Naw!

A few blocks from the M-I-SS-I-SS-I-PP-I River, somewhere in the upper 9th Ward, I find myself dodging thick, warm raindrops and dipping into BJ’s Lounge, on the corner of nuthin and nuthin. Inside on this stormy New Orleans night, it is absolutely packed with happy locals, standing in clumps, chatting, all along the bar and then just crammed face and ears forward in the long narrow rectangle towards the little stage where the band jams. I grasp a cold Abita beer and fall in at the back of the crowd.

When the seaweed of humanity sways just right, I can see straight across the top to a glimpse of the woman singing on the right. She is young but looks old worldly, and appears to be strumming a stand-up bass. The chatter from the bar behind me is louder than the music ahead of me, so I duck around a banister, as if heading to the bathroom and then swing around a trashcan and plunge a few feet further into the crowd. Now I see the musician in the center: laid back, calmly playing a beautiful little red accordion. I can hear the music now, the chatter dying down behind me. Three women make a line backwards towards the bar and I step into the new pocket of space.

I’m halfway to the stage. I now see the third member of the trio. He’s got one of those little ponytails like in Star Wars and he’s playing the hell out of the fiddle, occasionally swinging a slightly hungry gaze around the crowd. Oh, and the singer on the right is playing the cello, not the stand-up bass.

Fiddle, cello, accordion, the place is thumping! We’re stomping. And they all can sing, first one, then the other, then the other other. We’re bouncing up and down. I move forward still. I’m surrounded by happy music.

That’s Leyla McAlla on the viola, fresh of a tour with Carolina and the Chocolate Drops, but doing her own thing. Louis Michot is holding the fiddle like it grows out of his bicep. He’s led the Lost Bayou Ramblers for decades. Corey Ledet, on accordion, has his own zydeco band and is a champion of and just recorded an album singing in Lousiana Creole, an endangered language. The band also sings in Louisiana French and even that strange tongue, English.

A large man works his way up from the back of the crowd, nervously brandishing a harmonica. He mumbles, “Trust me, I’m gonna rip, trust me…” He reaches the stage and Louis, the Bayou Rambler, looks at him warily.

He waves his harmonica at Louis and says, “Let me get up there. I swear to god, I’ll rip it!” Louis looks at Leyla. Leyla looks at Corey. Louis shakes his head, makes an awkward gesture with his bow hand to indicate we’ve already got something going here. Large harmonica man persists. “I swear I’ll rip it! Let me get up there!”

Louis mouths “Play!” but indicates the man should stay below the stage. The band plays quietly while Harmonica Harry gives it his best shot. He holds that harmonica to his lips and does everything he can with it. His face turns red. He is not convincing. The crowd listens for a moment and then a man next to me yells,

“Naw!”

The crowd laughs, the band shakes their heads, and Harmonica Harry takes it well. “At least I tried,” he says, heading back upstream through the crowd towards the bar.

The In-Flight Movie Life

Because I deleted my Mark Suckerberg account a while back, I just realized I should use this blog as a place for sharing any other writing I put out there. So, forgive me if you saw this already, but just had a little radio piece!

https://www.kqed.org/perspectives/201601143755/evan-nichols-the-in-flight-movie-life

The Basket Swingers

The basket swingers are out in Vancouver this morning. There’s a farmer’s market at Trout Lake, which is really just a park with a pond, and my stagger towards coffee is interrupted by their gleeful basket swinging as they stream into the park. I decide to follow them, like an under-caffeinated moth to the flame. Positive thoughts instantly begin to bubble up from my morning grumble, like, hey, this park is nice! But the basket swingers don’t care. They hold hands and enter the park at every angle, having parked in their secret spots, or simply strolled from their home. They know where they’re going and they know why. Heck, it’s a Saturday and these are their lives!

Grumble grumble, coffee soon. I stumble forward. Perhaps the farmer’s market will have a nice, dark, farm to stall, bean to cup, cup. I’ll tilt the cup back in the morning light, trees above, and suddenly a basket will appear in my hand! I’ll swing it, hold hands with someone too. Canadian birds will alight on my shoulder and say, “Good morning, eh?”

