Dating dilemmas

This post is not as fruity as it sounds - just a note that all the posts about the trip dated in august do not correspond to the dates they actually happened! I'm back in Glasgow now, but still determined to finish writing about my trip!

At the current time of witing, I'm freshly back from a wonderful week in Iona, at the invitation of the Wild Goose Resource group. It was 'music and worship week' and an inspiration all round - from the rest of the programme team, but also from the guests who brought their own inspiring stories with them.

My remit was definitely a percussive one this week, doing daily drumming workshops, and contributing various 'noises' to the worship. I even had my performance debut on the triangle... alongside the thoughtful and gorgeously voiced Tony Alonso - who bravely invited me to play on a couple of numbers in his concert.

Other highlights included a service involving a huge wall of boxes being built across the Abbey (no prizes for guessing what the subject was!) - seeing Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham in concert at the village hall - the demise of the Abbey's sound system and accompanying compensations - the scriptures being danced, sung and drummed in, in the final service - and missing the ferry on the way home, in excellent company.

Next weekend a number of us will be off to do more music and worship stuff at Greenbelt festival... more about that later...

Conferencing in LA

The conference itself had a multicultural theme, which was absolutely perfect – the afternoon was spent soaking up words of wisdom from the revs Charles Ryu and Lee Jung Moon, who presented a fascinating workshop on the use of Korean drumming in worship. Lee was also an expert on traditional Korean percussion music, and is trying to advocate for its re-inclusion in worship settings, after years of drums being seen as a naughty thing. He’d brought with him some videos of work in Korea – both traditional drumming in its original cultural setting, and in use in worship – both of which were fascinating, and wonderful to see a tradition so completely different to anything I’ve experienced previously. Koreans ROCK! (oops – there’s a sweeping cultural generalisation again..) Long may his work continue.

I also had the privilege of experiencing more of the African American approach towards music and worship, which was a real treat. It seems a lot more geared towards whole community participation than much worship I’ve encountered – and not just musically either. I’ve grown rather fond of hearing some forthright exclamations of ‘A-men!’ occur from round the congregation in response to a particularly juicy point in a prayer or sermon. It seems much more of a two-way process than a one-way delivery. Perhaps I should start doing this in Scotland … and watch for the reactions! ;-)

Many many other moments at this conference were like a foretaste of heaven – the diversity of expression, human-beingness, culture, and approach to things godly – all valid, all appreciated, all sharing the same desire to create a more just world, and build community with each other and the divine. Aaaaa – MEN to that!

During the conference ‘day off’ I went to encounter a whole other mode of beingness! I was due to meet with a friend that evening, who had suggested a trip to Venice Beach. Trip being the apposite word! I had nervously driven across town and gratefully parked my car somewhere in the direction of the waterfront, and walked out on to what looked like a fairly normal beach (except with more suntans than you would find in the UK). I’d heard many stories of it being quite an ‘out-there’ place, and thought ‘is this it?’ – but went to pay my respects to the Pacific, and decided to keep strolling along the beach, (feeling very much a stranger in a strange land) in case I’d missed something.

Which I had. Further down, what looked like a small row of shops in the distance turned out to be what I can only describe from previous experiential reference points as a mixture between Camden Market, and the more bizarre aspects of Glastonbury festival, with a bit of extra added California ‘je ne sais quois’. All of human life was here – walking along (the promenade?), on one side were a row of little shops/stalls, selling all manner of trinkets and mind-expanding items – on the other side were some of the most creative ways to make a living one could think of, from a man selling hugs for 50c (who was rather gorgeous!) to a pair of beach-outfitted aliens in deck chairs (selling photographic opportunities), to a man whose sign simply said ‘Give me some f***in money’ – call a spade a spade, that’s what I say.

Learning to drive - LA style..

Well, my arrival in LA was traumatic, to say the least – mostly due to it being my second only day of USA driving, and my first experience of LA freeways. Placing perfect faith in my GPS navigator, I nervously wobbled along in the slowest of five lanes, past downtown LA on the way to Pasadena, and the west coast version of the conference which brought me over in the first place. I will never complain about driving in Glasgow again! From now on, the metal-boxed denizens of the M8 will seem like mild mannered paragons of moderation and courtesy!

Sadly, my faith in GPS was to be misplaced, as the SatNav proudly announced “You have reached your destination” – right in the middle of a freeway on-ramp! So, I went on and off at the next exit, ending up outside the Rose Bowl (well, at least I was sightseeing) – and no idea as to what to do next.

Luckily, I found the address of the conference accommodation – reasoning that if I could make it there (I’ll make it anywhere…it’s up tooo yooo….) I could probably get directions from someone on site.

The GPS worked fine this time, and I arrived where I was supposed to – only there was nobody to be found... After some fevered map-checking, I decided to try an alternative route, which seemed to bring me in the general area of the conference, and headed off again… in search of an address by the name of ‘East Colorado Boulevard’…

The problem lay in the street naming – in Britain we would mostly expect to see the ‘East’ bit written out explicitly on the signage, which is not necessarily the case over here, the result being that I massively overshot the venue on yet another detour, having been miles down Colorado Boulevard, waiting for it to turn into the ‘East’ version.

I ended up over an hour later than my original arrival time, and almost at the pint of tears, being still a little overwhelmed by the sheer sensory overload of driving on the different side of the car; the road; driving an automatic, and reading different street signs and regulations (and having been up since 4.30 that morning). Oh yes, and nearly killing a friend (who had also been waiting for me for an hour) by turning left into oncoming traffic immediately after he’d jumped in the car to show me where to park…

…Not the best start to the day, and I still had no idea where I was going to sleep that night!

Thankfully, things improved dramatically after that. I had turned up at the conference on very much an impromptu basis, but the organisers managed to squeeze me in, for which I was very grateful…happy landings at last!