I went to a fabulous lecture on Mycology yesterday with Beth at the Common Ground Fair. I did this in the spirit of John Cage, who was quite the mycologist (though it seems that he might have been going for the more 'experience enhancing' mushrooms -cough-). The lovely gentleman who gave the presentation was very insightful and was passionate about this topic. It really helps to have a person tell you something they are wild about. I know that is not a problem at my college, but in other places in this world I wonder how people can face the day doing jobs they hate. Anyhoo I learned about some incredible fungi and i might get a little basket and go out on a rainy day. One that captured me the most was the Lobster mushroom. It looks like the color of cooked lobster, and smells like the sea! Supposedly it even tastes like lobster. I want to try one since well lobster is just like milk for me, we don't get along well at all. I have always been wild about mushrooms. I have to say the best ones I ever tasted were in this mushroom dish I had in Rome. I don't know if it was the white wine they were sauteed in with olive oil or what, but that dish of pasta was... I will leave it there.
Speaking of food i also had some wonderful food at the Common Ground. See I went to the Farmington Fair the night before (okay now your saying: this was a music blog? I AM getting there!) and they have terrible food there, although I did have a great funnel cake and Maple Cotton Candy (it was almost nirvana!). The CG well has the best fair food EVER. I had Indian - vegetable curry, vegetable fritters, potato pancakes all with wicked hot sauce. Oh it was delightful and I have never had Indian before! And of course to end it a Mainer Pie Cone, strawberry rhubarb... Okay I am done with that. It was a great day for eating.
Beth and I also conducted a little ethnomusicological research at the CG fair. We found some Native American drummers right after the Indian food. (Woah, that sentence really contradicts itself in the weirdest way!!!) This was great and right up the path of research Beth is going to follow for class. I really enjoyed it how the four gentlemen sat around the large drum beating it and singing. All very simplistic but yet what todays music is built on, this very primitive form. One of the drummers was a very small boy probably 6-8 years old. He held a perfect rhythm and was singing right on with the experts. He had such an intensity for what he was doing it was amazing.They called him the 'apprentice' I remember. After this we walked around more and then we observed down in the main amphitheater more modern hand drumming. A crowd of 100 were in front of the stage dancing like crazy to the all girl group. It was the basic run of the mill djembe drummers, much like what i did in highschool but alot faster. This made me really want to get a hand drummer group together on campus like our group in high school. We just took trash, hand drums or whatever and played rhythms on it. When we watched the John Cage video in R2R last monday I noticed they hung different size brake drums and hit them. I remember we did the same thing in our group and they made some amazing sounds. Those were the days, banging on trash... There were alot of folky groups playing around in random places as well. They are good too, but they don't grip me as much as those rhythm groups.
Otherwise other than being fair-ed out and have caught a cold this weekend (its funny cause i remember last year @ the CG having a cold!) the wonderful life as a UMF student has been spec-tack-u-lar! I have a bone to pick with 2D. I plead the 5th at the moment with that class. Music classes are engaging, wish I had the time that I had this summer to put into them (which is like me saying music 24/7/365, someday!!). Ancient Greece and Rome is great. It seems like the class drags at times but it has been much more interactive lately. Ancient Greece was a great place... Maybe when I am in Italy for a semester I can pop over and take a holiday in Greece! I think i would want to go there just to have the food! No, I would love to see the landscape of the country, the pictures we saw in class on friday were incredible. I haven't been playing frisbee as much as I would like, but school comes first! And i will be playing more Oct has a ton of tourneys all in maine too! Our home tourney, Beaver Fest is Oct 15!!! Hopefully my parents might come up to watch (who knows with them!). Yep I love it I love it all. I couldn't ask for much more. I finally realized that life is really good and what could be wrong!? (Am I on drugs... No, I think I am finally leveling out upstairs from adolescents.) Enough with this I need rest for my health to get rid of this cold. Ciao!
