love affairs

How many love affairs can one person carry on and still keep herself together? My museum work... it is absolutely addictive, and hearing my colleague Gwen, a philosophy doctoral candidate, talk about how after her degree, she still wouldn't mind going into arts administration in a museum doesn't exactly discourage my fervor. Neither does the curator's approval of my Beiaardmuseum work and wish that I had the time to do the same for YUCMI. It's taken me three days to master InDesign (and to fall in love with it) and turn out the handsomest publication I have ever made. It will go for a run of 400 to 500 copies, and it's got a Yale blue cover--yes, InDesign has Yale blue built right into the color presets. But that's just the first affair.
Tonight I played the carillon for the first time since my final exam five days and an ocean ago. And even slugging through difficult pieces at an American standard keyboard, so different from what I learned them on, in the summer heat became so intensely absorbing that I realized I would have gone on no matter what the conditions were. The discovery that I need to play on an almost daily basis is frightening. The odds are against anyone who wants to play the carillon on a regular basis for the rest of her life. And yet with all the other things I'm able to do, that's the one thing I know I want as part of my future.

The Yale Memorial Carillon suddenly felt so light, it could have almost been a practice instrument--I wanted more resistance out of it! Perhaps the difference is due to the recent work by Meeks & Watson. But frankly, I think the carillon has stayed the same, and my arms have gotten more massive. Now that I reinspect them, I realize how much more muscular they are than they ever have been. I barely need to practice on the real carillon for my upcoming concert--the opposite of my situation in Mechelen. But I could have sworn that in the past, St. Rombouts had felt slightly lighter than Yale. Now Yale is perhaps a bit too spongy.

Afterwards I knelt in awe in Memorial Chapel at the base of the tower, gazing up through the darkness at that little fan vault ceiling--almost laughable in comparison to the originals at Oxford--and my body didn't know how to react to the wonder I was feeling. The default reaction was tears, but those were hardly appropriate. The low perpetual hum, the golden glow of the single lamp, the wooden reliefs lining the walls over monumental wooden seats, the stained glass commemorating disciplines and intellects, all seemed to converge on the point of a myth about to commence, something wondrous or terrible coming and as we prepared to defend all that is good. At the same time, my dreams of a big mock-religious church wedding faded as I saw that I could have the ceremony right there in that beautiful little non-consecrated chapel with one of the most gorgeous carillons in the world ringing out in joy. Not that my plans get any more specific than place and instrumental accompaniment, but I can't believe that in all the time I spent quietly in that chapel, the idea never appealed to me.

So, that was grabbed-by-the-throat love affair number two. I guess Yale, New Haven, and biking could be bundled up into number three. Because tonight I biked leisurely on what I keep telling myself is a badass single speed bike (really just a beat up thing with broken shifters that Bob threw together for me after I proffered Belgian chocolate) through campus in the perfect gloaming and perfect tank top weather. And I was overcome by its beauty, the undulating Gothic spires and monumental Classical arcades, the towers so dense you can't see one for the other before it, the elm-lined streets, the lush courtyards and greens... and just when I thought I couldn't bear it, contrast. For the first time, I saw the heavy wooden doors of the Wall Street gate to Silliman wide open, floodlights transforming the dusty air inside into a solid, inviting mass of light. Splelunking time. I hid the bike and wandered around, crunching on tire-sculpted gravel, remembering my ACCESS/YSECS days of yore. Hopping down the stairs for a good romp through the basement, I stopped short at the big asbestos warning sign, caught my breath, and romped straight out into the new gelato store across the street. I savored my melting lemon and giandiua scoops on the steps outside, gazing straight into the cavernous mouth of SM wishing for a spelunking partner.

And then home I biked, flipping my temp baby over outside the front door to manually shift the chain into a lower gear, since that's the only way to do it.

So the grass is still greener on the other side, no matter where you are now. But for me, the grass is only greener once I'm on it--pretty much the best way to live. I only grudgingly left Europe for the States because I was just fine there, and now I'm dizzy with exuberance to be back.

catalog talk

How do you make something as undignified as a cow bell sound fancy enough for a museum catalog?

Well, first of all, you dig up das ursprüngliche deutsche Wort von der Schweiz. Then you find words not used in the vernacular to describe whatever "artistic" elements you can find. And voilà: "Cow bell (Treichel) on leather strap with applied metalwork, 1813".

b-G-zus

7:19 pm: I had eleven minutes to practice the Yale Memorial Carillon. So I pulled on my right MTB glove and sat down without sheet music. The tritones of "Motorhythmia" began to pummel the campus as my fists pummeled the keyboard, probably audible from distant places where nobody had heard the carillon before (particularly since nobody can pull a fortissimo here).

