DAY 8.5: Travel mayhem

The mad dash from the hotel to the airport was insane. The amount of luggage - MY GOD THE LUGGAGE!!! The 4 musicians and all their instruments, Mark and all his gear, 3 of us and all our equipment - not to mention what minimal personal articles we managed to squeeze into the bags. Thank goodness Vlad only had two little pieces of luggage or that van would have straight exploded. By the time we got to the small domestic airport nearby we were all slightly delirious. We were met there by Carmen Rizzo and his assistant Loren who were no less disoriented having both just gotten off planes at the nearby international airport from the first leg of their travels. We checked our bags (nothing overweight - a sweet surprise and a pat on my own back for the excellent packing :) and then grabbed some beer and food at the lounge.

"Eternal" - the collaboration between Huun Huur Tu and Carmen Rizzo - was done without them ever meeting each other. Carmen took the acoustic set they recorded in San Francisco and mixed and layered it to create the album. At the airport, all the artists finally met face to face and talked shop over beers. The incendiary cultural and musical exchange begins.

Mark, Carmen, (the ever-present Joe with camera), Vlad, Sayan, and Loren.

The plane ride was uneventful as most of us passed out from exhaustion.

He snuck this on board in his pants pocket. classy, no?

Aerial view of Moscow lights.

There was more pushing and shoving Russian-style as we collected our baggage in THE SMALLEST BAGGAGE AREA EVER at the tiny Perm airport - seriously, the area was about the size of my bedroom with a sea of passengers and their shit squeezed into it, and fighting to squeeze out of it through ONE doorway where the guard was checking EVERY SINGLE baggage tag. Totally awesome at 5 o'clock in the morning (3 o'clock Moscow time - Russia has something like 11 time zones). To make matters even more awesome, the van that comes to pick us up is smaller than the one we took from the hotel earlier and now we have 2 extra people and sets of luggage. We are literally packed into the van like sardines - the driver filled the back with as much shit as he could, we got into the van, then the rest of our shit was shoved into the remaining space, and there STILL wasn't enough room. Vlad ended up riding in the other car with the Vladimir from the Perm Arts council that came to greet us at the airport (apparently Vladimir is one popular name here in Russia). All the time this was happening, the van was blocking traffic and none of the cars behind us could get around. There was shouting and arm waving - and I thought for sure we were about to witness fisticuffs. Good thing Sayan and Radik (from HHT) were there to hustle and get things in the van, otherwise there really might have been more than words tossed about.

Have I mentioned that I LOVE Huun Huur Tu? They're the talent for God's sake, and they had to deal with all the luggage.

Alexei and Radik from HHT. I am now a full-on groupie.

On the ride into downtown Perm and our hotel, we saw a billboard with the poster for the "Eternal" show. Hooping and hollering, we all tried to take pictures but everything came out blurry. It did give us all a much needed jolt of adrenaline, though :) The Perm hotel is decidedly more hotel-like than the one in Moscow, but turns out every amenity is a la carte. Guess I won't be needing my bathing suit after all :( We all decided to hit the free breakfast buffet before napping.

delicious.

I do a quick check of equipment, prep the camera gear for rehearsals, and finally crash in bed @ 10:30am. 3 hours later I'm back on my feet and heading off to the first Huun Huur Tu-Carmen Rizzo rehearsal...hope I'm still alive by the end of the day.

DAY 8 (9/3/09): Good-bye Moscow, Hello Perm

Spent the day packing up our Moscow hotel room and catching up on uploading footage. One of the "miscellaneous" tapes has our first day wandering around the nearby mall and meeting the band for the first time. Is that really just 1 week ago? Seems like we've been here for months. I am astounded by the amount of affection I feel for all my new friends and by the attachment I feel to this experience. Sad to be leaving Moscow without having properly explored her history but SO SO grateful for the time we've spent here.

Chad and Joe have been gone since early morning to film the last Moscow rehearsal with the Martynov ensemble in a new venue where later they will be doing a showcase for invited guest and music critics. Wish I could be with them to see and hear the whole thing from beginning to end - feel the energy of presenting it to an audience for the first time. Even though we've only been witnesses to the creation of this piece, I feel as if we'd been folded into its life as well and am nervous & excited for how it will be received.

