livejournal

Who would have imagined that after a long period of indifference, I'd be getting so into blogging that I now have my third blog at LiveJournal? I'm also real down wit da RSS. Maybe it's a Mac thing.

all saints

I stayed up nearly all night pessimistically working my ass off only to discover when I finally [mostly] finished this afternoon that the post office had been closed for the past two days for All Saints' Day. My dear België, a true kenner of leisure time to the dismay of stomme Amerikanen like me, considers it a national holiday. Fortunately, most of the Soros can be submitted online, but I don't know what they'll make of my CD postmarked November 2. To add injury to insult, my bike fell on my foot as I tried to step away from it to read the hastily printed sign on the door of De Post.

Too tired to feel remorse, I biked to Carrefour and Del Haize to see if I could erase my woes by shopping, but Carrefour was lifeless save kids running wheezy model cars around the empty lot, and Del Haize was nowhere to be found. Magnetized to the canals as usual, I biked north on the east side of the Dijle, a less frequent route for me. Despite or because of the holiday, I encountered only one human being along the way: a man trying to gather up his spilled belongings--way too many to have possibly fit on that bike--perhaps all his worldly possessions. The Dijle looked different, and the wind of the unusually cold but sunny afternoon felt smoother and cleaner than I have almost ever known it. As I reached my favorite underpass, I realized that my beloved "hanging gardens" were nearly submerged in water. The Dijle had risen and swelled over 1/3 of its normal width! I barely noticed any rain in the past 24 hours, but perhaps it fell elsewhere or while I was oblivious at my computer. The sight was stunning, beautiful, exhilarating, and surreal, especially after an exhausting night. Without my iPod, the silence was gorgeous as well.

Too weary to continue, I decided to cross the canal via the highway overpass, half expecting to be run over in the process. Instead, I discovered a spacious bike lane, and not a single car or bike interrupted my tranquility.

"Belgium, you spoil me!" I accused the wind, and as I coasted down the bicycle off-ramp, "What did I do to deserve you, Mechelen?" As I passed the hanging gardens again, birds alighted on each post and twittered nonsense replies.

For dinner, I cooked Signaporean noodles from my new Dutch Chinese cookbook, and severely regret only cooking one serving.

luft

While searching for the Ben & Jerry's in Antwerpen (which is unfortunately being relocated), I found the high-class shopping district--including a mouth-watering art, architecture, and fashion bookstore (not that I gave a farthing about the fashion section). I discovered a new item for my wishlist, in both English and German (depending on the angle from which you look at the cover): Luft / Air. One of my favorite photography subjects. But the best thing about it is the line from the publisher's website: Das erste Buch mit Airbag! Ein Buch-Objekt. Everything is more serious, more stern, and simultaneously more hilarious in German.

Can't wait to take my bike to Antwerpen and explore the entire damn city.

Another funny MS Word phenomenon: grammar check corrects "Midwestern" to "midwestern," which spell check corrects to "Midwestern."

not in kansas anymore

Sigh. Carillons, pizzas, museums. How to say more than can be said? Damnit. I live a good life. Why can't I ever stop wanting more?

Again, "returning" to a familiar place (we visited Lier for an evening during EuroTour 2005) was preposterously heartwarming. I made the trek ostensibly to hear Iris' sister's jazz trio perform in a bar on the Grote Markt. Iris dished out the following scoop that knocked me flat. You know that middle-aged, mild-mannered, soft-spoken organ teacher of mine? He remarried just this year--with a 26-year-old former student, the lucky one out of several that he dated!

"It's possible," she responded to my amazement, as she often does, half seriously and half ironically and half (this half being in a higher spatial dimension) because her English vocab doesn't encompass a more specific phrase. And I suppose it isn't all that unusual in Europe. Eddy's girlfriend is a good twenty-something younger than him and a former student at the school. You're right, Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore... although the coastal American's joke would be that such things only happen in states like KS or AL. Hell, the oldest guy I dated was European... and somebody else's teacher at Yale. One could certainly argue that a pattern is emerging. All the same, I'll be struggling to keep a straight face at my next organ lesson.

The last train to Mechelen never came, and the station workers directed us to Antwerpen Berchem, where none of the posted or electronic schedules showed any Brussels-bound trains. But my newfound Mechelen-bound friend Wem and I went to Antwerpen-Centraal and, to our great relief, found the 0:23 train waiting there. The best part was that it stopped in Berchem. Usually track 9, one of the workers told us. We spent the next half hour discussing cultural differences between the US and Belgium. It was nice to converse with someone new, since the young folks in Lier seemed to prefer chatting in Dutch.

The cock-and-balls-shaped sour gummies we bought and over which we cracked up endlessly during EuroTour must have been from the nachtwinkel near the station in Lier, because the store matched the one in my memory exactly, although I'd had the impression it was in another city. I went in to see if they still carried that particular line of gummies, but left disappointed. Did not get to eat cock on the way home.

roadblock or social progress?