By the penultimate page, the g1 (above middle c) felt funny. I tapped it a bit harder.

SNAP!

Something metallic flew out of the back of the keyboard and clattered on the cement floor. Ignoring the disaster, I kept playing and then trudged through an unfortunate rendition of "Image No. 2," which is filled with g1's.

7:30 pm: I had to stop for the Festival of Arts & Ideas. Getting down on my hands and knees, I sought the source of the bent metal rod in my hand through the cobwebs beneath the keyboard. The rod proved to be an (archaic) pedal return spring. Perhaps it had come loose?

No. It had snapped cleanly in two.

Should I feel badass for breaking a real carillon during a performance for the first time? Or should I just feel bad for the damage? (No, because the repair dudes were fortuitously scheduled to come on Wednesday, and anyway the pedal would have broken during someone's concert at the Congress instead). Should I worry that my playing has become too virtuosically European?

Nah, I kinda like the idea.

sunrise

Somehow it was a piece of cake to stay up in New Haven until 6:15 AM engaged in intensive writing and design... even though I can't stay up in Mechelen past 4 AM to save my life. Clearly there's something in the air at Yale. Aerosolized caffeine? Or just pure academic energy?

I took a stroll through New Haven to cure myself of a miserable case of jetlag and found my heart brimming with emotions I could hardly identify. I'd always missed New Haven, but yesterday afternoon I remembered some of the precise reasons why. Along the way, I picked up so many summer arts brochures, I could have occupied myself for a week, although I will probably drag an understanding soul along later. I did give in and visit the Ely Slade Gallery while carrying a bagful of Asian loot from the familiar old Hong Kong Grocery on the way home to a third-floor apartment on thoroughly New England-y Trumbull Street.

The diversity of America is such a relief. Not until my stroll did I realize I had not spoken to a single black person in Belgium since my first week of living in Mechelen, when a black lady living there and working in Brussels offered me directions as I was leaving the train for Mechelen, convinced that I was not headed there but to Antwerp (since who would believe in Asians living in Mechelen?). Now I've got two African American roommates (well, one-and-a-half) ragging on the white population of suburbian Connecticut. Thank goodness. Although now that I consider it, my workplace is still entirely white... surprise, surprise, the upper echelons of Yale society.

The openness and friendliness of people is a breath of fresh air. I enjoyed a lively chat with a woman going through Columbia business school on a free ride and a woman who went through Case Western on a free ride on the Metro-North from NYC, and we didn't need a reason to communicate. We just started talking, and discovered we had a few remarkable things in common.

The strangest thing that made me feel as if I had come home was that I had been puzzling for the past few days over a television show I had seen on the Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) when I was maybe six years old and which had inexplicably returned to my conscious memory. The main characters of the show, two children, run into an eccentric artist in an innercity ghetto building a dizzying set of spiraling towers out of the garbage that local residents threw away. I had wondered ever since if the program had described a real person and structure or was, more likely, simply a fantastic story, for that is what it seemed likely to be. Well, the Case Western grad was reading a copy of the New York Times with a photo that I instantly recognized, although I had last seen it perhaps two decades ago. And I finally learned the facts: That program documented the famous Watts Towers in Los Angeles, built by the indeed eccentric and remarkable Simon Rodia.

Welcome back, Tiffany--to your past and your future. And go to bed. It may not bother you in the Yale air, but your fingers are trembling at the keyboard.

GRADUMACATION!

At Elvo's request, a last-minute stub:

Yesterday, on the first true summer's day in Belgium, I graduated with great distinction from the Royal Carillon School (two points short of my own teacher in 1982) and earned the first perfect score in the history of the school with my thesis, a 366-page catalog of the Carillon Museum in Mechelen.

It was a very good day. For a few precious hours, I felt as if I could be a normal member of society again. And now I have accomplished precisely what I came to do: Learn to make music with the carillon, earn the diploma with great distinction, and find a way to go down in history.

Dinner tonight at De Kok & De Proever next door was great. That dessert...

easy

For the first time, playing Motorhythmia felt easy on the carillon. My muscles didn't tire or stiffen up, and at no time did I feel as if I was wrestling with the piece. I just tapped it off the batons and pedals.

Never in my thirteen years of studying music have I experienced a year in which the learning stages were so prominent. So this is what it's like to make music your life.

Pedagogical quote from Geert about playing in St.-Romboutstoren: "This carillon is a monster. You have to play it like a monster."

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...