lost

Two lessons:

1. When you're feeling down, capitalize on it. Play sad pieces as dramatically as you would if it were the end of the world, and your audience will be blown away.


2. Play carillon demonstrations at the Beiaardschool for German-speaking tour groups. To my shame, I gave in my exhaustion my worst perforamnce ever for a tour group, and two people had 5 € tips each ready for me the moment I got off the bench. I don't know if they were from Eupen or Germany or Austria or what, but whoever they were, they were very, very kind. One of the tippers took a photo of me as I was unlocking my bike outside, as if I was some kind of big deal. It had never even occured to me that constantly rendering such a musical service would merit a tip. Quelle idée!

I don't understand why I feel so discouraged. My deadlines are leaving a cloud of doom hanging over me at all times, and I'm not at the level I wanted to reach by the time of my final exam. Of course I missed two months to being trapped in the hell of my room with a cracked femur, of course I've been insanely busy with academic pursuits. But I cannot explain to myself why my playing is still short of perfect. How I dare expect myself to be superhuman I also cannot explain.

Even the highest compliment from someone I admire as much as Geert doesn't seem to affect me. When I replayed my Adagietto after his comments, he was amazed and had nothing more to say about it. I could barely manage a half-sincere smile. Why am I my own harshest judge?

Apparently he didn't finish his compositions until the day before his final exam--and he still graduated with great distinction (with the same score as Sally)! Not that I except myself or any other human being to be able to pull off the same stunt. But maybe I just want to hear from him that I'm ready, and we both know that according to our standards, that's not true.

Or maybe all I need is an end to this time of month and some godforsaken sunlight. Oh, and a lift of bandwidth limits.

taxes

Over lunch we discussed tax evasion as the Belgian national sport. Apparently there is a saying that goes, "The best way to paint your walls white is to paint them black", black paint referring to tax evasion.

I hope I'm athletic enough to compete, because Tom and I each got a big envelope of Belgian tax forms in the mail today.

may hail

Somehow woke up at noon when I intended to wake up at 10. Clearly rolling down the shutter halfway has a much more powerful effect than I ever imagined. To my amazement, garbage and recycling pickup had mercifully not happend yet, and my housemates helped me take out the garbage. Two miracles in one day!

Losing too much hair, but no time to go to doctor and ask what the hell's wrong. I take my multiple vitamins.

When I arrived at the school, there was nobody there besides the two mainland China girls, who were in one practice room together. So the only occupants of the school were three Asian girls... two of them together because they can't seem to operate separately.

Left my bike outside in the sun but brought it in just before it started to hail. Hail at the turn of June? What a wond'rous country we live in!

Tom and I had an avid discussion while he washed dishes and I scarfed down food about things we're fed up with at school. Then went with Elvo to see X-Men 3. The post-credits scene was probably the best part. But I gotta admit it was pretty exciting to see the Golden Gate Bridge yoinked off its hinges.

miserere mei deus

The highly-recommended Asian restaurant Ilha Formosa is in a cozy Pelgrom-like barrel-vaulted basement. As usual, I started scouring the menu for the small section of food I could eat when I remembered that the establishment was vegetarian! The dishes were an explosion of flavor and each employed as many different vegetables and meat substitutes as possible. They even gave us the standard cheap Chinese candy with the bill.

At my wit's end under pressure, I'd nearly forgotten how much Compline used to clear my mind, and unwittingly, I came to a concert by the Canterbury Cathedral Choir and found the catharsis I'd forgotten would help me. I had never seen the interior of St.-Pauluskerk in Antwerpen and was stunned by the perfection of its composition and color and by its priceless collection of artwork. Every object was a treasure in its own right, and the famed 17th-century organ was gloriously restored. Sadly, it was also too far from the choir to play continuo, and the range of its keyboard was limited. They had to skip a piece with continuo, and the organist substituted Mendelssohn for Duruflé in one of his solos.

The Master of Music was gratified to be able to speak in English and to even find himself in "English weather". But the white light filtering in through the windows until nearly 10 pm only added to the church's beauty. I had never heard a boy's choir live, and it was everything people said it would be. Such little children; one in the front was perpetually fidgeting. But those small boys' clear, piercing voices filled the entire church. Their rendition of Allegri's "Miserere mei" (made famous when Mozart bootlegged it from the Vatican at the age of 14) was breathtaking. The unseen descant in the back sung even the highest notes well, and in one verse even sang them flawlessly, an achievement I had not even heard in my various recordings of the piece.

