Dearborn, The Cold

I spent the last few days laughing at the guys from my quartet, who haven’s stopped filming snow since the day they arrived to USA. None of them has experienced snow. Ever. Even Gabe, who’s really old (ohhhh, of course I don’t mean that. I know you’re reading this, papacito, so I just felt obliged to mention that you’re a fossil). Shi- Hao and Gabe are even enjoying shoveling the snow (so if you’re looking for a snow removal service free of charge, you know who to ask). Well, occasionally, at least if you hire Shi- Hao, you’ll experience something that appears to be a high- pitched performance caused by this temperature (he starts making all sorts of noises the moment he walks out), buy hey, keep in mind that it’s free and the Asian guy will do all the work for you. Although he’s a tenor.

So, I was being all cool about snow (did you notice the word play? I’m so cool. Again!). That’s one of the rare things that we do have in Croatia every now and then… snow (from what I’ve heard, usually more then than now).

And about two days ago, I lost it. Martie, my wonderful supernatural bionic host mom (I can assure you, she would make a great character in a James Bond movie. She does ‘puzzles’ everyday, but I bet those are just some super secret codes for her next missions), asked me the other day, in the morning:

-Have you ever seen this much snow?

-Uhm, to be honest, I don’t remember seeing that much snow. (There, I said it!!!!) Is this weather common in Michigan?

-No, I don’t think so.

I came back in the evening, after the rehearsal and Martie immediately said:

-Remember when you asked me if it’s like this every year? Well, they just said on the news that it hasn’t been like this since 1943. And I heard that right now it’s colder in some parts of Michigan than it is in Alaska.

-Wow, well, I guess we must be fortunate to be here right now, to experience something like this.

And- it is a once in a lifetime experience. I get to see if I would make a good yeti. I’m sure there must be a checklist with all the requirements that make you a good yeti. I can’t think of all of them, but at least I know I’m hairy enough. The one thing I realized when I figured it took almost 14 years for my brother to grow a larger mustache than I have. Btw, he’s still 13.

Anyway, back to Dearborn, The Cold. Just yesterday, Marcus was driving me to the rehearsal and, all of a sudden, he spotted a Croatian sticker on a window on the car in front of us.

-Hey, isn’t that Croatia?

-Yup, it is.

-They must be Croatian.

-Maybe they’ve just been there.

-Nope. Do you have your business card with you?

-Yeah?

-Great. Watch this.

So, he actually sped up, got to the point where he was in the same line as the car with the Croatian sticker, he opened the window (although it was about -25C) and started waving at the ladies in the car. I know, and I told him right after this adventure finished, that he would get a finger if he did that in Croatia. But these ladies were actually very nice, and they wanted to open the window, but they couldn’t, because it was FROZEN.

-Oh, their window is frozen. (Like it’s nothing…)

-Well, too bad… we’ll do that next time.

-It doesn’t matter. I’ll just follow them.

-Oh, of course you will. Silly me. Why on Earth would I think that the fact that ladies in the car with a Croatian sticker next to us have frozen windows, could stop us from giving them my business card?!

Believe it or not, the ladies pulled over! Turns out, one of them is married to a Croat. Hence the Croatian sticker. They promised to look us up, so, if you’re accidentally reading this, I still hope you’ll be able to come to our concert on Feb 9th.

And then, there was today. Today, we had our first public mini concert at Buddy’s Pizza. It was very spontaneous… we planned it wisely enough to make it look like that.And yet, it wasn’t as spontaneous as performing a few minutes earlier for Steve, S.O.U.L.’s tour manager from some years ago and his mom, when we were supposed to sing Uruguayan Crece desde el pie, and Gabe announced: Vamos a cantar una cancion que se llama Jacinta (or whatever would be Spanish for ‘we’re about to perform a song Jacinta’). It was great, though. I left my sheet music on the piano in a different room… but that’s why I have Andrew standing next to me!

Of course, even getting to Buddy’s Pizza, which is… about a 100 meters away from the place where we have rehearsals, turned into a game. A race, more precisely. I lost. I don’t know the exact reason why I was the last person to get to Buddy’s Pizza, but I think it might have had something to do with the fact that I got stuck in the snow. Several times.

This is me on my way to Buddy’s Pizza…

And the problem was that the guys didn’t record snow this time, although I was really hoping they would.

This is me, a few days later, when I finally managed to get to Buddy’s Pizza, just chilling with some fans.

Woah. There’s so much going on right now, and I don’t think I even have the time to write about all that, but just to conclude this first post about being in USA… Regardless of what I say and how much I joke about the weather here, the old guy in my quartet, the high pitched Asian, the one standing next to me, about the crazy driver following cars with Croatian stickers… I really enjoy being here. Every time the rehearsals starts, I double check if I’m in the right room, because the people that I get to work with right now are the highest- level musicians, and I’m still trying to figure out what am I doing in the same room with them. Probably they just want a yeti in one of their snow pictures and videos, but I don’t mind… I knew there would come a day when all the hairiness would pay off.

Never shave.

Sonja, The Hairy