in paris i stayed in a cheap but decent hotel in montmartre, an area of town which is famous in part for the moulin rouge and the behemian culture of artists it helped to inspire. artists as varied as Talousse Latrec, Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh all lived or worked in montmartre at some point. the clubs in montmartre are some of the seediest in the world, and the area remains as unpredictable and dangerous as it must have been for talousse latrec in 1900. pigalles and the boulevard de clichy strip is a far cry from the cleanliness and cheeriness of the red light district in amsterdam. the moulin rouge, however, now attracts large groups of tourists to its nightly shows and to its brightly lit red exterior where americans pose for photographs and think of nicole kidman.

my first day in paris i went straight from the train station to the hotel and then to the louvre. at the louvre i only had a few hours so i went directly to the mona lisa first. the image is so well known to me that i spotted it from within another large room when it was just the size of an ant. there, masses of asian people swarmed around pushing and shoving with cameras trying to get a photo of themselves in front of the painting. i stood there for probably five or ten minutes, longer than anyone else in that time period. i am not sure anyone was really looking at it but only looking at the idea of the mona lisa–the most famous painting in the world. i have never seen anything like it. it was as if brad pitt had just stepped out of a limo. never had mona lisa’s knowing smile seemed so hilariously perfect to me, as if saying “can you believe this?” i almost wonder if davinci anticipated this kind of scene, or if the response was similar in the quattrocento. slowly i worked my way to the front and center and became the silent motionless eye of a tornado of ridiculous excitement. and there i decided: yes. it is one of the very best, a perfect painting. the right kind of atmosphere, mystery, beauty. despite becoming a cliche and a tourist trap, the mona lisa remains a timeless masterpiece. and even if it’s only in that one corner of france, somewhere for some reason people still get very excited about colored pigment on a flat surface. that makes me smile too.

that night i had paris by night tour and a drink and an open faced french sandwich with my first ever french friend benjamin (who shares my exact birthday) and his wife. they drove me around to show me monuments and important buildings, a tour which would have been impossible in one day on foot. i was still tired from my trip from lyon so that night in montmartre i slept like a baby from babyville despite the sounds of young artists drinking and laughing drifting through my open window into the late hours.

yesterday, tuesday, was my very last day in europe. i went to the Musée d’Orsay, perhaps the second most famous museum in the world after the louvre. the orsay was at one time the most modern train station in paris, now it is home to many of the best works ever from the impressionists and post-impressionists. there i saw monet, manet, corbet, and many other artists whose names end with et but are pronounced ay. most of the artists at the orsay walked the line between tradition and modernity. i think that is the job of every artist.

what would you do, if you had just one more night in europe after a two month adventure? i took a cab to the eifel tower to get there fast enough to catch the sunset. i walked on the lawn weaving through young and old bodies kicking soccer balls and drinking wine on blankets. i found a patch in the grass with a good view and bought a bottle of cold champagne from a vendor. i watched the sky turn from blue to pink to dark blue to black and the tower turn from orange to night and the lights come on. i made an effort to reflect on everywhere i had been and all the things i had done. my thoughts turned to home. after sitting around by myself for a couple hours i finally had the guts to approach a young guy sitting by himself with a backpack. i assumed he was a solo traveler like me.

“do you speak english?” i asked
“yes” he said with an accent i could not place.
“do you want a glass of champagne? i had to buy a whole bottle but i won’t drink it all.”
“sure!” he said with genuine enthusiasm, so i sat down.
“this is going to be the last conversation i have in europe,” i told him and we talked for an hour or so. i would learn that he was from quebec, canada, and spoke a form of french that could not be understood by french people living in france. it was his very first night of a european adventure. he had just found his way from the airport.
“i saw the eifel tower so i thought that would be a good place to start!” like me when i arrived, he had no return plane ticket, and only a rough idea of what he wanted to see. so with unspoken poetry, i passed the torch. the eifel tower, i thought, is a good place to end.

when i arrived in lyon i was greeted by Jérémy, a longtime supporter of mine and a big american music fan. if not for his thick french accent i could have taken him for an ohioan–he wears cut-off tee-shirts, sunglasses and sandals and walks with the casualness and unhurriedness of someone who lives in the country. he is average height and about my age. from the airport we drove to lyon, the second largest city in paris although maybe you haven’t heard of it and i really hadn’t either.

we took a funiculare (that is the italian word but i cannot remember the french word) to the top of a mountain and looked out at lyon from the foot of a the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, a castle-like cathedral that can be seen from anywhere in the city. lyon (pronounced kind of like lee-own) is sprawling and not very tall, the way most old european cities are. it has one or two or three skyscrapers and a river snaking through many clay roofed buildings looking like tan and red-orange legos dropped onto a green shag carpet fading into the hills in the hazy distance. french cities and villages look a lot like italian cities and villages and when i noticed this Jérémy reminded me that italy is not far–they are both southern europe. the language and culture however, could not be more different. in europe you can travel less than an hour and find that everyone speaks a different language and eats different food and even in the same country they greet each other with a different amount of kisses and in a different order from left to right. in america, i told Jérémy, “you can drive for 20 hours and see the same stores, meet the same kind of people, and speak exactly the same language.”

