Music

You never know where your window to the world will appear, but I do know that they seem to be fabricated our of dreams, visions and words from books. If you desire them to be more than that, then you follow the white rabbit down the hole like Alice or head to Nantucket like Ishmael. Now I know that Alice didn’t write back from an Internet Cafe in Wonderland and Ishmael never had the convenience of looking at his little handheld GPS unit and entering a quick waypoint titled “white whale” when Moby Dick first showed himself to the crew of the Pequod. Technology is a part of our world, whether we like it or not. Some would say it has robbed travel of its adventure. Maybe it has to some extent. I admit that I used planes, tour buses, Land Rovers and satellite phones as I moved from the high dunes of the Northern Sahara to the temples along the Nile at Luxor, down the winding course of the Rufiji River in Tanzania ending up in the dense Jungle of equatorial Sao Tome; but there was still plenty of pure adventures along the way enough to inspire a few good songs.

In Innocents Abroad, my old hero Mark Twain said “I flit and flit – for I am ever on the wing – but I avoid the herd. Today I am in Paris tomorrow in Berlin, anon in Rome, but you would look for me in vain in the galleries of the Louvre or the common reports of the gazers in those other capitals. If you would find me, you must look in the unvisited nooks and corners
where others never think of going.” This morning I awoke in the harbour of Bastia, on the island of Corsica where Napoleon was born but unlike my grandfather he never returned home after he left. Late yesterday evening while walking with my son to fulfill a shipboard promise for good behavior of finding him a Corsican dagger, we strolled the ancient streets in the port city. What I expected to find was a trinket in a tourist shop, fabricated of cheap metals and still leather to cash in on the worldwide popularity of Maximus, the Gladiator, but what we discovered was a little piece of the history and mystery of Corsica. We meandered through the narrow streets to escape the waterfront tourist traps and found ourselves in front of a storefront with no sign or name to identify it, but hung in the window was a large knife with a bone handle. The door was ajar but there was a chain that prevented us from entering. Inside a large man with steely eyes and a long beard sat sharpening the blade of an ominous-looking knife. We asked if he was open and he muttered something in French and unlatched the door. As we entered his shop, it became quite apparent to me that what had started out as a shopping trip had suddenly turned into a treasure find. An hour later we not only had found some incredible knives, we had shared stories of their origins with the craftsman who forged them and in the process brought a smile to his face. Cameron asked him, “Are they hard to make?” to which the old man replied “N’importe qui peut faire une cuillere. Je cree des couteaux.” (Anybody can make a spoon I create knives”)

Today we sail on where I am sure new experiences await me. Africa is now encased in story and songs, some of which appear in the collection. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope they work for you the way the stories worked for me, told me by a crusty old sailing captain who as a little boy in Nova Scotia so long ago, looked out the window and saw far beyond the familiar harbour framed in the pane.