Jordan

For those who see music as more than the sum of its parts, this is for you.  

  

I delve into many things about this day: the spectrum limits range from distress to supernatural, out-of-body ecstasy.  This essay is not about why we perceive the world the way we do, but how we choose to perceive it.  On that note, this essay is not just about praising influential musicians, and neither is it only for musicians.  Even if you are not a musician, my hope is that you are able to start realizing to what degree you in fact need music.  And if you are a musician, I beseech you to take this story to heart, for though we dedicate ourselves to years upon years of study, we must realize that being human will ultimately compliment our craft in the greatest way.  Of supreme priority…and supreme beauty…is knowing that music and life experiences are inseparable.  

In late April, 2013, I began my cruise ship career.  My life became a blur of places: almost every day the ship traveled to another port.  And it traveled to the best ports.  In six months I had experienced practically all of Europe: the French and Italian Rivieras, Scandinavia and the Baltic, Norway, the UK. It was a traveler’s dream.  I did not have an mp3 player or anything like that for the first few months, so when I went out in port I enjoyed all the natural sounds—all the natural music—around me.  Eventually I invested in an Ipod, and I began to develop a penchant for leaving the ship with it.  Along with taking pictures, visiting landmarks, walking for miles, or sitting down at great restaurants or cafes, listening to music became a part of traveling as much as anything.

Your perception, either by experiencing a new place or revisiting past stomping grounds, can be heightened by music and even transformed into something visceral.  Travel can be visceral too, as it brings many transcendental, life-changing experiences.  Yet I can tell you that when I put on music as I travel, I begin to feel like I’m in a movie, watching and participating simultaneously.  I feel detached from everything; yet I feel one with everything.  After some time out in port, whether I’m studying or casually listening to certain pieces of music, all that I perceive starts to grant this absolutely euphoric, almost out-of-body experience.  The intensity can be unbelievable. 

   

This inevitably raises the dilemma of the impression of music onto your experiences in travel.  I had grown so accustomed to listening to the world as it is; then all of a sudden I had the opportunity to have music playing as I traveled.  But why not just take the things you see for what they are?  To experience the places and their sounds in and of themselves is critical.  When an album or song becomes associated with a town or a landmark, the natural perception of that town or that landmark is compromised.  

That being said, I argue for the need of a balance between the face-value experience and the musical.  This balance probably varies from person to person as much as musical taste.  In any case, I personally go with my gut feeling when figuring out what to do next in a particular place.  There is a time and place for everything, but still I have the option of music available to me.  I have it for those special times when what I perceive before me needs a greater explanation.  I use music as a channel to connect to the Universe; then, within that greater explanation, my soul can radiate like the Sun. 

My “deep” and “moving” music is different from yours, I’m sure.  The music must always be the right kind of music, but for you.  So the question is; what will you listen to the next time you are really feeling something?

Trapani, Sicily.  It’s Good Friday, in the spring of 2014.  The haze hangs thick and lazy in the air.  The sun is warm and kind, piercing through the beige sky.  The brass band music is echoing throughout the corridors of the streets, lined with all those charming old buildings.

Trapani holds one of the most renowned celebrations for GoodFriday, the Processione dei Misteridi Trapani; Procession of the Mysteries of Trapani.  For 400years this parade has been taking place annually.  There are twenty floats; hand-carried wooden sculptures of holy grandeur that depict the Passion.  On this day each float had its own brass band.  They…were…loud.  The acoustics throughout the narrow streets were certainly helping.

I suddenly start thinking of my mood.  Well, rather not of my mood, but why it was ever there in the first place.  Why, with a job like this….

Trapani is a fresh, gorgeous place to walk around and to reflect.  So I stand, listen to the celebrations, and reflect on the last week. 

I had been having a difficult time coping with a personal problem.  In Cannes, a week ago, things I had suspected had come to light.  I became dark.  At first I was angry; then it turned into utter disappointment.  Within that disappointment, however, my darkness grew, and my soul stagnated.

