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Mike iLL

| | | — | | Flint, Michigan. Parked at at meter and we’re like, “Do we have to worry about getting ticketed in the morning?” They laugh and explain that the town is $40 million in debt, the mayor for the last 10 years took off with tons of cash and the state took over. They don’t have a mayor, they don’t have meter people, there’s 3 fire trucks for 1/2 million people. I say, “At least it’s not cold.” And they talk about how at least the winter’s too cold for people to rob liquor stores.

From July 4th on is total chaos. If the city’s not leveling buildings ‘cause the crack-heads don’t pay taxes, the buildings are on fire. “Arson?”, I ask. “Dude, they don’t even bother to check.” This morning (Sunday) the fuckin’ place was desolate. Rivka and I woke up on a mattress on the floor of the all-ages club called Local 436. Huge, empty department store-looking place that used to be a beauty school. Very bizarre place to wake up.

We got the fuck out of dodge (as they say) and came back down here to Ypsilanti (by Ann Arbor), where Iggy Pop grew up (in a trailer) and the MC5 used to live, to hang at Rubber Soul Records where we played the other day. A really cool used/new CD store that serves coffee and stuff. The two owners are cool as hell.

Oh, man. We saw this fuckin’ rainbow up here yesterday like we’d never seen before. It was a complete arc, like two miles wide, full color spectrum and there was even another rainbow we could see a quarter of on the outside of it. Un-be-liev-a-ble.

We’ve been staying with this heavy musician/healer named Maruga Booker who’s an old cohort of Perry Robinson. They’ve been in countless groups together and Maruga has also been a monk and hooked up with all these famous Swami’s like Ram Das since like the early ‘70’s. Beyond that the cat lived with George Clinton and Sly Stone and played on records with these guys and Greey Garcia. He smokes spliffs and expounds about the universe, music, money… This morning he started crying “tears of joy” about the work we’re doing traveling around giving our music and lifestyles to the young people.

Love, mike

22/03/2001