Travel

SOUTH AMERICA—2000

The only thing I knew about Peru when I was on the plane heading down there was that that’s where Alex Acuna came from, one of my favourite drummers. I had no idea what it meant to actually be in a Third World country, because up until that point I’d never been to one.
I remember all of my senses being fully engaged. I was like a baby in that touching/tasting phase, where they reach out to their surrounding environment and explore and learn. Everything was totally new to me. Each experience was precious, humbling, spellbinding, life-changing.
Highlights of this trip included climbing in the impossibly massive Andes to 13,800 ft (4,200m) through the rainforest on the Inca Trail, and then a few days later haphazardly ending up in the driest desert in the world near the Chilean border. The desert looked exactly like the Mars photos that NASA took in the mid-90’s. I remember cruising around the area, thirsty just from looking around, and every so often having my peace of mind lambasted by an unforgivably ridiculous barrage of Coke/Pepsi/Coke/Pepsi/Coke/Pepsi signs from out of nowhere. Leave it to those companies to wage their advertising wars in the middle of a desert.
The poverty in South America was like a slap in the face. Just how well I’d had it till then was made exceedingly clear, and I learned this through grit, thieves, open sewers, desperate people, and authorities with handguns drawn. Right off the plane in Lima I found myself in a very tense situation, with adrenaline pumping; hundreds of people had met the plane from Miami to offer their services and were screaming at me and the other passengers right after we’d practically been waived through customs. But ultimately, I realized there was an essential beauty to Peru—to its people and to the country—that seemed to permeate below the surface. It’s difficult to squeeze into words, but it was a feeling of lightness, of peace, like the land was moving and nothing was weighing me down. The problem with visiting such a shocking place for the first time, as I learned, was getting over being shocked and taking in the scenes for what they really were, not simply for how they made me feel.
Getting off the plane in Cuzco, I remember looking around and thinking, oh my God. What a wake up call. The city itself was at 11,000 ft, which is high. The streets were narrow, police authorities were everywhere, the air felt heavy despite the altitude. I remember being in a car with a girl who’s family ran the hostel where I was staying. She was sitting opposite me in the back, watching my face as I took in the scenery of her town for the first time. I tried to hide my feelings, to not react to each scene, striking as they were. She was still a bit upset. Over the next few days, the Andes had me by my shirt collar as I limped through the jungle, over passes, slept near waterfalls on the mountaintops, 7,000ft above what would mark the tree line in the Rockies.
In the end, it was a spiritual venture, a secret journey of the soul. Everything made an impact. All the harsh experiences, and all the softening ones, they manifested in the lasting esteem I have for the place. And I will go back.

WESTAFRICA—2001

I went to Ghana, West Africa in April of 2001 when I was 24. The experience changed my life. I came back with new values, a new appreciation for how lucky I was to have been brought up in Canada, to have had the quality friends and family I’d had till then, and to have had the privilege of attending some of the best schools in the country. I found that it was hard not to compare the things we had in Canada versus the things they continued to lack in Africa. I came back spellbound, with eyes wide, and needing to take a deep breath.
One of my favourite memories of being there was taking a drum lesson from a twelve year old kid. He showed me some parts to play on traditional drums (maybe ‘Ga’ drums of the Fanti or Twi people. Can’t remember, exactly) and how the parts fit together to form a groove. I paid him after the lesson and he was so ecstatic that he ran off, thrilled to have been paid for sharing his knowledge of the drums. I also remember not being allowed by the boy’s mentor to even touch a ceremonial lead drum.
I visited a Slave Castle on the coastline. To be alone in there was absolutely surreal. The African coast was spectacular, but to tour around a Slave Castle, to breathe the dankness of the air in the dungeons where the slaves were held . . . it was soul-destroying. The sun blazed off the waves, illuminating its white walls, and it was seemingly too bright for shadows, as though I wasn’t supposed to miss seeing anything. I knew I was in the right place at the right time, that I’d made the right choice in going to Africa, that seeing something like this was pay dirt. In school, they couldn’t teach what it felt like to be in that kind of place. I realized that atrocities could happen anywhere, even in paradise. Evil, knowing no boundaries, could still make room for itself.