we found our way to the art museum in downtown lyon kind of by accident. Jérémy had never been to the art museum and didn’t know where it was. i just assumed as we were walking that there would be an art museum and it would be a good one since we were in a large french city after all, and the french impressionists and post-impressionists had made arguable the most important contributions to painting ever. sure enough, in the most historic area of town we found it. unfortunately the beautiful old stone building did not have air conditioning, or the air conditioning was out of order. on one hour of sleep (as i had played a late acoustic show in london the previous night), the heat was quite uncomfortable. but i was in france dammit, and i was determined to see some great paintings. we wandered through room after room and made our best conversation considering Jérémy has only some interest in art and my tiredness made it difficult to communicate anything with enthusiasm.
“i will sleep when i get to america,” i told him when he realized how short the previous night must have been. between blinks of sweaty tired eyelids i saw some monets and pissaros and vuilliards and bonnards and other artists that i know a little more about than a lot of french people. i thought about trying to make a list of all the art museums i have been to in the last two months and realized what a daunting task this will be.

so i can name some french artists and what their main contributions to painting were. that is the only thing that prevents me from feeling completely ignorant in the company of french people.
“do you know our president?” Jérémy asked me and i responded “no” with a little embarrassment (it’s Nicolas Sarkozy, btw). but that is why people travel, right? to learn things? later that night his friends and family members would ask me questions like
“do you know our music?” or give me the name of some french singer or movie star who i could not place. france, we wikipediaed, is about the size of texas, although maybe the french know much more about texas than texans know about the french. i think that is a safe bet, if george w. was any indication. i told them that austin texas, is a current american center of progressiveness and that there area always exceptions to stereotypes. as as sidenote, the french have never heard of grey poupon.

these kind of conversations, not unlike the conversations i had in germany, holland, and england, were nearly constant for the next two days as we ate and drank and wandered around the beautiful old towns and villages of saint-clair-du-Rhône, Saint-Pierre-de-Boef, and Chavanay, described by the official website as a pleasant village at the foot of Mount Pilat. the Rhône river weaves through the area and is so blue-green it is like a ribbon strip of water cut directly from the fabric of the ocean.

Jérémy lives with his wife blondina (a local name) who is one of those people who glows warmly like a sun, and two beautiful daughters in a typical french house with stucco walls and the red-orange roof, a house they built themselves recently. sitting in the backyard you can see vineyard-covered mountains. every inch of available hillside in this area of france is covered with grapevines. over the weekend we would spend many hours in the backyard eating bread, cruissants, pork, frogs, snails, duck, more bread, patte, drinking local wines and watching the sun set behind the vineyards.

Jérémy’s friend jeff is the most french man i have ever met. maybe i am not qualified to make that kind of assessment as an american. but with the limited knowledge i acquired in three days i think it is true and i said so the other night and nobody at the table argued. jeff is pensive and stoic, with a knowing smile, very dark hair and a stubbly face. he is a jazz piano virtuoso and an amazing chef.
“everything jeff does, i do,” i said as jeff applied a large amount of homemade mayonnaise to his duck medallion and i did the same on my plate. i would follow his lead in matters of food and wine pairings throughout the weekend.

jeff’s father grows grapes and jeff worked on a nearby vineyard for three years when he was younger. the vineyards that cover the Rhône-Alpes area of france are planted on extremely steep mountainsides and hillsides that makes harvesting hard work, work that is more akin to mountain climbing–complete with a pack on your back of sticky bunches of grapes–than it is farming. it is hard to overestimate the importance of wine in french culture.

the weather is the greatest enemy of all farmers and winemakers are no exception. in some areas of france, upon the first signs of hail–which would utterly destroy a crop, authorities will launch missiles into the air to break up the ice balls. yes, missiles. i guess this is called cloud seeding and is used for various purposes in different parts of the world, but i cannot imagine a defensive military maneuver being a component of winemaking in the united states.

jeff’s father has thousands of bottles of homemade wine locked away in a cellar, bottles which would be illegal to sell on the french market since the vineyard is unlicensed.
“then what will you do with all of it?” i wondered.
“drink it. we are hoping that maybe we will inherit some of it,” jeff said. “when i was sixteen i learned about wine. i kicked the door open with my foot and stole some bottles. you can still see the…on the door. what’s the word?”
“footprint,” i said.

my acoustic guitar, which was lost in London by the airport, eventually found its way to Jérémy’s house. saturday evening i played a living room concert for Jérémy, his wife, jeffs wife nathalie and their daughter Charlotte, a wide-eyed fifteen year old who wears a lot of colors and is quickly learning english, and a handful of other friends. Jérémy plays the guitar and teaches guitar lessons, his wife blondina is an excellent singer and toured with a choir, and their friends are music teachers and pianists and clarinetists et cetera. i was a bit intimidated in a room full of musicians but i played well enough and everyone seemed to enjoy it. afterwards, they played some of their french and english songs for ME and we played some cover songs together.

“good bread, good cheese, good wine.” those are the perfect ingredients for a happy french person according to Jérémy. that combination made for one happy american too and last night my happiness was mixed with the knowing sadness of the impending end. Jérémy and company told me that maybe the french as a romantic people was just a stereotype. but that night with Jérémy and his loving family and friends with our stomachs full of the most amazing food and drinks, lying on our backs looking up at a clear warm sky translating words like milky way and satalites to french and english as we spotted shooting stars, i cannot think of a better word.