Now waiting for everyone to come back to the hotel before hopping on a 1am flight for Perm, where the next phase of our adventure begins. I sit on the window ledge of our room looking out over the Moscow sunset - listening to the acoustic recording of Huun Huur Tu and finally understanding the full scope of what Vladimir meant when he described it as "the most magical music in the world." It is the perfect soundtrack for this quiet moment - a little solitude for the first time in a while to reflect on how the universe delivers when you ask for what you want: just 3 months ago I sat at home everyday writhing in my own constipated mind, wishing for change and inspiration, and here I am in Russia joyfully giving all of myself to this project. Thank you universe.

The beauty of this Moscow sky reminds me of how grand life is and how small my existence in it, yet conversely it reflects the infinite space I feel within.

On the other side of the sky is the bright full moon. Could the world be more glorious?

On a side note: I LOVE Huun Huur Tu and all its members. I just want to hug and squeeze them. The simultaneous epic depth of their spirits and very real human fallacies are just as magnificent in person as it sounds in their music.

DAY 7 (9/2/09): Revelation, drama, and revelry

We've been in Moscow filming the Huun Huur Tu-Martynov concert rehearsals - all of it has been in Russian or Tuvan - so consequently we've not been able to understand a word of what's been going on. It's been a challenge and an inspiration to capture the situations based on the energies of interactions without knowing the context. A lot of it is reflected in the music and how it slowly takes form from seemingly scattered phrases of composition to one large fluid movement of sound. That and we point the camera at whoever is talking (mostly Huun Huur Tu and the orchestra leader/Martynov's wife Tatiana Grindenko, a passionate and fierce woman). In many ways this was the perfect set up for us to come into the project with: it's forced us to think visually and work instinctively, allowed our subjects to get used to us faster (because they too realize that we have no idea what they are saying), and cast us in a light of open and innocent curiosity that's helped promote trust.

In the last two or three days we've started asking questions about what's going on, and the small tidbits we've gotten have revealed just enough information for us to start recognizing the specific personalities of each supporting character - not just the major ones - their relationships to each other and to the project as a whole. It has also allowed us to enter the life of the project beyond the music, into the drama/reality of what's happening in order to mount these concerts. It's becoming as much about HOW the concerts are being produced as it is about WHAT is being produced. It reminds me a little bit of the Harry Potter stories: at first it was all about Harry and the magic in the magical world (the close up), then it pulls out wider to reveal a more extensive range of characters that all have an unseen hand in the magical happenings (medium shot), and then even wider to include the whole magical world and its politics (wide shot), and finally opens up all the way to include how the magical world fits into reality as we know it - the big picture (panorama). Replace "magic" with "music" and I think maybe we have our movie.

The most important - as always - are the relationships. Our relationship with them being just as crucial as their relationships with each other. Mark Governor (co-exec producer of "Eternal", musical director for the Huun Huur Tu-Carmen Rizzo concert, and the man who hooked us up with this documentary gig) arrived in Moscow late last night and brilliantly brought with him a small travel guitar. Tonight we all ended up in Mark's room which he shares with Sayan and Huun Huur Tu's manager (and producer) Vladimir - beers and smokes break the ice and out comes the guitar. It gets passed around and spontaneous music folds us all into a warm embrace.

Hanging out with Huun Huur Tu

One of the best things tonight was when the Huun Huur Tu percussionist Alexei came into the room. He opened the door to find Chad, Joe, Mark, and I sitting around with Sayan and Vlad - and his surprised expression quickly shifted to timidity and hesitation even as he closed the door and sat down tentatively in the chair next to mine. Mark quickly maneuvered the guitar into his hands and I could feel the immediate softening of his guard. He plucks out a few playful and melancholy melodies and then eases into a song that we quickly recognize as one of Huun Huur Tu's songs. We begin to hum along and I can feel his delight that we know the tune by heart. He beams at us with his huge beautiful smile and I know we've just been welcomed into their musical world in a completely new way. My heart could not be more full.

Alexei Saryglar - percussionist of HHT

It is amazing how much of a person comes out in the music they play. In Mark's hands we hear playful rock and pop notes, but in Sayan's hands the jam is bluesy yet ancient, and a crisp, almost blue-grassy sound comes from Alexei. A reflection of their soul and speaks directly to who they are. The MOST amazing thing is how when these Tuvan men play on this little guitar, I am reminded of distinctly American music genres. I swear I heard the soundtrack of "O Brother Where Art Thou" coming from Alexei, B.B. King's blues coming out of Sayan - and at one point even a hint of Nirvana. We are not that different after all.

