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Hong Kong Hike

from Calendar by Baseball Gregg

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    *116 pages on HD color Fedrigoni matte coated paper – Language: English/Italian - 1st press, numbered copies!*

    Every month of 2019 we released a song. Some of the songs were written the month before they were released, while some songs were written as early as 2009. Each month, Eli Wengrin made a cover for the single, and I wrote a little essay to go along with the song. In early 2020, we asked our friends if they had any art or words they would like to share that was, in some way, related to Calendar. All of the contributions have been compiled into this book.

    Looking back at the beginning of the year, it’s hard for me to remember exactly who I was when writing the first entry for Toursong. Whatever sense of identity that I feel today isn’t the same as what I felt a year ago; In a sense, I am a “new person.”

    If Sam from a year ago is a different person from Sam as I am today, there is no reason that I (today) should attribute any more weight to their (me a year ago) wants and desires than I would to any other person who I know. Right now, I relate to a lot of friends more than I do to my past self. I am equal to my peers.

    While making the XTC album “Skylarking”, Virgin Records told Andy Partridge, the band leader, that he had to make the record with an American producer in an attempt to tap into the American market, and eventually Todd Rundgren was hired for the job. The record is amazing, one of my top 5 favorite albums of all time, but the story goes that Andy and Todd butted heads throughout the entire recording process. Their egos were both too big. Now, Andy hates the album. He claims that Todd completely fucked it up at the last second by “reversing the polarity” of the tape, something that would in practice have an undetectable effect on sonic quality.

    There is a song on Skylarking, “A Man Who Sailed Around His Soul.” The song is about a man who tried to “find himself,” but he actually found nothing.

    "Now he sits all alone
    And it's no place like home
    It's empty skin
    A bag to keep life's souvenirs in"

    Ego is a sham. Identity is a sham. Don’t try to find yourself, find others.

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about

May 31st, fifth song off Calendar
Artwork by Eli Wengrin

I’ve been super lucky to work each July at a summer camp in Hong Kong. The camp pays for my airfare, and the leniency of their flight policy has let me to go to Italy each August. Without this job, Baseball Gregg would not exist as it does today.


Perhaps the most fascinating part of Hong Kong is the dichotomy between the densely populated urban areas and the undeveloped nature reserves that make up 75% of the island. My friends and I go hiking a lot, and a few years ago, my friend offered me some LSD as we set out on a hike. I had never done any psychedelics before, but I impulsively decided that I would take a quarter tab.


The experience was not what I had expected based on any cultural idea that I had of acid; I felt like I had drank a bunch of caffeine. I quickly made my way up the mountain into a cloud that was covering the peak. Once inside the cloud, it felt similar to a foggy day, except that outside the edge of the fog it was sunny. You could see the reflection of the sun off the water and the big city outlined in a golden haze.


After hiking, we went dancing until 5 in the morning. In the morning we ate dim sum with the train workers just getting up to go to work. The small dosage of acid had given me a sustained rush of energy, which made for a wonderful day, but was not what I had expected from the experience.

I told Luca about the day, and he wrote this song. It is interesting that Luca wrote a song in which he tells the story of my acid trip, even though it is not part of his personal experience.


It’s silly to limit the music to the expression of one’s personal reality. I had a lot of fun doing acid, and I will probably do it again, but it would be uninteresting to hear yet another psychedelic song inspired by an acid trip.


Rather than talking about his lived experience, Luca is expressing my experience as he imagined it, and I find this distortion of an empathetic imagination to be much more human than the distortion of LSD. Each day we hear details from the lives of people around us, and it is this same exercise in empathetic imagination that humanizes others and helps us feel less alone.

lyrics

And while my time goes by
I’m still here
I float around
The sky is black and white
A summer in progress

A rainbow that curves space-time
An octagon fills my eyes
I wash my hands with vapor
I am looking for gators

I stupidly think I’m fine
The reason I’m still awake
And Shiva warns me
"Sam, I fear that you’re still alive”

While Asia is pretty vast
The bamboo tree we’ve just passed
Is a memory that will last
I feel like a chloroplast

On an hong kong hike
I walk with monkeys by my side
Come with me
Let’s go inside a cloud

And if I’ll ever get sad
I am special
Please don’t be mad
Forget Immanuel Kant
And bury me as a plant

On an hong kong hike
I walk with monkeys by my side
Come with me
Let’s go inside a cloud

credits

from Calendar, track released May 31, 2019
Written and produced by Luca Lovisetto
Artwork by Eli Wengrin

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Baseball Gregg Stockton, California

Baseball Gregg is a pop duo from Stockton by way of Italy.

"Selected Covers (2016​-​2022)" out now!

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