parisianmelon

strophes

2008-10-26T19:04:00.005-04:00

in the semi-darkness, i wait.

"con ella"
pablo neruda
from extravagaria

Como es duro este tiempo, espérame:
vamos a vivirlo con ganas.
Dame tu pequeñita mano:
vamos a subir y sufrir,
vamos a sentir y saltar.

Somos de nuevo la pareja
que vivió en lugares hirsutos,
en nidos ásperos de roca.
Como es largo este tiempo, espérame
con una cesta, con tu pala,
con tus zapatos y tu ropa.

Ahora nos necisitamos
no sólo para los claveles,
no sólo para buscar miel:
necesitamos nuestras manos
para lavar y hacer el fuego,
y que se atreva el tiempo duro
a desafiar el infinito
de cuatro manos y cuatro ojos.

ce n'est pas certain, ce que je serai, ni où je resterai. il faut que j'apprenne espagnole, si seulement pour mieux comprendre les mots de naruda. sa poèsie me touche, je ne sais rien que ça.

rebecca (une étudiante à purchase) et moi, pour quelques semaines nous discutons la philosophie des surréalistes, l'état du monde Artistique (c'est à dire visuel, auditif, littéraire) dans l'époque.

félicit, iván: http://www.ivansolano.com - still "sous construction" mais - le site éxiste!

max ernst
(grazie fewfur.blogspot.com)

here am i

2008-09-02T18:41:00.005-04:00

back blogging in new york, amidst the heat and wasps and clever mice. things start anew tomorrow, i should hear about kobe by the end of the month. i spose it's about as likely as winning the lottery, but i will start to look at chant de linos and perhaps memorize cpe bach anyway.

tai sophia was reposeful, even through the last few weeks of revamping and shelving. the store looks beautiful - props to the crew (david, bien sur, john boland and sharon) and the newbies (christina and kimbra). hopefully they'll live through the rush without me.

the house is quiet, for the moment, and i have a ball of yarn just itching to be started into a scarf. clio felt sicky, so i did a little yoga and am in for a little tv on my computer over dinner before practicing.

cosmic karma

2008-08-06T00:13:00.005-04:00

i don't believe in all the "woowoo" or "wuwu" stuff, howeveryouspellit (rushdie-ism, you've caught me cherry-red handed), but i do hold some confidence in karma. i don't read my charts every day, but i feel like something greater is puppeteering my life. ever get that?

i read a lot, sometimes i get lost in it, submerged, mindfully less than capacity. my eyes hurt from staring at the screen. my finger has stopped bleeding, stopped feeling so numb, but i'm still reluctant to leave the bandage behind. it's a symbol. why don't oboe players constantly cut themselves with reed knives?

people i know are traversing the globe, playing with good people. ô when?

art happens when you're convinced you're doing it. tadeu coelho wasn't far off the mark.

words for thought:

pablo neruda
"ode to ironing"

Poetry is white
it comes dripping out of the water
it gets wrinkled and piles up
We have to stretch out the skin of this planet
We have to iron the sea in its whiteness
The hands go on and on
and so things are made
the hands make the world every day
fire unites with steel
linen, canvas and calico come back
from combat in the laundry
and from the light a dove is born
purity comes back from the soap suds.

[trans. Jodey Bateman]

richard will find something on long island. sean is in love. clio is in germany.

i am here, now, and it is enough.

humming

2008-06-29T23:15:00.006-04:00

i've raided the public library and wake from sleep as from a deep stupor. once my dream had a soundtrack, which was weird because that never happens. you'd think, of course! she musicks all the time, but. it was in florida, reinecke's ondine, romantic and turbulent.

i've been remiss, needlessly. sometimes i have the attention of a fruit fly. the headache from 10 hours in the tampa airport remains. james paced in circles, my dad slipped in and out, groaning at my requests for help with puzzles, i stretched yogically, practically still for a few hours at a time, thinking, trying to stay awake.

i remember once i was walking home from school, 14 maybe, spring-ish, i was lost in my own as usual, singing something to myself, and someone passed me and said "nice voice" and i snapped out of it, quickly. people are listening even when they're not.

another time, i slipped and fell backwards on the ice. my backpack weighed maybe 50 pounds.

i need to go back to paris.

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Now playing: Nellie McKay - Manhattan Avenue
via FoxyTunes

edge

2008-06-08T19:32:00.002-04:00

it's a process- clearing out the clutter, holding onto what sticks, not going blind in the process. on the docket: tolstoy's karenina, pinsky's the figured wheel (am i in a place than can again fathom prose poetry?), and perhaps a dose or two of faulkner.

i crave the quad-ruled, bound pages of the french, the rambling ways of atwood's narratives and foer's plots, the gentle arpeggios of segovia in concert, a clear path in the carpet for a yoga mat.

i want sara bareilles's album little voice for days that are unbearably, unforgivably hot (and it's only early june...), lavender-mint candles for my soul, and a cool breeze on warm skin. no simultaneity necessary.

soon to be: road trip (ish) out to see micah and some nyc-ish kids, in no uncertain order alex conway, tito, justin wolf, nora krohn, and dave vasold, if he can ever come up for air from rebecca's.

here's to friends: alison melville; alex conway; and the incandescent scribbles of sean.

letters

2008-05-30T09:58:00.004-04:00

i speak of cold purpose because the words don't flow like water from my pen anymore.

home is a familiar fog, blurry and bittersweet. people are growing up all over the place, nathan to penn for law school, jane to med school in baltimore, hannah deferring to both of her top choice colleges and trying for a job at tomato palace. i somehow thought (in vain) when i went away that everything would crystallize.

seeing kevin was brilliant; reminded me of my roots and who i was once. he's grown his hair without abandon...and i've chopped mine and now it stands untethered.

i heart a few things these days -- simply orange juice, pomegranate dark chocolate chip haagen dazs ice cream, avocados and fuji apples in salads.

tonight: indian food chez moi followed by the new indiana jones movie in the theaters. attended by my parents and richard the blankman.

Pablo Picasso
Guitar, Sheet Music, and Wine Glass
1912
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio

audrey's gone

2008-05-19T09:37:00.004-04:00

and michelle's basically moved out of our casa.

this week:

today...café mozart with the lovely lisa cohen, clio's viola recital at juilliard, afterparty in the bronx
tuesday...dinner for derin and cesare (ratatouille! among other things.)
wednesday...guggenheim with kevin lubrano (!) then dinosaur bbq in harlem with some purchase kids
thursday...packin'
friday...lunch at jean-louis, possible shift at rebecca's
saturday...cookin for some waitstaff (black beans and rice, homemade guac, sangria?)
sunday....skippin town.

and that, my friends, is how we go out in style.

Cai Guo-Qiang, "Inopportune: Stage One" (2004)

soon to be

2008-05-11T23:12:00.005-04:00

back home in the not-quite-paradise of columbia, md.

today:

ride to nyc on the big yellow buses (tyler wore my hat to keep warm)
concert with pso at symphony space under maestra tania león
quick trip to the store where i not quite raided the produce section for bananas, blackberries, blueberries, yellow and green bell peppers, italian eggplant, onion, and salad greens
dinner of pasta with eggplant, tomatoes, green/yellow pepper, onion and copious amounts of garlic plus some grilled chicken i had in the fridge, plenty of fresh ground pepper and dried rosemary + a salad of mixed greens, blueberries, scallions and dry toasted pine nuts with a white balsamic/dijon mustard vinaigrette (could have been better with warm goat cheese à la bar harbor, maine) while watching a rerun of "reaper"

tomorrow, last shift at the library...*sniff* and lunch parties with fellow circs and tutors. last meeting with carol bankerd (it's been an intriguing semester) and an evening of bassoon music.

i am reluctant to box my stuff up because that would mean that i have to start looking for places to live again. can't i just keep the kitchen and my bed forever? the set up is pretty sweet.

thoughts on projects to come: working for cirque du soleil seems amazing...but what do they look for, exactly? who is ideal? i feel conventional.

i need something to work towards.

when i was in paris, at first, when i felt like a fish out of water (different pond to be sure), i would read tintin comics every day. they had all the old ones in the bedroom. just picture me, in my little lofted bed, reading aloud old french slang.

taken at the hergé centennial exhibition in paris last year. meredith, dina, bevin and i were there!

crossin'

2008-05-01T23:31:00.004-04:00

we are all but curious children. it is interesting to consider what compels us to greet the new day, smile into the mirror, join the pulse.

i dream of toy boats in the jardin de luxembourg - lazy afternoons on kathmandu out of art's dock on the magothy, sun on my neck - baguette sandwiches by the fountain in front of the sorbonne - paris bridges in steady rain - hands in my hair - slaps of sensual "juli-o" - knowing other people's happiness.

upcoming:

flute/tuba/dancers project inside/outside performance clothes/street with susan wheatley, cara heerdt and friend.
orchestra concert with maestra tania león at symphony space, nyc, may 11
flute trio in crystal zagarello's recital, may 16

Paul Signac, Plane Trees, Place des Lices, Saint-Tropez, Opus 242, 1893

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Now playing: Damien Rice - Volcano
via FoxyTunes

what

2008-04-24T17:48:00.006-04:00

what i want is affirmation (or is it confirmation?). i need to know that it's not all for naught, that huge bangles aren't just for show, and that somehow, someday he will love me.

cooper-hewitt's rococo exhibit was sumptuously decadent; the only thing missing was music. why not a stately soundtrack of pieces written under louis XV to give an aural sense of the court? the met was, well, met-ish, grand, wide and open. le grand vestibule qui fonctionne comme un dégagement entre l'entrée et la nouvelle annexe grecque-romande me rappelle du louvre, quand j'étais là avec mes amis pour voir des choses cet après-midi en janvier (ou février?). le plafond est assez haut pour permettre l'entrée du soleil - dans l'évolution du jour, l'angle et la force du soleil changent et éclairent des sculptures différentes. au new museum dans le bowery, c'était assez surprenant que il n'y avait pas de plan ou progression spécifique, comme le moma (c'est pas le même idée, mais quand même...) ou autres musées modernes à washington que je fréquente quand je suis chez moi. ça, c'est pas bien pour le succès du musée pour leur publique parce que il n'y a pas une cohérence claire et alors il y a une tendance pour les gens de se balader partout sans but.

collaborating on projects involves constant discovery, about what things can happen simultaneously (or un-), effects that are extramusically gorgeous and interesting............. very, very cool. this inside/outside thing with cara and susan is bound to be thought-provoking. it's just a matter of buckling down and writing.

do we really feel our ages, or do we just keep living, surviving as before?

enfin

2008-04-19T10:14:00.005-04:00

j'ai décidé d'écrire en français cette fois-ci. j'avais un "night off" hier et j'ai fait du shopping. j'ai trouvé quelques robes (!) et aussi des pantalons khaki. ma colocataire jamie et moi nous sommes allées au film "smart people" (avec le génial ellen page) - c'était bien fait, le dialogue était simple et parfaitement fait. il fait beau (ENFIN!!) ici alors il faut "m'en profiter." il y avait de glace gratuit à purchase "culture shock"...c'était presque un TGIF à oberlin, mais pas vraiment. c'est un truc qui passe seulement une fois chaque printemps; à oberlin TGIF c'était chaque vendredi quand il y avait du soleil. après travailler dans le labo c'était parfait de boire qqch et m'en profiter.

ben ouais, c'est vrai que ça fait longtemps que j'écris en français, et de temps en temps je parle avec raphaël ou emilie à la bibliothèque. c'est assez interessant de m'écouter - mon accent de paris a presque completement disparu! c'est possible que j'avais un accent là simplement parce que tout le monde avait parlé comme ça....................mais ma langue sens lourde, sans capacité de dire des choses. aussi ça prend trop de temps dans ma tête de formuler des idées.

est-ce qu'il y a un remède, mes amis? je ne peux pas payer pour l'avion dans cet instant...... dites-moi.