The farmer’s market comes into view. A long line snakes backwards from it into the woods. The basket swingers are lined up for 100 yards in the trees. A line for a farmer’s market?? These Canadians are taking this wholesomeness thing too far. I approach. Wait, while there’s a huge line, others simply walk right into the market. Is this an optional line? Are half the people (perhaps Americans) choosing to ignore the line? Grumble grumble beans. At the front of the line I find a sandwich board for Stoney Paradise Tomatoes. They are lined up for tomatoes. A woman in front asks, “Are they really worth it?”

“Oh, yeah,” says a basket swinger. “There’s no comparison.” His wife leans over. “We got here at 8!”

Did I taste the world’s best tomato? Sadly, I did not. I shook my head in disgust, grumble grumble, freakin’ Canadians, and went and got coffee.

Resuming

The problem with a blog, aside from being a blog, is that if you pause writing in it for, say, eight months, it becomes increasingly difficult to resume. You think, I need something really important or deep or clever or funny, and that’s always going to be a brick wall. So, I’m going to say right here that if you want to get started or restarted writing for others, give yourself permission to write something quick and small and meaningless, as long as that’s not your “thing” from here to eternity. Aim to improve, of course, but let yourself get loose like a rubber chicken. I’m pretty sure nobody ever hit a home run while thinking, OK, here I go, this is going to be really great, this needs to be great…tighten up on the grip, flex those biceps, dig in your heels, I think I’ll aim for left center…Instead, they put in the work, stepped to the plate, turned into a rubber chicken, and knocked the bejeezus out of the ball.

Our Dutch Correspondent

At the Academya Lingua in Bologna, we are a representative sample, all buzzing in at door 14, ascending the grand staircase, and entering the front room to a hail of buongiornos!! My classroom is the second on the right and, try as I might, I can’t seem to arrive late, or even on time. It seems a childhood of late arrivals has hard-wired me to enter an empty room, settle into my chair, and be there to greet even our young teacher, Arianna, who perches on the table like a cat (and looks a bit like a young Mary Louise Parker circa Fried Green Tomatoes) and then my five classmates. First, the elders, or “wise ones” as we call them/me: i saggi. Margarita is from Australia and takes copious notes. She is the first to volunteer if no one steps forth and shares with me her cheat sheet on how to pronounce the Italian alphabet. Matteo is Colombian and we bond at the first coffee break when I say something to him in Spagnolo and he answers but adds, “Preferisco practicare il mio Italiano” (as do I!). He is an IB teacher and has lived all over the world.

Now, the youth. Mariella is English and Irish and at first grapples for words, but then begins pulling out some surprisingly complicated ones. I later discover she has a nonna in Italia. We tease her for apologizing too much, to which she says, “Mi dispiace.” Maria is German and when she laughs her body starts high up but then goes down an inch with each reverberation, back and forth, a bit like Kermit the Frog. I find it difficult to understand her German accented Italian but we bond on the last day over a game of Tabù (she calls out, “è molto alto…” and I shout out, “montagna!” our fastest guess). Jules is French but also a good bit German, from Strasburg, each parent raising him with their language. He says he is formed from both and hopes one day to have kids and raise them the same way. I suppose that means he must marry a German (Maria? Interested?). On the day we study combined pronouns, it almost breaks him, though I must admit the fact that a lifelong bilingual European has to work as hard as I do to learn Italian is extremely comforting.

Last but not least, we have Nina from the Netherlands. She has been an aupair in Bologna for months and months and arrives a bit on the run, eating yogurt and fruit and such in class. At the break, she offers tea to all, and her scarf game is absolutely on point, but the most important thing about Nina is that she asks questions. Wait, are they actually questions? Let me think…Perhaps it is more accurate to say she demands answers, seeks clarity, widely shares her confusion, contrary to most adults (which is the hardest part about teaching adults). Without fail, every class, there comes a moment when the teacher rattles off some new rule or verb tense, writes up a sentence on the whiteboard, and Nina stares hard at it and says, “I don’t understand a single word of that!” or “Can you explain what that means?”

I have come to think of the class as a show, like perhaps Trevor Noah’s show (alas). Trevor would do his bit and then say, “And now a word from our Dutch correspondent.” Then Nina, wrapped in a scarf and clutching a cup of tea, would say, “I didn’t understand a single word of what you just said!” And now back to you, Trevor!