Throughout my life, whenever I’d had times of distress or depression, the music to which I would listen needed to reflect my mood.  This “fighting-fire-with-fire” technique had always worked wonders in healing me.  However, in the initial stages, my emotions would run wild, and thus would the healing process in an effort to figure out where and how to start. 

My dark excursion into Cannes was no different.  I’d been to Cannes a few times, yet on that day it was just some place with streets upon which I could saunter for a while without a damn.  In fact (dare I say it?), I could just as well have been walking in my hometown of Buena Park.  I went out on my own for hours in a musical fervor…perhaps a musical vengeance.  I almost swaggered down the roads.  The music to which I listened was every level of “intense;” from beat-ridden, hard grooves (like the group Lettuce)to irate, molten walls of sound (The Mars Volta).  My soul was intense and fiery, as was the music.  So, this fighting-fire-with-fire technique was working fine.  Here, however, was the drawback; I was consumed in such an euphoric stupor that the music nearly blinded me to Cannes and its environment.  Music and environment are supposed to work together to bring both that greater explanation and that vast euphoria.  This particular experience was grossly one-sided.

The day after, I swallowed my silence about the situation and confronted it.  I’m not a lover of conflict.  Never was, never will be.  But it had to be done.  A swath of bitter relief hit me and affected me for days.  My soul stagnated further in its loss of something profound.        

Rome.  Two days after the conflict.  I was utterly overjoyed in returning to this city.  A sight for a sore soul. 

I started evaporating my bitter relief by enjoying a great time with great friends.  I had felt so detached the day before, and indeed I’d even wanted the detachment from people, even my friends.  But that day in Rome ignited…something…in my cold and damp cellar of a mind.

I had been to Rome twice before, so the familiarity of some of the landmarks did not affect me as it did everyone else.  The familiarity slightly dampened the grandeur, and thus allowed the dark mood and bitter relief to impend annoyingly, like a fly that keeps darting back in front of your face. 

But the day after Rome, the dark mood and bitter relief shrank even further.  The same group and I Europed in Syracuse.  We cafed, we outdoor-marketed, we bread-and-cheesed; we satiated ourselves on a pristine day in yet another stupendous European city.  Man.  Man.  That day was fantastic. 

Rome did help me, since it is Rome.  I mean, come on.  But, I had never been to Syracuse.  New places hold new experiences.  New experiences yield better perspective.  Better perspective promises expansion of one’s perception of everything, along with the self.  Period. 

So now, here I am, a few days after Syracuse.  Another new place, promising new experiences, new perspectives, and an expanded perception of everything and of self.  

Trapani should be the last step in my revival.

Right out of the berth I plunged into the Sicilian Good Friday.  Crowds congealed down the way.  And such power in the all that brass band music!  I walked past musicians in waiting, all firmly uniformed: trumpeters, sousaphonists, clarinetists, saxophonists, the drumlines, and all the other typical marching band players.  Though I’m a tall guy, I caught only glimpses of the parade through all the heads.  The two man-held floats that went by swayed to and fro, and the band swayed with them. Left…right…left…slowly…all the while in these relentless, Godfather-like dirges…. 

Much as I wanted to stick around, a desire began rumbling deep within me.  It surfaced slowly, surely.  I knew it all too well.  It was the urge to wander off and explore.

Trapani; here is a town of an interesting geographic character.  The old town is situated on a peninsula that is much longer than it is wide.  On the south side: the bay, the docks,unremarkable but stoic. On the north side—literally a minute’s walk—another shoreline, stretching far as the eye can see to the East where the peninsula balloons and the horizon is lifted by mighty green hills and the Sicilian civilization rushes all the way to meet them.  What resplendence!  What serendipity! 

This old town was so welcoming, overwhelmingly so, to my sullied mentality. 

I took it all in, for as long as I wished.  People walked by: old, young, big, small, male, female.  There were two teenage couples seated on the beach wall, embracing each other and getting a feel for this thing called love.  I think I felt myself smirk, and if I did, it was with understanding and not disdain.

I put one foot in front of the other.  Passing the last couple in embrace, I took out my IPod.  Alright, I thought.  That’s cool; been there, done that.  Definitely don’t need it myself.  And DEFINITELY not after what had happened....  I’m embracing something else.  Something larger. 

