Pubdate: Wed, 16 Mar 2011
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Column: Higher Ground
Copyright: 2011 Metro Times, Inc
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: John Sinclair
Cited: Hash Bash http://www.hashbash.com/
Cited: Monroe Street Fair http://www.monroestreetfair.com/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Hash+Bash

LIFE ON THE ROAD

A Bit of Thievery Leaves Our Correspondent Free and Easy

Happy Mardi Gras, everybody! I've just successfully completed my 30th 
consecutive Carnival Time in New Orleans and am now getting ready to 
head North by way of Oxford and Holly Springs, Miss., and Little 
Rock, Ark., to Chicago and then to Detroit by the end of the month to 
make the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor on April 2 and the Seventh Annual 
4/20 Party in the D on April 20.

I'm sorry I missed the last installment of this column but my bag 
with my laptop and all accessories was stolen at an outdoor cafe on 
the Rambla in Barcelona, my last stop before coming to New Orleans. 
Otherwise I had a terrific time in Spain, introducing the Spanish 
translation of my book Sun Ra Interviews & Essays, published by 
Libertos Editorial, and performing shows in Madrid and Barcelona with 
Lydia Lunch and her band, Big Sexy Noise under the aegis of RUTA 66 
music magazine.

Before I left Amsterdam for Barcelona, I went to see a Dutch doctor 
about a medical marijuana prescription, showed him my Michigan 
Patient Card and secured a script for 10 grams of medicinal cannabis. 
My friend Ben Dronkers had told me that a Dutch prescription would be 
honored throughout the EU, so I felt pretty secure until my 
prescribed stash was seized by my thief along with the other contents 
of my shoulder bag.

Quite happily in the breach, however, my interview with CANAMO 
magazine had been greased by the gift of a substantial bag of the 
local sacrament, and I was able to continue treating my physical and 
mental aches and pains for the entire week of my stay in Spain, where 
personal use of recreational drugs is no longer treated as a criminal 
matter in any case.

The city of New Orleans, too, has finally decriminalized personal use 
of marijuana, although Louisiana has yet to confront the question of 
medicinal applications. The medicine is fine here now, though I can 
remember when I moved from Detroit to New Orleans 20 years ago that 
the weed was not so great nor readily available. Today, nearly every 
one of my friends with whom I've shared medication during the 
Carnival season has presented first-rate smoke at every turn, and I'd 
like to offer particular thanks to my old-time podjo Swami Bill for 
helping keep things copasetic during my stay.

Now Mardi Gras is over, and I'm writing on a borrowed laptop courtesy 
of my compatriot in Chicago, brother Fritz Kielsmeier from 
StandingOvation.com, who said when I got to New Orleans and moaned 
over the phone about my stolen computer, "I'll just ship you mine - 
I'm not using it right now," and he did. Thanks a million, Fritz, and 
I'll drop it off when I come to see you in Chicago.

Losing my computer is a serious matter for me. My life as an 
itinerant bard in the 21st century was - and will soon be again - 
centered in my MacBook and Verbatim external hard-drive that held 
about 450 gigabytes of recorded music and self-created Internet radio 
programs as well as all my poetry, writing and recording files, which 
is to say I can now carry my entire life's work around the world with 
me in digital form in a bag over my shoulder.

Very happily I'd gotten high enough in my pad above the Hash Museum 
the night before I left Amsterdam that I'd heard a voice in my head 
very clearly instruct me to back up all my files on my matching 
Verbatim 640-GB external hard drive and I diligently copied 
everything over, finishing up the grueling task as soon as I sat down 
at the home of my hosts Sergio and Sarai in Spain.

The next afternoon, they took me down to the Rambla to make a radio 
show on location outside the Cafe Joan for RadioFreeAmsterdam.com. I 
sat my bag down in the chair next to me and opened up my newspaper to 
relax for a few minutes while waiting for coffee and starting to work 
on the radio show. Five minutes later I reached for my shoulder bag 
to take out the laptop and the bag was already gone.

Thus I've existed in a state of suspended mental animation ever 
since, working in an alien operating system on a borrowed machine 
without access to my files while trying to muster enough resources to 
replace my trusty Macintosh before I flip my wig completely. What I 
need to make this happen represents about one month's budget for 
food, medicine and travel incidentals in my stripped-down existence 
on the road, and like they say here in New Orleans, that ain't nothing nice.

But I've recovered from much worse setbacks on my long and rocky road 
through life and if I can fake my way through this column with none 
of my customarily voluminous files to draw upon, everything should be 
better by the time I have to write the next one at the end of the 
month. I'll be back in Detroit by then, where I'll have a chance to 
marshal my considerable vernacular resources and acquire a new weapon 
and assume my regular workload in relative peace. I've posted at 
least one new radio program, and often three or four, every week for 
the past seven years, but now I'm "off the air" in both Amsterdam and 
Detroit (DetroitLife313.com), and I'll remain a little edgy until I 
get back on track. I don't need that much to get by and do my work, 
but I sure need it right now!

My intention for the column I missed writing last time and this one 
as well was to try to delineate the concept of an America without its 
endless War on Drugs and an imaginary Michigan that might have 
refused to re-criminalize weed after the state's marijuana laws were 
declared unconstitutional in March 1972. And, with a little bit of 
luck, that's what you'll get next time from me.

In closing this epistle from the Crescent City, I'd like to offer 
thanks and gratitude to my hosts, Dr. Prof. Barry Kaiser and Ms. Mary 
Moses; my daughter Celia, who's been living here since 1987 and 
taking care of me every time I'm in town; my beloved Soul Lucille, 
who came all the way from Florence, Italy, to share the Mardi Gras 
with me; my guitarist and co-conspirator from Paris, M. Gilles 
Riberolles, who's shooting a little film with me here; my man Frenchy 
the action painter and King of Oak Street who made the cover for my 
new album, LET'S GO GET 'EM, recorded in Amsterdam with the 
International Blues Scholars; and Detroit's own Mike Boulan, who 
rushed the CD into release on his new Mo-Sound label in time for its 
debut at the Louisiana Music Factory March 12.

My next report will come from Oxford, Miss., the Literary Center of 
the South and the site of the nation's only government-funded 
marijuana growing operation off the campus of Ole Miss. Then I'll be 
in Michigan and looking for you at the Hash Bash, the Monroe Street 
Fair and the traditional after-game party with the Macpodz at the 
Blind Pig on the first Saturday in April. In the immortal words of 
Mezz Mezzrow, Let's light up and be somebody!  
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake