What a neighborhood!

At the risk of expressing my parochial bias, I'd like to go on record as stating definitively, that I live in the best neighborhood on the planet. While this status may be something that ebbs and flows, it was definitively the case on Sunday, May 6. I know this is true, because on that day I asked a number of my neighbors if they agreed with me, and sure enough they felt that we lived in the best neighborhood on the planet as well. 

The cause of this clarity was a most amazing little music Festival. Over 70 stages, genres as diverse as punk rock, classical quartets, brass jazz bands, folk, salsa and more. The highlights for me were about as diverse. My all time favorite performer of the day was Magdalen Fossum (www.wix.com/magdalenfossum/music ) a 10-year-old with a voice to be reckoned with. Someone said, we have to go hear her, so we wandered up Brooks. I was entranced by her music. From where I stood, I didn't recognize her, it was only later that I figured out that I know her mother, and my sons have played with her at a potluck and on a couple of other occasions. Other favorites included: The punk band, Suicide By Cop, I found a place where the volume was just right to get me hopping. I liked the little bit of the psychedelic DJ I caught from John my neighbor across the street. And I made sure to end the day where I had and it one year before dancing like crazy to the Latin jazz sound of Los Gatos. This year I picked up one of their CDs. 

I'm not the kind of person who goes to a lot of shows. I like music but probably listen to it less often than I should. But this festival was just what was needed to feed my soul. There were the many and amazing acts, too much for anyone to take in in an afternoon, but I also loved the way the streets of my neighborhood became alive with people full of joy! So you stand or sit and listen to a song or two or even a whole show, then when the act ends or when you're ready to move on, you wander down the street either with a program map in hand, or following your ear and instinct, then you see someone you haven't seen in a while and you stop and talk, or just say hi, and maybe all walk together to the next act. There are surprises you might just walk by, houses you may have walk by everyday never knowing the virtuosos inside. I remember walking by one house, and from the front window I could see a man at a piano, the music drifted lightly out the window to sort of pat me on the back as I walked by. Paul Tinkerhess is a genius for having conceived and organized this event now two years in a row.

Back to the glory of my neighborhood, it is not just for the geniuses like Paul that my neighborhood is great, it is not just for the wealth of talent that clearly resides here. Perhaps it's biggest fault is people like me who think it is the center of the universe, but the greatness of the Water Hill neighborhood rises above all that, when almost spontaneously the neighborhood bursts into song and Festival! By “spontaneously” I don't mean for a moment to downplay the efforts of all those who organized and contributed to making the event, I only mean that each person who participated in Sunday's event, each musician who took their time and energy and projected it from their porch did so as a spontaneous gift. In so giving they created something amazing. They have projected utopia into a place. The Water Hill Music Fest lived up to the slogan on this years poster, ”love your neighbors.” We are loved.

A week or a month from now, my neighborhood may no longer be the best place on earth, but for me at the moment the glow of the weekend still permeates my experience of the streets and my neighbors, thanks to all of you! I spent that particular afternoon with a friend and artist from the East Coast, when he left he took a program with him, and he told me that he had a friend back east who he thought might organize a similar event in a town in Connecticut.

While extolling the virtues of my neighborhood I should at least make reference to an upcoming event that I will be out of town for, and so will sadly miss. June 9 and 10th, in the 700 block of Fountain Street and event called Mission Zero Fest (www.missionzerofest.org )  is being organized. The mission is to get to zero carbon emissions. With a focus on home energy efficiency and “homegrown tomatoes” the festival promoters promise “real solutions for saving money and living a more purposeful life.” If the music Fest is a model utopia of joy and song, Mission Zero Fest reaches for the utopia we need in a more material realm. I regret that I can't be in town to showcase my own Mission Zero project, a passive house addition, but there are other interesting and exciting energy efficient houses just up the street from me. I hope you can make it in my stead.