The thing is, our Dutch Correspondent plays a vital role in all of our language learning process. She does not mean anything by it other than to seek comprehension. Many is the time the teacher has rattled off a new lesson which I mostly get or perhaps don’t really understand at all, or I do understand it for a fleeting moment, but it’s just floating there in the glimmering light and will soon be snuffed out by the march of time and the decline of the facilities. When Nina asks her hard-faced (picture Monty Python animation, where a huge, colorful scarf is wrapped around like castle walls, and slowly a head with a frown emerges up through it), the teachers are forced to explain a different way, or to call on us to explain what we understood of it, and to collectively piece together comprehension. Every single time, I benefit.

More importantly, we can’t all luck out with our own external Dutch Correspondent, huffing it just in time to the classroom, popping open the plastic lid for a quick breakfast before focusing a withering glare at the trapassato prossimo verb tense. “Whachu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” So, we have all got to remember to activate our inner Dutch Correspondent when we are learning a language (or anything else, for that matter). Give that lesson a hard stare. Interrogate it. Call out the gloopy gray patches of confusion. Demand clarity! After all, it’s your education. Either you fight for comprehension, flap your wings and soar! Or you slide back down into the primordial ooze.

I knew this already but I didn’t necessarily know it, know it, until I came to this Academya Lingua. And, for that…

I want to thank the Academy.

Nel mondo del caffè

Our Milano hotel had seemed semplice, simple, but you come down in the morning, wrap around the lobby down a new hallway, and suddenly it opens into a large, colorful, art-filled dining extravaganza, with gorgeous pastries, gleaming coffee machines, and a barrista standing by. Prego? Mamma mia! There are molti blogs and videos and guidebook pages about coffee in Italy, so I’ll try to keep this breve, brief. If you waver, if you stammer, if you hesitate, or maybe if you are just in a hotel, un posto turistico, and you say, “Un caffè?” with that rising question intonation, or even if you say it straight, “Un cafe,” no question mark, they can hear the missing f, the missing bounce on the second f, not to mention the missing accent mark’s emphasis. Or perhaps it’s just the look in your eyes, or the look of your clothes.

Whatever.

They’re going to wonder, does this tourist really want, “un caffè” un espresso italiano upside the head, or do they want “a coffee.” Generally, then, they’ll ask, “Americano o normale…espresso?” What a great comparison! Normale vs. Americano. Says a lot, doesn’t it? Would you like that with good health care, excellent public transit, and a deep respect for the arts, or do you just want a cup of Joe, an assault rifle, and a gas-guzzling Ford Ozone truck?

Ah, the quest to be normale! Jump ahead two weeks. Here I sit, having ordered about 28 espressi in the last 14 days, più o meno. (Some of those were cappuccini, mind you, and the problem with ordering a cappuccino, let me add, is that you’ve got two double consonants, so you’ve got to bounce on the p and on the c. Verbal gymnastics. And you’re only supposed to order them in the morning because, well, foam in the afternoon is an outrage (apparently), so this is often my first attempt at language of the day! So picture me at the front of the line saying, “Un cap-Pu [raising my head a little]-chCH [stutter, how the hell do you bounce on a ch sound?]-no!” The whole place freezes. What ails this lad? Is he having a seizure?!

I say, here I sit, and what I’ve learned in my brief tempo here, is just to enter the bar (That’s where you have your colazione, breakfast, but you knew that aready, vero? What have you been up to? Hanging out a lot of bars…), I say you enter the bar, jab them with a quick, deep voiced, “Buongiorno” (not too cheerful, somber but somehow friendly), and then go straight to the “Un caffè e un brioche [point point] per favore.” Then look away quickly so they can’t see the doubt in your eyes. And probably the per favore is out of line too, like when I used to gleefully tell my host family in Nicaragua, “Buenas noches!” and they’d all stop, like, what ails this muchacho? Just go the F to bed, hombre, and nobody gets hurt.

“Un caffè e un brioche.” Worst case, they give me that look and I still need to blurt, “Normale.” Ah, normale! Their face relaxes, they nod, and all is well in…nel mondo del caffè.

