The only down thing about our jazzfest trip is the evil tropical colds we caught there, which we are still fighting. Musical highlights: Marcia Ball, Angelique Kidjo, Suroit. I tracked down the song Bucktown that Maria Ball sang, ordered the Chip Dolan CD. Ritualized visits to Bead Man and Batik Man. Everyone sang to The Event, The Thing; Cowboy Mouth advice: Dance all over the son of a bitch. We finally got to meet niece Jeanne's husband Romain; so I guess we have to stop calling him Lettuce Boy. He had just brought back from France a copy of Bernard-Henri Levy's American Vertigo. I bought a copy in English and am reading it, having read some of it in the installments in Atlantic. Our first visit to the UCM Museum in Abita Springs. Running into people we hadn't seen in years: Ruth and Phillip at the Abita Brew Pub, Jolie at Congo Square Stage, Mary Lee in the mall, Beth at the Bell Street party, Daniel in Lafayette. Aimee and Julie (just getting back into their Lakeview house) took us to a new restaurant named Cochon. Nouveau Cajun, I would say; his memories of his grandfather's cooking influenced by years in California. Coffee & chicory with dessert. The Newport Folk Festival schedule always comes out right after JazzFest. Great lineup; bought the two day passes immediately. The Duhks, Betty Lavette, Madeline Peyroux, Mary Gauthier, Indigo Girls... In my shows I seem to be on a run of trios. An article in the New York Times yesterday about T Bone Burnett whom I listened to years ago on World Cafe because he had a song with the lyric "we live in an age lit by lightning; after the flash, we're blind again." I bought Cassandra Wilson's latest album, Thunderbird, because it was produced by him. Who would have thought the musical director of O Brother Where Art Thou could direct such a mysterious jazzy lady. Thinking what Daniel Lanois did for Emmy Lou Harris, and what Gurf Morlix did for Mary Gauthier. In the interview Elvis Costello (with whom he wrote The Scarlet Tide), is quoted as describing Burnett's approach as "making a sense of time and place, but at the same time dislocating it slightly to give a sense of the unease that we're living in."

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