To my delight, the audience was filled with kindred souls... the woman in front of me was clearly enthused, and during the intermission everyone wandered around the church and gazed upwards in wonder. They even beat me to the postcard stand. Needless to say, the choir earned our standing ovation.

As I was stepping off the L train at Mechelen station, the Brussels-bound American in the booth across from mine suddenly hurried up to me and said, "I just wanted to tell you that you're gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful." He smiled at me with red eyes and then went back into the cabin. I'm sure he was simply struck in his drugged state by my funky outfit, but in any case I didn't burst his bubble by revealing that he was complimenting a fellow American instead of some cute foreign Belgian. Sorry dude, it's the California Girls who have the style...

typical

Radio Polonia article: "When fire broke out in the roof of St. Catherine Church in Gdansk, "[monks living in the nearby monastery] were very busy bringing to safety the most valuable pieces of art, especially the Baroque paintings. Unfortunately, the monks completely fotgot to call for fire brigades. It's believed that a passer by called for the fire fighters from his mobile phone half an hour later."

Is this typically Polish, or typically monkish?

"One hundred fire-fighters arrived soon at the scene. Extra fire brigades came from nearby cities too. Unfortunately, it was too late to fight with the flames that completely burnt the roof of the church. But the tower of the church was saved together with the 37-bell carillon which has chimmed every hour on the hour since the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War."

Typical of all societies, then, that people think of carillons as being wonders of automation and nothing more. (That's 49 bells to you, buddy).

But YAY! The carillon might well have survived without serious damage. The question is, will the fire marshals allow access to it? Or is that not a typical concern?

Byebye carillon :-(

St. Catherine Church in Gdansk caught fire during renovations to the roof and has practically burned down! In Geert's sms-ed words: "Byebye carillon :-(". What an incredible disaster... for the World Carillon Federation Congress this summer, and for all the Polish students who are or have been studying at the Nederlandse Beiaardschool. It may suck for the Congress attendees, but the Polish carillonneurs will bear the brunt of the disaster... another calamity following on the heels of Portugal. Slightly eerie as I just read while cramming for campanology about two or three carillon towers that were struck by lightning in Lehr's The Art of the Carillon in the Low Countries (Lier's St.-Gummaruskerktoren was hit thrice before they rebuilt the crown in stone rather than wood). The St. Catherine's Church carillon was the city's pride until it was destroyed by a lightning fire in 1905. And 101 years later, some renovation company has hell to pay.

memory

I'd been working on memorizing my exam pieces for the past week and tonight saw the fruits of my efforts. Playing with nothing before me, I look without seeing and can thus concentrate on senses other than sight. Solutions and nuances emerged in every piece from passages I had practiced countless times all year. I was right, Geert was right--I just needed to put the preference for playing by heart into practice.

Rouen jour 2

We arrived bright and early in the morning at the Église Abbatiale Saint Ouen to play its magnificent 4-manual Cavaillé-Coll organ (1890) and chuckled at the "orgue et trompette" concert flyers slapped across the exterior restoration scaffolds. Our payback came abruptly when little old Madame Marie-André Morrisset-Balier informed us that we could not play after all due to an "unexpected" (planned) event in the church. She and her trumpeter, however, would perform for us.

Fortunately Joris talked her into a little playing time, and Johan opened with Franck's tumultuous Chorale No. 2, which truly demonstrated the power of that instrument to blow us all away.

"Ça manque un peu de sérénité," was Madame's flabbergasting response.

Fortunately Joris also had the keys to the chapel of the Hôpital, which in itself seemed a medieval village dotted incongruously with 70's and sleek modern buildings. I had never seen an organ with a pedalboard quite so much like a computer keyboard, but Nicolas de Grigny's Livre d'Orgue came miraculously to life in Joris' hands, and the acoustics were perfectly balanced. Wannes went wild and played well past lunchtime while Iris and I wandered contemplatively and hungrily about. Coming upon a dusty latched door, I undid the lock and found myself midway up a forgotten staircase. Pieces of the ceiling lay on the steps near the top, and at the end of the stairs I came to a dark room filled with shadows and debris, but alas, I had no flashlight.

Everything in the center of Rouen seems to be crumbling and neglected. It makes for excellent medieval spelunking photography. (My specializations seem to be getting increasingly narrow...)

After a lunch for which I barely managed to find a remotely vegetarian platter, we came to the peculiarly-named Église St. Thomas de Cantorbéry (why must the French insist on inventing their own spellings?) in Mont-Saint-Aignan to play its restored mean-tone Renaissance organ. I squeezed in a lot of campanology reading and found an old donation slot hidden behind the 'new' organ staircase. It was a lovely instrument, but hearing bright reeds for several hours left my ears dissatisfied. Surely early composers wrote for softer stops!

That night we had dinner in a festive turquoise and orange restaurant hung with fishing nets and new-age artwork and staffed by a pretty blonde in patterned tights and neon pink sneakers. As we impatiently awaited food or bread or anything to sustain us, Joris recounted Madame's response to his last concert there: Why did you play so fast?

"Why did you listen so slow?" was Gary's suggested reply. Apparently Duruflé got miffed after a concert at a music critic who commented that one of the pieces was nice but too long. "No," he replied, looking down at the man, "You're too short."

I ordered the seafood salad and was confronted with quite possibly the largest salad I had ever seen in my life -- et en France! Unwisely, I partook of half a glass of the white wine that was going around and found myself swaying side to side with eyes closed after dinner. The friendly waitress asked if I wanted to take a nap in the back room. Do they really have a cot for such purposes?!

There was a little emergency when we returned to our extravagantly manned Etap Hotel Rouen centre Rive Gauche. The check-in machine refused to give us the room reserved for the ladies. Wannes offered to "sacrifice" himself by giving us his single room, but the question of what had happened to our belongings still remained. Had they checked the room out to another customer?

Finally Marie-Noëlle had had enough and hit the emergency call button. Sure enough, it called a hotel employee and not the fire department, and we got a code with which to reserve the room another night. When we finally went in and put down our things, Iris and Marie-Noëlle rushed out laughing tensely for a smoke.

Rouen jour 1

Day one of the Conservatorium organ department’s field trip to Rouen, France. Wannes, a stout fellow named Johan from Lier, and I departed from Mechelen in the evening. I finally gave the McDonald’s in Mechelen a try with them, but was disappointed by the French fries (without dip--that would have cost 40 cents extra). If European McDonald’s are better than American ones, they certainly don’t do fries that way. Ironic for a country that boasts some of the best frieten in the world. I stole a balloon from the Happy Meals. "I beg your pardon?" Wannes asked as I tried to inflate it in the car.

It’s difficult to reconcile myself with having overlooked it, but just across the river from IKEA Anderlecht is a nuclear power plant with mood lighting. Yes, mood lighting! Changing pinpoints of light over the entire surface of the cooling tower. It must be an impressive sight by night--or at least psychedelic.

For the first hour, I fervently reviewed my exam repertoire, but fell asleep as darkness fell and remained that way through my companions’ incessant and increasingly irritating chatter. To drown them out, I was sleepily extracting my iPod mini from my backpack when Wannes’ voice cut through the haze of unconsciousness.

“Don’t you want to take pictures of the lightning?”

Sure enough, lightning was crashing in stereo around us as we sped through misty surreal fields. We passed by trees illuminated eerily as I had only seen them in photos. Moby provided the perfect soundtrack, and I savored the melancholy, solitude, and vulnerability of which I become intensely aware when driving at night.

Many of the buildings in Rouen seemed badly maintained, further persuading me that Flanders really is economically one of the best places in the area these days, although Wannes’ explanation was simply that run-down buildings were a French habit. Since the cozy family-run place they used to haunt had gone of out business, we checked into an Accor hotel outside the city center that seemed more like a prison, with a giant code-operated gate, code-operated doors, and an electronic check-in. The only redeeming aspect was the vending machine with Van Houten hot chocolate. Unable to resist, I knocked back a full cup and was chipper by the time I hopped into bed, although I’d barely managed to stay conscious for the ride.

It did not occur to me that the top bunk of a short room does not offer an ideal environment for sitting up. Twice I became acquainted with the consequences before I finally managed to toss and turn myself to sleep.

land of gaudì

Barcelona, here I come!!!