Monica Fernandex, Gaudi Barcelona, from Organic Cities show at BBC Leicester's Open Centre as part of Architecture Week from 16-25 June.

hahvahd

2008-04-09T06:04:00.002-04:00

art used to call me martha ellen when i was younger. he also had the strongest boston accent i'd ever heard............except he was from maine.

today, early (which explains the hour of this post) crossover is going to cambridge - more specifically to harvard to meet david edwards, dashing author of artscience. i'm skeptical of the spectacularity (spectacularness?) of it; perhaps i've too long lived in the presence of artscience, growing up around my dad's musician-, sculptor- and painter-mathematician friends.

don't fractals resemble human life? i love them. this one recalls angie wood and her octopi.

and so...

2008-03-22T14:38:00.006-04:00

sushi take-out in harrison is amazingly fast. eel-avocado rolls on the train, swigging hyper-sweet japanese drinks, dribbling soy sauce, trying not to choke on the big mouthfuls of rice.

a lovely evening of too-loud music at the bowery, although they made me confiscate my big bottle of water at the door. jerks.

these last few days, every one, has felt like a sunday. this break has a certain timeless stasis that i have grown to love and will be reluctant to let go of.

i think it would be cool to be in a band. it takes balls, though.

tomorrow is easter sunday. i'm not sure how i feel about god. maybe "into the wild" will give me perspective...i like incense and candles more and more now. this kenyan book petals of blood is giving me pause; roddy doyle's the woman who walked into doors is charming and sad.

Georgia O'Keefe, Red Canna

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Now playing: Edgar Meyer, Bela Fleck, Mike Marshall - Old Tyme
via FoxyTunes

buzz

2008-03-16T22:32:00.004-04:00

am i cut out for the restaurant business? these next few months will be intense; this job is demanding in ways i did not expect. arnie has years of experience. janice knows to wear high-waisted pants. james (6'7") is incredibly patient. i can't pocket the coatcheck money anymore.

today the flute trio (alice-crystal-myself) had a coaching on the devienne at tara's house in the city. i had a mug of kona coffee (caf, roasted in-house) with milk and 2 sugars and alternated it with glaceau water (tara called me the liquid lady). afterwards we 4 took a cab to carnegie hall to see roberta michel give her debut. her vibrato is a little high-strung for my taste, but her control of all the special flute effects is stunning. i especially liked a flute and percussion piece called "ritornelo" by brazilian composer silvio ferraz. i think maybe alexa still made her a little whistletone-happy.

the zack browning piece on cadillac moon's myspace (see livelink above) kinda reminds me of an electrified reich with a little bang on a can all stars thrown in.

cure for two dinner shifts (4pm-midnight) = light movie, ce soir: "the holiday."

[i haven't rented half the bergman films i promised myself i would. david edwards' book on artscience in the post-google generation is enough intellectuality for a few weeks, thank you very much.]

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Now playing: Ingrid Michaelson - Overboard
via FoxyTunes

singularly beautiful

2008-03-02T21:48:00.006-05:00

occasionally, somehow, moments - slices of time - will strike me as singularly beautiful: repose between phrases of sweeping bach, the dark penetrating gaze of a small girl with an etch-a-sketch, the whisper of mink against departing shoulders, the glow of a candle amidst broken glass, the clasped hands of a broken soul, the play of light through my blinds in late morning, the sweep of someone's hair across their unwitting back-

they keep me in pursuit.

handel trio sonatas (magnatune classical internet radio)-miles davis "so what" (my copy)

the pace of my days has to change. i need hope.

alive

2008-02-24T13:25:00.005-05:00

with the help of trader joe's fruit leather, frothy apple cider, wnyc 2, richard savino's lute playing, and the john dowland project.

the snow seems to be melting
and the sky is finally blue
not some shade of grey

crossover projects are difficult to consider. my ideas are blurry and still fairly abstract. it frustrates me, this ambiguity. but maybe that's the point.

cristal's garden project is a good one. will it find the necessary campus and community support? a greenhouse is one way to circumvent the problem of winter. i was thinking, though, winter vegetables? i think it would be cool to prep a presentation for the community on the viable plants (veggies, flowers, fruits, etc) in conjunction with a botanist/biologist/environmental someone who would know such things (westchester county park guy amanda knows?).

comments, please leave them...maybe a website collaboration with robin and others?...

buzz

2008-02-10T10:18:00.000-05:00

upcoming this week:

tuesday late morning -- audition for tanglewood music center in new york city;
wednesday evening -- flute lesson with the lovely tara helen o'connor;
thursday early afternoon (feb 14) -- audition for pacific music festival
thursday evening (yes, v-day) -- shift at rebecca's;
friday evening -- fin's solo vocal show at a supper club in the city, staying over at kat's in the east village;
saturday early morning -- audition for schleswig-holstein musik festival

ostensibly, the week from hell. on top of that, long orchestra rehearsals tuesday and friday and two early shifts at the library. tutoring also starts this week, hopefully no one will have hard questions. i'm still trying to recover from not enough sleep and a rotten cold. the house has been quiet with michelle out of town; almost back to the weeks before school when i had just moved in and hardly left the house for fear of spending money.

today: cooking asparagus pasta for the lovely alice jones, afterwards purse shopping.

Paul Klee - Burg und Sonne - 1928

tania the tiger

2008-01-27T11:43:00.000-05:00

friday we had our first rehearsal with tania león, the 5-foot-tall cuban female tiger. i think the entire symphony orchestra should've had a few sit-in sessions with the latin jazz orchestra before rehearsing with her. we're too upright, too classically trained to play ellington, ginastera and revueltas...to be a complete musician, she said, we had to be involved in everything, including jazz. that's true at some places like calarts, where improvisation is expected and experienced all the time, but at oberlin and at purchase, not so much. we have a very limited view of what music actually is.

i've been working saturday nights checking coats at rebecca's. sometime in april i hopefully will go back to side waiting. my biggest tendencies are to get chapped lips and to get dehydrated. i brought one smart water (1 liter), but it wasn't enough, and i kept my burt's bees lifeguard chapstick (red cap) in my pocket at all times. i met the guy who owns the ginsberg pictures. they're amazing - quirky and funny.

today: imani winds at the PAC, 3pm.

i started at the circ desk at the campus library on thursday; i think it will be a fun job. at $10 per hour, handling books all morning two days a week, i'm happy. tutoring starts the week of feb 11.

i've been playing excerpts and mozart expositions for weeks. hopefully some day the fever will break. 6 auditions in the next few weeks, and should i send a tape to banff as security? hiking the mountains of canada sounds good to me.

swollen

2008-01-16T15:21:00.000-05:00

the kat-ful weekend was good. we hit balthazar for saturday brunch - where i randomly saw ami vice - and wandered a bit in soho before heading to midtown for some scrounging of contemporary art. we saw christie's first - kat's famous workplace - they were having an open house. i put on some gloves to look at some koons posters. everyone was looking. we forged on to the frick, which is lovely. kat gets 6 free tickets per month - another perk of her job. it's similar to the isabella gardner museum in that the entire collection is attributed to a single woman. here, portraiture dominates (vermeer, rembrandt, singer sargent, goya, el greco, among many others). notably, hans holbein the younger had an amazing capacity for capturing character with extremely precise drawing. kat described his exhaustive process of sketching (i believe it was him...) before even beginning to paint.

sam met us at kat's apartment in the east village after his day of rehearsals and we headed to dinner at milon, an indian restaurant a few blocks away, while kat took a taxi with tootsie to a friend's art opening in brooklyn. we caught up while being almost blinded by the strings of lights inside the tiny restaurant. kat met us back at her place and we girls changed before hitting gonzalez y gonzalez for a night of salsa!

sunday morning i met clio and andrew for a late-ish brunch at niko's (72nd&broadway). clio has been playing in this chamber music intensive for the last week or so and her classes just started back this week. her concert is the same night i'm working coat check at rebecca's, unfortunately. i met kat at union square and we took a cab to chelsea, hoping some more small galleries would be open. unfortunately, many of the smaller places are closed sundays and mondays (like many chic restaurants), so we regrouped and went to the MOMA (not a shabby substitution).

we wanted to see "27 dresses" but it wasn't completely out yet in theaters, so we rented a movie and got chinese takeout from the place around the corner from kat's house. we chilled with finn, kat's effervescent chic roommate who hails from london over szechuan string beans, general tso's chicken, and bbq ribs chinese-style. i thought the snow was going to come, so i stayed an extra night. it was nice not to have to take a late-night train, anyway. in the morning we ate oatmeal in our pjs and read a few chapters of the prisoner of zerba (purchased at the strand) aloud to eachother.

my dad is right. i need some good walking shoes. i'm going to kill my feet.

will i get into any of these 5 festivals this summer? i wonder.

fresh

2008-01-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

sitting crouched on my twin-sized bed amidst the sounds of across the street construction i wonder: will being here at 17 university place port chester, away from the toxic environment, promise me happiness?

it has almost been a year since i crossed the pond for france. last weekend i met claire and rodolphe in the city for lunch, and she said it was strange-it was as if we had seen eachother yesterday, not 8 months ago. i wish i had disposable income so i could jetset and see them at their respective corners of the universe...but unfortunately, these days my finances are drearily tight.

this weekend, prospective...

friday: "new york idol" - kat's roommate finn is singing; sleep over at kat's.
saturday: galleries with miss-know-at-all katherine cohn, photography at the moma, etc; dinner with the elusive cellist sam van loon, who i haven't seen in a lightyear; salsa dancing downtown at gonzalez y gonzalez perhaps with sam in tow, otherwise with kat and possibly clio/andrew.
sunday: dinner with alice at my new place, perhaps?

a possible 3rd roommate is coming to view the house today. i hope she likes it!

once

2008-01-05T23:21:00.000-05:00

once upon a time, my words were weapons. i rarely had anyone to spar with. now, i make things up less often. i don't have to manufacture reality. too often it disappointed, anyway.

