music day

last night was this music festival all over nevers. apparently it was a french cultural holiday known as "music day" in which cities and towns all over france have music in the streets. it was fun and interesting. my favorite part was the punk show at the skate park. i went to my first punk show here the other night (puny runt was headlining- i don't get why but bands here tend to have english names) and found myself missing dry river and all the kids back in tucson. and i couldn't help but picture particular friends from the tucson scene superimposed on the nevers kids. my impression of punk in france so far is that it has many surface differences- subtle things in style of dress and the way people get down in the pit (although so far french pits got nothing on dry river's angry love). but punk is still punk and it warms my heart to find that even in tranquill nevers, there is a healthy population of pissed off disaffected youth.

there were many other wonderful things besides the punk show. i took a bunch of pictures- i'll post them later. i'm wandering off again tomorow. after the clermont train adventure i'm feeling more confident and am going to head to toulouse. it's a much bigger trip- i'll have to change trains a few times and it'll take about 8 hrs. to get there. not exactly sure how long i'll be gone. a couple nights at least. there are a few different anarchist projects there that i want to check out. aside from paris, toulouse has the most anarchist stuff listed online. who knows what that is in reality- could just be that it's the place with the most tech savvy anarchists. but i'll go check it out in person and see.

also last night i was introduced to an iraqi man who owns a kabab shop here. my friend who introduced us told him i speak arabic. i tried. but linquistically i'm such a mess right now. i couldn't remember the most basic things and ended up speaking this gibberish combination of french and arabic. i feel like a two year old. french is hard. if they'd just spell things the way they say them, i'd be fine. but no. leave it to the french to pretentiously flaunt their insanely difficult language at foreigners who have no hope of understanding anything.

i'll post pics when i get back from the toulouse adventure. i hope you're happy and enjoying your life.

love

t.s.h.