I love the "street reclaiming throne." Socially conscious prankstering! Funny that the ideal world Engwicht describes sounds almost exactly... like Flanders.

relatively late

incidentally, i ended up practicing a total of seven to eight hours today, a record for me at the carillon and in fact at any single instrument. tom AND the chinese viola dude and his wife were all at the school... at like, 10 pm...

Incidentally, I have finally found the Dutch version of Sesame Street, Sesamstraat. Now alas, how to watch it?

relatively early

3 pm, in a practice room at school:

Tom: You're here early.
Me: Unprecedentedly early. You're here late.
Tom: I woke up at 3.
Me: Damn!
Tom: Well, I went to bed at 3.
Me: Damn! ... I went to bed after you.
Tom: That's because you need less sleep. I need twelve hours a night.
Me: It takes me three days to get that much sleep.
Tom: See?

seen

The Belgian news never fails to astound me. Amongst today's headlines:

Nos banques de sperme dévalisées par les lesbiennes françaises
Bill Clinton contre l'obésité
La Poste partenaire d'eBay
Privé de lumière, Rattenberg [a village in Tyrol in the shadow of a mountain] veut détourner le soleil (with giant mirrors)
Du poisson contre l'agressivité [planned study into whether eating fish can control criminal impulses]

miracle

upon miracle seems to follow in this fantastical land, or at least in the strangely lucid plane my inner life has become. Last night I was brainstorming answers for an essay prompt that I assumed would just draw forth a precious few eloquently BSed ideas from me. Instead, I had another revelation about my life that had never really struck me as an issue of concern. There is an answer to why I am an impossible mix of highbrow and lowbrow, why I always have groups of friends who are otherwise mutually exclusive... I may write more later, but the essay needs to be written first, and even before that, I must keep sane with another bike ride, because I've just practiced for four hours in OLV o/d Dijle without remembering that I hadn't eaten lunch, because that organ is so addictive to play, time hardly seems to pass... and anyway, I suppose none of this is terribly interesting or relevant to anyone except me.

curriculum vitae

And now for the so-called 'cv' I've been working on nonstop for the past two days... may it prove worth the effort and sleep deprivation.


Pianissimo high notes sparkled over deep lingering overtones as I played the forty-nine-bell carillon of Sint-Romboutskathedraal. Rich minor harmonies piled upon each other, and a chance rush of wind bore the swelling lines away through the streets of Mechelen, where they echoed until they seemed to come from every direction. As I toured Belgium with the Yale Guild in 2003, that moment completed the enchantment that began when I was a freshman, captivated by the power of the Yale Memorial Carillon to communicate the unspeakable across campus. Having pursued the instrument to its origin in the Low Countries, I have realized that I am drawn to it by my desire to contribute my particular strengths to a field that needs them and demands innovation.

Living and learning in a foreign country was worth every hardship for my father, who left his family and five siblings in Hong Kong to pay his way through the University of Rochester as a busboy. Now I am coming to understand what drove him. Struggling to leave behind a personally trying year, I arrived in Belgium with three suitcases and a tenuous academic network. Within six weeks, I had found a new lease on life, immersing myself in an unknown culture, meeting people and ideas unlike any I had met before, and building a new existence around my studies. Considering my father’s hardships, I am immensely grateful to focus on the pursuit that gives my life meaning. And even simple joys, from discovering a museum in a tiny alley to biking with friends along canals at twilight, still overwhelm me. When my efforts go completely awry, my frustration becomes exciting proof that I am living the life I worked fervently to reach. My need for discovery is met every day now, and that need inspired my passion for the carillon while at Yale

More than in any other field, I can make significant contributions to carillon education throughout my career. Performance and bellfounding reached an apex in the Low Countries in the fifteenth century, but were nearly lost until American William Rice and Belgian carillonneur Jef Denyn established the KBJD in 1922. Although six schools exist in Europe, the dearth of qualified teachers in the US and wealth of progress to be made in this young field have fired my involvement. Co-chairing the Yale Guild, I spent up to seventeen hours per week on organizational improvement, the restoration of the instrument and tower, and involving the Guild in the greater carillon world. When I discovered thrilling possibilities for education and international collaboration in planning the 2006 GCNA Congress, I knew there was no cause I wanted to pour my efforts into more.

I cannot resist exploring promising possibilities, and the carillon field abounds with them. America’s mostly older adult carillon community needs fresh ideas and impetus, such as the technology, translation, and youth outreach skills I am contributing to the GCNA. While many university carillonneurs struggle to attract students, the Yale Guild turns away so many that I am writing a guide to using active student involvement to perpetuate the carillon tradition. But demand for instruction exists beyond the walls of academia. As a summer teacher in 2003, I relished introducing New Haven middle school students to new subjects from web design and programming to carillon. But I had to send would-be bell players away as lessons are open only to Yale students. At the CIN and NB, I expect to build the leadership and charisma needed to create broadly accessible learning opportunities and to inspire enthusiasm in new generations of carillonneurs.

In a monumental tower, seemingly isolated from the world, I have the privilege of making a magnificent instrument ring out across the land, conveying deep emotions across boundaries of cities, languages, and cultures to the listening public. In return for that great gift, I seek in my career to make this privileged opportunity accessible to all.