10/24/2004
memory traces of sand escaping
drop by drop until an eventual zero
why are there holes
and not solid ground
gaps yawned blurred edges
banging pans trying to recover faces
voices anything but the void
waking with the dawn
refusing to laugh with the rest
knowing everything that wouldn't be
living cliché hard-boild eggs and salami
gulped down with a malt and a morphine
tricking time at its own game snake eyes
the flip of an imprisoning switch and it's
back again to the unabating infernal waltz
morbidly beautiful tango scepter cast aside
maybe the guru had lain atop his mountain
suspended in his lotus pose cracking lips
wisdom rolling off his tongue no longer savory
sad twisted corrupted and solitary
rusted in sore misuse collecting dust
aubergine tears seized by slow frost

new favorite

2007-12-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

"JUNO."

an evening at the lanz's with the usual crew-nathan scott lynn me alexis lorraine shakoo-and of course madame. fondue and alsatian white wine, something involving cranberry and walnuts for dessert.

rushdie's satanic verses, dumas' black tulip.

rediscovered: golijov's ayre, dawn upshaw, the oh-so-versatile-soprano recently victorious from a battle with breast cancer.

to do: pack pack pack in those festive trader joe's bags. start doing yoga again. brave the hills of westchester. don't think about 20˚ weather. collage. get up earlier. smile.

almost new

2007-12-26T22:17:00.000-05:00

christmas was chez nous: grandma, aunt ruthie, uncle lenny, ben, james, aunt eva, uncle chris, and lukas. for hors d'oevres we had crudités (radishes, celery, scallions, baby carrots, cucumber) with hummus, olives with cloves of garlic, cheese (camembert, comté [my favorite!], etc) and crackers. mom cooked a ham infused with cloves, a turkey breast with accompanying cranberry sauce from trader joe's, and red peppers with sugar snap peas. eva brought a wild rice salad, and i made a huge green salad (mixed greens and escarole) with toasted pine nuts, dried cranberries and sherry/balsamic vinaigrette. we also had date bread and pumpkin bread. for dessert, chocolate ganache from tj's and pecan pie (my mom's secret recipe). oioi. yum.

saw the golden compass on the big screen with my dad this afternoon, after a leisurely morning practicing and avoiding the pouring rain. afterwards, a peppermint decaf mocha from starbucks with banana nut coffee cake. delightful. i was quite impressed by the special effects of the movie - seamless, as is everything in cinema these days. can't wait for the big ice bear fight at the end of the third movie in the trilogy. good character acting, nicole kidman makes a particularly delicious villaine.

gossip girl is my new indulgence. life on nbc as well. on the plate for literature: christopher hitchen's take on contemporary organized religion, god is not Great. i am tiring of sappy tales of romance.

happy birthday, nathan vogel!

almost 2008, how strange.

the case of the salsa nazis.

2007-12-22T23:51:00.000-05:00

i spent the past few days in south beach, miami, florida. i didn't send anyone any postcards.

i went to dance salsa at a place on lincoln road called yuca, which cost me $40 for 2 rigorous hours of lessons and some dancing at the end. there were 6 levels of classes happening at the same time, and i somehow ended up in the highest level with oscar, a slim venezuelan guy with the collar of his uniform shirt popped. he proceeded to teach us a series of moves that involved spanish names that i didn't understand, and i was pretty confused most of the time, having not really had that much experience with uber-complicated twists and turns.

everyone has a different idea of who i am as a dancer, and what i figured out that night is that i don't like cuban (casino) style. it's too smooth, too contrived, too thought about somehow. the circles are weird too. this guy steve who goes to law school in michigan was also mistakenly placed in the highest class and as we watched these people twirl around he said they looked like "salsa nazis." and that would be about right. they stick to their own, everyone learns these formulas. it does provide a certain reassuring base for dancing, but somehow i'm more drawn to the puerto rican (or is it new york?) style, simple, no-frills style. nothing fancy, just hot.

the sun did us good, i think. i read eat pray love, which was hilarious and sad and beautiful, and then jed rubenfeld's interpretation of murder mostly between yesterday and the plane. i went caroling at lynn's house, a yearly event, minus alexis (new york string orchestra seminar, lucky ducky) and nathan (working lights at a rep stage show) and lorraine's viola. apparently she's doing well in the astrophysics doctoral program at harvard. i think she studies stars. i'm just a musician - what do i know?

christmas is fast approaching and i don't have an apartment to move into yet. doris and i didn't work out. tara offered up her studio for me to crash in for a few weeks in january (but o, where would i shower?), and the percussionists mentioned that i could crash on their couch. they would be sick of me after like two days. kind of them to offer though.

also, lee braun pointed out (though as till now i haven't seen it) that on the brandenburg poster in the elevator of the music building someone had circled my name and penciled in "i have dibs." who are you and what makes you think you have dibs? ah, well. if it's cesare, maybe it's ok.

cleva

2007-12-05T22:02:00.000-05:00

upcoming:

"art of the fugue" recording session for deutsche grammophon, windscape + orion string quartet, chamber society of lincoln center tomorrow evening.
presentation of jolivet's cinq incantations, jeune france+rough ritual, friday in class.
sunday, tatyana tenenbaum with the raw and the cooked, multimedia things, at the tank in the village, perhaps bach hors d'oeuvres at a lutheran church (is it jp's gig after all?) with the ever effervescent steve menotti.
concerto competition at school, for which i am playing reinecke. i'm at an unfortunate "meh" point. it's beautiful, romantic music...but i don't even have even a glimmer of a fizzle with anyone.
two movements of piazzolla's exuberant histoire du tango for flute and guitar ("café 1930" and "nightclub 1960"), wed dec 12, 6(ish?)pm.
brandenburg 4 in a midnight blue almost indigo floor-length gown, exceedingly elegant and only $65 at saks, with alice jones (flute) and cal (violin) at the PAC, fri dec 14, 8pm.

and so, it goes. my thoughts dwindle. is milkman gonna die so soon in song of solomon? i feel cheated. i started to read it once. i'm not existential enough for eco. i desperately need a haircut...norman from the aveda non-credit card-accepting salon in tarrytown to the rescue! he requires absolute stillness and some photos of celebrity possibilities. i'm counting on the hudson news at grand central for inspiration. who in hollywood other than natalie portman has short hair anymore?

oh, fie.

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Now playing: Norah Jones - Wake Me Up
via FoxyTunes

is it?

2007-11-27T22:55:00.000-05:00

all a self-indulgent waste of time? because if it is, someone needs to tell me so i don't keep posting.

berio flies in T-minus 20 hours. i will probably wear pinstripe pants. you can't go wrong with pinstripes.

game?

2007-11-24T22:38:00.000-05:00

"lucky # slevin."

"no country for old men" like tommy lee jones. does that shadow of death guy really date penelope cruz? how does she sleep at night?

i know this much is true makes me ache for a twin that doesn't exist. toni morrison's song of solomon sits untouched; i did bozza in three takes at joe's this evening before dinner. i need fingerless gloves. my body won't stop shaking. heat dries me out, and yet a shower leaves me cold.

thanksgiving was not relaxing. my family may be small, but it's hardly functional. i did not buy anything of consequence on black friday. i'm starting to lose faith in presents, perhaps something to do with my rapidly dwindling savings. i need a real paycheck to open a checking account here in new york.

the letters drift across the screen almost of their own volition.

i love ben kingsley, even if he is knighted.

formatting is everything. i convinced myself of this long ago. even if your content is shit, if it's formatted well, at least the thing looks good. does this masters degree i'm supposedly pursuing have any real consequence? did josh hartnett really love lucy liu? he killed those people so quickly. she was so brightly quirky, a match for his flyaway hair.

and with that, i bid you 'goodnight'.

latest

2007-11-18T22:03:00.000-05:00

i feel like i've been playing catch-up.

i guess i have to join the nfa.

this weekend:

Friday_________________

first klibonoff rehearsal for reinecke. not perfect, not shabby.
after the orchestra dress rehearsal, a bunch of us (david, crystal, da, derek, alice), shivering in the brisk november night air, headed in two cars (mine low on gasoline) to the westchester wine warehouse. we tasted (i tried an oak-y zinfandel, aussie shiraz and californian pinot noir), ate bits of bread with tart tapenade, and bought a few bottles. i'm bringing my italian estate dry red and reisling home for thanksgiving.
next we went to seasons for sushi (alice's wise suggestion), i had a delicious roll, eel and cucumber wrapped in avocado. yummmmm.
the concert was pretty good, surprisingly. the program was egmont overture, a little mozart symphony, and mahler 1. the horns (9 strong!) were stellar, the trumpets pretty good mostly. i had heard so many disaster stories, but because dunkel laid back in the performance, it was more of an organic performance.
after the concert, after much deliberating, we headed to stopn'shop to buy cheap booze (because in new york, they sell the petty stuff). then we drove to alice's in david's huge red boat of a car and ordered pizza...nothing like beer and greasy pizza in a warm apartment on a friday night.

Saturday____________________________

train to harlem-125th st, m60 to the end to andrew's house to drop off my flute with clio.
somehow by transfer to the q to canal st to meet nora. dinner in chinatown involving soup dumplings. delicious and cheap.
electronic music concert at roulette (20 greene st), music of anna clyne. we should've brought ear plugs. the live graphics were really amazing, something called superdraw. i saw some timara guys from oberlin teching the show. the world gets smaller every day.
then uptown to spanish harlem to the f b lounge for what crystal thought would be salsa dancing, turned out to be $10 cover jazz, not bad actually, just not the free dancing i thought it would be. i left after the first set, and didn't have money for a cab to get me to 96th and broadway, but the bouncer lent me some. thank god for kind people who worry about young women. i took the 1 train to the bronx (181st) to clio's house. crash...

Sunday_____________________

9h wake-up, groggy shower, hit the streets at 9h30 for the train to 96th. lenny's bagels, i thought maybe steve menotti would show, but he didn't. blueberry bagel, plain cream cheese, and an hour of score study (reinecke, berio, bach e major).
noon lesson at tara's house at 98th and west end. gorgeous apartment: hardwood floors; high ceilings; art and books everywhere; cabinets full of scores; copper pans in the kitchen, clean and well-used; freshly ground coffee...mm.
walk up broadway to 105 to the silver moon bakery, what tara described as the closest thing new york has to paris. their pain au chocolat wasn't too shabby. i hardly had any money left, so i bought a crispy grilled cheese from a little short-order place on the way from the bus stop to the train.

blah blah blah, this is my life, take it or leave it. maybe drinking coffee in new york means that i can bear to let go of a small part of paris, the café + crèpes part. meredith and i had a place in the marais, i think it was 5 or 6 euro. the waiters would stare at her, her blonde, dancer self, mostly unconscious to their attention. so much inherent grace. sometimes i wish someone would look at me like that.

enough of this self pity. sorry the picture of the penguins disappeared. that's happened a couple of times. i guess that's what i get for lifting images off shifty websites.

aces

2007-11-14T00:03:00.000-05:00

brahms piano trio in b major, op. 8 no. 108
calvin wiersma, violin
julia lichten, 'cello
paul ostrovsky, piano

purchase college conservatory of music - 11/13/07 - 8pm

brilliant, stunning. something in julia's playing is so alluring...playing brahms chamber music must be like skinny dipping in the daylight, vulnerable and chased.

i had a bit of a conversation with kevin lubrano tonight. he said it sounds like i'm exploring. lately i've been feeling pinned down, but maybe it's a trick of mirrors.

i need a haircut and a good glass of pinot noir. maybe not simultaneously.

saturday the plan is to go to the city, drop off my musicking things at clio's before salsa dancing, location tba. i have a lesson at tara's house uptown on sunday. it would be a waste of a round trip train ticket and a few hours' sleep to not stay.

sometimes my soul craves silence. maybe the suburbs are what i need right now. someone told me once that new york city would be too overwhelming for me, too soon. what i loved about paris was the possibility. i don't know what thriving feels like.

tara and cat cantin have both said that the flute comes easily to me for some reason, which means i have to give that much more to make the music happen. interesting that that has been said twice in the span of a year in two different countries and languages.

designs

2007-11-09T22:18:00.000-05:00

gregory maguire's confessions of an ugly stepsister, set in haarlem, netherlands, hometown of our very own jp.

we talked about our interviews, and i was reminded of my plank research paper from last year, for which i spoke with l. dean nuernberger, the incredibly inventive original conductor of collegium musicum at oberlin. i sent it to a bunch of friends, old compadres from collegium, while i was in paris, trying to stir some interest. mary larew suggested i send it out to early music america. i'm planning to get a draft of it to jp next week to see how it can be reworked. i don't know if nuernberger would grant his permission to publish it, though. he's modest to a fault.

alice and i had our first rehearsal with cal (faculty violinist at purchase) for brandenburg 4 this afternoon. derek, crystal and i went to the cobblestone for a drink. hot toddy=tea+shot of jack. (too strong for me tonight) good when you're sick and need a drink (think finals week, meeting clio for a drink at the feve, december 2005, bleary eyed and sniffling).

one more mandelbaum gig to go (slight groan)..."paris is as paris was, my son..."

dave's jokes:

how do you get a musician to complain?
give him a gig.
how do you get a musician to complain more?
pay him.
...and more?
feed him.

what's the difference between jazz and blues chords?
blues is 3 chords for 1,000 people; jazz is 1,000 chords for 3 people.

my days are scattered, frayed. i'm not sure what to do with the time i have. hopefully rebecca's errands will fill up a few hours a week, maybe playing a few more gigs...the weather here is drippy, moorish. i want to hibernate, away from the damp, dark cold.

next week, denisov. marc wolf and i bravely take the stage (well, the floor) of the pcom recital hall (nov 15, 8pm) to play some weird amorphous quarter-tone music. stay at least for the 2nd movement nocturne.

stay tuned.
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Now playing: Marcos Valle & Joyce - Valeu
via FoxyTunes

renaissance revolution

2007-11-04T08:32:00.000-05:00

i was supposed to work a dinner shift at the restaurant last night, but apparently there was a scheduling mishap, so handwashing my apron and drying it at the laundromat was in vain. i hate that, disruptions in what i expect of my day. i went home, watched crappy tv, ate eggs and leftover squash, and rented a dvd for $1 called renaissance. it is an animated film noir, with paris cloaked in a murky, smog-ish darkness, something about scientists perfecting an elixir for immortality. i chose to hear the dialogue in french with english subtitles. my french is sore, strange and heavy. i catch snippets of paris in my dreams, slices of what seems now a faraway life.

current books: i was lucky enough to snag purchase's copy of the memory keeper's daughter, so i'm into that, also a book of short stories by raymond carver (i read somewhere over the summer that he was pretty good). the time traveler's wife isn't doing it for me.

the rehearsals for tito's gig are tiring, the music is beautiful at times, but is also often abstruse. i don't know if all the rep will come together in time for the competitions.

what do i want, actually? it changes by the hour.

chagall's memoir is cute, stream-of-consciousness-like. he knew he wanted to create art. i am not as confident in that.

below, chagall's stained glass window at the UN. i saw it when i played the gig there and thought it was tiffany.

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Now playing: Bonnie Raitt - Walking Blues
via FoxyTunes

geek chic

2007-10-30T18:26:00.000-04:00

according to the ever-wise (and hilarious) jordan, i am "geek chic." maybe i should start designing clothes. i draw the line at cigarettes, real ones or jean material, unwashed hair, and angry cause-blazing haters. my idea of politics is fairly simple: support with conviction, and don't criticize those who don't give you the time of day. people find their own way into communities. it's a passive principle, but that's what i believe. so today, o embittered students for "save darfur," you came up short. no signature for you.

for 2 days i have felt like i have a swollen golf ball settled in my collarbone. ginger tea? sleep? tara suggested a gargle with salt, but hopefully some strong ginger infusion will do the trick. "heroes" + dinner involving squash, garlic, mulled apple cider, and milano cookies. not necessarily in that order.

upcoming:
nov 5: interview with patti monson for research&writing class;
nov 6, 11: music of joel mandelbaum at queens college and hunter college under tito muñoz;
nov 8: handdrumming performance (suny-purchase);
nov 15: denisov sonata for flute and guitar (mvmts 1+2) with marc wolf at suny-purchase;
nov 28: berio's sequenza (orig.) for paula robison masterclass at diller-quaile in the city.

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Now playing: Fred Hersch - At The Close Of The Day (live)
via FoxyTunes

spacey

2007-10-23T15:45:00.000-04:00

fall still doesn't feel right.

last night a group of us went to see charlie neidich play the brahms clarinet quintet with the juilliard string quartet near lincoln center. the concert was briefly interrupted for a false fire alarm (they restarted the shapey quintet, which was a little abstract and abstruse, even posthumously). also on the program was elliott carter's second string quartet. a great piece, but as nick gallas wisely interpreted, is too dense to really understand at first hearing. it takes a good study to approach it. i read him for fischer's class at the sorbonne, i'm quite enthusiastic about the way he conceptualizes music, but then somehow his music makes me come up empty.

the most impressive part of the performance was the instrument neidich played on. he had it modeled after mühfield's, the clarinetist brahms heard play in meiningen. he even had it cut from the same vintage wood. the idea was to best recreate the quintet sound brahms must have heard at the end of his life. amazing, actually. the juilliard quartet is a great vintage ensemble. i especially liked the second violinist.

we had our first brookshire midterm (blech), long and moderately painful. bridget, susan and i are going to see STOMP on broadway tonight, taking the train and transferring to union square. derek recommended a great indian restaurant nearby called raj mahal (the east village is his 'hood).

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Now playing: Missy Higgins - The River
via FoxyTunes

approaching...

2007-10-18T23:03:00.000-04:00

friday: classes, second shift at rebecca's.

saturday: parents. my birthday. dinner. lucia di lammermoor at the met (not dessay). possibly the pepsico sculpture garden, or the bronx b otanical gardens for some japanese chrysanthemums.

things seem joyless, grey around the edges. the change of weather, flipflopping crisp and warm, makes my bones creak. maybe fleeing the scene of this life is the solution. for now, i'll read more allende and the time-traveler's wife to steal me away from the earth.

i tried love in a time of cholera, but it didn't stick; of love and shadows on the other hand, was almost epic. i almost think what irene and francisco have doesn't exist in the real world. it's that much more beautiful on the page.

below: kiku, queen of Japanese flowers.

as of late

2007-10-14T11:31:00.001-04:00

the concert went pretty well - good turnout, confused applause for the messiaen, coughs at the wrong times in the debussy. i think maestro dunkel was pleased.

recent reads: vanishing acts by jodi picoult, a tree grows in brooklyn by betty smith, the sea and the bells (poems) by pablo neruda.

from "ode to salt":

Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest,
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude.

i'm pumped to find, on iván's recommendation, chagall's autobiography, entitled (in english), my life. there's a copy at the purchase library!

i love the smell of old books. i caved and bought copies of the master and margarita by mikhail bulgakov (knowing my parents, they probably bought me a copy for my birthday), as well as naked lunch, william s. burrough's chef d'oeuvre, at the campus bookstore. i don't have the money to spare, but...somehow, it seemed right.

this week marks my first of rehearsal freedom - more time to learn daphnis and practice my quartertones for denisov.

first taste

2007-10-07T22:09:00.000-04:00

and so it was, saturday dinner, my training day at rebecca's in greenwich, ct : boot camp for those virgin to the restaurant business. following ricardo from 5pm-2am. she sold out and sat eager diners at the counter. my favorite table thus far is the café table, tucked away in an intimate nook, out of sight of the rest of the guests.

i don't know if i'm cut out for this business. in fact, i have no idea. it will be a good training ground. well-oiled machine, that's for sure...i just hope that it doesn't take over my life. i can't work more than 3 nights/2 nights+lunch/week. it would wear me down.

alice very graciously went shopping with me in white plains to find white oxford shirts and khaki pants. i bought some cute black shoes (mistake). i didn't sit down once (or go to the bathroom) during my entire shift. i was on my feet the entire time. i have massive blisters from those new shoes and my legs are sore.

i sang a gig at a church in the city this morning as a favor to jp (research and writing teacher at purchase), which was a mistake. i should have just slept. my brain was too fried to rehearse with marc in the afternoon, so i took a day. played a little, burned myself with the iron trying to smooth out my new gap khakis, finished reading teacher man by frank mccourt (angela's ashes), still am in the middle of a tree grows in brooklyn, which, derek balcom was right, is a chick book. we have yet to think of an equivalent phrase to "chick flick" that applies to literature.

i saw ladysmith black mambazo perform at the PAC on friday, $5 student rush (nice). they have an exquisite sound that never really varies, velvety polyphony...they sang "homeless" and spoke a lot about peace and love as means of conflict resolution. the original guy who started the group 46 years ago still sings with them. i was so tired, i just closed my eyes and sank into the velvet.

purchase symphony orchestra's first concert is this weekend! friday night, 8pm, PAC. program: martin ballade (crystal zagarello, flute), le tombeau de couperin, debussy nocturnes and messaien oiseaux exotiques. should be sweet.

early morning blues

2007-10-04T07:31:00.000-04:00

underslept and not yet paid, the heavy morning fog is setting a gloomy stage for a day of 3 job interviews, a haircut, and an evening in the city.

