I Know It's Been A While Since I Rapped At 'Ya

Right now I'm sitting at my desk in class, watching my students fidget with their hair as they flunk my final. I really couldn't have made it any easier; 65 multiple choice questions taken directly from the review sheet they'd been given the week before the test.

After 10:50am this morning, I'm on break until January 8th, which is very exciting. I'm taking my guitar home to practice for our upcoming studio sessions. My solo on "Tell Me Something" is going to get most of my attention, as it's plodding and derivative. Hopefully my uncles Mike (a jazz musician) and Bob (a composer and producer) can give some tips. Bob's a pretty bitchin' guitar player, as well.

Here's a friendly tip: listen to as much "Free" as you can. It's unfortunately a band that doesn't get the attention it deserves because it came up in an era of such quality depth in rock n' roll.


Grant

A beard and the Lord Mayor of Belfast

Mas

Our pilgrimage did not start well. Dan was feeling sick from exhaustion, I was unknowingly sans Visa card, and we’d left St. Jean way too late in the day. By 11am most pilgrims have been walking for five hours. The woman at the pilgrim office informed us that as young people we’d be taking the high road over the Pyrenees, in the sort of way that leaves one little room for protest. Besides, she said, only the first 8k was straight up and from there it really leveled off (not true). According to our excellent British guidebook, there were two routes across the mountains from St. Jean; the easier one followed the modern road over the Pass of Roncesvalles, the harder one a higher and more treacherous road used by Napoleon’s army, designed by the general himself to test the limits of his own cruelty.
On a good day, fit pilgrims can hike this first stage in eight hours, which, looking back, seems charitable, since it took us at least twelve and we passed countless pilgrims on the edge of asphyxiation. The first sign of trouble came almost immediately after leaving the village when an elderly Basque gentleman (in a traditional black beret) breezed by us on the road as if we were standing still. The higher we climbed, the more dense the fog became, and within an hour, our beautiful views disappeared in a thick soup of low-flying cloud. For six hours, Dan and I marched, soaked, through that shroud of mist, with only the sound of cow bells breaking the silence now and again. But it was worth it. When we finally crossed the border, we broke into sunlight at 3,500 ft. above the valley floor and stood looking out over a sea of white clouds.
Our destination was the medieval monastery of Roncesvalles, straight down from where we stood, a place where monks provided hospitality for pilgrims for over 800 years. Tucked away in a valley of the western wall of the mountains, Roncesvalles was, according to legend, the spot where Charlemagne’s general Roland was ambushed by the Moors. There aren’t any monks there today, just some friendly volunteers who usher the hundred some-odd pilgrims who turn up every day to their beds.
After a shower in which the water coming off me ran brown, a hearty fish dinner (heads on, naturally), and some pantomimed conversations with non-English speakers, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Seemingly no time intervened between then and when I awoke—at 5:00am—to the sounds hasty packing. Typically, it was the Germans. There is a certain subset of pilgrim, comprised mostly of tall folk with wire-rimmed glasses, which wakes up when its dark to beat its fellows to the next pilgrim refugio to secure beds for the evening, while avoiding the heat of the sun. This might sound OK to a morning person, but its hardly fair to those who prefer to stay up past 7pm. I tried it for a few days and found the experience to be very overrated. Too much wine to be had, too many songs to sing, too many exotic people with interesting stories to meet. Within a week Dan and I were infamous for being the last people out of bed each morning, but this won us friends among the Spaniards, who make it a point to accomplish nothing before 10am.

A work in progress

To stand in the shadow of the Pyrenees, to gawp at 4,000 vertical feet while the weight of a loaded pack tugs on one’s shoulders, to take the first steps of a 40-day trek across Spain along an ancient pilgrimage route, is to experience the visceral thrill of the unknown. To do so without having slept for more than 50 hours is considerably less visceral; indeed, as I stood there gazing through half-open eyes at the mountains before me, I could hardly think of anything but the bed waiting on the other side. Three airports, five train stations, and a picked pocket after leaving the U.S., I arrived in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, a small Basque village in the French Pyrenees, to begin this great adventure.

The Camino de Santiago de Compostela is a 500+-mile path stretching across northern Spain to the tomb of the St. James the Greater, which for more than a thousand years has drawn pilgrims to its relics from all over the world. Though interest in the pilgrimage flagged when relics lost their place of importance in high medieval theology, Santiago continued to draw pilgrims in a steady stream until scholarly inquiry cast doubt on the authenticity of its relics in the late 19th century. In the last twenty years, renewed interest in pilgrimage has created a mini-boom of Santiago pilgrims, and while the focus no longer remains on the veneration of specific relics, today’s pilgrims undertake a journey of self-discovery and reflection—a forty days in the wilderness experience during which the traveler confronts his inner self and experiences a life apart from the day-to-day.

My own pilgrimage was made primarily to participate in an ancient form of Christian worship, and while doing so reevaluate my future in a completely foreign context (as it’s difficult to avoid mulling over one’s life-purpose while walking through a desert.) Having a hell of a lot of fun at a cheap price—final tally: $750 for 6 weeks in Spain!—was just a bonus, but nevertheless it was to this end that most of the more interesting anecdotes took place. And so I whiled away each day for almost two months hiking through Europe’s backcountry, perusing 1,000 year-old cathedrals, meditating, praying, playing my guitar, and having intense theological discussions over glasses of wine, only to get up the following morning to do it again. (Incidentally, teaching, which leaves summers free, is the world’s greatest profession.)

To accompany me on my journey, I’d invited my friend Dan, who was less interested in the historical component, but shared my spirit of adventure and an openness to the possibility of an authentic encounter with God. Plus, he didn’t have anything better to do over the summer in Chicago, and his boss was surprisingly accommodating in giving him two months leave. On the train we sleepily crabbed at one another as we snaked up into the Pyrenees, and upon arrival had come to a consensus that we would spend the remainder of the day in St. Jean and climb the mountains to the Spanish border the following day. Ultimately, however, we decided that it would make a better story if we left on no sleep, and so filled up our sacks with bread and cheese and headed to the pilgrim hospice at the top of the village to get our sello (a sello is a daily stamp one receives on his pilgrim passport, a document that verifies its bearer has stopped each night along the way and is a legitimate pilgrim, not some charlatan looking for a cheap vacation.)

A new scheme is born

As those of you who spent time in Danville this past weekend well know, a new scheme has been hatched, and, unlike most previous schemes which have been met with both trepidation and pathos, this one garnered high praise. I won't reveal its exact nature here, for fear that some fork and-spoon-operating carbon blob ferret the idea away to some production house and beat me to the table.

Nevertheless, the dawning of a new age could well be apon us, and, if said scheme turns from dream to reality, I'll buy the first round of drinks.


IG

I'm Back, Baby!

I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya, but things being what they are, with many what-have-you's still to be considered, and so forth.

Life has resumed its slackened pace, and I'm crafting a daily schedule designed specifically to dull the pain of tedious existence. Moustache is riding high once again on the hog of rock, school has started, and Notre Dame football is in full swing (though its offense has a ways to go). Coupled with these, the thesis ever-looms like a seemingly innocuous letter opener of Damoclese, poised to slip down my spine and render me careerly lame.

Plus, the gut is on its way back from a brief summertime haitus.

Stay tuned.

This is me, in my head

And someday in real life, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNF_P281Uu4&eurl=

Grant