*** update the airports or airlines have lost my acoustic guitar. i was forced to check my guitar and it has not arrived from london to lyon. we shall see how this shakes out. but the day is a beautiful day and the sky is a perfect blue to white gradient, a vast improvement from dreary london.

i try not to stereotype. one stereotype i had hoped to disprove is that the british do not have good food. in every place i have visited i have made an effort to try the local cuisine and england is no exception.

on the front cover of the menu at wetherspoon pub, a successful chain of pubs perhaps equivalent to applebees in the states, was a beautiful photo of a dish called a Ploughman, which includes a Melton Mowbray pork pie, a special kind of pork pie which comes from a specific region of england. the picture on the menu is the classic restaurant food picture: the light is perfect and the depth of field is very narrow allowing the focus to be on the pie while the side dishes have a bit of atmospheric blur as if all the components are in some kind of dreamy food heaven beckoning you to taste. i was confident that the featured entree at one of the most popular restaurants in england would be delicious.

when it arrived it was cold, which is the traditional way to serve it. okay. but it tasted slightly like sausage, except with almost no flavor. i thought maybe sausages were just flavorful by nature, as they are in germany or the usa, but i guess there is a way to make pork into sausage while making sure no flavor accidentally sneaks in. maybe they have a strainer which removes the flavor. between the cold pork substance and the cold crust there was a layer of what appeared to be some kind of industrial window caulk or perhaps animal fat that had congealed into a hard murky gelatin. in short, weatherspoon’s Ploughman was one of the worst entrees i have encountered in europe. but i ate almost all of it because i was hungry and i slightly enjoyed the humor in it, knowing it would at least make a good bad food story later.

having little luck with restaurant food i turned my search to grocery store cookies and candy. one of the most popular cookies here in england are “digestives”. the label says “Digestives” in white lettering against a bright red background and underneath “Dark Chocolate”. “Digestives” has got to be the worst name for a cookie i have ever heard. for me, and i don’t think i am alone here, digestion is what happens after i eat. before i eat, i don’t need to think about digestion. if you’re going to call your product digestives why not take it a step further and call them “poopers” or maybe “excramentives”? i guess it’s hard to know where to draw the line, but where i draw it is with chewing or before. charleston chew–acceptable. charlston esophogus slider…eh, on the cusp.

i did have one delicious plate of fish and chips, naturally. but i think it is safe to say that england is not known for it’s cuisine.

however, none of this is or was the fault of my kind british companions tom and joe, two brothers from Bushey, just outside london. tom and joe cannot singlehandedly affect the food taste crisis their country seems to be undergoing, but they were kind enough to put me up at their place and show me around. tom introduced me to “revels”, my new favorite candy. they are like american whoppers, milk duds, raisinettes, chocolate orange, and one other thing that i cannot remember all in the same package. and it is a surprise which flavor you will get! so for someone like me who enjoys surprise and adventure, it is a wonderful mini taste odyssey that is predictable enough to be pleasing but unpredictable enough to be exciting, the same way a great pop song works. after talking for two days, tom suggested that i buy some revels for my band mates john and dan. my bassist brian ives, however, gets the more consistent tasting “Maltesers” because of his occasional aversion to fun.

we spent one evening with tom’s parents and found that we had a great deal in common. for my sake tom’s father did some independent research focused on Bushey’s rich art history which included Von Herkemmer, a german immigrant who was a painter and filmmaker and founder of an important art school in Bushey, and Lucy Kemp-Welch, the illustrator of the original edition of the classic equine book, “Black Beauty”. the next day at the very small Bushey museum, i saw several enormous canvases of masterfully painted horses, and one smaller quick painting by Lucy Kemp-Welch of a horse and horse owner near the Santa Trinita, a bridge in florence italy where i studied art last month. my eyes saw the painting but i did not feel it until my heart recognized it as florence and a bolt of something came through me, one part longing for florence and one part appreciation. the painting is actually just a sketch for a larger work, and although the sketch is lonely and nearly forgotten in a dusty corner of a small town museum it is masterfully executed in a fresh, quick style, which i prefer to her larger canvases which occasionally feel belabored. but me as an american looking at the little painting of florence italy executed by an english artist who was trained by a german i felt a connection with all these different places i have been and times i have studied and the entire history of creatively minded artists and adventurers and in this moment i knew for certain that i was on the right path.

that night i played an acoustic show at the Dublin castle, a famous bar in london which hosted acts such as Madness, Travis, and Blur as they were getting off the ground. i played one of my better acoustic sets in a while, complete with one-night-only trumpet and trombone accompaniment from tom and joe, respectively, for the song “mitral valve prolapse”. tom and joe are both extremely talented university trained brass musicians. unfortunately, i started the song a half step too low but i just went with it and forgot to let tom and joe know. joe is one of the rare human beings with perfect pitch and knew immediately my mistake while tom, who like me does not hear pitch as well as a robot, was left to struggle through the first chorus until it became clear to him what i had done. but by the second chorus everything came together in a triumphant brassy rendition that was truly special.

i am here in lyon, france for three days.

friday i was greeted and hugged heartily near the train station in amsterdam by tom and tim, two handsome bachelors in their late twenties. thomas and tim are the kind of guys who can flirt with anyone, talk with anyone, and get anyone to smile from old ladies to pretty women to bus drivers and taxi drivers. tim is a rock star. “i have led the life of a rock star,” he says. when you have a story about waking up in an alley somewhere in south america with no clothes on and not remembering exactly what happened, you have truly led the life of a rock star, despite not having played an instrument. thomas is also charismatic but more quiet, and the two have a dynamic which is hilarious, sarcastic and playful. they are the most american europeans i have met, having a free-spiritedness and idealism that evokes california. before leaving their spacious, contemporary apartment in white shoes and big sunglasses tim says “let’s rock and roll baby” with a conviction that overrides his dutch accent. this is the culture of amsterdam and in a lot of ways, i fit right in.

