Next up, a six-hour flight to Paris. One of our faithful is already playing doctor, offering spare Ambien tablets to anyone preferring not to spend the next six hours alone in their own head. Naturally, I decline.

We’re in the air now, and the Air France flight attendants, male and female, are way too good looking. Their English is about as good as mine, and their personal comportment considerably better. The meal is a choice of chicken fricasse or pike perch with bell pepper cream sauce. There were fresh miniature baguettes with brie or butter, Evian water and miniature bottles of Merlot or Chardonnay. It was still airline food, but done about as well as it could be.

We were also outfitted with headsets and blackout eye shades. I’m going to try them eventually, but I’m a tough sleeper, and I doubt it will work. I require darkness, silence, and stillness, but the fusillage carries a deep, subsonic rumble and there is some tail wind turbulence that is making it hard to write, let alone sleep.

Most of the plane is in some state of suspended animation, but sleep and I have lately had a tenuous dalliance. Scribbling these words high above the mighty Atlantic surrounded by people with baby blue blinders on in varying states of consciousness while hurtling through space at a ground speed of 700 miles per hour has pitched me into a meditation on the value of my own intellectual output.

The fact of the existing technology to pull this off is awe-inspiring; the combined imagination of so many thousands of fine minds leaves me, a pretty bright guy, monumentally stupified. It makes me second-guess the application of half a lifetime of my own unique imagination. I’ve never made metal fly, though in one way of thinking, playing a good trumpet solo does precisely that.

*****************

We are leaving Paris now and that's fine with me. The rudeness to efficiency quotient equals a perfect ten, that is rudeness = 10, efficiency = 1. Compare to JFK and I love my country. After an hour and a half of being snapped at by security personnel and counter hel;p, being shoved in line, and issued disdainful body language, I am eager to be done with the most beautiful city in the world. I'm sure a more detailed tour of Paris's art and culture would leave me gushing, but as far as getting in and out quickly with only a cursory look, Paris blows.

So it's off to Amman, Jordan, another fascinating city. My primary motivation in embarking on this trip is to see parts of the world I never have or probably ever would, as well as firsthand US operations in Baghdad, rather than count on filtered versions of the truth presented by the US media from left and right biased news agencies.

I am certain I'll mine numerous sources for stories, and I've always believed that the best way to work on your art is to work on your life. If you know more, if you've experienced more, then you have a deeper reservoir of source material to interpret through your chosen medium of expression.

*******

I write now from the lobby of the Hotel Royale in Amman, Jordan, a gorgeous hotel in a beautiful city. Stone mansions line the streets, errily dark now, perhaps owned by mega-rich who only occupy them a few weeks out of the year, or perhaps by devout Muslims, early risers for the first call to prayer. We were shuttled to the Royale from the hospital by a superb tour company called Amana Tours, reccommended as your conduit to a fast-moving world most Americans don't understand.

The nest morning we were Baghdad bound, and Amana led the way back to the Amman Airport. In the light of day, Amman is dry and arid, very flat, and populated with low brush, short and squat palm trees, and hearty pines, though short and thin, with fierce bunches of long needles. There are also spruce trees, likewise stunted but vigorous. There are no tall trees, and as a result of course, there are no wooden houses.

We passed through a checkpoint along the way, manned by a phalanx of uniformed guards, a gauntlet whose exclamation point was a Jeep equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun turrent, in case any passing motorist passing through had any objection to the scrutiny.

After they dropped us off at the airport, we were led through a screening process by airport personnel who handled us as a group. I struck up a conversation with a fellow who eventually asked me where we were headed. When I answered, "Baghdad," he said two words: "Very dangerous."

It was becoming clear that the closer we got to the epicenter of the unrest, the more intense the security screening. Shoes, belts and coats came off, and my fold-up music stand became a topic of uneasy conversation among the baggage screeners. They eventually let me through after I set it up and played air guitar in front of it. On the plane, a smily, rotund Jordanian that sat next to me pointed out the lands below. As we flew over a succession of gathered points of light, he identified first Iraq, then Palestine.

Safely and from ten thousand feet above, I became moved and saddened for mankind as we swept across this most embattled and unstable part of the world. We flew over all of the oppression, over all of the persecution, the war, the death, the racism, the religious intolerance, and left it behind us, as we did clouds of burned jet fuel forgotten and disregarded, to dissipate as it would, as it may. Next stop, Baghdad. (I am behind, but I'll try to catch up to the present by end of day tomorrow).

***************

Ahhh, Paris International Airport. I'm so happy to hear you you've made it to your destination finally. Play that funky music white boy!

be well my friend! show them folks how we play it in the states!

bb

May your journey be safe - and may Groove Alliance be dangerous! In honor of the late James Brown may I request a funky new version of "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag-hdad" ! Take Care

What an amazing adventure, Chris. Godspeed
Ella E (TracyNina)

Hey... What do you guys open with? "Magic Carpet Ride"?

Hey... What do you guys open with? "Magic Carpet Ride"?

oops! sorry that posted twice!

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