A rich lady paid my ticket to go to Armenia for two weeks. We'll call her Sugar Mama. This is the story of how hard I went in those two weeks.

Sugar Mama paid my ticket on the condition that I'd play a few pieces on the piano for a concert there, which I did (it went well) and the rest of the time was all mine.

This picture is Armenia. It's how it was meant to be, before highways and banks. Pictures were very few but Hubski stickers are included!

That's lake Sevan, and me, sitting on the top of a hill on the tiny peninsula Axtamar.

"Axtamar" ('x' is a throathy sound like "khhhh") is derived from the story of an Armenian princess named Tamar. Her parents wouldn't let her marry the village boy she loved, so at night she would light a torch on top of the hill, and the boy would swim across lake Sevan towards the beacon.

One day she didn't light the torch and the boy swam in circles until he began to drown. As he drowned he shouted "Akh, Tamar!!" in spite, confusion, and despair. I don't know why though, I should ask someone about the details to that story.

It was a beautiful place anyway.

Spot the Hubski sticker!

Climbed some mountains.

Slept on some mountains.

Chilled with villagers.

Kids grow up fast in Armenia. They don't play xBox until their thumbs bleed, they study and work to get the fuck out of Armenia. It's the most inspiring thing that has ever made me that depressed. The capital city, which again I have little pictures of, has all the skyscrapers and couture boutiques you could dream of, but each store has a homeless kid sleeping at the door. It's fucked up, and the greatest minds that grow up there, get the fuck out of there. And everybody on the outside pours money in to get them out of there. And there's nobody but a couple thieving oligarchs, and a million struggling families, to run the place.

The underground, young, redlight, and progressive scenes of Armenia are run by foreigners. Style and culture as you and I know it doesn't exist to Armenian-Armenians, but people that come in from the outside make some shit happen, and it's great. I am treated like an adult, which I abused in a state of five consecutive days of drunkenness with my friends (I don't drink).

To put the underground scene thing in other words, Armenians living in Yerevan (the capital) are attracted to European elitism. Foreigners visiting and living in Yerevan are attracted to music, art, and the Armenian earth.

The result is graffiti like this

"Save lennon!"

and concert venues like this

Amidst a capital square that looks like this

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River Fest:

I went to a festival called River Fest. This year was its second year, and I am an organizer/donor to the festival, which is set in a village a few km's from Yerevan. All the profit helps build and maintain the local school, and as a thanks the villagers clear out the camp/festival ground, and clean up for us afterwards in addition to offering delicious food all night, and coffee and tea for us in the morning.

This year 700 tickets were purchased and we raised enough money to build two classrooms and replace the old broken windows that let the freezing cold in all winter long.

I partied really fucking hard. The villagers brought homemade pomegranate wine in buckets, and it fucked us all up, especially when we mixed it with everything else.

In the morning, the Armenian Yoga Federation stopped by and treated us to a 6AM yoga class.

The campground was really small and nobody slept and everybody drank so there was plenty of sex to go around. Drugs aren't really present in Armenia, so everyone is an alcoholic.

Community bonfire.

Here's an action shot of my friends! They're all metalheads, because rock is popular in Armenia. They're all Syrian refugees.

My homies again! I'm poking my head out of the guy with the red shirt on the left.

This is rushed, I'll probably say more things later! Thanks for reading!

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More Things:

Electronic music spilled in its influence from nearby Georgia, which (fun fact!) is the country that fuels Europe's electronic music after Germany, France, and the UK.

Here's an EDM show

Here's a poem(?) from an art gallery I found. The exhibition was pictures of doors.

Here's a words:

Armenia is small, geographically. But it's even smaller, community-ly. As a musician, an American, and a young person, I slowly got in on a very niche crowd.

They all know each other, they work with each other, they party with each other, and they see each other everywhere. This crowd organizes everything in Armenia, runs all the funds and foundations and events in Armenia, opens all the pubs and banks in Armenia, and fights against the politicans in Armenia.

Because I became friends with enough people in this group, I was given a social key to the city and had impunity from all the negative aspects of a life in Armenia. I drank in all the fanciest rooftop clubs, I drank in all the hippest dive bars. I went to all the gallery openings and art exhibitions, and I met all the artists and curators. Here's the thing though, this is my reward in advance. I am a member of the network of Armenians that is expected to succeed and then give back to Armenia, by keeping it safe, stable, and developing in any way it needs. This may not make much sense but that's basically how the country operates. 'Foreigners' keep it pumping and preserved as they fight to enjoy the Armenia they love and dream of. Politicians suck it dry, and the working-class citizens drive the taxis around for us both. It's a different dynamic, but it's cool. It's a good place, and it's always going to get better. I'm happy to be a part of it. I'll try to explain the Foreigners vs. Politicians thing better later as its own post, if you have questions or something about anything I wrote comment. Thanks for reading!