friday night we sat on the porch as tim grilled out and made some fancy salads and we drank heineken beer, which is brewed in holland and very popular there. thomas and i spent a lot of the night (and the weekend) sharing music for each other. in his room he has shelves with thousands of CD’s–complete discographies and b-sides and rarities ranging from groups like bone thugs and harmony to sting and mew. in europe i guess you would have to be a big music fan to have discovered albums from a relatively unknown songwriter from Ohio like me. thomas has been here in the netherlands following and supporting my work since the first independent albums i did with SWIM right out of high school. since then i went on to sign a deal with MCA records under universal umbrella, and somewhat coincidentally thomas went on to work for universal records, which is i guess the best place to work in holland if you are such a big music fan. between thomas’s connections through universal music and tim’s job as a sales rep for cocoa cola, they never wait in lines and can get into any concert or show or bar in town for free and often drink for free too and we may or may not have done just that. basically, if you are traveling to amsterdam thomas and tim are the exact two guys you want to stay with.

on saturday we went to the van gogh museum where i saw one of the best collections of post-impressionist works i have ever seen and for once on this european adventure i felt just slightly more knowledgeable than the locals, although i was excited to see a painting by van gogh that included the side of a house where thomas’s mother was born. traveling to these places and seeing the art where the artists lived and worked their legacies become much more real for me and i feel more directly connected. or as one of my painting instructors told me, it will make me feel like more of a part of the “continuum of painting”, which is a good way to put it.

after the museum i took a personal scooter tour of amsterdam with tim. they call amsterdam the venice of the north because of its network of canals. it is a beautiful old city and easy to travel by public transit, scooter, or by walking although i think scooter is the most fun and now i want one for myself. we went to vondel park where there were hoards of beautiful teenagers and twenty-somethings strumming acoustic guitars, playing bongos, and sunbathing as the smell of marijuana floated on the hot air. amsterdam is usually cloudy and rainy but it was beautiful and mostly sunny for me all weekend.

then tim and i made the obligatory visit to the red light district and saw window after window of beautiful girls for sale. these girls are not the crack-heads we have back home in the dark corners of cincinnati at night. this was in broad daylight and the amsterdam prostitutes look like sports illustrated swimsuit models. they stand around looking sort of listless and bored but smiling slightly. many of them are paying their way through college. this is the oldest job in the world and in amsterdam it is quite profitable and well regulated. red light district is one of the safest neighborhoods in the town. the police do not want any trouble there and the pimps and girls don’t either, so regular patrols and lots of cameras limit theft and violent crimes to almost nothing. all of this seems quite surreal for a someone from a country founded by puritans. tim and i spent about twenty minutes walking through the neighborhood going over the regular moral arguments for and against prostitution or at least for its legalization which was a good way to keep our minds occupied and to avoid looking at the merchandise too much until we scurried back onto the scooter reminding ourselves of our beautiful girlfriends back home.

after heading back to the apartment and eating tim’s delicious thai curry for dinner (a recipe which i will take with me back home), we hopped on a train and headed downtown where i played an acoustic show at a place called the waterhole, a medium sized bar with a good stage in a lively area of town. the waterhole is made to look somewhat american or british. the interior is weathered wood and rock posters and random things nailed to the ceiling and the walls, creating an overall aesthetic that is part CBGB’s and part Friday’s restaurant. i felt very at home there. even the very british sound guy was cranky in the way that most american sound guys are until they hear you play and realize you are actually good. toward the middle of the set, more and more people began coming into the room where i was playing. by my last song, i began stepping off stage but the crowd applauded and wanted an encore, something i don’t think i have never experienced at a solo acoustic gig. for the set i played a cross section of solo material new and old, some july for kings songs. for the encore i played “futureflies” and a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “dancing in the dark”. i wanted to have something upbeat and very american in my back pocket just in case, and it is a good thing i did.

later that night after visiting a lot of tim’s cocoa cola clients we hit the local FEBO stand. FEBO is a chain of fast food restaurants in and around amsterdam which are basically giant vending machines with fried foods instead of candy and gum. you put your money in and you open a glass window the size of a shoebox and retrieve one of many fried snacks. i suppose there are actual human beings that are preparing these fried objects and putting them in the windows for your retrieval but i have no actual evidence of this. as usual i trusted the judgement of my local escorts and was handed a frikandel and a croquette. they were both quite good. only later did i discover that one of them may or may not have contained cow eyeball or horse-meat. they do eat horses in holland but only occasionally.

we all slept soundly that night feeling a bit like rock stars which is a good way to feel and a feeling i only get every once in a while these days.

the next morning we had breakfast which consisted of breads and toppings and ontbijtkoek, a dutch spice cake which i said is “pretty good but we would only eat it for christmas and stuff” although they eat it for breakfast all the time in holland. that day we went to the beach, a beach thomas found online that claimed to be the “finest beach in holland” and once we arrived and saw the sand and felt the sun and everyone seemed happy we figured that maybe it really was the finest or certainly among the finest. tim who is a food enthusiast and proud of the local dutch cuisine and also a bit of a sadist led us to a herring vendor. a dutch specialty is souced herring which is essentially salted raw fish served on a paper plate. with diced raw onions if you are lucky. traditionally, you take the fish by the tail, suspend it above your face and lower it into your mouth for a bite. repeat until it is gone. even grandmas eat it this way, as i learned from a sign on the side of the booth featuring a smiling grandma suspending a herring a few inches from her wrinkled mouth. but i had mine the sissy way with a toothpick and onions and it was kind of gross but i ate all of it as we all laughed at the ridiculousness of the dish and probably at the faces i was making as the slimy pieces touched my tongue. thomas abstained completely. tim ate his in the proper dutch manner and loved every second of it. i was impressed.

