Postcard from Trumansburg

There are no alligators.
Pickles, types of pickles.
Rainbow.

Spoken in sleep, August 6, 2006

We've been here for a week but it already seems like a month. I love it here. I've been dreaming every night, often hear only the breeze bugs and my own footsteps, and have been amongst more nature in one week than I have in the last two years.

We're living in the old Oddfellows Hall, est. 1906, in downtown Trumansburg. The space is, needless to say, amazing. Much of it is basically empty, as we moved out of a cramped NYC space 1/3 of the size, and just don't have enough stuff to fill the space. The move, incidentally, just about killed us. It made me feel old and flustered. Granted, we moved everything down three floors, loaded up a 16 foot truck, and moved it all back up three floors, in the midst of a 100+ degree heat wave. Not the easiest task even for a more athletic type; thankfully, we had some help getting it all packed up.

Unpacking has been a strangely slow process. It seemed like we spent months packing and getting set up for the move, and yet, in the final days we were still horribly unprepared and wound up slinging shit into random boxes. Trying to find simple things like tweezers, Sharpies, and drill bits has been maddening.

A few notable items:

BOB MOOG: I don't know how this one slipped by me, but I just found out Bob Moog's first manufacturing company, established in the early sixties, is just a block down the road. Thus, Trumansburg is basically the birthplace of the modular synthesizer. I can't believe that the village of Trumansburg hasn't exploited this more... I'd put up a plaque or something, sheesh... but this very special energy present here certainly means a lot to me anyhoo...



BUTTERFLIES: They're everywhere. I hadn't realized that I haven't really seen a butterfly in two years until I started seeing hundreds of them. And even the grasshoppers have crazy striped wings.

MY NEW STUDIO: Now we're talking. My New York "studio" was so crammed full of crap, I was paralyzed with a weird combination of fear, vertigo, alcoholism and the old fashioned Dread. My setup here is, for the first time since the establishment of Norman's Recording Studio in the early 80's, starting to look like a real studio. I even have a large closet that will make a perfect iso booth. Time to put the fun back into fundamental frequency.