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!