Impressions After 4 Months

Halloween fell on a embarkation day (when old passengers are thrown out and new ones invited in), so we had out Halloween party on the 29th of October. It amazes me how many members of the crew travel with a wig or entire costume for every contract. One of our more flamboyant crew members uses any opportunity to dress up in drag to be his alter ego, Delores, and make all of the straight guys uncomfortable. And that’s the truth.

The party was in the Officer’s Bar, deck 4 forward. It’s a small, dark bar and it was packed the other night. Beer costs $.95 and wine is $2.50, hard liquor is somewhere in between. You don’t pay cash, it just gets billed to your room. A lot of people have a hard time keeping a budget on their bar tab since buy the time they want to mentally figure out how much they’ve had…they’ve had way too much to ever be able to figure out simple arithmetic.

Some of the guys dressed up as pirates, mostly, it seems, in an effort to somehow not be held responsible for their shoddy behavior. The girls complained the next day. The cast had just performed a show and didn’t bother with the costumes. One of the deck officers dressed up as a salon girl and I was surprised to see one of the more aloof, mean-spirited female officers at the bar in a bikini.

I put on jeans from Turkey, a shirt from Denmark and a hat from Greece and tried to pawn myself off as a cowboy. People gave me points from trying, but it was pretty weak. Maybe I should start traveling with a wig like everyone else.

During the day we’d been to Naples, Italy, and I’d taken a ferry from the port to a small island of the coast called Capri. In Roman times, the emporers Ausgustus and Tiberius lived and ruled Rome from the island of Capri. It’s famous for it’s beautiful cliffs, rugges coastline, green landscape and year-round flowers. A garden now stands where the imperial palace used to be. The island’s beauty lives up to it’s reputation. Watch out for the $15 ravioli though, the restaurant owners around here know that tourists would pay anything to get “authentic” food during their trip to Capri.

Tomorrow, election day in the states, will mark 4 months for me on this ship. Ship time, we all agree here, is a lot different than land time. It’s unbelievable how much happens in just 4 months on a ship. Almost every friend that I had on the ship when I first got here is gone. The band is a group of entirely different people. My bosses are completely different. This is the third captian I’ve worked under, as well as the third cruise director. I’m in a different cabin, and a different part of the world. I sailed Scandinavia for a month, sailed down to the Mediterranean, spent 18 days at the Olympics and even that ended now over two months ago. I’ve been to Turkey, Sweden, England, France, Italy, Greece… I’ve made friends with passengers and crew members; they’ve left and I’ve never e-mailed them like I said I would – nor have I ever heard from them again. Often I forget their names after a few weeks. In less than a month – less that two cruises even, I’ll be sitting somewhere in the Caribbean. Again the crew will almost change completely when we reach Ft. Lauderdale. Four weeks after that I’ll be gone.

I hate sea days and I sometimes shy away from friends going on long day trips to another set of ruins. It’s hard to save money and at times it’s difficult to fill up the time. The sunsets at sea are better than anything and it’s hard to describe the feeling of floating through a set of islands, or along the coast of the mainland during dusk. At night a walk through the ship brings you in and out of melodies from the different bands, and if you’d like to find solitude at that time, it can only be found outside, at the top of the ship with the stars.

The work is minimal here, especially recently. I was slated to play a private party this morning at 11:15, but at 11:30 we sailed past Stromboli volcano and I was sent home so that the commentary on the loud speakers could be heard. As a band, we will perform for only 2 acts in 12 days. The rest of that days should be filled with similar 45 minutes sets like I almost had today.

I’m a better piano player than when I first got here, there’s no denying that. I have a more extensive repertoire and more experience. My sight-reading is better and I have a better understanding of what a keyboard player does in a band like this.

But to come here just for music would be, at best, incredibly frustrating – not because of a lack of talent on the ship (certainly not), but because you simply don’t do much. And when you do play, it’s nothing inspiring or exciting. This is just a gig – it’s for your wallet and not your soul.

I’ve read more than I every have before, and caught up on all the reading I ever wanted to. In a lot of ways, it’s like early retirement. I do all the traveling I always wanted, catch up on the reading I’ve been meaning to do, and do a lot of sitting around.

If I were to talk to another musician who was thinking about doing this gig, I guess I wouldn’t know what to tell him. If he sought fame or fortune, he’d find neither here. If he was looking for love, or even solid friendships, or to find himself, or to network in the entertainment world – he’d find none of that here either. If he wanted to travel, to relax, to go on vacation and to forget about the real world, I’d tell him to come here.

But I’d certainly advise him to bring with him a hobby other than music. The hardest part of this job is killing time without blowing all your money. I could sit on this internet all day and have a great time killing time, but in a few hours I would have spent all the money I made today. I’ve found that, aside from reading, I enjoy writing, and I play a few games of chess everyday with the golf pro. I spend nights watching movies or drinking in the bar with these new friends. It’s an easy, happy life, and I’m always looking forward to the next day.

Most musicians come out here for “just one contract” (6 months usually), and most of them end up out here for 2-5 years before they get so sick of it that they have the courage to break away from it. It’s an attractive idea really – no bills, free food, little to no work, living in paradise, plenty of free time. There’s two members in the band now that have done this for 13 years. It’s changed them though, and sometimes I wonder how they’d ever cope on land.