Last week, the K Records sleepover at an organic farm in Washington State.

First we stopped by Olympia Washington, where people seem to be doing these amazing things designing and sewing clothes, and making music, records, and coffee, and sandwiches. I had to restrain myself at the used clothing store. I had already bought too much at the thrift store in Portland.

Then to the sleepover, which besides being a sleepover, was also music festival. There were blackberries everywhere. We slept underneath a tree that a blackberry vine grew up and the blackberries hung over us like stars, and it was very cold out for August.

That night I played in Karl Blau’s horn section. I felt very at home with a trombone to my right. It was fun, very fun. The next day we watched them roast a pig in a pit. It was pretty amazing. Then I heard Cajun accordion and followed the sound to the back of the house where Jared, who lives there, was playing with a mandolin player. Of course Jared and I knew a bunch of people in common. We played together til it was time to drive back to Portland…

Paris in June: solstice. Golem came to play at Fete de la Musique, the city-wide music festival. The last time I was in Paris, I was also living in New York, but I was 18 years old and very dirty and carrying around a huge backpack, so to have a suitcase with wheels and a shower in our hotel room was completely different.

Although I rarely wake up early unless forced to, (to paraphrase that quintessential Parisienne, Edith Piaf, evening is our morning) jet lag made me sit bolt upright at 6 am. So, I went downstairs, ate some free hotel breakfast (is everything better in Paris, or does it just taste that way?) and wandered around the early morning streets watching the city wake up.

Shockingly, I found that I could still speak some french. I found my way to the Louvre and was magnetically drawn to the Mona Lisa, I’m not sure why, perhaps it was all the signs pointing the way; but I stood in front of her for a while, fascinated by the way they had chosen to display her: in the center of the room, encased in glass, with velvet ropes blocking off the area in front of her. Of course it’s partially just to prevent anyone from stealing her, and partially to deal with the Da Vinci Code crowds, I guess, but it felt religious to me. Like the Mona Lisa was a holy, enshrined object that people from all over the world came to venerate on a secular pilgrimage. Of course, I had barely slept for two nights, so everything seemed rather mysterious.

I should probably mention that I made a number of culinary faux pas; the worst was ordering coffee BEFORE dinner at a nice restaurant (gasp!). The waiter teased me ceaselessly, mercilessly, throughout the entire meal. Lesson: stop by a cafe on the way to dinner.

The actual show was in the Marais (the old Jewish quarter of Paris) in a beautiful museum courtyard of stone. What an audience! And what a performance by Sir Aaron Diskin whose pants sacrificed themselves for his brilliance, before the eyes of hundreds of Parisians. We walked back to our hotel after the show, through music-filled streets. After this magical evening, some guys were shouting obscenities into traffic cones in the alley right below our hotel windows all night. Glad to see not everyone in Paris is so classy. We’re coming back in November.