that night holland lost the world cup as i stood in an orange hat outside a bar with all the locals. it was an ugly match and a shame and that’s all i’m going to say about that.

i am german! probably 50% german at least, anyway. i never thought much about it until very recently–two days ago actually, when i arrived here in germany. i feel at ease around these people. these are my people. honestly, i was never much interested in my german heritage before. beer steins and oktoberfest celebrations and sausages–these things are so common in cincinnati that i have taken them for granted or dismissed them as contrived. after all, most of my experiences with german looking buildings have been in theme parks.

now that i have seen some towns and met some people, i get it. the german celebrations and traditions we have in cincinnati are not novelties or exploitations but are truly ingrained into our heritage as a people with a great deal of german blood in our veins. my mother’s maiden name was german and my grandfather spoke fluent german. so after a month in dreamy otherworldly medieval cities in italy, frankfurt feels very much like home. the potato salad they serve here is a lot like my mom’s potato salad (the best potato salad in the tri-state). the franks and sausages remind me of being at a red’s game or in a friend’s backyard. the beer is delicious and so is the local apfelwine and apple cider. everything has a familiar quality to it: the way germans gather and eat and drink, their congeniality and humor, et cetera. there is a germany word for which there is no english equivalent: gemütlich. it means comfortable, cozy, warm, et cetera. that is what i have felt the last few days in the wonderful company of my german pen pal turned real-life friend markus.

for my first few nights in germany Markus and his girlfriend Laura graciously offered to put me up in their quiet town of bad nauheim, so named for the baths (bad) there, or hot springs. over the weekend they took me to see a small castle completely devoid of tourists. there Markus told me the local lore and legends of the mad men sculptures that switch places at midnight but can only be seen by those who have never told a lie (Markus has seen them switch twice he claims), and the man who was killed by a boar tooth for not trusting his wife’s intuition about a dangerous hunting trip. it was an incredibly intimate tour of the towns Bad Nauheim and Büdingen, places which no american tourist would see if not in the company of a local.

the three of us have had a wonderful time together and i think we will remain close after i leave despite the large atlantic ocean between us. however until greeting me at the train station Markus and i had never met face to face. coming from work he wore a perfectly starched white shirt and shiny black shoes and black slacks. he is a young businessman. he is about my height but much stronger and with almost black hair and piercing blue eyes. he is truly german and german looking but he speaks better english than i do in a direct professional manner, which was slightly intimidating at first. there are a great deal of younger germans who have been taking english classes since they were kids. they speak british sounding english with only a slight german accent. Markus’s girlfriend Laura girlfriend speaks english very well too as she lived in the states for a few years playing tennis during college. since i arrived they have spoken english most of the time as a courtesy, even when addressing each other. i asked them if they would be relieved to speak german again when i left and they said no, that they really enjoy speaking english occasionally.

to my surprise, markus and a lot of germans agree with americans in thinking that the german language sounds clumsy and harsh. i have also learned that it is very difficult to compose songs in german, which is one reason germans like american music so much. markus played me music from a german band that sounded very american. when their fans discovered that the band was german and not american, their record sales declined dramatically. not only is the sound of american music important, but it’s americanism gives it an authenticity. music and entertainment in general is surely one of america’s greatest exports and something that we can remain proud of despite our other exports which include preemptive wars, oil spills, mcdonalds, et cetera. american music is a positive, meaningful force in the lives of many europeans and i am happy to be here as a representative.

if there is one thing that breaks down cultural barriers it’s alcohol. but if there is another thing–and this is the thing i was going to say when i started that previous sentence–it’s the arts. american music is as important now to europeans as the european visual arts have been to americans since the late 1800’s. yesterday in frankfurt i saw a retrospective show of one of my favorite painters Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. without the german expressionists there would have been no neo-expressionists and i would not be able to paint in the way that i like to paint. in the 1920’s Kirchner and his friends founded the group die brüke, the bridge, to bridge the old german art with the new avant guard art. (as a sidenote i met someone today whose grandfather hung out with the Blue Rider, the other famous group of expressionists in germany). Kirchner and his friends spent a lot of time sitting around his bohemian loft smoking cigarettes and looking at african sculptures. they painted and drew young girls, often their girlfriends or other artists, from life in poses that were considered unacceptable by the academic art would at the time. his paintings are mostly figurative, although they can be quite flat and abstract. at first glance they seem child-like but retain an underlying sophistication of color and texture through layered paint application. if there is one thing that will really stick with me about the show, it is the way he used layers. most of the paintings are visceral and quick as if the artist was possessed with the desire to capture the moment. these paintings were done in the 1920’s or before but a lot of them still seem contemporary. it is good timing that this show is here when i am here since a retrospective of a german painter like Kirchner will probably never happen in america, especially in cincinnati where, 100 years later, people still seem to have little tolerance for abstraction in painting.

Kirchner was quite popular in his own day. when Hitler rose to power Hitler staged the “degenerate” art show. the show was a place for germans to come and look down on or literally laugh at artworks that hitler dubbed primitive or degenerate or bad. hitler included kirschner’s works in the degenerate show and had over 600 of Kirchner’s paintings removed from museums around germany, including many at the famous museum here in frankfurt where the retrospective was staged, the stadel museum, which was loved by Kirchner. can you imagine being an aging artist, having accomplished so much and to have it all taken away by some crazy fuckhead who liked killing people who look different? this must have been the most terrible feeling, some combination of rage, disbelief, depression. surely it was, because when the Nazi’s finally arrived some 20 miles away from Kirchner’s house in what he thought was a secluded part of austria, Kirchner shot himself twice in the heart.

if you ask an american about germany and say what comes to mind they would probably say nazis. this is unfortunate but true and germans know this. i have seen so many movies about the nazis but no movies that i can recall about actual nice german people doing nice german things in their german way like eating breads for breakfast and afternoon cakes with coffee and eating sausages as if they are candycanes and laughing and toasting prost! the way they do everyday. germany as a country has been conflicted about her own patriotism until very recently. what could possibly ease the tremendous lingering emotional burden of the nazis? there is one thing that has united these people more than any other force, a thing that has finally given germans the right and confidence to proudly stand up and wave their yellow black and red flags and yell deutschland! that thing is soccer.

the world cup happens only every four years and is the most important thing in europe. more important than the mona lisa. on wednesday i had the great pleasure of watching germany play a quarter final game against argentina at markus’s brother Sven’s house. sven is stocky but not overweight with a good laugh that occasionally shoots off like a projectile weapon of joy, and a good sense of humor which is made even better by his accent.

this was a family gathering that reminded me so much of my own family gatherings at home i would have forgotten i was in another country if not for the occasional shouts at the tv of nein nein nein! when the other team approached the german goal. there were children running around the house, extended family doing dishes and cutting cakes, a dog eating tennis balls in the backyard and sausages coming off the grill all night. i ate well and smoked a cuban cigar, had some incredibly smooth prune brandy from Ziegler which was probably expensive (my mostly german grandmother loved brandy), and drank hefeweizen. there must have been fifty german flags in the house and all over the cars outside and on tee-shirts and noisemakers but in the corner there was one american flag. it is one of only a few american flags i have seen since i left america. sven and his family are quite fond of america. they have visited kentucky and vacationed in florida and love doritos.

when germany scored its fourth goal and went on to win four to zero the house was absolutely ecstatic, beaming with such positivity that everyone found it hard to sit down and there i was the lone american a smiling witness to this nationally important event, wearing a lei with german colors and i cheered and felt more german than i ever have. that night on the back porch i sang and played songs on the acoustic guitar for the family. sven and i had it worked out that i would play them one of my songs for every sausage or beer i consumed. i played for a while. the kids clapped their hands but germans can only clap on the 1 and 3 so i played songs that way until they grew tired and slowly drifted to sleep as we smiled and breathed in the summer air feeling gemütlich.

when i stepped out of the taxi here in the gravel lot of cittadellarte, i felt as if i was in some kind of top secret military outpost. a few people were standing around staring at me from the surrounding white buildings while i waited for a tumbleweed to blow by. it never came and eventually i found my way up some stairs to a small group of people with macbooks looking at a presentation in a large white room. the network of buildings known as citadellarte is not an italian military outpost but an old wool mill which has been converted into a several affiliated ventures including art galleries, a gift shop, a cafe, a clothing line, an architecture firm that uses only biological building materials, and an artist residency program. the residency is an annual four month long gathering of a handful of talented young artists, economists, and activists from all of the world working under the supervision of an elusive, eccentric but charismatic man with a white beard who slightly resembles sean connory and calls himself michelangelo pistolleto. he has recently published a book entitled the third paradise, about his new vision for the future of the human species. i’m not making that up. cittadellarte houses all of his pet projects.

the staff prepared me a room for two nights. i feel privileged to be here since overnight stays are only available for friends of the artists and the staff. my friend maggie is the only other american here. i had dinner the last two nights at the most international table i have ever sat at with fellow artists and thinkers from palestine, scotland, bulgaria, et cetera, with diverse skill-sets all speaking english at different levels of fluency. why this reminds me of the X-men i do not know. it’s not nice to pick favorites, but i’m not always nice and my favorite person here is Alioum, from Cameroon Africa. he is about my age, tall, shy, and dark of course with a huge toothy smile. he is well dressed and the kind of person you can tell is smart because their brain shines slightly through their eyes. he and i spent most of this evening listening to, discussing, and playing music. in Cameroon, shepherds play a two stringed instrument for their cattle and for themselves when they are lonely. although not a shepherd he plays a little. coincidentally (although Alioum doesn’t believe in coincidences) we found a guitar with only two strings sitting in a corner of a room downstairs. he played it for me the best he could although it had only a slight resemblance to his native instrument. then we watched youtube videos of african artists and i played them back to him by ear with my guitar the best i could, to his great amusement. i now have a good list of West African singers to download out on itunes. Alioum is a painter as well as conceptual artist.

my american friend maggie is not an artist in the typical sense of the word; she more closely resembles pistolleto’s conception of creator as an agent of social change. what is an artist anyway? a contemporary artist is someone who makes art for other artists and rich people. artists know, but they don’t often admit it, that facebook is more entertaining than something you have to stare at for an hour to wrap your head around. maybe there are more important roles in society for people who like to call themselves an “artist”? rather than or in addition to creating something strange and avante guard for its own sake or the sake of a shrinking number of art fans, contemporary artists could make things that bring about social change through the way they are made or the way they are viewed or work within society. that is what maggie seeks to do here through developing “assignments” that force the participants to think about their role in society and their interconnectedness with other cultures and the species at large. i participated in one of them today. it was hard for me to understand all this at first too but just trust me there’s some shit going on here that is probably important.

