Monday, March 26, 2007
You know when you're sick, that sometimes if you just go about your daily business, go to school, etc... then the miasma clears up and you feel better? Didn't happen.
Still, Monterey was fun! We performed well, even if we didn't place, and heard some great groups, a clinic from a laid-back trumpet player, and a smashing opening concert. My friends and I Jamba-juiced at least once a day, and yesterday we frolicked on a beach. The CA sand is pale and is squiggly the way fresh snow is. Lunching in Carmel, our guitarist and I visited a sweater shop where the sweaters were $100 and up, and the saleslady told us "What did you expect? It's Carmel." Her words proved prophetic, as, just down the street, I was unwittingly duped into buying a can of Sprite for Two Dollars!
On the plane ride home, as my cold was developing, I read W. Somerset Maugham's book The Painted Veil, and it dazzled my mind. Listen: "I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard the world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures the paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all those the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."
I read that and thought Yes! I would expand his definition of beauty to include creation though– I gloried in seeing the green hills and valleys of the Californian countryside. But now I must away to unpacking, while imbibing a constant stream of tea and blowing my nose enough to make the title of this page once more incredibly appropriate.
Still, Monterey was fun! We performed well, even if we didn't place, and heard some great groups, a clinic from a laid-back trumpet player, and a smashing opening concert. My friends and I Jamba-juiced at least once a day, and yesterday we frolicked on a beach. The CA sand is pale and is squiggly the way fresh snow is. Lunching in Carmel, our guitarist and I visited a sweater shop where the sweaters were $100 and up, and the saleslady told us "What did you expect? It's Carmel." Her words proved prophetic, as, just down the street, I was unwittingly duped into buying a can of Sprite for Two Dollars!
On the plane ride home, as my cold was developing, I read W. Somerset Maugham's book The Painted Veil, and it dazzled my mind. Listen: "I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard the world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures the paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all those the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art."
I read that and thought Yes! I would expand his definition of beauty to include creation though– I gloried in seeing the green hills and valleys of the Californian countryside. But now I must away to unpacking, while imbibing a constant stream of tea and blowing my nose enough to make the title of this page once more incredibly appropriate.
