I was up until 5 a.m. this morning. I was writing. I haven’t felt that motivated to work on a piece of fiction in a long time, for lack of both time and inspiration. It was totally unexpected, but I guess there’s one thing to be said for spending so much time by myself: I feel more compelled to do and to create, if only to keep myself entertained.
So, today I rolled out of bed around 1pm and took stock of my side of the fridge. Prospects didn’t look good. Fortunately, I’m at that phase where grocery shopping is an adventure, not a chore. At home my parents do it and at school, your options were a dining hall or take-out. Going to the supermarket is equal parts fun and challenging. It is a high-stakes game. How do I purchase delicious and healthy ingredients while staying within a budget? And how do I come to grips with what these crazy Brits eat? For instance, they’re not fond of turkey as a deli meat. Their yogurts — of which I recognized no brand names — are thin and runny. They do not believe in Kix, kid-tested, mother-approved. And apparently, expiration dates are hypothetical, because my milk went sour four days early. I remain optimistic. Speaking as someone who is hungry for food and power, if I want an avocado, it’s mine for the taking, and that makes me happy. I’ve enjoyed concocting meals for myself — which I think I’m generally good at! — although I set off the fire alarm the other day. Only Adam was home, and he was in a feverish coma, so he didn’t even notice! So, in a way, if you think about it, it didn’t really happen.
In other news, I believe it was Kurt Vonnegut who once said, “Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.”
I want to go to Georgia. The country. I stumbled upon this haunting piece, and I’ve listened to it at least a hundred times over these last few days. (I’m the type of listener who replays the same song for hours.) I’ve done some cursory research, and they have a sick choral tradition. And what a coincidence that the NY Times should run not one, but two articles about Georgian music. The downside is they don’t have the most stable political situation, but hey, who does? Also, their language is tough to figure out. But a friend who was there in January fully encourages me to go. I’ve got some thinking and reconfiguring to do, but there’s time.
I’ve been to two mediocre concerts in the last few days. Today I went to hear Latin American vespers. Way more fun than it may sound. It was an undeniably satisfying evening, and Ex Cathedra was, by far, one of the most musical and cohesive groups I’ve seen. I also grabbed a drink (ginger beer yum!) with my choir’s musical director earlier this week, which was both lovely and informative. I hopefully will also be meeting a fellow the choir likes to call their “International Man of Mystery.” He speaks about seven languages, has got two Ph.Ds, and is the Gaelic translator for the E.U. He may or may not give me the time of the day.
Rehearsals have been consistently enjoyable. It helps me feel more integrated as opposed to just being this free-floating phantom drifting through the streets. Gives me a routine, something to use as an anchor. I meet people in passing; it’s inevitable when you go everywhere alone. I’ve fallen into conversations at coffeeshops, museums, sometimes on the bus. But I’m more aware of how transient these encounters are, of how in transit I am. In a week I’ll be grabbing a train to Skye. I hope to get at least one day of sunshine! Next stop: Marrakesh and Essaouira, Morocco. Though I am tempted to make a mad dash to Dublin for a day.
I’ll wrap this entry up, but one of the tunes we’ve been working on I absolutely can’t get out of my head. The piece is entitled Airigh a’ Chulchinn, and here’s me singing the melody. This is for you Emily.
xoxo
Filed under: Scotland
I am filled with pasta and pesto and cupcake. I also just heard some amazing 18th century Latin American music today that surprised me, because it sounded at once both familiar (think Palestrina or Josquin) and totally foreign. In some passages the singers would just melt into one sweet dissonance after another, until their voices slowly coalesced into a cadence. However, there were also raucous shouts and laughs during their folksongs. Trust me, these Peruvian rhythms made you want to get up and dance, but the audience settled for clapping along.
Good food and music are two of the best ways to satisfy hunger. But I’ve been experiencing a different kind of desire, one that’s a little harder to satiate. Sometimes I find myself staring at GoogleMaps, zooming in and out of different countries, scanning the terrain, and visually tracing the contours of the landscape, because I can’t contain my excitement. To know that the entire world is before me, waiting to be devoured, is a huge rush. I will myself to remember the distance between Bangkok and Phnom Penh, to memorize the ferry route from Copenhagen to Stockholm to Tallinn. I want to be able to point anywhere on an atlas and feel a tug, whether it’s nostalgia, because I’ve been there, or anticipation, because I’ll be there soon.
It’s odd, because I’m essentially a bit of a home-body and a couch potato. It’s hard for me to get motivated to attend parties on short notice or to visit family friends over in the next town. But Istanbul? Dakar? Tokyo? Sign me up. It’s not the thrill of exoticism so much as it is that I’m a woman of extremes. Go big or go stay home. That’s my philosophy for pretty much everything, and it’s probably most true for travel, art, and love. You know, the Big Three. Anyone who knows me also knows that phrases like “The food’s pretty okay” or “I sort of like him” aren’t in my vocabulary.
YES or NO, LOVE or HATE, DO or DIE. These are your options. That is all.
So, I’m getting to feel very comfortable in Edinburgh. I know what buses go where. I’ve found my favorite coffee shop. I see familiar faces at the supermarket. In other words, I’m starting to feel that tingle, because complacency is pretty much the cue to pack my bags and go. But I’ve got a little over two weeks that I’ve already paid for in rent and concert tickets, so here I stay. And also because there’s still a lot to learn about these crazy Scots, so I look forward to gleaning more insights about, well, everything.
xoxo!
Filed under: Scotland
I don’t always have my camera, but I stumble upon amazing things in Edinburgh all the time.
Man of my dreams
An everyday sort of magic
I spend a good chunk of time rushing off to shows or rehearsals, reading up on Scottish history, and pretending to be a Top Chef. Today is a slow day. The weather’s remarkably sunny and warm, so I’ll go perch on our balcony and read and write and see what happens.
Part III, Discoveries and Reflections:
These charming boys have taken to calling me Jersey.
Adam, Chris, Jorg
No complaints here.
I’ve been meeting with the Edinburgh Saltire Gaelic Choir while also enjoying festival activities. The group’s been around for over a 100 years in one form or another, but it’s gotten difficult to recruit members, because their repertoire is solely in Gaelic. They have around three or four native speakers, and everyone else’s fluency varies. At my first rehearsal sight-reading notes was fairly easy, words, not so much. I listened intently, since they actually worked on pronunciation a fair bit, and any shyness I had when I walked in quickly disappeared as I focused on the immediate task of pulling my weight in the soprano section. Because it’d be really awkward to travel thousands of miles to sing with a choir and then suck. I’m certainly not used to the language, but like any choir singer, I’ve spent most of my time approximating sounds and singing in languages I don’t speak — German, Old Church Slavonic, Portuguese, Latin, Xhosa…
Afterward, we had tea, and I talked to several members. You learn a lot through simple participant-observation and open-ended interviewing. I got a ride home one night from a woman, and I was surprised when she said that, for someone like her who had lived in London, she identified with being British just fine. Clearly the choir aims to preserve the Gaelic language and culture. My immediate thought was that being pro-Gaelic — and going so far as to join such a choir — implied a fair amount of national pride. I assumed the choristers would overwhelmingly be for Scottish independence. It’s tempting to align pro-Gaelic with pro-Independence, but it doesn’t play out that way.
A few days ago I met with Alima, a friend of Katya King, who’s just finished her Ph.D. We talked about loads of things, but I was particularly interested in how she writes about constructions of Scottish national identity in museums. This struck a chord with me, because even in the short while I’ve been living with Chris, who was born and raised here, he’s made a number of offhanded and humorous comments about being Scottish, being (or not being) British, and most decidedly not being English (mostly described as tossers/wankers/!@#$%).
I’ve struggled, because I feel somewhat insecure referring to Scots as Brits. There seem to be a couple of unspoken rules in this game. Although it’s technically appropriate, there are some tensions and undercurrents that I as an outsider don’t know how to fully navigate. The thing is, I’m not sure Chris does either. My confusion is partially due to my exclusion from this group. But I also believe it’s a reflection of the information I’m being given, which is unstable, mercurial, subjective, and contradictory at best. As Chris said, “Scotland is independent, for all intents and purposes, except it’s not.” I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing; it simply is. It’s a political and cultural conundrum, because right now they have all the benefits of being independent without any of the pitfalls. I wasn’t expecting to find so much beneath the surface. And one day, as I fumbled with my words, correcting myself because I had mistakenly referred to him as English, Chris asked me, “Well, how do Americans generally think about Scotland, then?” And I told him what I think is the truth: “We don’t.”