* * *

biella is a small town with all the amenities of any italian small town including gelato, espresso, pizza, parks, piazzas, piadina kebabs and other things that begin with the letter p. but as best i can tell the most exciting part is the funiculare, and i know this because people would say “have you been to the funiculare yet”? we don’t have an english word for it so i didn’t understand what it was at first. but i heard it was so cheap it was almost free and i was sold by the first syllable anyway: fun. funicolare is pronounced funny colARE ay, which is kind of like funny car. and it turns out that funiculare means inclined train–basically a ski lift. so i bought a map and found my way to the edge of town. behind a large church near a park there is a rusted archway with faded letters on it saying funiculare. i walked under it into a small room with a turnstyle and two sets of tracks with two suspended wonkavators. oddly, i was the only one there; there was no attendant and were no other would-be passengers but the wonkavator door was open. so i walked in and sat down. nothing happened. i looked around and saw a big red button inside the car near the front window. now i already i know what you’re thinking: “whatever you do, don’t push the red button!” and that is what i was thinking too. despite not being able to understand a single word of the sign in italian by the button but i was overwhelmed by this urge to push it, which is what always happens when people are near red buttons and why i think they should never be red unless, and this has just occurred to me, that making it red was a secret ploy to get foreigners to push it. just then my right hand extended its index finger on its own and moved my arm toward the button and pushed it. immediately a loud alarm when off and without thinking i scrambled out of the car as the doors almost closed on me. the magic doors must have sensed my presence in the doorway because they re-opened. a few seconds later i reconsidered and walked back inside. the alarm went off again and this time, i let the doors close me inside the car and finally it began ascending the hill with me inside turning round and round to make sure i saw out every window. the button is indeed the button to make the car go and at the top there is an attendant watching video surveillance of the bottom. this must be one of the best jobs in biella since i am sure once a day someone like me walks in there and the attendant has a good laugh and then a couple minutes to wipe their smile off as the car ascends. it cost me 30 euro cents and was well worth it for the view of the misty town surrounded by misty mountains, or the feet of mountains.

right now i am on a train traveling from italy through switzerland where i will catch a connection in zurich and finally arrive in frankfurt germany. the roofs of the houses are going from red to brown, the bars to pubs and the landscape is becoming steadily more incredible as we pass lakes and enormous snow covered mountains. after a month of italian, i think it will be refreshing to hear another language even it if it is not my own.

it is obvious that Michelangelo loved men, as evidenced by countless male nudes he painted and sculpted throughout his life. i mean REALLY loved men. he kept painting naked men on the ceilings and walls of churches, then ten years later the priests would have to hire other painters to put swatches of clothes over their privates. people today talk about the sistine chapel as this archetypal work of art, a masterpiece, but can you imagine someone getting away with that now? “father, i would like to paint about fifty naked men on the ceiling of your church.” you can’t even do it with a sharpie in the basement bathroom, let alone get paid by the pope for it. in the sistine chapel there are many biblical figures, and some “ignudi” which really have no function or relation to christianity. they are just an excuse to cram a few more naked dudes up there.

When Michelangelo did sculpt or paint a woman, she was essentially a man with awkward breasts hanging from the pectoral muscles like shriveled coconuts on a tree. Either he had never actually looked at a woman’s body with any real interest, which i find hard to believe for such an intensely observant artist, or he just could not bring himself to represent a woman in the way a woman really appears. the only woman he ever loved or cared about he loved because she seemed to him a man in a woman’s body. i have at times found it difficult to wrap my head around this kind of apparent sexism.

it is of course impossible to separate myself from contemporary views about homosexuality and sexism; those sorts of words and concepts simply did not exist in the quattrocento. it was taken for granted that the male was the superior gender, and a man loving another man or boy in a platonic or neoplatonic or even sexual way was as natural as beginning a family at thirty is for us today. all of that i can accept. but it is so difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that you could be so enamored with the ideal of one gender that you would be completely blind to the other.

the only way i can come close to understanding it is to think about how i see women. i could spend a lifetime photographing and drawing and painting women and writing songs for women. come to think of it, i am well on my way. and in the same way that michelangelo’s men represented human potential and creative power and the divine and all of these other things, the female form often functions that way in my art and in a lot of art. i think most artists have a bit of a gender bias that shows up in the work. but take someone like DaVinci, who was working in this area around the same time as Michelangelo, and must have met him a few times. if moses or the david sums up michelangelo, the mona lisa must sum up davinci. they say that DaVinci was “homosexual” too, but i think that word must fall very short of summing up the way Davinci actually saw men and women and sexuality. i do not know much about the Mona Lisa, but then that is what is so appealing anyway–it is full of the mystery and atmosphere and sensuality that DaVinci could so easily cast onto his subjects.

Dante the writer, who was well known to both Michelangelo and DaVinci at the time, once wrote that in order to make a good portrait, the artist must BECOME the subject. i think that is true. it might be an obvious thought but in any artists very best work you find their own qualities reflected in their subjects be it portraits or landscapes or abstract works or even still life’s or songs. i may never understand or represent “terribilia” the way Michelangelo did but i think i understand his essential humanism; i can see god in people, and i see creative power as divine.

after nearly a month, i have only three more days here in florence. i will miss this city. before i leave i am hoping to go the tombs of Michelangelo and Galileo and i may even bring them drawings or flowers. i hope to watch one more sunset on the arno river while experiencing one more flavor of gelato.

