I manage to catch good sleep on the overnight train.

Inside this carriage, the smell is overwhelming. Outside the window is mile in mile of sugarcane, but somewhere among all this is lemongrass. Maybe it’s a companion crop? It is however quiet unmistakable.

Everywhere else is rice. The labour required to cultivate looks enormous. It’s early morning, and there are only a few working in the fields. The farmer is using a tool Id call a grubber, to slice first, scoop second, the nearly black mud from the earth, to deposit onto the rising mounds built fur holding water in the rice field. Human dredging. Digging deep.

Malang.
Arriving on the overnight train, I obtain a taxi and take off in the direction of accommodation.  Driving for 30-40 minutes, we get to the place where Google Maps says it should be. It isn’t. A deeper investigation offers a second location. We backtrack towards the city in the hope of success. We arrive at a point where it seems I’m in close walking distance. The cab leaves, and I head off on foot. I get to the place, again,  where Google Maps says it should be.  It isn’t!  My phone is running. I’m in the middle of a kampong, s made of dwellings, and reliant on the maps app. I have enough juice to find my way to the main street and to hail a cab. I head to the venue and plan to sort later.

The venue is the Malang Creative Centre, a serious multi-story facility of venues, Co working spaces, gif stalls, and ongoing constructing.  The show itself is epic noise. Act after act after act. Quick changeovers. The audience grows in capacity through the day. I have a rough idea of what I can do in the allocated 15-minute performance.  I abandon most ideas mid fight and deviate of in surprising and satisfying directions.

During the day I get offered a bed at someone’s house. But later in the evening, they disappear, so I look for plan D.
There are not many options at this time of the evening. I choose something that onscreen looks ok. The internet is quite different from real life.

It’s a small blue concrete box on the third floor of a decaying residence through large rusting metal gates.
The young women on reception was helpful. I am appreciative of this place to sleep. I actually think I am staying in a super cheap hostel for those of the Muslim faith. Signs everywhere that female heads must be covered. If you are a couple, you must be married. But it’s quiet and peaceful. 

The room has one power point, so i turn on the fan to cool down? Or charge phone? And it has a mattress on the floor, stained sheets, and if I’m quiet enough, I get a whiff of piss. The springs of the mattress massage me to sleep and wake me up.

I look for Plan E the next morning. Friday, it’s a day with no shoes. I catch a cab across town. Plan E is good. Still minimalist in amenities but closer to where Ineed to be. 

I have a detour planned for Friday. I freshen up and walk to the train station to catch a train to Blitar. I want to visit old friends. The family and extended kin of Stella, the now young women who we wrote that song all those years ago.

16 years ago was the first time we traveled to Blitar. At the time, I thought it was a village, but it’s actually a sizable city. I met Lestari, Stella, and family and talk and eat. Afterwards, I have time to visit Ni Kita Jibril Komunike, the collective who hosted our previous shows in 2007 and 2012. We talk about times, friends alive and gone, and those unwell. Illness can hit younger and harder here.

And I try to answer questions about the white supremacist shooting at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019. It’s not the first time I’ve had this conversation here. The phrase ‘an attack on one is an attack on all’ feels painfully true this far from home.

I sleep two hours and then return to Malang with Lestari’s husband by car.  He is going on to Surabaya to drive a taxi for income, thy money is better there than in Blitar. He has family in Surabaya but tells me he sleeps in his car.
Every week or two, he says he returns home to Blitar for a day/night to visit.

The second Malang show is upstairs in a heavily graffiti cafe, amazing coffee, good food, and a rooftop [where my band member comes is found]. The show is organized by the same crew as Thursday, and the first performer is on near 4 pm. Wall to Wall intense noise with much dynamic difference. Some use instruments, some voice, and some prerecorded sounds. It’s hot! Outside is a busy road and its traffic is constant and loud. Inside is the same.

I write about Slammy Karugu‘s set. My set is close to the end, I’ve only had about three/four hours of sleep since yesterday, I’m tired but throw absolutely everything at it… mission accomplished. Another joyous show.

Now I can let myself go and crash. Sleep, come to me.

Notes:
———–
The mosquitos sing to me of feasts.  Even my deafened ear works well in their company. In the morning, I shall see what comments they have left.
————
The last time I sat under this roof, our friend, Pepenk, was here.  A lot has happened since then. Earlier tonight I went to visit that which his friends called his new home. A plot of earth near to his father’s final resting place. He was only 30.
————–
I’m lying awake waiting for friend to wake so we can head back to Malang at 3am. I’m looking at the cracks in the walls and wonder if they came from earthquakes.  Then, the whole building starts to rattle and wobble in a gentle, yet all encompassing, persuasion. The Earth is just rolling over in her sleep.

———
There is only a tin roof between me and the rain i think i hear. It’s not. It’s so quiet that I can hear the enclosed river that flows in front of the house underground. A river entombed by the Dutch sometime in the last 100 years.

A roster is singing its welcome.