1. part-time waitstaff at rebecca's in greenwich, ct.
2. salesperson at chef central, hartsdale.
3. stockkeeping at triboro quilts, white plains.

haircut at eclipse A salon for hair, tarrytown.

evening with lisa & ed cohen at the joyce theater for funky fusion dance.

somewhere amongst all this i have to eat lunch at home and practice my new altès and jeanjean études, and patch boulez memoriale.

busy, à la paris or oberlin. hopefully my zippy little car and gps will serve me well today.

it's not you, it's me.

2007-09-29T17:01:00.000-04:00

i'm at one of those junctures where i realize that i'm the problem. my roommate is sensitive to strong smells, i have a penchant for cooking with garlic and olive oil, but we keep similar sleep schedules and basically coinhabit the space. i am going to have to learn to actually be clean and keep clean. for some reason this was left out of my childhood, this tendency to keep things clean. maybe i resisted it. my parents are pack rats. i am cleaner than sam sharp or colin marsh, but that isn't saying much.

148 n. main was a memorable house, but not for good reasons. charmaine was a good part. so was my invite-only wine&cheese birthday party. with eben lichtman, jazz piano and supporting musicians. steve menotti showed up sheepishly to crash the party. candlelight, good people, laughter, friends. cary cody, kat cohn, there from the beginning. alice teyssier, alex conway, darcy gervasio, my girls. kevin lubrano stopped by. john shaw showed his amazing face.

here at purchase, i feel like someone stole the snow from my snowglobe. suddenly, magically, rug from under my feet, no people. not something that is cured by a late-night stiff drink.

with that, i am going to walk to the dam in these last hours of sunlight and read a little fux.
that's right, the oh-so-seductive chapter on second-species counterpoint.

found, in part.

2007-09-25T19:19:00.000-04:00

saturday. crystal took me to a place called gonzalez y gonzalez, located in soho around the 6 bleecker st stop.

interior, gonzalez y gonzalez
625 broadway

clio and i met at grand central at 10, and took the 6 downtown. the place itself is a restaurant and bar, but they have live music starting at 11:30pm on saturdays.

salient feature: NO COVER. that's right, boys and girls, one of the salsa spots in new york city without entrance fee. the men were a little grabby (but i'm fresh, and don't have a crew), and i had to duck out at around 1 to get on the subway to get the last local train out of grand central.

cheers to david and the fearless john boland of the meeting point bookstore at tai sophia for keeping up with my musings! i miss you guys too, particularly the hip abstract art and fun philosopher finger puppets. i forgot to buy buddh-its before i left (they're probably all sold).

sooo o o o...more letter writing is in order, particularly since i think it makes me smarter. i don't know if that's actually possible, but i feel it.

my hands have been very stiff, and i'm not sure where the tension is coming from. maybe it's karmic. i'm working on boulez memoriale and the denisov, trying to play the quartertones correctly. singing along with a recording helps. sometimes also made-up fingerings for glissandi work better than fingering manuals. especially in the mid-low register. those are easier to fake, i think.

this week, doris is in california, and i can breathe. alice and i cooked tacos and fresh guacamole last night. i'm going to attempt ratatouille tonight. i'm getting nostalgic for france again. my hand hovered over a vat of nutella at the stop n' shop today. i decided that my baguette will have to be happy with raspberry jam and honey. damn, and honey from apiaries from the south of france...and amazing côte du rhône wine...

maybe i should just give it all up and be a writer. move to france, become a food critic. thoughts?

professional, ish

2007-09-11T20:51:00.001-04:00

as i have recently made the error of placing my blog address on my shipment of business cards, i will take this opportunity to pull in the reins a bit, as it were.

projects that will soon be implemented at purchase:

flute+guitar with marc wolf, one of the geniuses behind the record label furious artisans;
a renaissance vocal group, unnamed and unpersonelled as of this moment;
hand drumming class, wednesday mornings, externalizing beats that will better me as a dancer and a human being.

i am a grad student at suny-purchase and dream of scandalizing the masses with cutting edge new music and rarely heard (in these parts) old music. education, for me, is a means by which one may open doors - cliché, but absolutely and utterly true. at some point early on i decided that, whatever the consequence, i would endeavor with a mind thirsting for knowledge. those who regret going back to school should have never been there in the first place. auditing classes is a genius idea: it enables one to learn, stress-free, with none of the stigmas or bad karma associations that come with assignments, grades, expectations, all those tethering things. maybe it is a little haze of mania talking, but i think that heading out to new york alone, knowing no one at the school, moving in with a stranger, was a way of creating newness - even now it seems a little raw - and breaking the invisible cords of what expectations oberlin had for me. premed, biochem, cum bioethics major - these labels, these things, so utterly irrelevant to the shaping of one's soul.

recent flute-related events:

first lesson with the very clever and effervescent tara helen o'connor;
first (not half-bad) rehearsal of messiaen's "oiseaux exotiques" - which, though cluttered, makes for very entertaining listening, if you can pick out the birdcalls and distinguish the groups of instruments through the contrapuntal muck;
ordering of new music - new études (altès and damase, on the recommendation of tara) and a few romantesque french grande solos, which i hope won't break my bank, from carolyn nussbaum.

an aside: it is very rainy in new york at the moment, and the fog shows no signs of lifting. very "secret garden", england, moor-esque. i am reading a very nice book called blue shoe by anne lamott, taken from the popular collection at the purchase library.

the reason that i inject my reading here (for those of you that read the occasional blather) is that i find that literature - poetry, prose, plays, however you take it - is incredibly important for anyone's character. when i was in high school and was required to read a certain amount of heavy-handed stuff - to the lighthouse, black boy, 1984, lord of the flies - i lost sight of that. not that i went straight to faulkner (whom my mother worships, or did, at one stage), proust (whom darcy recently bravely tackled), or joyce (someone i know owns ulysses in several languages), but rather i have taken the opportunity to step back and consider style and form. i didn't love on beauty, for example, but i absolutely adored the center of everything. j.d. salinger turned a little sour, while f. scott fitzgerald climbed my rankings.

conclusion? i am a passionate person with a lust for music that extends to literature and dancing and traveling. the list will probably lengthen with time. i hope this has been an improvement. stay tuned.

in a small tribute to a place i called home for an hour on early friday mornings a year ago...

after

2007-09-08T09:10:00.000-04:00

conclusions after a full day of graduate life:

JP, or Professor Knijff (prounounced "Knife" with a hard "K"), the Research and Writing teacher, is a slight, tall, hilarious keyboard player (mostly organ and harpsichord). He hails from Holland (Titus van den Heuvel's native land?) and has many ideas for the class. Our first assignment is to brush up our bios - I feel mine is too stiff and bland. I am neither stiff nor bland.
Brookshire terrifies me slightly. His class is ultimately going to be an exercise in my patience. I thought species counterpoint would never haunt me again in this life, but it seems that it will be a big part of what we learn in Harmony and Counterpoint class. For some reason, I don't see how emphasizing that aspect of the 16th century has any resonance with us as musicians. Da and Derek were saying yesterday when I drove them to the White Plains Metro North station that understanding species counterpoint affects the way we conceive of musical line...I'm a singer, I think that's basically bullshit. My ear has always saved me.
Paul Dunkel rocks. He conducts the Westchester Phil and plays flute at Lincoln Center. He's working with us for the joy of it, not the money or the glory (both minimal). His tempi in Tombeau are a little sketchy at times - I hope he takes the last movement at the brisk marked 120, or at least 112 - but I think he will whip the orchestra into a fine form. I honestly think that the string players, though intonation in the violins was a little "eh" occasionally during the first rehearsal, are more committed than the Oberlin players. Maybe not in the cello section.

The picc part for "Oiseaux Exotiques" looms in my immediate future. Shopping goals: hangers, for all my jackets and sweaters and somber black clothing, ear plugs so i don't go deaf in my right ear from high fast piccolo playing, and perhaps an Indian buffet at Bengal Tiger in White Plains.

tales

2007-09-05T21:29:00.000-04:00

lately: ghostwritten by david mitchell. i believe it was matt, who lives with kat in brooklyn, who mentioned mitchell after kat almost spilled vending machine coffee on his worn ivory leather loafers in the subway. she snuck up on him from behind.

the flute crew at purchase is small, and i hope will become tight. peter lee is a married, grounded soul who commutes from long island, and crystal reminds me a bit of anita in her friendly disposition. i expect they're all strong players, particularly alice. she seems mysterious, as if she has something up her sleeve. jaime is quiet, and adam is very worldly. i'm crossing my fingers for the picc part for messaien's "oiseaux exotiques" - which, tara and i agreed, totally kicks ass - as well as maybe 2nd on debussy's nocturnes.

class-wise, i would love to sit in on an intro creative writing class as well as a hand drumming class...

for the few of you that rose early friday mornings to catch my radio show last fall on wobc (http://www.wobc.org/guide-show.php?edition_id=1795), i had a djembe show one week and featured a track from a live album by adama dramé (above). if i can't get into any classes at djoniba in the city, i might just have to settle for soaking it up at purchase.

so...marc wolf and i are likely doing some cool flute and guitar things, denisov and bozza, perhaps a piece by francaix. we'll see if we've bitten off more than we can chew rep-wise.

i hear the train at all hours, and sleep fitfully, waking usually at dawn...

oioi

2007-09-01T18:45:00.000-04:00

i am here, north white plains, ny, and don't know anyone yet. i spent a good share of the weekend with kat cohn, lovely old friend of mine and freshman year roommate, in brooklyn. she has an internship at christie's auction house, where she works in the contemporary art division. she hopes for a paying gig after december.

moto
so. williamsburg, brooklyn

kickass resto, its dark interior reminiscent of "triplettes de belleville" (old timey, and the subway is visible through the window in the picture, which is actually the table at which kat and i sat). good shiraz, fantastic pesto panini, even better company.

we then stashed my stuff on the roof of her building (she forgot her deadbolt key) and ventured to soho to find a bar with some really good beer. i slowly but surely got through half of a very good citrus-y wheat beer. during that hour and a half, kat had several wheat beers/light lagers.

i'm a slow drinker. sue me.

we crashed at kat's place, which is gorgeous and high-ceilinged and not quite finished, and then arose 8-ish to meet clio back in soho for some much-needed breakfast. pancakes were delicious, though i am unsure the fresh oj was worth $3.95. kat hailed a cab and we hotfooted it to grand central so i could catch the last non-peak train back to north white plains. 40 min later, i was in my car making my way back to the house.

placement test tomorrow, icky memories of sonata form and fugue subjects...luckily, i held on to mr darcy's handouts from theory 3 and 4, so i should be set for that.

clio has the GREs. i am oh-so-very-glad that the path that i chose for the moment doesn't require that.