but i did not understand venice at first. i have always loved water but never enjoyed crowds. the banks of the city are extremely crowded with tourists. i did the obligatory gondola ride with friends and it was nice and relaxing although way too short for 80 euros. we looked at souvenir store after store and got lost in the maze of streets and sidewalks and crowds. a shop another shop and another. finally i ran off by myself and stumbled upon the rialto bridge. standing on the rialto looking out at the boats moving in the grand canal i could finally appreciate the grandeur of the city. the boats rearrange themselves continually like a ballet or an exercise in visual composition coming up from the corners becoming diagonal, horizontal lines and shapes everywhere as the sun glimmers on the green water like an impressionist painting reborn and reborn with each moment. venice is a breathing work of art. after the rialto i ducked into a cool quiet alley and the thought of leaving so soon after i had arrived made me want to cry.

the city is a maze. two turns and you are lost. the streets are narrow and in some places it would be inaccurate to call them streets or sidewalks even. they are more like tunnels between buildings and you have to suck in or move your bag to let people pass the way you might on an airplane. in areas dense with shops there are tourists on every corner staring into very tiny maps. there are little photographs waiting to be made everywhere. i saw two crabs scurrying up an algae covered stone wall. the light from the sun plays in blue green streaks on the undersides of bridges. venice is truly magical, mystical even, but functional.

until a few days ago i had always kind of dismissed the venice as a novelty or curiosity because of its extreme uniqueness as a town on water. however, i know now that it was an extremely powerful city in its prime. the fact that it was on the sea and had canals for streets could be seen as an inconvenience now, but at the time the oddity must have provided its citizens with an unparalleled knowledge of boating and water navigation. they literally lived on the water and the city is strategically positioned in a natural mediterranean harbor. this enabled them to travel and to accept ships and seafarers and trade in a way that no other city could do in the quattrocento. spices, jewels, and things came through venice from the east, including the plague. the plague is said to have come into europe through venice on rats. it was especially devastating there.

although venice has traded its past imperial power for tourism, the symbols of its greatness remain and there seems to be plenty of money that still flows through there like the water. tourism keeps some of the ancient pastimes profitable including masquerade mask making and murano glass blowing. renaissance music still floats in the air and red flags with winged lions still fly. in venice, as with many other areas of italian cities, the clothes and florescent yellow nikon camera straps of tourists are the only indicators that it is 2010 and not 1500.

* * *

i am on a study abroad trip with other american art students and some italian culture/language students. my favorite people here are the people who like me are enamored with Italy and do not resist otherness and newness but go deeply into each moment. i have always been a pretty independent traveler, but when i am not exploring on my own, my usual companions and photography subjects are my roommates three incredibly talented artists and adventurers shohei, blake, and nathan, and two girls from tennessee hannah and alyssa, the classiest most well-mannered people on the trip. i have nominated myself the unofficial photographer for everyone and people have begun asking me to take pictures of them. sometimes including a person in these touristy locations is the only way to make the shots feel human, and instead of snapping a bunch of pictures of myself, it is nice to have so many kind beautiful people around who have become accustomed to my camera in their faces. it is also convenient that the girls on this trip outnumber the guys about five to one, since girls smell better and photograph so much better against the beautiful scenes of italy. in my whole life though since i was a kid with a mom and three sisters, the women have outnumbered me. i see women the way michelangelo saw men.

being with the guys reminds me a great deal of touring with JFK during the swim album era. there is a particular kind of free-spirited openness and rambunctiousness that comes with the early twenties. a lot of the time i just laugh with them and at them. our room often smells like sweat, crap, and tuna fish due to the frequency of all of those things happening. there is no fridge or microwave in the room, so we eat dry goods for one or two meals a day to save money. for a long time i ate only nutella sandwiches and apples and bananas. shohei has since discovered canned tuna and passed along this important knowledge. i added lettuce and tomatos. we are now all on the tuna sandich boat, and nathan has also recently joined the tomato and mayonaise boat. to avoid literally sweating tuna juice the way shohei does when he returns from his morning run, i alternate days between tuna and nutella. today i had a triple decker nutella sandwich, which admittedly was not very satisfying but i am no longer hungry. i have also discovered these incredible strawberry cracker biscuit things at the market. i am considering taking some home with me.

my roommates are conveniently my favorite artists on the trip. so we talk about art and draw and show each other our drawings and images of our work from back home. shohei’s art is very graphic and bold and precise. nathan has been working on his rennaisance cross-hatching with great success. blake’s figures are somewhere between. the four of us have a lot of common interests including mysticism and physics and art of course and we are always sharing our finds throughout the city.

the guys, although intelligent and introspective and sensitive the way artists are supposed to be, can also be hilariously vulgar and deviant, the way guys in their early twenties are supposed to be. we have a bidet in our bathroom, which is an endless source of amusement and conversation. you fill in the blanks. alyssa and hannah are also in both of my classes, and are also in relationships so they are a nice balance at the other end of the spectrum. having a boyfriend or girlfriend at home seems to translate into a little more sleeping and less drinking at night. it may also have something to do with their christianity and the sweetness and humility of people and life in tennessee or it could be that all these people are unique creatures with unique characteristics that i cannot and should not stereotype although i keep trying. i am lucky to have made good friends here who seem to be appreciating this experience as much as i am.

i am running out of deodorant. if i didn’t know better i would assume that deodorant did not exist in Italy. in the morning, the narrow crowded streets of florence are full of the scent of perfume and cologne and flowers. the people smell amazing and wealthy and look amazing and wealthy. by noon, all of these same people smell like armpits. maybe i am being ethnocentric, but deodorant really seems like a product that would sell itself: for three euros, you can not smell like a armpit by noon!