La famosa città della California

Arrived at the hotel in Milano, we approach the man behind the desk and two years of Italian vanishes. I sort of point at Maya and myself and make a gurgling noise. How do you say room? Beds? Reservazione seems a safe bet but a lot of syllables. All I can think to say is “Non parlo tedesco,” but that’s not going to work out. Ah hah! I’ve got it!

“Ciao!”

He gives me a look. Later I realize I should have gone with option 2, “Buona sera!” Dang it.

We get our room, drop off stuff, and head out to grab a bite before everything closes. We try a ristorante. Chiuso. Closed. We try an osteria. Chiuso. A trattoria? (I still don’t know the difference, perhaps my gentle readers do?) Chiuso. What we are looking for is something aperto, not to be confused with the famous aperitivo, the pre-dinner drink and perhaps snack with friends.

Finally, a door opens when we tug on it. A friendly waiter walks up. “Sì, prego?”

“Un tavolo?” I say hopefully.

He shakes his head. “Chiuso.”

Mamma mia. First night in Italy and we shall die of hunger, or as they call it, “fame.” I mean, on paper it looks like a good thing. “Would you like some fame?” “CERTO!” Sure thing! “Could I have some glory as well?” “No. Chiuso!”

I tell the waiter in broken Italian, “Niente aperto.” Nothing open. Me hungry.

He looks at us with tears in his eyes and says, “Pizza?”

We nod enthusiastically. He gestures to a table. “Prego.”

We’re in! We order two “personal” (way too big) pizzas and gobble them down. When we go up to the cashier to pay, the man asks in English, “Where are you from?”

“California!”

“California?” His eyes light up. “MODESTO?!” He then rattles off the other “major” cities and some cultural references I miss.

I’m too shocked by Modesto as the opener. Who knew it was la famosa città della California!

Milano

On the plane to Milano, the flight attendants speak Italian. The man behind me is German. When they take his drink order, he asks a question in German. The flight attendant answers, “Non capisco tedesco.” I understand all three words and, I don’t want to brag or anything, but this is a complete sentence. You’ve got your implied subject, io, or “I.” You’ve got your verb, capisco…well, heck, even you non-Italian speakers out there have heard Roberto De Niro say “capisce?”, so “understand.” And then tedesco, “German.” She adds in English, “Too complicated.”

I arrive in Italia. What’s the first thing you do in a new country? Connect to the wifi of course. “Beautiful country. Excellent wifi.”(The sad thing is this is probably an authentic comment on Tripadvisor somewhere. I remember when I started seeing complaints popping up online about campsites with poor data connectivity. Sigh.) In my defense, I connect so I can find my daughter. She has been in the homeland that dances in her blood (great grandparents from Sicily) for going on three months: Roma, Napoli, Palermo, Catania, Bologna. La ragazza gets around! And now I return from the New World to see what she’s discovered.

I have made an Old School Plan with Maya. Find my gate and meet me where I emerge. If that doesn’t work, meet where the train departs from the terminal for il Centro. If you don’t see me by 9pm, let’s meet at the hotel.

My indoctrinated brain says, “Screw that! Text her.” I go on WhatsApp and say, “Here!” She says, “Yayyy!” We exchange a flurry of messages while I walk. “Wait, which gate?” “Where are you now?” I call her. “I’m headed for the baggage…” it cuts out. She calls back. I hear beeping on the phone just like the beeping of the little car zipping past me. I hear a voice: “Papa.” I spin. Mia figlia!!! We hug!

Sometimes, you know, la vita è bella!

Il primo “Ciao!”

In the Munich airport, I stumble groggily to Gate B25 to wait for my flight to Milano (Imagine, flying to a cookie! “Are you flying to Milano?” “No, I’m off to Snickerdoodle!”). It’s a bit early and a few guys sit around here and there, but otherwise the gate is empty. My old friend the podium is empty too. I sit. Little by little, passengers arrive and fill in the rows. Suddenly I hear it, my first “Ciao!” This is not an episode of Coffee Break Italian. This is not Duolingo. That guy over there just said “Ciao!” and he meant it. Holy crap.

