It’s been a full year tonight since I sat here at my open-air office by the waves at the end of Copacabana and wrote a blog while waiting for the year 2008 to end. Another calander year has gone by now and here I sit again, taking stock of all of this last year’s accomplishments, blessings, victories and changes, and giving thanks to the good spirits of Truth and Awareness, Honesty and Faith that have brought me and my loved ones through another Apocalyptic year safe, happy, healthy and well-provided for in body, mind and spirit.

I’ve spent the last week pretty much as usual, sitting here and at home happily doing what I love to do — writing and working on new books for an average of 12 hours a day. I need to give special thanks here to those of my friends, fans and supporters who have helped me out this year — especially my patrons, those who have generously put their money where their mouths are this year and supported me financially, thereby enabling me to continue my work, even in the midst of this present shit-sucking dumbed-down climate of mass mediocrity in the popular arts and the drier-than-ever-before media and mass communication channels on which our art sadly depends.

This year I’m not gonna name any names, since those of you who’ve been trudging this stinking battlefield with me for so long already know who you are. So this is just a hastily scrawled note from the far end of Copacabana to let you know that when the fireworks blast overhead at midnight, I will be standing in the warm summer waves saying a prayer of thanks and appreciation with all of you in mind, and wishing you tenfold all the prosperity, abundence, inspiration and love we all so surely deserve in the challenging year to come.

Salve Ogum!
Peace n Love.
JS

After the beach, Eugene and some of his band members went back to their beach-front hotel for a shower and a nap. We made plans to meet up after dinner at Mio’s house in Copacabana for a dinner and informal rehearsal for their upcoming show together at the Fundação Progresso in Lapa.

The show would be Gogol’s first public appearence with a band of local Brazilian Gypsy musicians, and we were all looking forward to the happy occasion.

After my friends left, I stayed on the beach and waded out into the sparkling waves under a hot and cloudy sky, thanking God for another day clean and sober in my beloved city of dreams — Rio de Janeiro. Bendito Rio, city of Orfeu Negro, city of clouds and music and barefooted dreamers, city of Gypsies and landlocked pirates and wailing bohemian poets, city of Cigano and Narcisa, city of love and terror, city of God.

Copacabana at Night

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Eugene the Gypsy and I have become fast close friends since we first met up here in Rio a couple of years ago. There was an instant connection, a strange familiarity right from the time the infamous Rock n Roll Journalist, Mayra Dias Gomes introduced us at a corner bar in Ipanema.

Maybe it was the common bond of Roma blood roots we shared, since my people — some of whom were Gypsies — also came from Romania and the Ukraine, where Eugene hails from. Whatever it was, as we sat talking that first day a couple of years ago, I sensed immediately that Eugene was just one of those people I’d somehow known my whole life. And as we spoke that day, we were both plesently surprised at the quantity of friends and aquaintences we had in common around the world.

Eugene, like so many foreigners who come to Rio on a visit and end up staying forever, quickly fell under the weird savage spell of my city. And he’s been coming back here almost constantly ever since then — sometimes alone, sometimes with his beautiful Romanian Carioca girlfriend, Diana — an anthropology professor who herself has lived for years among communities of local Brazilian Roma.

This time Eugene was back in Rio for his second round of public appearences with his whole band, Gogol Bordello whose members have also become good friends of mine. This was gonna be a party.

Diana, Eugene, Mayra, JS

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Got to the beach at Posto 8 and parked my bike by the familiar shower stalls. I greeted the regular attendant there who greeted me with the usual greeting. “You been missing here, Cigano.”

“Well… If I’m missing here, I musta been present somewhere else. Now I’m present here and missing there. Such is my lot in life…” I laughed.

“Maybe you could try cloning yourself…” The bathroom attendant suggested.

“How can you be in two places at once when yer not anywhere at all?” I answered, ending the short philosophical debate with a question for us both to deliberate on till next time.

“It’s nice to be home,” I thought, grinning as I walked across the sand, feeling the hot South American sun burning my skin.

There was Eugene, sitting near the water’s edge with his guitar talking to a couple of grubby looking hippy types.

“Doing a little improvization, Genia?” I said, breaking his balls with a subtle reference to his statement on the Jo Soares TV show the night before that he never improvises musically, that improvisation is “for hippies sitting around the park.”

Youtube of Gogol Bordello on Jo Soares

“This is different, Cigano.” He grinned as we exchanged kisses on the cheek. “This is the beach, not the park.”

“Ahhh. Of course.” l laughed. It was good to see my friend again.

Gypsy Party

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Finally got a full night’s sleep in my own bed. That was good for a change. Just as I was finally getting unpacked and distributing presents to my girl, the phone rang.

“Hey, bartalo, Cigano! Mixto!” The familiar voice croaked.