Period.

I flipped through the gigabytes. 

The artists I had been listening to lately: Joshua Redman, one of my saxophone idols; The Brian Blade Fellowship Band; Kenny Garret; Lettuce; Soulive; Led Zeppelin; Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mark Turner; Charles Mingus; Miguel Zenon….

  

So, Miguel Zenon.  Zenon, though a recent artist whom I’ve been studying, is becoming one of many artists that are more and more representative of the deep perspectives I hold in esteem.  

Zenon’s album Awake was the first on my list.  Compared to the last couple days’ worth of listening, at once it was something less dense in overall sound but more powerful in sheer musicality.  This is a 2008 recording that to me represents so well Zenon’s unquestionable mastery of not just the sax, but of jazz, of storytelling, and, hell…of music.  The track “Camaron” is one of those tunes that just GROWS in intensity.  It’s akin to watching daylight creep into being from 4am.  The foundation for the intensity; the rimshot.  That driving, quarter-note rimshot that permeates the entire melodic section of the tune.  The melody is so playful, and goes on for so long, that when Zenon starts to improvise it is a seamlessly smooth transition.  You don’t notice the improv until it’s too late.  That rimshot leaves justas seamlessly, replaced by a phantom quarter-note beat in the high-hat that’s barely heard in the mix.  Zenon and Henry Cole’s time and communication are so impeccable that the drive becomes not just that quarter note, but everything they are playing.  That sax-drum intensity explodes continuously, fiercely, unstoppably; Zenon’s playing flows through you with such force as to knock you back off that ledge and leave you hanging there for dear, joyous life.  What mastery, indeed.  

Yes; “Camaron” is intense and fiery.  My mood was still simmering from Cannes, yet the fighting-fire-with-fire technique,finally, was beginning to work correctly.  Instead of negativity I noticed positivity, brooding in the corner, thinking about how best to approach the situation for me. 

“Penta” is the third track, at once more delicate, yet with that same virtuosic, intensely thoughtful passion….  Its drive comes from the irregular meter, yet the meter is smooth as butter and convinces you that it isn’t there.  Then, there’s “The Missing Piece.”  So persistent in its b2-tonic color, and so contemplatively emotional that it seems to elude everything other than a dichotomy of strife and beauty.  I saw myself in it, attempting to render from negativity to positivity….  I did not need to fight fire with fire anymore; “The Missing Piece” was perfect for my mood. 

Zenon and his group and I wandered to the north beach, and then wandered alongside the shore, past lovely little homes and businesses toward the ancient tower by which the western street ends at the ocean.  The ocean.  I let that vastness humble me like always.  “The Missing Piece” and its beautiful strife resounding through my head, and the sun, just piercing….

Again; what will you listen to the next time you are really FEELING something?

It was a great start to my euphoric efforts.  I felt myself floating, and being taken in to the surroundings and the piercing sunlight.  But, no; I wasn’t feeling as euphoric as I did in Cannes.  Not yet, anyway.  I needed and demanded a major difference between Cannes and this day: in Cannes, I had been incredibly euphoric within my music, but in avery negative light.  My troubles had still been very fresh.  Today was to be a day for euphoria in an absolutely positive light, and furthermore alight that would re-affirm my goals and my purpose. 

Overall: so far, so good.  

Moment-to-moment dispositions and thoughts are meant to warp and change.  So can the music, if you wish.

Charles Mingus and his band’s playful, sometimes discordant antics perhaps require a lighter disposition.  After that surging meditation I’d felt from staring at the ocean, Mingus was the guy to approach next.  

People were scarce in this part of the town, giving it a distant but pleasing atmosphere.  I put on “Diane,” off of Mingus Dynasty.  “Diane” is a tune that is similar in beauty to “The Missing Piece,” but in addition it holds humorous aspects.  Mingus, to me, can be humorous in his earnestly thought-out compositions, much as I feel Thelonious Monk can be humorous in his earnestly improvised solos.  But I didn’t want humor yet; “Diane” has much more depth than humor.  The tune’s head is almost awkwardly wonderful in colors; then, it suddenly gets startling when the band rushes immediately into this free, bird-calling chaos.  Roland Hanna’s mighty piano cadenza comes soon after that.  It smacks you awake as if to say, “There is SO much more to this!  HERE WE ARE, PAY ATTENTION!”  What a transformation; everything ever-so-slowly changes into a delicate, wonderful ballad.  Hanna’s virtuosity is unbelievable.  It is unbelievable on several levels.  There’s a burning story there that burns just as much as his solo.  Strife meets beauty here, and all bittersweet loveliness in between.  At times the band leaps and runs after Hanna like a giddy Victorian-era girl.  At times Hanna transforms into that same girl, except she’s a woman; worldly, and ever-lovely.

Because I hadn’t heard this album or this track in so long, I almost yearned for it as its sonorities melded with the beauty that continued to unfold around me.  More importantly, unlike in Cannes, I was noticing this beauty and respecting it within the experience.

Farther down--a speck on a mountaintop, a burgeoning point of light--I sensed my soul, re-training itself to be self-regenerating and thereby self-invigorating.  

Music…travel…they are such a potent fuel.     

I decided to head back up the main road.  There were many little cafes, bars, restaurants, and businesses to either side of me.  Of course many were closed for Good Friday, but had they been open, well, I’m sure I would’ve taken my fill of the road for all it was.  I was deep in Mingus’ bouncy waltz, “Slop,” really enjoying all its light-heartedness and spontaneity.  My mood was doing alright with that humor….

The people were multiplying!  I mean sure, there were quite a few more pockets of people roaming around this main road but, hadI known I was heading for one of the mainstays of the parade, I would not have been surprised.  A myriad of people I could now see about 500 ft. ahead.   

I guess I finally found all the main action of the day, for there were a few open cafes and a restaurant ahead and lo and behold!, at one of the outdoor tables sat my good buddy Mike and another friend from the ship, Anneka.  At this point in time I was just starting to dig into “Song with Orange” during the trumpet solo.  Mingus himself was digging in to that groove and those strings, and things were good!  

I decided that things were going to stay good, but from a different frame of perspective.  Going with my gut…wanting the switch from solitude to interaction…I turned the music off as Mike beckoned me to sit and Anneka smiled along. 

I almost forgot to continue feeling down and out.  Screw that; I was up and in with Mike and Anneka, as if they were the missing piece to my day.  A thought passed through my mind; had I not run into them, my day might have been incomplete.  Little did I know that this was precisely the case. 

Mike’s eyes smiled.  “’Sup man?”  A lightning pause.  “Come on, eat!” he implored.  I felt Iwas intruding, so I hesitated a bit.  He pushed again, and I said,“Alright.  If you insist.”  In his humor I think he replied with something like, “I do insist, eat.”  He’s interesting like that. 

Mike; or “Fancy”…he went by both names.  A guy so colorful in personality and interests that rainbows have nothing on him, his trumpet playing, musicianship, and personal vibe are some of the best with which I’ve had the enjoyment to work.  Anneka was a hairdresser in the spa.  Her go-with-the-flow manner had quite the charm.  She was always great at reading people, and perhaps that’s why she stuck around with Mike and his array of colors.  Those colors had much to say.

He and Anneka resumed talking, and then suddenly Mike turned to me and said, “So what were you listening to when you walked up?”
“Oh, Mingus.  Great stuff man.”
He grinned and shook his head.  “Jordan,” he laughed. 

I was taken aback, but his reaction was more intriguing than anything, for I  wanted to hear what he was going to say next.  “Mate; you can always do that later.  You have to listen to the sounds of the city, the people.” 

Wow.

“Yeah,” I replied in a tone saying that I understood.  What my face did not betray was just how freakin’ hard I’d been hit.  He was absolutely right.  Though he himself did not know, recently I truly had been putting emphasis on music while taking my surroundings for granted.  The entire reason I leave the ship is to experience places, and yet in that past week I’d been choosing to be ignorant of all those places.

