The Studio is a State of Mind pt 5

Tropic of Bunker.

2016. A new season of life changes.

My next home-away-from-home-studio was in Rio Grande, an hour east of San Juan along the coast.

Retreat Five was a shack on a permaculture farm run by a guy my age. A former raver turned vegan.

His listing said he'd pick visitors up from SJU but everything else was up to them as far as getting around.

But he still drove me into town in a beatup pickup a couple times to pick up a forgotten cable from the electronics store, and see the old forts with portal windows looking out to endless ocean. I saw a store called a joyeria - literally, a jeweler - but at the time I thought it might be a store that sold joy.

I needed joy. I saged the inside of my cottage, and brought a pile of little plastic people to pose in random places. Spirit guides, I suppose. I guess I was going through something.

These were not expensive trips, at least not anything at all like the Rolling Stones holing up in Nellcôte for six months.

I'd get twenty seconds of music in a show like Riverdale every few months, which was enough to pay for five days at a no-frills cabin somewhere somewhat far away. Another flight paid for by Southwest points from filling up my Corolla with a branded credit card.

Food bought local. I allowed myself one restaurant.

Appropriate technology.

Appropriate cuisine.

Appropriate routine.

Routine:

• Morning coffee brewed on a single burner, in a Moka pot I had to relearn how to use every time I traveled abroad.

• Breakfast - local watermelon, apples and banana.

• Think. Walk. Plan.

• Lunch bike to the Luquillo kioskos to sit at the beach with a Heineken, recording sounds of waves that I would use for City Water.

• Think. Pace. Talk (to self).

• Dinner back at the farm. Thick stews made from potatoes, yucca, garlic, coconut, cans of Goya beans and local herbs. Or, my newfound love, mofongo, if it was the restaurant night.

• Think. Plan. Write.

• Wind down with a guitar in the bed to the cree-cree of the jungle bugs at night and soft rains.

In Rio Grande, I wrote JC Autobody's night-at-the-insane-asylum release Witches, stationed at the one desk bolted to the wall in the combination kitchen-entryway holding my keyboard, computer, headphones.

In Rio Grande, I decorated the wall with a Post-it mind map of the first chordal patterns of a third City Water release, based on themes from an old Protestant hymnal.

In Rio Grande, all buildings are stout brick stock. Even the smaller cottages like mine. Reinforced by hurricane shields on the windows. Gates and cages on every possible opening to thwart intruders both human and wind borne.

In Rio Grande, salsa bands in tents on Sunday afternoon. Graffiti and aboveground cemeteries in the New Orleans tradition. Trees gnarled from the wind and moisture.

Everything dripping in a deep, solemn green.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What I’m reading: An Honest Woman (Charlotte Shane)

What I'm listening to: Bluebob (David Lynch)

Read the Brazil tour blog at the Substack: