Santiago, Tibet

Had a pretty good weekend, appart from having to spend the better part of Sunday cleaning up at home. My wife and I were invited to a party at a sculptor's studio in Dalheim, a village south of Lux. It was kind of weird, as the invitation came not from the host but a guest. It seems that he was eager to show off his work to pretty much everyone. We arrived pretty late and we knew nobody there.

It was kind of awkward but the host, a Chilean called Marco something-or-other, did a good job at making us feel welcome. The place was in a farmhouse, partly renovated, which Marco rents from a Danish guy who's selling it, until the new owner moves in. A couple of Marco's works were exposed in the main hall but you could walk around freely in the studio and check out his work in progress as well. Marco works with stone, mostly non-figurative. He spent some time speaking with us about his stuff, showed us around, offered food, drinks and smoke, then told us to check out his travel log on Tibet when he got bored with us.

I kind of envy guys who can do stuff like that. The book was filled with sketches of places he saw, different ideas, beer labels and other documents (including a bus ticket from a Chinese "aviation bus company", which cracked me up), his commentaries (in Spanish, of course) and notes from people he met. The spontaneity of the whole thing made it pretty exciting to look at, though we couldn't make out much of the text, as neither of us speaks Spanish :(.

It reminded me of "mail art", where people send letters or a book back and forth by mail and react to each other's work. I like the "log" format, which lends a narration to the whole thing and gives meaning to otherwise sketchy stuff. I wonder if it can be done with music...

Speaking of music, not much got done with "Guiding Light" this weekend. I re-recorded the song like three or four times. It seems that the key of A is just too low for my voice, so I threw the whole thing out and did two new takes in E, before deciding to go back to A, 'cause the guitar parts sounded way better that way. So now I'm stuck with trying to make the vocals come alive. I made a couple of attempts last night but am very far from having anything definitive.

I'm still listening to the new PJ record, it's starting to grow on me...