“Sar san, prala!” I said to Eugene the Gypsy in my own broken Romani.

“Back in Rio, brother. Chillin’ at the beach in Ipenema with my band today. You coming down?”

“See ya in twenty minutes, bro!”

“Party!” Eugene said. Then; “Hey, man. Call Mio too!”

I hung up and dialed the familiar number. Mio, the respected Gypsy leader of Brazilian Roma answered on the third ring. I told him Eugene was in town and we made plans to all meet up at his place later that night for one of our wild all night Gypsy jam-sessions in his kitchen. Yeh, it was all starting up again. Gogol Bordello style. Party!

Back in Rio, I barely had time to get reaquainted with my home, much less even begin to recover from the long whirlwind of people, places, travel and events before it would all start right up again.

Finally got a few hours sleep in my own bed while a pair of my  pet vultures flapped their massive black wings out on the sunny balcony overlooking the bay. Seeing them sitting out there as I fell asleep reminded me of that song “Death is Certain” that Iggy wrote after spending an afternoon on my balcony in Rio. After just a few hours, we woke up in the afternoon and went to the Paderia for fresh bread, eggs, coffee and fresh orange juice. Then we got back on the bike and rode over to my regular spot by the beach.

I pulled the motorcycle up onto the big rock at the end of Copacabana — just in time to meet my dear friend Sebastian Elsaesser there. Sebastian had just arrived from Germany, via the Amazon jungle city of Porto Velho, where he had been conducting one of his intensive self-realization workshops in a prison for habitual murderers.

Sebastian is a paranormal phenenomenalogical psychologist; a powerful witch doctor with a PHD. He used to be the Director of one of the largest mental hospitals in Europe. Sebastian revolutionized treatment programs there by nearly totally eradicating the use of harmful psych medications on patients and initiating a highly effective regime of holistic therapy and “alternative” treatments for those under his care. A shamanic spirit-worker by vocation, Sebastian has been teaching, working and studying in Brazil for decades now with the likes of Chico Xavier, the famous Brazilian medium and psychic healer.

Sebastian had just finished conducting a week-long workshop in my neighborhood in the hills above Rio and was now enjoying his first and last day off before heading north to Bahia for his next adventure — after which he would head back to Germany. For now he was just chilling, sitting at my open-air office by the waves.

As Tali and I rode up onto the rock, I could see Sebastian was already hanging at the table with our dear friends, filmmaker Romulo Fritscher and his wife, the great Brazilian songstress, Paloma Lins Costa. We sat down and ordered some fresh coconuts all around, then caught up with our friends there, sitting by the waves sipping cool coconut water and swapping news.

After awhile Sebastian and I took our leave from the others and walked down the stone stairway to the sand. It was time to greet my Mother, Iemanja, Princess of the Sea. Sebastian dove right in the water and swam out quickly beyond the breakers, while I stayed closer to shore, body-surfing wave after crashing wave, smiling as I bonded again with my sparkling happy home. And once again I was reminded why I love living in Rio above all other cities. Where else can a grumpy, cyinical anti-social writer have such an “office” to do his solitary work from?

Finally, after months on the road all over the world, constantly surrounded with all sorts of people and social happenings I was really longing for some peace and solitude. And this is where I go to get it. But I’d still have to wait for any kind of real break. The next day Eugene and Gogol Bordelo would be arriving in Rio with all their raging demons of wine and song…

Chico Xavier

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About halfway back to Rio on the bus in the middle of the night, my girl suddenly shot out of her seat like she’d sat on a scorpion.

“E’sheet! I forgetted my laptop in the Acid-Lady house!” She howled.

Shit, of course! At one point at the party, in a fit of pathological anti-social shyness, and feeling overwhelmed by all the fancy people there, she’d simply retreated into Fantasy Land and gone off by herself to play some computer game.

“Aiii!! My laptop!” She wailed loudly again, waking up the sleeping bus passengers to a volley of hissing and ssshhh-ing worthy of a rolling snake pit.

“Should I tell the driver to stop and turn the fucking bus around, baby?” I laughed.

Before she could go into full meltdown mode, I calmly assured her that I would call our host the minute we got back to Rio and just ask him to send it to us with my pal Eugene, whose band, Gogol Bordello, would be coming up to play in Rio in a couple of days, right after their upcoming São Paulo gig. That promise, combined with the prompt rockstar hand delivery of her beloved laptop seemed to satisfy her, momentarily quelling her urges to kill everybody on the sleeping bus, myself included. I went back to sleep and when I woke up, we were in Rio.

As we got off the bus it was raining softly in the murky light of dawn. The familiar smell of raw sewage and mold invaded my nostrils. The smell of a thousand dead man’s farts. Welcome home. Ahh, home! Home Sweet Home.

Pics not working today! Sorry guys!