And if you think that’s mean, know that he’s been teasing me about McDonald’s and Starbucks since I’ve arrived.
So, these performances of identity we’re talking about arise in various ways: through deliberate actions taken by a very select group of people, through unpredictable circumstance, or through accident. If you think about it, history doesn’t just exist in a vacuum. It’s always being told by someone, often a very particular someone. And if you consider Alima’s concentration in museum studies, archaeological discoveries are a crap-shoot. The number of artifacts we discover pales in comparison to all that remains buried. Chance majorly influences what ends up in the socio-cultural mythologies we weave. Still, in the realm of what we do know and have at our disposal, what we choose to forget and deny tells us just as much about our culture as what we choose to canonize and to worship. And how we position these items, whether physically in a museum exhibition or psychologically in a mental hierarchy, affects how we interpret and consume them.
Hugh McIlvanney wrote, “Identity, personal or national, isn’t merely something you have like a passport. It is also something you rediscover daily, like a strange country. Its core isn’t something like a mountain. It is something molten, like magma.” These acts of remembering, of forgetting, of bringing things to light and relegating others to dark corners, of hearing some voices and silencing still more: they don’t just happen once. Our histories and our myths, both collective and individual, are changing every day. If that’s the case, then our identities, which are irrevocably tied to these larger cultural narratives, also have no choice but to be in constant flux. Many people talk about these issues far more eloquently than I do (Joseph Campbell, Baudrillard, Lyotard, esp. his skepticism/dismantling of meta-narratives, etc), but it’s helpful to put things in your own words.
And speaking of words, one particular point of entry in this ongoing dialogue about Scottish national identity is that of language. This also provides the perfect lens with which to analyze Scotland’s social and sonic culture. Which brings us back to Pur, the Scottish musical duo who pairs up Gaelic and Scots. Chris says, “I’ve got no problem with people in Inverness and the like learning Gaelic, that makes sense. But down here, it was never the language. It’d be one thing if the two were treated equally, if Scots got the same benefits. [And the same recognition.] But there’s loads of money being pumped into Gaelic, and it’s just a dying language.”
I can’t help but believe that the effort to preserve Gaelic, at least as it takes place in the Lowlands, is partially tied to the larger idea of “Tartanry,” which Wikipedia defines as: the kitsch elements of Scottish culture that have been over-emphasized or super-imposed on the country first by the emergent Scottish tourist industry in the 18th and 19th centuries, and later by an American film industry. Tartanry refers to often misrepresented or invented aspects of Scotland such as clan tartans, kilts, bagpipes, Scottish Gaelic and Highland culture more generally.”
Of course this brings into question the notion of authenticity. Chris believes that this super-imposition of Gaelic is a misrepresentation. To him, it’s nonsensical for Scots in the Lowlands to adopt it now when it was never the dominant language historically speaking and when it overshadows the more “authentic” or historically accurate presence of Scots. One could argue that it goes beyond mere appropriation and moves into a kind of romantic mythologizing of the Gaelic language and associated culture. This perhaps, implicitly or explicitly, relegates Scots to a lower slot in their cultural hierarchy.
Learning and talking about all of this is fascinating. And performance of identity is a particularly apt phrase if what we’re looking at is music-making and how it affects/is affected by such tensions. That was a bit of a hodge-podge of my recent thoughts, but hopefully it makes some sense.
Lastly, before I forget, I stumbled upon this in the middle of the Royal Mile. For your viewing pleasure:
Go Ephs!
xoxx Yanie
Filed under: Scotland
Longer post sometime tomorrow, but just to sum up my last two nights:
Got an epic crash course in Gaelic singing
Teared up at a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass
Danced to a band of awesome buskers on the Royal Mile
Ate one of the 300 or so cookies the lead singer’s fiancee passed out to the crowd. Now that’s love
Saw a cascade of fireworks from the Castle whilst walking down Princes St.