The impression I got of Ghana, that tiny sliver of the African continent, was similar to the one I’d formulated of Peru the previous year: everything around me was positively teeming with life. Something was growing in every opportune place, every millimeter of soil yielded flux and change, and no matter how short I cut my fingernails, red earth would manage to make its home in there. I felt a strong sense of interaction with my surroundings, that people lived with the land, not off it; that people found what they needed in the soil, the land gave it, and kept the rest. Back in Toronto, this harmony was categorically lacking and weak. ‘Toronto the Paved’ seemed apt by comparison.
Ghanaian charm was impossible to miss: the smiles, attitudes, the absent contractions in their English, the interest and genuine caring expressed toward a traveler like me (they loved hearing that I was a drummer). And everybody noticed me, even though I was just a guy walking around. It was pretty unsettling at first, being called abruni (‘white man’) 200 times a day. Eventually, the place seeped into me, soothingly, beautifully, and with as much ease as the way in which the scores of wonderful people I met along the way seemed to go about their daily lives. I learned new syncopations of rhythm, the true meaning of a bustling marketplace, recognized the infiltration of western culture and technology, saw kids playing in piles of garbage, walked through unforgettable African slums, hustled via taxi through 325 kilometers and a tropical Monsoon . . . I also learned that what it took to appease a policeman wielding a shiny AK-47 at a roadblock was the proper bribe.

I traveled to the edge of the Sahel, where the temperature was 42 Celsius. Women carried infants in slings around their backs while maneuvering through the diesel and dust of overland traffic with enormous pots balanced on their heads. I steered my steps through the sweat of thousands on a market day in Tamale where all wares were displayed in the dirt and all colours adorned skin. I watched an old woman pick up a 60 Kilogram sack with the aid of another woman, mount it on her head, and load it up the stairs of a bus. I heard people being robbed, I walked through sewers, cesspools of trash, and ventured through kilometers of salesmen’s outdoor stalls, learning to deal with local merchants. I philosophized with mechanics, watched fishermen upstarts battling the back draught, saw drum and dance troupes, laughed with plenty of people, and slipped out of threatening situations where my skin colour was an issue. I remember sitting at a beachside bar one night, talking to a Rasta barman when three or four policemen turned up, leaned their machine guns against the bar, and sat next to me for a few drinks. That sort of thing was unfortunately very typical.
I remember traveling on a highway outside of Tamale at night, being alone with the driver and a mechanic, sticking my head out a window and breathing in the landscape. I reveled in the sheer adventure of being there, basked in the wonderment of the moment, and felt very much at peace. Seconds later I leapt back into the bus, just avoiding being hit by an oncoming truck, his horn blasting, which despite the pitch black I hadn’t even seen until the last second. That sort of thing was also typical: I always seemed to be kept on my toes. Life was lived entirely differently over there and it was difficult to adjust to this, to accept that—when I least expected it—everything softened in its way, and the living was easy. Especially for those who succumbed to the sway and drift between day and night, that dance of diurnal, surrounding rhythms, for in so doing they contributed to the pace and the feel of African life.

NORTH AMERICA—1984 to Present

Preconceptions about famous places—cities/states/provinces—fizzled away by being tirelessly wired to my surroundings via each sense perception. I found that there just wasn’t any room for my preconceptions anymore: these first-hand experiences of New York City, of Boston, Austin, Philadelphia, Vancouver, The Prairies, these wiped the slate clean and came to mean more to me as such than any TV viewing, newspaper article could. I learned that these latter mediums could never hold a candle to the experience of actually being there, that living vicariously through a broadcast or through printed text was illusory, not informative or illuminating, and any sense of reality such forms proclaimed to instill were biased and false, for how could they be otherwise? It was impossible to travel unless I actually went somewhere. Technology was not so convenient that it brought the world to me, so I took myself out there to have a good look around.
I had no idea the Eastern Coast of the States was so beautiful. What a wake-up call that was. Then there was the ghetto in Philadelphia (huge cockroaches coming out of wrecked sidewalks at night), crumbling Newark, racism, scores of down and out scoring on the streets. A story in every rag.
Highlights of touring in North America included going to New York for the first time. There was an energy there, a warmth on the sunlit buildings that turned my heart to butterscotch. I learned that it was entirely possible to be in love with a city as much as it was to be in love with a person; that integral to learning was a submission of sorts, for in order to make subsequent discoveries along the way there had to be reciprocity of the soul.
In SoHo I sought out art that would have some sort of lasting impact on me. Most of what I found elicited no response, but what I did find was astonishingly good. It was important for me to realize that almost all of what I’d taken in prior had had zero impact, but, following my instincts, I found something that I knew I’d never forget. I realized then how much mediocrity there was in the arts, in general; that the more I grew as a musician the harder I’d have to look to find real quality, to find inspiration.
In Austin I was struck by how liberal, how laid back the town was. As a Canadian, it reminded me of home and simply wasn’t what I’d expected. It might have had something to do with being there among 700 other bands in the course of several days (I saw twenty four of them in three days), but it felt good walking around those downtown streets; there was nothing sinister about Texas, not like we’d all heard. I don’t think I even saw any cops!
I liked Philadelphia a lot. I got lost twice in the National Museum. I played three shows at a club ‘in the hood’ and loved it. I remember walking around the area with a shaved head and wearing all black. An old black woman sitting on a stoop gave me a really bad look, but I smiled at her and she said “How you doin?” and meant it. I said “I’m doing well, how are you?” I felt Canadian through and through. That sort of experience would never have happened in Toronto, because no one would have given me that look based on my having had a shaved head, wearing black clothes, and walking through a predominantly black neighbourhood.
I remember literally getting lost in nearly every American city I was playing in on tour. It was all part of being on the road. It could be unsettling at first, but I got used to it, learned to relax, and realized that the abstractions of the mind basically never materialized into the world of form: there was never anything to worry about! America was beautiful. There was no sense fearing a wrong turn, I’d find a way to get there. I got lost in about 15 States, even having had to drive throughout while, how do I put this, not even having a license. Such were the necessities of the times.
US Customs loved preventing Martina Sorbara, Sarah Slean and I from entering their country. But we eventually got our legal papers together and played all over the place down there. We couldn’t resist. American audiences really listened, they wanted to be there, they didn’t talk during the shows, they applauded, they cared about the performers. I experienced many magical moments onstage down there, in Washington, in Newark, in Buffalo, Rochester, and in Manhattan.
Going across Canada I realized that most of the country I shared comprised of farmland. Every road I was on seemed to be flanked by fields and silos and the rail tracks that my grandfather had helped lay. Once I got a suit fitted in Montreal by a man who turned out to have worked for my grandfather on the tracks in Western Canada. What goes around comes around. The Prairies were a vast land and the sun shone bright, eighty percent of the year. The Rockies were mysterious, humbling, and very hard on vehicles carrying trailers full of gear. Still with no license, I drove through them during the worst winter months and was a visible wreck from the wear and tear of going across such a massive country at that time of year. But it was a great experience. Getting paid to travel, being flown around to play music as a reputable means of employment in my early, mid-twenties was just plain fantastic. It felt like I was doing the right thing, getting a great view of the continent from underneath, and from high above.

EUROPE—1990

I went to Greece, England, and Switzerland. Greece was the highpoint of that trip, for sure. Athens, Delphi, Corinth, the Greek Islands, it was all so invigorating. It was a major education to see these ancient beds of civilization totally in ruins. It hammered home the notion of impermanence, that despite our best efforts at preserving something long gone, I’d never know what it was actually like to have been there 2,500 years earlier. I learned that imagining what something used to be like didn’t have much to do with what actually was. Still, I wouldn’t trade being in those settings for anything else.
I remember the complexity of London. The layers upon layers of retrofitting whether in the layout of the streets and buildings or, more abstractly, in the air—in the feeling of the place having had a foundation that spanned centuries. I felt the same sort of thing in Zurich, that a lot of money had been invested in the city, that style and sophistication were things to be embraced and displayed rather than given a backseat for the sake of function. Here, the function and the form were expertly intertwined, and I could see dignity in the people, their buildings, and I’m sure that if I went back now I could better see it in their lives. I also remember witnessing doctors handing out free heroin to users in a park along a downtown river. That was an enlightening experience. I was told it was heroin, but it might have been methadone.
Ultimately, I’ve come to know and appreciate the value of traveling. Everywhere I’ve been I’ve developed a genuine respect for the roots of culture, for variations on our common theme of being human, and I’ve found new depths, new folds, new layers to the human spirit.

Places I’m Going To Visit

-Agadez, Niger
-Japan
-Brazil
-France
-Scotland
-South Africa
-India
-South Pacific Islands
-Cuba
-Italy
-Prague, Czech Republic
-Ireland
-Australia
-Argentina