"buddha garden" + yoga = love.

briefly

2007-08-29T23:09:00.001-04:00

coming up on my last day of work at tai sophia.

You're going to make someone very happy.
And fat.

Ron, front desk, after tasting one of my apple cinnamon granola and blueberry muffins.

i miss my spot on rue de lappe, dancing aggressive ballroom-style salsa with ray keller, ballet dancer extraordinaire and student at harvard, and eating late-night crêpes on the walk home.

my departure is approaching, and i'm not packed.

surprise.

two-faced

2007-08-24T09:27:00.000-04:00

words from what seems a faraway past:

at times, hopeless romantic with a bitter aftertaste...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
early morning, 9 march 2005

i want to fall asleep by the light in his eyes
submerged forever skips of accordion slow
halting misguided and quaint shimmer of
silliness secret laughter impenetrable gazes
layered teeming with implications undiscovered
subtleties amidst the obvious melancholy despair
solidarity grandiose terms for something so small
escape to better warmer without glare on bleached
snow city streets rife with culture close crowds
misshapen from distortion by pop mania
subsisting surviving on cups of joe and the
occasionally frequent cigarette darkened by
fatigue general societal restlessness thinking
in metaphors dreaming in dirges split open
by half-truths sick lies bitter martyrdom
selling out for a better more miserable life
amongst the fakes fools fanatics forlorn
another acronym for another demise damn it all
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

...at others, glumly sarcastic and frustrated.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
27 mai 2005 , just

pretend plastic wasn't it lovely
whizzing choreography dazzling technique
stolen dreams silent muted blues
offended hardly miffed and alone
those paid to invade other lives do they
find solace pleasure in their dirty work
or does it have a rancid aftertaste
every time distinctly the same
was it out of need boredom these few
scrawled words etched in steady ink
blabitiblah yada yada yada boom boom
oh how i wish all the cards would
fall down 52 card pickup of my life

every

2007-08-15T21:42:00.001-04:00

"I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building."

--Charles M. Schulz, afterthought to Dana Adam Shapiro's the every boy

i almost cried a tear when i finished this book. brilliant and brief, the sweet adolescence of shapiro's narrative hit me hard. i never had a henry every growing up. i always wondered about jonathan and wiley, if there was ever any truth in adolescent obsession. note-writing and furtive hand-holding in darkened hallways was as far as i ever got. danny stole an unmarked bottle of perfume from his mother, and nick made me a bookmark with a few school portraits and permanent marker hearts. when i hit age 11, i got braces and cut my hair, and the dreamy days of boys pining for my quick wit and loud mouth were over. they had wised up, grown out of me, and so i retreated into books i almost couldn't understand (portrait of an artist, too intellectual, secret garden, a former true favorite of mine, a bit mundane) and wrote blindly on lined pages.

henry wrote and color-coded his ledger - my entries are never as precise, nor as complex. i crave the expression of a written word, and so i write, not knowing what comes next.

"ratatouille," though it lagged at points, was simply delightful. the scene where he is chased along the seine reminds me of the night i tripped on a rat coming down some stairs with a certain someone. except the rat in the movie charmed the heck out of a gloomy, stubborn food critic. the one i saw just made me shudder.

teaching flute to caitlin this weekend, but this time i have a sweet ride, a silver honda fit. it still smells new, but it's half-mine. i keep it locked with a purple club that i hope will keep it from getting nicked in new york.

here's to discovering the smallest, darkest salsa clubs (that don't persist in playing crappy bachata and too much merengue) in new york city, and maybe an african dance studio specializing in congolese dance.

well,

2007-08-14T09:51:00.000-04:00

the trip was stressful, but worth it. the place in rye is too beach-y for me, not to mention pricey, and sue is a career smoker. the apartment in tarrytown costs twice as much as i thought. 2 closets, king-size bed, private bathroom...i loved the place in north white plains, though, but doris hasn't called me back. i'm taking that as a not-good sign.

it looks like things are falling into place for transferring my credits from paris. perhaps i will receive my diplomas from oberlin come christmas...the most important thing, though, is that my transcript be sent to suny-purchase so i actually have proof that i completed my undergrad education.

for the audition for chamber placement, i'm thinking the first schumann romance and the 3rd movement of cpe bach's unaccompanied a minor sonata.

the covered-up blackboard wall at tai sophia resembles rothko's untitled (orange & yellow) (1956). david thinks another paint job will do the trick, but i think it looks rather...intellectual.

recently: water for elephants by sara gruen. she is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant at telling a story. i read it last night almost in one go.

so, so...

2007-08-09T20:23:00.001-04:00

i leave for new york saturday morning. i have 3 apartments visits saturday and one on sunday morning. i'm pulling for the place in white plains - $400/month with 4-5 hours of french tutoring to an already bilingual (spanish/english) 4-year-old. perfect. even if i have to use a laundromat.

lunch with carol reggia today kicked *ass* : fresh guacamole (aguacate, cebolla rojo, tomate, ajo, zumo de lima), chorizo, black beans and rice (lesson = soak beans overnight) with a salsa soundtrack. dessert, brought by carol, mango with fresh lime juice and dark chocolate.

"stardust" premieres friday. the meeting point bookstore has gone under an extreme makeover, involving gondolas, which i assumed only referred to boats on the canals of venice, new paint jobs, and tearing down lots and lots of boxes of new textbooks. my workout of the day. ha ha. it wouldn't be so sad if it weren't true...

road trip! hopefully richard will burn me some regina spektor cds (her older ones), yo yo ma bach cello suites, perhaps some brahms violin sonatas, and india.arie's confessional, bien sur...

really?

2007-08-03T21:21:00.000-04:00

so strange for a girl my age to like to cook? if i cook, sue said she'd do my laundry. $1000 is a little steep on rent, even if her ranch house in rye is near 2 beaches...so still no definitive news on apartments.

examples:

today's lunch = half/half whole wheat/regular penne, sautéed bell pepper (red, yellow), onion, canadian bacon, garlic, parmesan cheese, made before i went to work in the morning;

the salad i proposed to john = raw spinach, blueberries, toasted almonds + balsamic vinaigrette (olive oil, strong balsamic vinegar, mustard, salt, freshly ground black pepper)

i'm not bitter. i'm just deprived of close contact.

when i talk about living in paris, it seems like a few months of my life were on someone else's dime. maybe i didn't value the experience enough while i was living it, i don't know. i was too busy soaking up all that i could from all the different sources - sorbonne musicologie, michel fischer, michelet monde islamique, cat cantin, m-a letellier, pascal odille, cheminals, solano - that maybe i forgot to just be. to just exist, you know?

erin wang said recently that i paint with words. i avoid it sometimes because it hurts, but maybe that means i'm deconstructing something real.

vonnegut's welcome to the monkeyhouse is superb, and it gets me through the long days of work. that, and i put on trio medieval's stella maris album when there's barely anyone in the store. keeps me sufficiently entranced.

an absolute nobody.

2007-07-27T21:54:00.000-04:00

I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting.

JD Salinger, Franny and Zooey

maybe it's salinger's (franny's?) cynicism that helps me along this literature binge. next in line is vonnegut and possibly steinbeck, if i can get my hands on east of eden.

the renaissance group has yet to be named, but repertoire ideas are flying around - monteverdi (brookshire), ingegneri (gideon), lasso (thatcher), machaut (me) - now we just need bodies and a rehearsal space.

yum yum yum, indian food. good company and tasty leftovers.

new piccolo! burkart world (manufactured in china) with a wave headjoint - responsive with a percussive low register.

i'm starting to develop short story ideas...bought myself a little book for writing catchphrases, maybe a direct result of this wild, tumultuous summer spent between plot points and thin pages.
what defines an installation? a vibrant explosion of mixed media? something is happening in budapest, and they won't even know what hit them.

at last...

2007-07-22T11:38:00.000-04:00

"Because, Martha, life's too short!" (Covent Garden, London, 12.07.2007).

i have realized that i have been duping myself. existence is as good as you make it, and you have to do what you love (anya, front desk at tai sophia). i've been trapped in my own delusion, which had til now made me wonder what went wrong. perhaps harry potter and the deathly hollows, 750 pages finished in just over 5 hours of reading (but who's counting?), broke the spell. not quite sure. whatever the case, it's time to blink my sleepy eyes and snap out of this bog in which i've been slowly treading water.

claro (def.)

new york will be a continuation of something i start here, now, this moment. african dance liberates my body; playing flute, my mind; writing and collaging, everything leftover. the spark is back - now i just have to run with it.

not so out of luck

2007-07-15T22:10:00.000-04:00

i have a job now, at tai sophia institute, an acupuncture school about 20 seconds walking distance from the applied physics lab, where lynn has been working this summer. i make coffee, clean various surfaces, and sell people books and herbal supplements. my boss david is cool, very experienced in the book selling business. i try to bring positive karma to the store. so far it's working.

today my parents and i saw "the witches of eastwick," an awesome new musical that is in its pre-broadway stages. it closed tonight at signature theater. anyone remember the movie with cher, susan sarandon and jack nicholson? same plot, and the actors in this version are particularly delicious in their roles. hopefully a good portion of them will carry it to tinseltown (is that new york's nickname? i always get it confused for the nickname for paris, which i now know thanks to aunt eva is "the city of lights").

i have a certain amount of trepidation about carting myself away to new york. it's an inevitable change, i know. working in the box office at the arts center, interning and/or dj-ing at the radio station, forming and directing an 8- or 10-member renaissance group sponsored by the harpsichord professor, playing flute consistently and demanding more of myself - will it be all that i hope for? will i be able to get down to the city on weekends with any regularity? frequent art galleries and new music concerts? fall in love with the woods and remoteness that is purchase? drum up enough money for airfare to france to see important people?

hm.
as usual, too much worrying.
just read kite runner and have been listening to india.arie's "confessional" sans cesse.

fireworks and placing blame

2007-07-05T22:55:00.001-04:00

working a 15-hour day is hard.

what do bottle rockets actually do, anyway? i know you're not supposed to hold them in your hand when you light them, at least...

my parents are at the beach for the week. i have the house to myself, and i jump at the sound of my own voice. my thoughts are louder. i'm thinking takoma park tomorrow. maybe looking at vintage clothes and drinking a good strong latté will kick start my weekend.

i am in a rut, and am solely responsible. today, micromanaging myself while smothering myself in colorful nonlocal raw vegetables and non-bottled water, i realized that. i also read janet frame's scented gardens for the blind during my brief stint at the fireworks stand off richie highway in glen burnie (we were there for the big storm - no tornado, but it thundered and hailed). she totally threw me for a loop in the last 4 pages. wicked, that one!

j'ai modifié la langue de blogger

2007-06-25T23:16:00.000-04:00

and i'm changing my own personal font. touché. the scientologist dental practice people claimed i "wasn't a good fit" for the job, which is probably true. i don't know. perhaps i intimidate people? i've seen certain sides of the world that i am proud of, but that doesn't necessitate showing it off. so i'm back on it, trying to find a job, i dropped off my resumé to a few salons and local coffee shops and restaurants. it's discouraging, mostly because i thought i had something.

saturday richard and i are heading out to blues alley to see tim reynolds (blues guitar). tickets were a bit pricey, and the overhead for food and drink is a little steep, but we've never been, and it's supposed to be quite a place.

i might head out to an african dance class at the howard county arts center saturday morning. they have live drummers.

if i get a job, am i still allowed to be kooky? i guess i should close myself a little more.

mr. sleepy

2007-06-16T23:20:00.000-04:00

sound of the squeaky shower head
yellow shag carpet on naked feet
faint pervasive smell of cocoa butter and garlic
errant blueberries the taste of white gold on my chin
hum of the turning refrigerator smooth cracked leather
sleeping barely waking grown restful from disuse
the telling crunch of a cherry tomato guessing wrong
things familiar churning mulling it all over was it fixed
given a tell smudges on the mirror of my childhood
nightly hoping for spiderbites sign of nightmare
marks of bitter reality an excuse to sweep away
remnants of the past on my windowsill frozen fixed
flushed dripping sweltering dans l'air climatisé
biking paved suburban circles alone mid-morning

some drinks

2007-06-14T12:03:00.000-04:00

mardi soir: café de paris, under the auspices of eric, richard and i rolled out at 9pm, i think i psychologically ignored eric's suggestion that i arrive from 5:30-8:30 to see the jazz...needless to say, when we arrived the musicians had packed up their instruments and gathered up their tips. we each had a glass of dry cote de rhone wine and talked things over.

plans for next week--dinner at iron bridge winery (which reminded me from the pictures on the website of that winery i stopped by but didn't drink anything at in the 16th arrondissement, was it? with manou?), maybe also a movie at the charles ("waitress"?).

in the farther future, we're planning a dinner party at richard's place (more space and no interference of my parents, a definite plus), perhaps indian-themed? although we wanted to have wine, with richard handling the wine pairings of the dishes...we'll see.

last night: happy hour with some obie alums in the d.c. area at café citron, down by dupont circle. oliver mains! cristina jardine! becky davidson! fabulousness. it was lovely to see oliver, it had been a while, and cristina met him for the first time and they became fast friends. we're plotting some cool things, maybe movies on e street or dinners in bethesda/silver spring.

cristina had a mojito (they're known for them there), i a corona with lime, and after schmoozing a little we left in the pouring rain (i had my little plaid umbrella with me, thank god) in search of a restaurant. we ended up at a good mediterranean restaurant, i had something involving beef and eggplant, although i was disappointed with the result, and cristina had a spinach and cheese pizza-type entree. blue moon for her and a glass of red wine for me.

we left late, my fault because i talk to much (obvi). it took me a while on the metro (like paris, at night the trains run less frequently), and i changed at chinatown (as did cristina, but she to the yellow line in the opposite direction) to the green line and took it nearly to the end. there was a bit of a mess on 95S past the 32 exit where i got off, i'm not sure whether it was an accident or what, but i was tired and the flashing lights woke me up a little. i was home by 11h30 and in bed by 1.

on the reading list: the tent (m. atwood), some plath poetry, if on a winter's night a traveler (i. calvino)

cooking tonight: ratatouille (2e fois) avec de l'ail, aubergines, courgettes, tomates, poivrons (rouge, orange, jaune, vert), herbes de provence. yum.

no más! my first night at café de paris.

2007-06-10T00:00:00.000-04:00

eric (owner of café de paris) m'a dit que je pourrais "observer" the staff d'une fête ce soir. quand je suis arrivée, j'ai rencontré nikki et jessica, deux soeurs qui travaillent ensemble au café. j'ai aidé nikki dans son boulot, qui était de servir une fête de 25 personnes pour l'anniversaire d'une femme. quand j'ai demandé le nom de la femme, elle m'a dit "paula micka" et j'ai commencé à rire! mon dieu, c'est mon ancienne prof de français au lycee, quoi!! alors c'était un gros plaisir de voir son mari, qui est malade depuis quelques mois, et sa fille, et tous les gens qui l'aiment beaucoup. je n'ai pas gagné beaucoup d'argent, mais vraiment c'était très sympa, avec tous le staff et les clients. j'ai aussi l'écrire une lettre quand j'étais à paris, mais elle ne m'a pas répondu, mais je comprends maintenant que c'était à cause de la maladie de son mari. je ne sais pas si eric va m'appeller toute de suite, mais j'espère que je peux travailler là-bas pour les petites fêtes comme ça, c'est quelque chose que j'aimerais bien faire.

it's also good practice for my french. still no wifi hub-thingy for my laptop, so i'm stuck using all the shortcut codes for french accents. i wish i had a blow-up team of guys that would help me unpack and reorganize everything. it's a huge job, and i'm intimidated by it.

quand-même, il faut que je trouve quelque chose comme "full-time job" parce que ce serait impossible pour moi de gagner assez d'argent comme ça. pour aller à new york, il faut jouer beaucoup de gigs (qui n'existent pas) ou travailler dans une boite que je déteste. je connais presque personne qui pourrait me donner un job, alors...idées? quelqu'un sage?

multiphonics across the atlantic

2007-06-05T23:10:00.000-04:00

how is it that some women can contort their abdomens like that? i saw a thing on maryland public television (they were promoting a dvd) where they were combining yoga and bellydancing. it's beautiful and ugly at once. i'm starting in on ismail beah's memoirs of a boy soldier.

david's natural market is a no-go - they've hired for all positions for the summer. la madeleine and donna's are still possibles.

i got business cards printed and intend to draft a one-page resumé and run them around to local schools and maybe mail them to hotels that host events that might require music. solo flute might not be their style, but i think michael beharie (guitar) is coming back into town in july. will we get gigs? this isn't new york...

my dad sleeps chaotically when tired, snoring noisily, open-mouthed.

yoga, more unpacking, and a new paganini caprice tomorrow. 2nd movement of poulenc. i am enjoying the freedom of controlling the repertoire i work on. i'm brainstorming about the larrieu competition in nice - we'll see if i can lay down a few tracks good enough to send out for the preliminary tape by the end of july.

pondering the latent humidity (no metaphors)

2007-06-03T23:30:00.000-04:00

my body is dissipating between the slats of my childhood bed. i miss the fast pace of the city because it forced me into motion. here, time slips away without a schedule, without a trajectory. swimming through dense jelly with leaden boots. it's been difficult to surface.

writing helps. playing will too once i settle into a pace. any tips from the wise? i've been looking for jobs, right now the crêperie at café de paris sounds the most promising. gas is up to $3.16/gallon, still cheaper i know than europe, where gas is sold by the liter, but quand même $50 for a tank of gas is obscene. french feels heavy on my tongue, like someone gummed it up and threw it back. tomorrow, a new day, a new week, perhaps i can figure out where to jam all these things i have into some sort of organization? it will take inspiration. i'm getting a haircut, maybe i'll come out with a clear head.

i missed indian buffets in france. scene of today's crime: house of india on snowden river parkway. chicken tikka masala, pea curried deliciousness, naan bread, sweet lassi, many other delights whose flavors bled into eachother and simmered into my mouth. i will sleep tonight without pause. the narrative of "inheritance of loss" bleeds into my dreams. sylvia plath's poetry sits darkly in the corner of my mind.

comment as you will, mes amis. pointers from slices of your life, outlooks from across the ocean, all much appreciated.

lately

2007-05-28T23:10:00.000-04:00

1. friday: return from paris vers 17h to the states, one large valise m.i.a. with all of my clothes, sauf my beautiful graduation dress and button necklace that matches it perfectly. chinese takeout (string beans and kung pao chicken, 2 of my all-time favorites) and then dropping a few old things in my small suitcase (vide of all the books and music) before hitting the road for pennsylvania.

2. saturday: arrival by car vers midi to oberlin, oh, for the conservatory luncheon. i think many were surprised to see my cropped hair/open smiling face...i dashed down the chicken salad (still quite jetlagged and on a weird meal schedule) before going to meet up with my friends alex and darcy in tappan square.

we did nothing, sauf bavarder et relaxer, in wilder bowl on benches before heading out to clio's for a little reception at the old apartment (316 w. college). everyone was there, all the old dinner party crew - gwen, solon, elisa, stephanie, lilly - plus wendy, of course, and affiliated family members. lots of clio's clan. yummy warm pasta salad with cherry tomatoes and cheese; double gingerbread with crystallized ginger (a personal favorite of mine that clio makes so well); raw veggies and plenty of delicious fresh fruit and juices.

after, the commencement recital part I (meh); swing dance at wilder bowl (free, live band, fun to see and dance w/ brandon ramos and daniel who lives in nyc); dorm room with darcy, chatting about life, just like barcelona/fez!