Here was a turning point.  A permanent turning point.  Mike, thank God, opened up my head and yelled into the roiling esotericism,“Yo!  Jordan!  Where the hell are you?!” 

I emerged, gradually, unraveling my psyche out of the fixation on the IPod-- and hell, out of the fixation on the last week--as I sat withMike and Anneka and spent time with them.  I spent time listening to the outside world.  I concentrated.  Man, what I had been missing.  

The bread, cheese, and spreads were all great, all fresh.  Afterward the three of us walked around for quite a while,taking in all the sights and sounds of Good Friday.  Those sounds were dominated by the brass bands.

Yes; again, the brass bands.  Geeeeez.  Talk about volume!  Plus, the sights and sounds of the city—that “natural” music permeating my environment—consisted of man-made music.  How’s that for irony.

For each wooden float, each band had something glorious to say in its own screaming funeral-dirge. “Fortissimo” never seemed to have had such meaning.  Plus, trumpets were hitting double D’s, E’s; even up toG’s.  Impressive stuff.  Mike and I, after a while, started to gage the cleanliness and accuracy of those notes just for fun.  “Ah,THAT one wasn’t as good as that last trumpet section we heard back over there!”  Or, “Damn, alright; what was that, a double G?”  So on and so forth.  But obviously we respected these musicians and their effort; else we wouldn’t have been wise-cracking.  

I presumed that each band was comprised of many amateurs and casual players, for each band had about 40-50 members of all ages.  It was a 50-50toss between male and female members.  We even saw a handful of young-uns, most notably a kid of single-digit years who was on a marching snare!  The musicians, when not playing, chatted idly but fondly with each other.  It was occasional, and they talked of who-knows-what(because of course I don’t understand Italian or Sicilian): the significance of the day, some jokes thrown casually out there, what one did yesterday and hopes to do today after the parade is over, etc. etc…

And if I witnessed the band members interacting like this, you can be sure that the people in the crowds were at least interacting in the same way!  The crowds were a much larger version of the bands in character and contentment…just without instruments.  All of the bands expressed faith through these Godfather-like fanfares, and the crowds were there to bond with this expression and to take away from the experience that which the musicians were creating.  Both creators and receivers were experiencing the day with the same result of spirituality and celebration.

It was refreshing for my soul to watch all this interaction. I had forgotten how rewarding people-watching can be.  

At this point, the fact that I didn’t involve myself in the festivities earlier on was beyond me.  In witnessing such a variety of people brought together by both music and faith, my heart and spirit truly started to bloom in full.  That blooming last occurred in Cannes, yet it was unsuccessful because it was poisonous….  Today’s bloom purged the other immediately.  

The roaring passion of all that music was very too-much-of-an-interesting thing after some time.  Jaded with moving slowly through the crowds, the three of us made our way to an out-of-the-way pub.  Not many people were around on this small path.  We made small talk, had a few, and just hung out.  It was very nice.  But, I parted ways with Mike and Anneka since they wanted to go back to the ship, and I wasn’t finished in Trapani.  Not by far.  I still needed to be alone; but, I was absolutely grateful for having their company.  If not for them, I believe the day would have had a hollow corner in it, something regretfully incomplete.  I said goodbye, and started off in the opposite direction.

I stopped.  My head felt heavy, so full of anticipation that I was in elation.  I was brimming with it.  Countless times I had felt this, in every new port guaranteed to take your breath away….  Was everything around me starting to take on a shine? 

Wow. 

With God as my witness, I knew I was going to be fine….

I was on my own again.  I turned my admiration back on, along with my music, for everyone and everything.  And of course, remembering what Mike had said, I chose to remove the headphones every so often. 

I slogged through the crowds to get to a road I knew would lead me east.  I finally emerged from the narrow, chalk-full street onto a wonderful open square.  I took my headphones off.  Rustic and elderly green trees lined both sides of the square within which scattered groups of people fused together as they crossed busy intersections.  A great important-looking building, all on its own,stood to the right like a sentinel.  Old-town and new-town merged here; just ahead was an urban boulevard.  The first light of dusk was Christmas-like and lovely against the trees, the structures, and the multitudes.

