One Small Window

I love workshops. Or the idea of workshops in any case. The good ones always fill me with energy and I come back home and for a short while, work like I’m never going to stop. It’s all the new ideas tossed back and forth, new tricks learned, stories shared, people met… So when my editor told me about a music workshop by Red Bull in our city, I was more than willing to check it out.

It wasn’t exactly a workshop – more a panel discussion and introduction to the Red Bull Music Academy which is where the real two week, in-depth workshops will take place in Feb-March 2010. RBMA co-founder Torsten Schmidt, Radio Slave aka Matt Edwards and Mumbai musician Louis Banks were on the panel and in the audience consisted of local musicians, artists and DJs.

At the end of the afternoon, I came back without any new musical insights but did make some observations:
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So I played my first real game of poker last night, real world after a few months online. I’d played with this lot before, a couple of years ago, but everything was new back then, I didn’t know what I was doing, one of the guys had printed out a cheat sheet for me detailing the hands in descending order – yeah that time didn’t count.

I’d had an opportunity once before, a couple of months ago but I didn’t take it. This time I was bored enough and pissed off enough with the hand of cards life was dealing me to go out and see whether I could actually hold my own against a roomful of guys who had played together before, for years. I expected it to be the kind of bummer that really pissed me off beyond the sucky string of days I’ve been having. Why would I go tempting fate like that? That’s for me to (think I) know and a therapist to figure out.

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A few days ago, one of our friends asked us if we wanted to go check out the Comedy Store gig at Blue Frog on Thursday. Now, the Frog isn’t exactly our favourite place to go and spend money (I’d offer that there really are few places we’d like to go spend our meagre earnings in but of the lot, Blue Frog is definitely low, low down on the list). Don’t know what it is about the place but it always manages to piss us off. I’m not being royal as I say us, I’m simply speaking for the missus and me.

Plus there was the added joy of having to shell out a thousand are-you-pee-to-the-double-ee-ess (each!) to essentially go stand around and watch people with questionable senses of humour hold forth about this, that and the other thing. As far as I’m concerned that’s our average night out, and my friends are funnier. Still, a flurry of phone calls later we had agreed to let our actor friend book tickets on our behalf and it was decided (because it is better to have a bad experience than no experience at all – one of our life’s mottos in the recent past) that we would go.
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