Kaigal-Ool Khovalg and Sayan Bapa - cofounders of HHT

Joe, Mark, and Alexei

DAY 6 (9/1/09): The international language of creative process

Observations of language: meaning vs sound, in various contexts and spaces, on native and foreign tongues.

On this alien soil, the words coming out of my mouth all of a sudden sound abstract and arbitrary - held up and strung together only by my intention - its usual meaning useless - I cannot feel them and they are squares I'm trying to squeeze through round holes. At the same time, this same language flowers in the mouths of my new friends whose limited vocabulary makes the space of simple words expand exponentially in their innocently poetic use. Perhaps it is also that the words are being spoken by amazing musicians/artists/human beings whose depth of experience/feeling and expression of experience/feeling cannot be contained by mere meaning - they must be shaped by the manifestation of sounds and felt in the space between sounds.

When I asked one of the Huun Huur Tu members, Sayan (a co-founder of the band) what they had been singing/chanting in rehearsals, he said:

"Nothing. Only these words and these sounds all together. We sing these words to feel the sounds and some times when we sing a sound it becomes very big inside and then we know what it means. All the time we are working to make the sounds MORE."

He explains to me that the actual words are selections from a poem called Children of the Otter by Velimir Khlebnikov, on which the composer Vladimir Martynov based his orchestral composition. They are not the Tuvan words of Huun Huur Tu, nor are they in the order in which Khlebnikov wrote them, but are compiled/curated by Martynov as a collage specifically to be expressed through a sequence of sounds that happen to also be words and may happen to have meanings in context with each other. So Huun Huur Tu is engaged in the textural pushing and pulling process with Martynov and his wife Tatiana in their exploration of these sounds.

It is utterly visceral and fascinating.

They are birthing a dark and beautiful creature together in this music - with the guttural bones and rhythm of its Tuvan father and the sinewy muscles and tonality of its Russian mother.

Are you as turned on as I am by this? If you are not, you should be. Trust me - if you were in the same room with the powerful energy of the sound they are creating you WOULD be.

Tuvans make all their instruments by hand. Here are just a few of them:

HORSE HOOVES (click together Monty Python style):

BULL BALL

(aka. the ball sak of a bull. yeah, I mean exactly what you think I mean. Acts as a maracas-like shaker.

You know you want one.)

DAY 5 (8/31/09): What is happening to my brain?

This is the internet cafe with free WiFi that we hit up every morning. God bless it.

In addition to losing our boom mic mount last night, I managed to lose one of our power adaptors IN OUR ROOM. We got back to the hotel room and there were new sheets and towels on our bed. I put the fresh bed condom on my mattress pad, and then I swear to sweet baby Jesus that I took the 2 camera battery chargers and the 2 adaptors out of my bag and put them all on my bed. 5 minutes later when I went to look for it there was only 1 adaptor left. I searched the entire room - NOTHING. It was late - we were tired - there was limited light - so I just told myself I'll find it in the morning and went to bed. In the morning I literally take the room apart - bed condom, sheets, mattress, luggage, etc - and STILL NOTHING!! WTF!!! Somehow it managed to VANISH INTO THIN AIR. Somewhere there is a round black power adaptor laughing at me.

Then I spent all day in the hotel room again uploading footage, and discover that there is just no need to run 3 cameras at rehearsal. No need at all. And that watching and listening to the same 3 hour rehearsal 3 times is enough to make my brain swimmy. Around the 3rd or 4th tape I start sleeping while it's uploading. Note to self: letting my brain fall asleep only to wake it up over and over again every 59 minutes can cause additional brain swimmy-ness. Now I know how all those people on LOST felt about pushing that button.

Chad and Joe come back from shooting a 6 hour rehearsal, and what's magically in the camera bag? THE POWER ADAPTOR. Yeah, apparently I left it at the rehearsal hall. --insert applause--

We've been buying these chocolate eggs from the 24 hour grocery store everyday since we've been here. They are a chocolate shell (yum!) with the plastic container on the inside (how do they do that?).

Inside each plastic container there is a surprise toy. Here are all the ones we've collected so far: