Life on the road

Happy Mardi Gras, everybody! I've just successfully completed my 30th consecutive Carnival Time in New Orleans and am now getting ready to head North by way of Oxford and Holly Springs, Miss., and Little Rock, Ark., to Chicago and then to Detroit by the end of the month to make the Hash Bash in Ann Arbor on April 2 and the Seventh Annual 4/20 Party in the D on April 20.

I'm sorry I missed the last installment of this column but my bag with my laptop and all accessories was stolen at an outdoor café on the Rambla in Barcelona, my last stop before coming to New Orleans. Otherwise I had a terrific time in Spain, introducing the Spanish translation of my book Sun Ra Interviews & Essays, published by Libertos Editorial, and performing shows in Madrid and Barcelona with Lydia Lunch and her band, Big Sexy Noise under the aegis of RUTA 66 music magazine.

Before I left Amsterdam for Barcelona, I went to see a Dutch doctor about a medical marijuana prescription, showed him my Michigan Patient Card and secured a script for 10 grams of medicinal cannabis. My friend Ben Dronkers had told me that a Dutch prescription would be honored throughout the EU, so I felt pretty secure until my prescribed stash was seized by my thief along with the other contents of my shoulder bag.

Quite happily in the breach, however, my interview with CANAMO magazine had been greased by the gift of a substantial bag of the local sacrament, and I was able to continue treating my physical and mental aches and pains for the entire week of my stay in Spain, where personal use of recreational drugs is no longer treated as a criminal matter in any case.

The city of New Orleans, too, has finally decriminalized personal use of marijuana, although Louisiana has yet to confront the question of medicinal applications. The medicine is fine here now, though I can remember when I moved from Detroit to New Orleans 20 years ago that the weed was not so great nor readily available. Today, nearly every one of my friends with whom I've shared medication during the Carnival season has presented first-rate smoke at every turn, and I'd like to offer particular thanks to my old-time podjo Swami Bill for helping keep things copasetic during my stay.

Now Mardi Gras is over, and I'm writing on a borrowed laptop courtesy of my compatriot in Chicago, brother Fritz Kielsmeier from StandingOvation.com, who said when I got to New Orleans and moaned over the phone about my stolen computer, "I'll just ship you mine — I'm not using it right now," and he did. Thanks a million, Fritz, and I'll drop it off when I come to see you in Chicago.

Losing my computer is a serious matter for me. My life as an itinerant bard in the 21st century was — and will soon be again — centered in my MacBook and Verbatim external hard-drive that held about 450 gigabytes of recorded music and self-created Internet radio programs as well as all my poetry, writing and recording files, which is to say I can now carry my entire life's work around the world with me in digital form in a bag over my shoulder.

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