Thank you all for your words of encouragement and advice!!! I decided to wait a little longer, and then tonight B called me, when I was on the phone with a good girlfriend (incidentally, encouraging her in her DB'ing)!!!! I clicked over and told him I was on the other line, but that I was excited to talk to him and he told me to feel free to try him later. I talked to my friend for almost an hour and then called B back. He was in a coffee house in Maine (to play at his symphony job) and about to hear a fellow fiddler do some tunes. I laughed and said, 'so you should get off the phone so you can give him your full attention' and made some jokes about the fiddle fellowship. He said he would try me later though he wasn't sure how long I would be up or when the fiddling would be finished.
So he called me a bit later, and we talked a little bit about the fiddling. I could tell he was nervous, there were some awkward pauses, but I think we both tried to keep things flowing, but I still was mostly just listening. Then he told me that he had watched the movie (genghis blues) that I sent him a link to a clip of a couple weeks ago (!!). (It's the story of Paul Pena, a blind bluesman who learns tuvan throatsinging & travels to tuva to participate in their throatsinging competition). A friend of his had the DVD and B asked to borrow it. He told me in the beginning of the movie he thought some of the moviemaking was a little silly, but that later in the movie he cried. He said the movie reminded him of Dave Chapelle's Block Party movie (which we saw together and B also got me the soundtrack for), because of how vulnerable the main characters were, and how he loved the vulnerability. He said that he loved how Paul was completely himself in the movie, and how he immersed himself in a new musical language and then traveled to where it came from. B said he knew that was something I desired and that was something he desired too. He told me his favorite parts of the movie, and I told him my favorite part that I remembered.
I told him that the first time I watched it, I was really excited that Paul learned something brand new and went to a faraway culture--and how that inspired me in a lot of ways to do the things i've done like travel to bali and work with musicians there. But watching the youtube clips a couple weeks ago what struck me was how he was also rooted in his own blues language, and it made me question if I needed to root deeper into my own language too. At this point I wasn't sure if we were still connecting or if I was asserting too much my own preconceptions. OVERALL I was excited that he was talking to me about something so vulnerable, like crying over a beautiful movie, and saying that he and I both wanted something similar with our musical dreams.