I was loving all the sounds and very natural music around me, which was why I was reluctant to put my IPod back on.  However, I had a craving.  What I wanted to put on was something that I’d not only been studying seriously, but someone whose music has a calming but infinite aestheticism, like the sky: Kurt Rosenwinkel, the renowned jazz guitarist.  Mark Turner, his main man on saxophone, plays with him on a particular set of live recordings dubbed Live in Fasching, Stockholm.  This set of recordings was my main source of serious listening throughout, and even before, my whole dark episode.  I had been dissecting Turner’s playing, growing more and more amazed by what he can do.  I put on “Path of the Heart,” which begins with Turner’s richly warm sound, all alone, in the one of the most deep, intimate, and contemplative cadenzas I’ve ever heard.  

As suddenly as I had put on that cadenza, I felt more drawn toward the people around me, their expressions, their body language.  It was magnetic…what was this?  I don’t think it had happened before….  I couldn’t help but lock on to every visage and really see someone as I passed by…. 

The boulevard was becoming more like downtown St. Petersburg,West Hollywood, downtown Oslo, Barcelona.  Turner, in his cadenza, keeps the same melodic shapes and uses similar notes as starting and ending points in this hypnotically free rhythm.  It’s like watching an astronaut jumping on the Moon and landing in a slightly different spot each time.  My mind was stirring; butterflies were fluttering.  The four-story buildings, not as embroidered as those you’d see in Barcelona or St.Petersburg, corridored far as the eye could discern to that speck of distance that clung to the base of those looming green hills.  Some of the ideas to which Turner returns are so well done that they are cyclical, and on par with a Romantic symphony.  The urban center and the tree-lined divider striping the center of the boulevard and the bustle of the shops and the stores and the people were nearly walling me in.  But with that dusty rainbow sky as my wide open ceiling, I’d not been so free in so long….  It’s a three minute cadenza.  No, it’s not….  It goes on forever.  Time stopped with Turner; the sound was no longer a lone saxophone, but the symphony of a sad, gorgeous melody that reached out in intimacy to me and said, “I know.” 

I felt such a yawning distance from the area…and yet in that greatest irony, I started connecting to it like an omnipresent being.  Euphoria ensued, and in great brilliance.  I was drifting on another existential plane. 

More hour-long seconds passed, like clouds.  Then,Turner was done with his symphony.  Music and emotion and city had blurred their boundaries and in no way was I done.  I put on “Casa Oscura.”  Turner’s solo on this tune exemplifies everything he stands for as an improviser: great melodies, ideas connecting like lovers, emotional fulminations throughout the whole technical and extended range of the horn, and that graciously warm tone that inexplicably draws you in whether you want it to or not.  This is one of his godly solos, where everything just tells you without question.  Without question.  And the exchanges he has with Rosenwinkel’s beautiful accompaniment can be considered a deep conversation between scholars.  That entire album’s sound, from “Get Out of Town” to “EastCoast Love Affair” to “Safe Corners,” transformed into this elixir of culmination that burned through my veins. 

I kept going into the dully bright, city-wide dusk.  Onward down the perfect bustling boulevard.  I kept drifting forward on this existential plane.  I wanted so immensely to keep drifting forward on this plane that I physically could not halt myself.   Live in Fasching, Stockholm, sounding damn near philosophical, was now the main source of steady, steady detoxification, evaporating those last dark and bitter dregs.  

How distant was I from my troubles, from here?  …but how much of my being was immersed here?  The music was so good as music, and yet more- so as a conduit between me and the world.  Finally, finally, I felt silent answers to my heavy week gracing me with their presences.  The questions I had already asked…why…how….  The answers were silent because they consisted of anything and everything.  They consisted of my extraordinary life,and this extraordinary job.  I needed no answers because I had known them all this time.  

Within all this interconnectivity I just “was.”  In ecstasy, I WAS. That was the best part.  The best, triumphant part….

Common sense eventually wrested me away.  As disappointing as that felt, the ship was very far now.  I had almost an hour to get back.  But that was only a personal quota.  I took my sweet time. 