Then a woman says, “Buona sera.” Just like that, “Buona sera.” She’s not singing along with the Big Night soundtrack. She’s just saying good evening to someone. Oh, I’m dying. Morto with linguistic happiness.

I can’t take it. I drag my big backpack over to a post to lean on next to a group of four Italians. They’re just standing there, talking Italian. Just like that. I lean casually and eavesdrop. I understand words here and there but I have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s too fast and I just skipped a night of sleep. Who cares?!

The whole world, il mondo intero, is suddenly an Italian school!

Floofen Ze Munich

It’s the Monday after the busiest travel weekend of the year and you can hear crickets in the airport. Security waves you through in a blink. You wait at Gate G6 for your flight to Munich and the man to the right wears a green fur robe and tall boots like he’s King of the Bohemians. They announce boarding and tell families to line up to the right of the podium. What podium? It’s a desk. Families appear in droves, all speaking German. Floofen ze this, fluffen ze that. They tell Business Select to line up to the left of the podium. Off goes the King of the Bohemians and another line forms behind him. Both lines move slowly as they are being facially scanned with biometric technology. If you blink a big red X appears and they have to scan you again.

You check your boarding pass and you’re Group 4. You peer around the families and see signs on stands, scattered in front of the podium: Groups 1-2, Group 3, Group 4. They are not arranged in a way that makes sense. If you lined up in front of them you would walk straight into the alleged podium. They say Group 1 can now line up right of the podium. Group 1 isn’t sure whether to line up behind the remaining families or form a new line facing the little stand that says Group 1. The first line grows bigger with a smaller faction lining up next to it. Group 2 may now line up. The first line grows, slowly inching forward. A Group 2 splitter tries for the Business Select door and gets the red X. Group 3 forms a small facing the center of the so-called podium as well as adding on a new feeder liner at the back of the mega-line. Group 4 is no better. I choose the feeder line and scan faces for signs of outrage. No one seems to care. They begin randomly waving people over to the now empty Business Select line. In they go with a wave back to the rest of us suckers.

They scan my face. I get the green check. I’m in!

I approach my seat, halfway back, and run into a tired looking mom, shoving baby gear into the overhead compartment. I’m in the next row that shares that compartment but she looks at my large, carry-on backpack and at me with a look that says don’t even try it. I say “Hi!” she says nothing. She is German and it seems there is no more withering gaze than that of a tired German mom with a baby and a small child about to fly 10 hours. I find another compartment for my backpack and slip over to the window. A small blond child, maybe three, peers around the seat at me. The baby toddles down the aisle and looks at me with deep, friendly, blue eyes, then toddles back.

The flight attendant announces floofen ze this, fluffen ze that and the doors close and I realize the flight is half empty and no one is in my row! Ah bliss. I will be able to stretch out. They dim the lights and off we go. I look across the plane and a young woman with glasses is shining her phone light on the screen in front of her to figure out where to plug in the earphones. Her light shines up and down the cabin in vain. I smile and think, how hard can it be? I buckle my seatbelt and consider my options. I’ll just plug in my earphones and check out movie options…

But where the hell do you plug them in?? They are two-pronged and look like they came from the bargain bin at a Radioshack Everything Must Go sale. On the bottom of the screen there’s a little hole, a big hole, and another little hole, but the two little holes are too far apart for this two-pronged jack. I feel around in the dark. I’m Louis Braille tap-dancing to save his life. I’m not going to turn on my…I turn on my phone light and send beams shooting through the darkness. No, no other ports. Not on the armrest. Not on the side of the screen. Two rows up a guy flags down the flight attendant and holds up his two-prong jack helplessly. She says, “On the screen.” He tries something. She says, “No, on the SCREEN.” Finally she reaches over and does something. I can’t see what. The little blonde kid peers around the seat at me and I turn off my life. If I blind him, the mom will finish me off for sure.

I stare the two-prong. It has a weird little icon that suggest motion. Hey, maybe it stretches out wider like that guy’s laws in American Werewolf in London and then plugs in on either side of the big hole! I try to stretch it and one prong tips to the side. What’s this? I push it all the way perpendicular and now I have a one-prong jack. I try it in one of the little holes. Too big. I try it in the big hole. It fits!

See, I told you it was obvious.