not in technocolor

i can´t believe i´ve never noticed the techno in technocolour. how about that?
cuba, oh boy, cuba was set to boot camp.

i spent the last two weeks of my three weeks in La Habana taking daily conga, bongo and eventually shaker and, yes, cow bell lessons from Roberto Santamaria, a guy I met while taking a photo of men fixing a huge car of some sort (i don´t need to know the names of the types if i can´t drive them, the exterior was that 50s sort of bulbous look, like it could float) with the licence plate HDU, some joke about taking dunedin out of the girl, or is it the other way round? Hearing something about ¨música¨ as i asked permission to photograph them, they directed me to Roberto who we eventually met later for short sweet percolator coffees to listen to his uncle´s recordings enormous 70s synth funk collection. and here i am, 2 weeks later with a pair of bongos and a heavy conscience. if a vegan is going to buy some bongos, the most guiltless place must be cuba, right? nothing is wasted here. the woman i was staying with spent sundays curling her hair with toilet rolls. ah yes, guiltless.
Roberto also took me to Cuba´s central recording studio. Brilliant to see how they do it here. not much differently, aesthetically anyway. half empty bottle of rum, half full ashtray at a rakish angle to the nosmoking sign. cooledit. anyone important seemed to wear a cheese cutter. or maybe that´s why they seemed to look important?
we also spent much time with Tropa, or Francisco Sanchez, an eighty something saxophonist that had recently had cateract surgery, and had been promised a bonus of sorts by Camilo Cienfuegos a week before his plane crashed. apparently. we bought a burnt album featuring some of his saxophony which turned out to be the buena vista social club recording. how about that, so did Kim Hill.... oddly. it really just keeps getting stranger. oh to understand! Quite a wonderland really, nothing as it seemed. my ´host father´for example. fairly chilled looking chap of 70 in a jesterish yellow and pink panelled shirt, a photographer, into yoga and some sort of magnet healing. sweet. nice that he´s waiting up for me, warning me about machete attacks. great that he wants to keep talking about the suffering of the people, how careful i have to be and how capitalism is the one stop solution for everything. great. but how can someone so tranquil get so angry and afraid about black people? how about the chest beating machete demonstration to quell my fears and renew my confidence ? and of who exactly were those rather close up and personal photos he tripped upon, asking advice of the camera he´d just aquired at 4 in the morning. stranger and stranger.
took the obligatory salsa lesson, an aerobics-style group class at the Museo del Ron. i´m trying to concentrate my wiggling to the lower half of my body. caught an incredible guy (in a cheese cutter no less) that was mixing salsa and moonwalking thrillingly.

oh so much more, but i have to run.

quickly though, two great language stories.... did i tell you about the one where i asked to smoke a cd, and the shop owner gave me an ashtray (i meant burn). just yesterday, having been in the land of tips for the tourist currency (read: a total life saver for some people), i asked the woman in the panamanian bathroom if she worked there. as she replied yes, i handed her a quarter, which she refused, as i realised she must simply work in the building. phew, about that. i got a ¨Thank you¨ in English. Understood.