And those dark and bitter dregs were now so feeble, trying so pathetically to prod at my heart that I laughed hysterically at them.  I turned back down the street in a dramatic, pulsing undertaking.  I strode for the city and its people, for myself,for being. 

As I backtracked I began thinking that it isn’t just enough to be in these stunning places day after day; the icing is in the people watching.  The people that pass you by.  The people that you focus on in a café or restaurant.  The people that stand and chat, walk or run, or laugh or gesture.  Incredible.  I started zoning in on more people as I made my way toward the north beach.  Every visage, every expression, every gesture…seriously,what was this magnetism?  Still caught in the Rosenwinkel-Turner sound and that existential plane, it almost felt as if I’d known these people for years….

As “Casa Oscura” ends a second time, I decide to take my headphones off.  As I walk down the modest suburban road, I want the moment as it is.  I want the future moments to come as they will.  I want to let myself perceive people as they are.  But that magnetic empathy, is it weakening?….  Perhaps it’s only because I’m not in as much of a euphoric state as I was back on the boulevard.

Ahhh, the ocean; so suddenly, there it is!  Wide open possibilities when you look at the ocean.  I stare as I go; the sun, completely down at that point, and the sky, utterly streaked in sunset-bright, musty clouds. 

The sky….  My hands move to my headphones on their own.  I put on “Chords,” first track on Kurt Rosenwinkel’s live album The Remedy.  This triple-meter tune moves, moves, MOVES so damn hard.  The bridge always invokes images of a futuristic, sprawling metropolis roaring in the sky; Rosenwinkel’s giant sound is that roaring.  For me, he dominates that tune.  You can’t help but hear tidings of all things to come when you listen to that astounding solo of his. 

Nobody around on the beach.  Brilliant.  Indeed no distraction right now.  I thrust my eyes into the endlessness of the horizon and my head is booming with the future, with Rosenwinkel. 

The next tune comes on, “The Remedy,” the title track.  Rosenwinkel starts it all on his own, echoing at you from miles away with these longing, almost lost chords….  Once the entire group enters, the tune has the effect of a flower beginning to blossom in a pretty cottage garden.  And it happens repeatedly,cyclically.  When that flower fully blossoms, the music never fails to strike you in rapture.

I’ve been walking slowly for a while now…these freakin’ teenagers pass by me…haha, I’m annoyed but intrigued over their excitement and loudness about anything.  Following them moments behind, a couple, 20-30 years older than myself.  I finally stop, lean against the beach wall, and persist in staring at the horizon.  In a short time the veteran couple comes walking back,arm-in-arm.  The wife speaks to the husband.  Doesn’t seem like the words mean much…but he reacts with the slightest facial changes.  These two individuals are crystal-clear.  They,as they are, stir me, and they are crystal-clear….

So many people that I’ve walked by and empathized with today….

“The Remedy” ends, and the audience breaks out in applause.  I feel like a sentence has ended with a period.  Or that a story has ended with one humble phrase.  I grin and take off the headphones; the butterflies comeback in earnest.

One can actually try to empathize with a certain person or certain people on a moment’s notice.  It doesn’t always take long for that empathy to happen.  Even within the second you spot someone, you might see their contentment (or non-contentment).  And just like that, it’s not all about you.  So here I am, attempting to purge my sullied mentality…and yes!  INDEED it’s not all about me, screw my problems!  I’ll try to live in another person’s moment for just a second.  ONE second…that’s enough to see an expression of the face.  That’s more than enough to hear an exclamation or an utterance.  That’s enough to see gestures, hands, body position, anything associated with communication in which you are not involved; yet you live in that moment for that second and you say silently to that person, “I see you.”  And when you see, you feel as well…. 

Sometimes to communicate with the world, you just have to watch it.  Watch it, draw from it, and let it move you as it will. 

My mind was embedded in that thought as I made my way through the old town once more.  Suddenly it struck me.  This high and tinny bell, a warm and subtle prick.  But it was something massive.  A huge epiphany.  It was similar to the feeling of satisfaction you receive right after you finish the last morsel of an enormous, palette-baptizing meal.  

