Unlike Pat, I haven’t found it easy to blog from the ship. Oddly enough, I’m on his original Cruise Ship X, with some of the same band members. It is indeed a small musical community. I’ve been on the ship for nearly a month, the time frame after which I’ve been told one can begin to form opinions on the cruise ship experience.
My first cruise was filled with orientation and training – not anything musical, mind you, but more of the environmental/safety sort. It’s important information, to be sure – essential for one’s survival aboard the vessel – but the way it is carried out is often redundant. Often, neither the trainers nor many of the students speak English as a first language, so there is the element of repetition to make sure things are clear, as well as the attempt to decipher various different accents and capabilities in the English language. This is the reason training sessions are scheduled for, and always take, three to four hours.
I lost track of time quite quickly, as I was warned. I now tell days by which port we’re in, not by dates. I did remember Mother’s Day.
I have been fortunate enough to visit each port at least once, and I am slowly forming a tan (and not through crustacean-esque burns as some of my Canadian colleagues are acquiring).
When we hit Calica last time, a few of us went out to the Mayan ruins of Tulum. We didn’t do a tour, we just walked around admiring the view and the iguanas that seamlessly blended into the stone towers surrounding us. There is a natural beach below the ruins, which we spent most of our time on. A tour guide came by and yelled out that the ruins closed in 15 minutes. We didn’t see everything, but most of it. We also stumbled across a little roadside restaurant at happy hour – 2 for 1 Cuba Libres, and a large plate of fajitas for 40-odd pesos.
I am enjoying the fresh air and being on the water. Luckily we haven’t hit seriously rough seas yet, though a couple of days ago the boat was rocking hard enough for cancellation of shows to be a possibility. The weather centres are predicting hurricane season to start early this year (June 1st at the absolute latest) so the adventure and intrigue may increase in short order.That said, the MD and I work quite well together and most of the band is really quite solid. There are some notable exceptions, and to that end all I will say is that I will never again take for granted that other musicians will have similar frames of reference to mine. I’m trying to stay positive in the light of some of these more disheartening musical events, though it is draining. I suppose it would be more taxing to get caught in the negativity. I’ve also got pretty much carte blanche to arrange whatever tunes I want for the band, and the dancers, techs and band alike are pumped for the fact that this ship has a full eight-piece band for the first time in about a year (if not more). They were a quintet before I signed on, and within two cruises after my joining we were complete.
I’m trying to be diligent about composition, and I do have the goal of writing a chamber piece for some sort of double reed orchestration (most likely oboe, bassoon and piano), as well as setting groundwork for more big band music, but it’s been slow going. I have a couple of melodic fragments that might have potential. I just need to get down to business. My roommate is the DJ at the disco, a vocalist and former music industry insider from Chicago who came up in the 50s and 60s, and worked with some big soul stars in the 1980s. He’s got a lot of stories and has been really inspiring, working away on GarageBand in his free time. I’ve been swapping music with both him and my bandmates, and it’s been quite the blast.
1 comment:
Montréal misses you.
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