Ah….at long last I sit and write! I blame the tornadic summer filled with activity for leading me away from the ole keyboard, and ultimately away from Mondo Instante duties. Although it was for a good reason, and a lot of the absence was due to preparation for Ady’s and my trip to the Newport Folk Festival where we were invited to attend with full media credentials, something that was very exciting for the both of us. We attended as Sisters Dissonance, our joint project that we have been working to build for many years. You can check out the many posts that precluded the event as well as the ones that emerged during and well after the festival to see what we were up to on that end that caused absence here.

That said, as you may recall, we had every intention of bringing Mondo Instante to the festival, though once we got there and reality set in, we quickly realized that, while it would have been incredibly cool to pull off, this was not the time nor place to canvas for the this project. The Newport Folk Festival is non stop music and events, both within the fest, and in town in Newport, Rhode Island and between enjoying the festival, and covering it, leaving little or no time to tell people about it as it would have totally interrupted everyone’s total immersion into the music. Further, seeing just how pristine they keep the grounds (ie, they do not allow or encourage waste so handing out hundreds of little cards that may or may not wind up littered throughout Fort Adams State Park was not something Ady or I wanted to be responsible for in the end), it just seemed…not the place to do it.

In addition, the focus on spreading the word there I think perhaps caused many people to think it was our intention for it to exclusively to take place at the festival. And while it was not, I think that added component confused enough people, and I did not catch on to that until a bit to late, and was a bit preoccupied otherwise to get the word out better to our core group of participants. Thus MI19 in the end wound up the smallest round yet. But, as always, those that did take photos did a fabulous job and what arrived in my inbox are beautiful snapshots of life around the globe during that Mondo Instante moment, and so I thank you guys for holding down the fort! Hind sight is 20/20 as they say, so I walked away with it being a learning lesson as far as what is appropriate for getting the word out about Mondo Instante in a new way.

Thank you to Noona in Glasgow, Scotland, Betsy in NYC, Mark in Devon, England, Carl in Aurora, OH USA, Cindy in Brighton, Michigan, USA, Judy in Massillon, OH USA, Kelly in Las Vegas, NV USA via California, Yossi in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Ady who was driving us through New York City at the MI moment for being our anchors and keeping MI going! You can see the full photoset here:

Mondo Instante 19 Photo Exhibition via Flickr

And that leads us to the announcement of Mondo Instante 20! The date has been set for Saturday Sept 22, 2012 at 15:30:00 GMT which I will convert into various time zones and post in an official announcement shortly. The following MI, MI21 will be the TWO YEAR mark for the Mondo Instante Project! In celebration I am preparing a design that will be released as a sticker and a few other merch items that will be available very soon, so look for that! Yep, I’m back in the creating-mode saddle again. As Autumn approaches I’ll become less nomadic and more hermetic and you’ll probably hear much more from me, pestering you to do this project or that, create this, make that. Consider yourself warned!

Until then . . .

Chutalute!

Banner image: Noona, Womad Fest, Glasgow, Scotland for MI19