I rarely smile while walking in public, and I’ve perfected the quintessential “F-U face” you get from many jaded city dwellers. But tonight I couldn’t help it, and I’m still smiling.
at the Castle
Filed under: Scotland
Part II, Serendipity
The very same day I met Dom, the South African lady, I RAN INTO BEN KAPLAN. It was one of those random but clearly DESTINED Williams run-ins that result in grabbing a meal, hitting a pub, and just relishing the moment of finding a fellow Eph where you’d never expect to see one. And it’s especially cool when it’s someone who you knew at school and thought was cool, but didn’t really know in a deeper sense. So then you make up for lost time.
My days in Edinburgh are numbered, but I try to live them fully. I cook mostly vegetarian food. I keep track of my expenses (groceries and festival concerts). I do laundry by hand every couple of days. No complaints here. Honestly, if I got bored of the Spartan lifestyle, I could buy a suitcase halfway through my trip. But the perks of backpacking — which can be summarized as a new-found lightness of being — far outweigh the cons. In fact, I can’t really think of any cons. Can you? I guess I’m trying to say, very inarticulately, that right now less = a whole lot more. Only thing I’m missing is a piano. I haven’t been able to locate one, and I’m forced to fill the void with other activities. Unfortunately, I don’t really find myself writing or drawing, but just checking and re-checking and comparing train fares, flights, maps, weather forecasts, festival guides, currency converters. For every. single. country on my list. Because I must plan for every possible outcome. There is such a thing as too much self-discipline. Baby steps.
It’s been interesting meeting the Edinburgh Saltire Gaelic Choir, but more on that later. In September, I’ll head up to the Isle of Skye and then Aberdeen. Chris likes to say I’m ditching them to go “hang out with the sheep-shaggers.” I’ve been going back and forth about my itinerary, but OCD-like tendencies have their upsides. In trying to discern the most time and cost-efficient way to explore Scotland, I discovered that Skye’s Blas Festival actually begins in September. SO, my visit will coincide with a great opportunity to hear Gaelic music. I love when the planets align and just hand you a present that you totally weren’t expecting. And it’s not something ordinary like a Barnes&Noble gift certificate or a nice sweater. This is more like getting a surfboard or a Tiffany necklace, depending on your tastes. There will be a number of Gaelic choirs performing that I wanted to see but couldn’t because of various constraints. The act I’m most interested in actually isn’t a choir but a female duo named Pur. Their mini write-up describes them as such:
“Shona Donaldson and Katie Mackenzie Pur consist of Scots singer and fiddler, Shona Donaldson and Gaelic Ross-shire singer Katie Mackenzie. In 2009 they released their debut album – The Lassies Reply to coincide with the celebrations of Burns in the Year of Homecoming … Both singers perform in their own language but also sing each others language and together, to demonstrate that both languages can co-exist side by side in literally perfect harmony.”
If the distinction they’re making between Gaelic and Scots doesn’t mean anything to you yet, wait for the next entry, and it will.
As always, thanks for reading.
xoxo Yanie
Filed under: Scotland
Since it’s been a while since my first post, I’ll do this entry in three parts, which will hopefully make it easier to digest.
Part I, The Practice of Everyday Life:
Four days ago I woke up to find a Domino’s pizza box outside of my bedroom door with the note: “YANIE EAT ME! If not pass on to Jörg.”
In short, life is sweet. I’ve got two flatmates, Chris and Jörg, who will soon be replaced by Chris’ friend Adam. To quote Chris, “Adam’s from Northern Ireland, so he’s a terrorist.” I’m sure you can understand why I’ll be quoting Chris a lot.
I’ve been here about ten days, and I love every nook and cranny of this city. I remember asking for directions at the airport Information Desk upon arrival, comprehending maybe 20% of what this man said to me in English. Luckily, my ear’s adjusting well. And I remember walking down Princes St. for the first time feeling somewhat frustrated by the rain, by my inability to find free WiFi, and, most of all, frustrated by how all of these main boulevards, no matter where you are — Paris, Rome, London, Buenos Aires — are the same. For a moment, it felt like I hadn’t really gone anywhere, because H&M, Gap and Zara are lining the streets, same as Fifth Ave. And if you need a caffeine boost after all of this shopping, don’t worry, there are about 20 MILLION Starbucks to be found. Sans WiFi. If you’re feeling the least bit apprehensive about traveling, fear not. Count on mass-production and consumption to guarantee that you can leave the comfort of your own home without leaving the comfort of your own home.
Rain put me in a pretty foul mood, as you can see. Don’t worry, things get better. Things get awesome.
So, I walked for a few minutes, vaguely disappointed, until I happened to glance across the street. There was a castle. The Castle. And it was situated atop these beautiful, moss-covered, craggy rocks jutting upwards. I was stunned. Stunned by its beauty, stunned that it was right there, in the center of everything. I was and still am shocked by this altogether jarring juxtaposition of the hyper-modern, hyper-consumerist culture and the preservation of an ancient and clearly revered relic. The castle’s presence almost felt … defiant. Maybe that sounds weird. But it was definitely a moment of cognitive dissonance for me. Of course, I eventually went up to check out the castle, because as Chris astutely noted, “You can’t come here and not see the bloody castle. Your friends will laugh at you.”
I met a very cool South African woman at the Elephant Room (the coffeeshop where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter). It was quite packed, so she shared my table. We talked for a while; solo traveling as women was a topic we were both passionate about. (To sum it up: Women ought to travel alone at some point. It is difficult. We’re conditioned to be “nice” and to never “cause a scene,” even when someone is blatantly harassing us. Unless you’re from Jersey. But you don’t owe anyone anything, especially a stranger on the street. Period.) We talked about how easily your priorities can change when you get rid of distractions like Facebook and cell phones. I’m a bit more moderate than she is — to each their own. Anyway, I love being a city girl, and it’s made me a confident traveler, generally unfazed by creepy men. But the Highlands are calling out to me.
To be continued…
Filed under: Scotland
Tomorrow, I leave the hustle and bustle of NYC and fly to Edinburgh, Scotland for the first leg of my trip. I’ve got one pink backpack, one pitch pipe, and one Little Black Dress. The bare essentials. I wanted to use this fellowship as an opportunity to streamline my life and focus on music. Traveling with a backpack necessitates strict separation between what you want, what you need, and what you think you need. Figure I’ve got the rest of my life to acquire and accumulate stuff, right? Many people would think this a worthy experiment for a young, starry-eyed 21 year old embarking on a journey around the world. My mom laughed in my face. It wasn’t a cruel laugh though, more of a giggle. One tinged with pity and awe at this strange, naive American girl she has raised.
Fully encouraged by her reaction, I’ve gone ahead with my plan. I hope that this pretty drastic (for me) external change inspires some internal transformation. I’m not a spontaneous person. I’d say I’m spirited but not free-spirited. I like meticulous research; I like planning and preparing for every possible outcome. I’m intense and driven about nearly everything, but I focus all of that energy into structured activities with clear goals. It’s not a bad mentality to have, and it’s gotten me far. But I am a little envious of people who go off and do wild, adventurous things (or normal, interesting things) last-minute and enjoy it. I won’t try to be someone I’m not, but I can consciously strive for balance. My mom often references a certain “rigidity” in my character that no one else in my family seems to have, a tendency to be incredibly hard on myself and on others. “Ou gen twop lod,” she told me last week, when I complained about people trickling in late to a funeral. “You have too much order [inside of you].” That strikes me as a cooler, more Zen-like way of saying, “You have control issues. Chill out.” And so, I hope to change in small, imperceptible ways and huge, total-overhaul ways. It’s one thing to know what you want and to go after it; it’s another thing to live your life in a self-imposed straitjacket.
Anyway, aside from these existential ramblings, I’ll be spending my year hearing, making, and breathing music. There’s nothing in the world I want more right now. And I’m sure throughout my travels I’ll discover plenty of chaos to counter all this order.
xo Yanie