For most of my time in Trapani I had been listening to music as I admired the people and the festivities around me.  But WOW…I finally understood that the music to which I’d been listening was strengthening my focus not just on the place, but on the people.  The crowds of people, the groups of people, and the individuals themselves; all to which I turned my perception and my empathy were magnified under this lens brought on by music.  Sure, I could empathize with others without the music, but having that musical lens allowed me to glimpse into the passerbys’ souls with startling clarity.  It was imparting a sixth sense into me.  With music I genuinely thought I was feeling people in real time by indirectly communicating with them on deep levels, slicing psychically through the flesh and blood toward some truer essence. 

Talk about transcendental communication! 

Interestingly enough, the music’s colors, intensity, and otherwise thought-provoking qualities had no affect on the way I perceived people in this empathetic clarity.  That kind of perception stayed the same and did not change on account of which song or tune was playing.  Further personal study is required on this phenomenon.   

As of now, my biggest question to myself is this; why had I not had this epiphany until six hours later, as I was heading back to the ship?  Well…my best guess would be on account of what Mike had said.  His words were the most important epiphany of the day; I need to shut the music off occasionally and enjoy the immediate, natural environment.  Surely I can’t have music on all the time; otherwise I’d imprint all that scenery, all those people, in a way I may regret later on.  Or not.  Today was not that case.  I eradicated my darkness on account of music.  And ironically, that particular success can also be traced to Mike’s advice.  With his advice I proceeded to be selective with my music, and to gage what things needed to be perceived as they were, and what things needed a greater explanation through music.  One of those greater explanations turned out to be, in fact, that epiphany of empathetic clarity.  The first epiphany—that of focusing on the environment for what it is—paradoxically led me to my second epiphany, brought about by music.    

With all that having been said, to have come back to my normal, joyful self in a matter of days through music, travel, and alongside good people and friends is something dumbfounding.  Dumbfounding in the best way.  I'm still gaping about the height I reached by soaring that fast.  

And so, that, in great detail, comprises all of the elements of music-laden travel in one day.  Only one day out of nine months onboard the ship.  This particular day was the certainly one of the most eye-opening experiences of its type, but to say that the intensity of the experience is the greatest that I’ve felt is not true.  Many times I’ve had similar euphoric episodes, in ports ranging from Venice to the NorthCape to Gibraltar.  Plus, who know what the future holds.  

To the reader; you should try it.  Remove yourself from the ruts, stagnations, and troubles of everyday life and make an effort to recall how it feels to shine.

Go into a park, or onto a nature trail, or even into downtownLos Angeles or Metropolitan-wherever, and listen.  Figure out what you’re listening for in that environment.  But have your music ready.  Have your music ready.  Have it ready for those moments when what you perceive in front of you requires a greater explanation. 

This explanation is only something you yourself will understand, with only the music you yourself can appreciate like only you yourself can.  Any one piece of music invokes different emotions and feelings and imagery for people.  It just so happens that I wanted to discuss what I felt on this day, how I felt it, and why it was so personally significant.  Why?  Because I know that you are able to understand.  

It’s not just about the music itself.  Music brings people together.  Since music communicates with us mentally, we can then express how it affects us, either through discussion or dance.  This is the foundation for why music brings us together: deep down, everybody, every one of you thrives on it.  Music decorates our souls with something Universe-powerful.  We can often connect and communicate in the best ways when music is playing, not just with other people, but with ourselves, our surroundings, and the higher powers that be.  When two or more people can listen to, dance to, or play the same song and feel similar things, music becomes a form of communication more pure and clear than speech.  And within the performance or listening atmosphere, expressing the ways in which music affects us can be as humble as a mutually exchanged grin or as extravagant as the most daring dance move. 

How often and how MUCH do you take music for granted?  When you just randomly select a radio station or hit shuffle? 

How often and how MUCH do you realize how badly you need to listen to music?  

We just need to be scientists; mixing, balancing, separating the natural music from the man-made music as our souls require, for music, as it is always around us, comes in infinite forms….  

Rock On!  The Universe wants you to!  The spectrum of life is colossal, and music can be the thing that envelops it.