Posted By Raya Yarbrough on September 26, 2011
He looked like a buoy floating darkly in his own stale ocean.
Two reflecting lenses under a white cap and bill, bobbing subtly, anchored to a glass at the elbow of the bar.
I never saw The Captain’s eyes because he never took off his aviator glasses.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on August 22, 2011
Le Deux Café was the new inside of the inside when I was 19.
When you turned off of Hollywood Blvd onto the side street, the place looked like a cement wall with a sheet metal garage door. Rusted.
You had to know where it was. I was with the band. As always.
I would go around the back, where the bougainvillea started to crawl. The bouncer came into view, backed by understated trip-hop loops from an unseen speaker.
The sounds of city and industry steamed off my body, when I crossed into the muted pulse of the “beautiful people.” All who pass through this womb will be luminous, and shall always be. The strung lanterns heaved with the heartbeat of this message, and a wave of whispered subconscious repeated the mantra.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on August 13, 2011
The bow trembled like a moth, pale pink, on a crown of black hair.
Below the trembling moth of a bow, her eyes were still for 20 seconds at a time, then they would shift incrementally.
Her mouth was stationary, paused, open, in interrogative paralysis. The questions were coming to her 8 year old mind at light speed, and thus, as physics dictates, her mouth could never catch up.
I suppose I should apologize to my friend Patty for ever telling her about my Saturday night gig at a bar on Hollywood Blvd., but I had told all of my friends in 3rd grade.
I just never expected anyone to come.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on July 28, 2011
Our hotel wall in Madrid is wallpapered on the far right side with a giant photograph of the New York skyline, overlaid with the lyrics to “New York, New York.” This is odd for traveling Americans.
In 7 hours we’ll be in NY, with a 7 hour layover ’till we get on our plane to LA. The wallpaper is a reminder that this room marks the end of our Spanish odyssey.
Last night, with the wind of the breath of the new at my back, I entered my first gothic catheral. I, not a Catholic, did not expect to be overtaken, but the Holy Mother…or The Dove…or the soul of an infinity of vespers came to me…and pulled me into a knowingness.
It is alive, you see. This is what they do not tell you.
The arches, white – not like marble, not like, pearl, not like chalk , but for all the world like bones – reach their zenith out of their own volition. They feed off our inspiration, and circulate the light. The architecture is the bones, and we…we…are the holy spirit.
I do not mean this to read as blasphemy, or presumptuous,
this is what came through to me, startling my corneas through the stained glass of Almudena Cathedral.
I take this will me.Gracias España.
And last night, in the Lobby of Hotel Mercure, Madrid, we said goodbye to David (in what I’m sure was his very coolest Superman T-Shirt), Sergio, Óscar, David (de Barcelona),Fernando y Agustin .
No – not goodbye, “Hasta Luego” (see you later), because these 10 days, through this sleepless journey, we have found a family overseas.
Music lovers. Film lovers. Life lovers. Nerds.
We will not allow us to become strangers to each other again. El proximo año.
Rock on, guys.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on July 27, 2011
So many times, great inspirational high points are followed by stretches of the comically mundane. As long as they’re somewhat comic, or interesting, it’s bearable.
But last night, I was truly moved by a force of nature.
A force I live with every day, one that can seem quite mundane out of familiarity, but one that sheds its shell, its Clark Kent anonymity, and reveals itself: a glorious cataclysm.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on July 25, 2011
7/23
I’ve been searching for higher ground. I’ve been too heavy for the wind to lift me, and now I want nothing more than to be light. This week in Spain, this forced vacation away from my own music, my schedule, my band, my city – I’ve had to “hang out” with myself. Something I don’t really do. But I found out, I’m an ok kid.
I’m an insomniac, but only for short stints. I can, in fact, speak decent Spanish sometimes. I make friends with dirty little stray Spanish cats, just like pampered LA cats. Sometimes, my heart will not slow down unless I talk to it at night. I love good olive oil. I am not a drinker, though I sometimes try – folly. I love to sing more than anything.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on July 25, 2011
7/20
I’m watching a 3 year old named Neave, (composer, Chris Lennertz’s adorable daughter), splash in the hotel pool in a pink tu-tu bathing suit. Her mom and grandmother are with her, and it’s just the sweetest thing. I would get in there with them and splash around, but this hair takes a day to dry.
We’re about to go to Bear’s first performance in Ubeda, a small city in the part of Southern Spain called Andalucía.
This city is unbelievable. Literally. I feel like I’m on a studio backlot, or Disneyland.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on July 23, 2011
In the blanched heart of 4am, if you had seen me, I was tank-topped and illuminated in blue. Sleep was a tease and a bitch, so I sat down at the hotel room desk, in my Batman shorts, and joined the act of collective consciousness that is the Google search.
I screen capped a few shots of the 405 fwy (which appeared on my previous entry) and responded to my mother, who has been concerned for my well-being. Bear had mentioned to her, in passing, that I had slept in through yesterday’s rehearsal, and she was worried that I was sleeping through my entire time in Spain. A mother’s love is as true as it is exponentially protective, so I wrote back to her, assuring her that I was aiming more for Sophia Loren then Rip Van Winkle, and that I had slept through rehearsal because I hadn’t gotten to sleep until 6am the previous night – and if I am to be fabulous – and I am – I must get my rest whenever it comes.
fabulous, no?
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on July 22, 2011
Ink is the transcendent element.
Ink as clefs, rests, dots and dynamic markings. Ink as crosshatched shading under a wild bloodshot eye on the page of a comic book.
The cult of “genre” transcends language and cultural heritage, and brings us here today, under a cottage-cheese-plaster ceiling, between four walls stuffed with chamber musicians.
Posted By Raya Yarbrough on July 20, 2011
I leave a strange road behind me.
Bleary from a sleep-attempt which finally failed at 4:45am, I’m now in the oatmeal lumps of air turbulence between LA and NY.
We left Los Angeles for Spain on Saturday the 16th, the historic beginning of “Carmageddon,” the freeway closure, which has gripped the Los Angelino imagination both in terror and orgiastic, anarchical, anticipation. I was with the latter.