3. sunday: leisurely morning, breakfast at oberlin market (soundtrack: stevie wonder!!) - chili/ cumin bagel with strawberry jam, chai with milk and honey; shuffling around with kitchen stuff that clio and i decided i would take for my place in new york...

wobc open house for a t-shirt and 2 stickers (one with an old design to replace the one i lost on my green nalgene before leaving for france); chem open house to see all the kids that i missed (zany mia casale and david smith, eben lichtman, rishana cohen, manasi bhate, all my old profs -- ackermann, whelan, elrod, craig)...

then i wandered around a bit before finding (trouver! god, my franglais) some friends to sing with at nuernberger's house. the crew ended up being steve lind (bass), noah horn (tenor), sarah allen (soprano), and zoe weiss (alto/tenor) and me (alto/soprano). we really needed another tenor, but i think he was truly thrilled to have us sing in his living room. it was intimate. i liked it.

caught a ride with noah and relaxed a little in front of gibsons before doing some shopping in town (earrings from the bead store, cards from ginko gallery, another green nalgene [how could i resist?] from dave's army/navy) and grabbing a feve burger (grilled onions and avocado), great lakes beer (local to cleveland), side salad with mango-lime dressing and a side of tots. i didn't finish everything, but it was delicious!!

i was somewhat courted while drinking my beer by these 2 musicians from new york city in town to see their bandmate graduate (they play klezmer music)? i got the business card of the mexican violinist, he sometimes plays gigs on broadway, i thought he might be a good contact? because really that's what it's all about, i think...

met up with the parents for the second part of the commencement recital, in which solon, clio and johanna played the lovely slow movement from the symphony concertante, alice/jon a great xenakis duet (flute/percussion) and stephanie washington sang a stunning rachmaninov set.

4. monday morning: graduation!! i was right behind the lovely sarah allen (who got high honors in neuroscience, p.s.) and received an envelope with nothing in it, sauf a little thing that said "your diplomas will be in the mail" once we receive the appropriate things, blah. but i got to walk anyway, and shake people's hands, and feel like college was actually over. which it is, and that's a little frightening.

back to france?

glittery aftereffects

2007-05-23T14:02:00.000-04:00

joyous because i didn't have schenkerian analysis tonight. i left early, grabbed a crêpe sucre on my way down st michel (my flute on my back, after going to my last cat cantin lesson and my final islamic architecture class ), and waited around for 15 or 20 minutes expecting people...and then vaguely remembered my prof had assigned the rest of the class projects and wished me a bon retour aux états-unis last week...

but - some things restent sur mes épaules, unfortunately. the rest of this islam dissert, and something about domaine musicale and the total serialists of the 1950s, i like to wave my hands about it but it has to get written tonight. then pascal's final tomorrow afternoon, is it worth looking at? memorizing a few titles of salient oeuvres? meh, is what i say...things are coming to a rapid close, and like i told him earlier tonight, if i start packing it means i really have to leave. i'm stubborn.

inevitably, mes derniers jours il y a de bon temps en paris. sans doute god's way of saying "stay, martha, stay!"

jeudi vers 22h/salsa-ing/balajo/1o€ cover/anyone who can give up their dignity and shake their collective booty. it's my going away party i'm holding for myself! (encore)

wishing on a star

2007-05-20T04:04:00.000-04:00

and so it was bench watching the sun glaze the seine
dizzy with nervous energy this man this voice
unassuming letting the mic pick up the little notes
funny glissandi scales chord progressions interwoven
all his household fights dissipating into beatboxing wars
passing down his incredible lineage cultivating what they had
two rows between bodies into it singing along bopping delighted
long braids clasped behind his head lights creating a dense jungle
light touch of the accordeon player musicians at play
improvisational banter so simple and yet complex incredible ears
pure joy the glee of musical conversation spinning audible threads
imagining bobby mcferrin in the metro on the bus divining up
webs of sound melodies mind constantly humming i do pretty
well til after sundown my heart is still with you
midnight knows it too near the village the peaceful village
where troubles melt like lemon drops thats where you'll find me...

crusty bread, the smack of balsamic vinegar, and honey from the south.

2007-05-16T16:23:00.002-04:00

the latter in a thin layer over a carton of yaourt nature (activia, danon, the green one). these are staples of my existence chez cheminal. shoutouts to those who have written me letters, i think i wrote more to you than you did to me. i've been getting writer's cramp lately, filling out neverending paperwork for the abroad program whose credits don't really count for much at oberlin except to say that i did something in paris and taking frantic notes in the cm section sur "les dynasties en inde" so as not to make an ass of myself when i decide it's a good idea to open my mouth and answer one of her questions that she so intimidatingly leaves suspended in the air for 10 or 15 seconds.

warning: the following text is french, because i'm having writer's block in english. ça arrive de temps en temps.

cet après-midi j'ai vu meredith benjamin, finalement, une camarade de cupa (pour manger un crêpe chocolat et prendre un café crème dans un petit café que nous aimons bien sur rue de rivoli et pour discuter la vie d'une parisienne) qui est maintenant en train de finir un dissert de 12 page parce qu'elle part demain à londres! et c'est un jour ferrier demain, alors il n'y a pas beaucoup de bibliothèques ni magasins qui sont ouverts - tant mieux si elle peut le finir ce soir. moi, franchement j'ai complètement peur de commencer mon dissert pour "le monde islamique," parce qu'il y a un article que j'ai trouvé dans le journal muqarnas de 1996 qui était écrit en anglais sur l'architecture de la mosquée à al-azhar. c'est mon sujet, mais il faut dire l'information 1) en français et 2) dans une autre manière. il faut que je trouve un autre traitement de l'histoire de la construction et la renovation de la mosquée, mais il n'y reste pas beaucoup de temps pour le faire...alors, il faut que je sois prudente, et que je ne ressasse pas trop sur ce que je vais laisser ici...

frolicking and trying not to panic

2007-05-14T19:15:00.000-04:00

oola...maéva was crying tonight, i think she was absorbing some of my stress...my body is collapsing inward, not so much from the stress but from the utter lack of planning and the fact that the time is just evaporating. how is it that it is 1.15 am on may 15? perry j o'halloran blew his happy british swaggering self through town this weekend, really helped to clear my head but at the same time screw my head on straight. i have this little gnat buzzing in the back of my brain saying "wouldn't you just love love to stay in france, work at cité de la musique and do your doctorate in musicology with michel fischer whose name is so very close to that of a southeast asian history professor i had for a winter term advisor freshman year at oberlin? who did his doctoral thesis on polymodality in the music of messaien?"

...but i digress...he is in strasbourg, i am in the city trying to sweep out my brain of all the extra stressors and distractions. bnf was a success this afternoon, and if the stars are aligned i will wake up, get the right score to xerox from michelet, print everything out, and make it to the sorbonne by 11 am.

see you at the finish line! prance, prance, prance.

bull castration

2007-05-08T05:27:00.000-04:00

i added a sticker to my small grey nalgene: a spanish bull, apparently, bought by the roman amphitheatre in arles (provence). the weekend with my parents was fun, if stressful, and yes, i can read a map, quite well actually, even if i'm nul at determining distances.

i saw these pinchers that castrate the bulls, also - ouch, poor things.

suny-purchase next year for my masters with tara helen o'connor (anyone familiar with dawn upshaw's golijov disque "ayre"? she plays on it with the andalusian dogs). i will find people to sing with, and maybe even will get to play with gulia and clio (they'll both be in the city) and frolick the streets with katherine cohn, my longtime something of a soulmate.

jonathan from québec is coming to paris this weekend, as is my friend perry from london from french woods! hooray! i think some good chinese food grâce à ching-min is in order for a group of 5 on saturday...

more soon...plagued by work and thoughts of not leaving...

bites

2007-04-30T17:53:00.000-04:00

information may be withheld from this post to protect the identities of those involved.

friday was the scene of something spectacular. bevin turned 21, and scared iván away with her girls' night party (we went to 2 bars and everyone got home safely [mostly] by noctilien).

i saw some dolce&gabbana pocahantas couture, and my oberlin pc-ass was offended. i immediately thought of the fact that they were profiting from the objectification of a culture, but then...so did disney.

i have a rather shadowy dark photo of the two phallic symbols of paris (concorde, eiffel).

donatoni was baaaddddd. not enough rhythmic integrity. i am constantly tempted to spell rhythm "rythme" because that's how the french do it.

after jolivet's "chant de linos" what was on the menu? boulez's sonatine for flute and piano. i haven't played it (yet) but i saw cantin do it at palais garnier with pierre-yves artaud. is that his name? the pianist, whatever his name is, the famous one that recorded with susan graham.

my mom lost her purse in the park by cité universitaire the day of iván's concert. i went to the concert, they went to the police and to the hotel to cancel credit cards and put a hold on their bank account...and then iván went back and recovered it from the security people at the park. my hero. 100,000 points. drink (café au lait for us, limonade for my mother, beer for my dad), dinner (pasta for the ladies, red meat for the men) with chilled (blech) red wine, ice cream at that gelato place in odéon (yummm, i had chocolate and mint that looked like a flower, but iván's was prettier and bigger), and then resting on a bench by l'institut de monde arabe.

pâtisserie and a huge gothic cathedral. plus a crazy québecer and a kiwi.

2007-04-26T05:29:00.000-04:00

the bus granada-sevilla was...a bus, i bought a book of sudoku before leaving (which i quickly got bored of and dozed off). i sat next to this stylish blonde girl who was reading a spanish magazine with a small translating dictionary..."the client" was the movie of choice for the 3-hour ride, and it was subtitled in english (dubbed over in spanish), lucky for me...not a bad film, susan sarandon and that kid who probably didn't have a career after that movie, and that guy from ER who had cancer played the lawyer's assistant. oh yeah, and tommy lee jones in this hilarious role as a gospel-blabbing DA from louisiana. i was laughing, clearly an anglophone, and when i got out my printed out pdf to walk to oasis sevilla, the blonde girl asked me if i needed help getting there. or maybe she asked me if i was american, i can't remember the exact order of events...

needless to say, she took me on a long-ish walking tour of the city! she is german, from munich, a primary school teacher by trade, in sevilla for some months to learn spanish as well as assist in a primary school to teach kids german. it was about 25ºC when we arrived in sevilla, and she said that i had completely lucked out, that before she left for granada for a week's vacation it had been rainy and not-nice. she showed me some of the major sights and gave me scraps of history...the university, the cathedral, alcázares...it was sunny, warm, not many people on the streets, and i really got a feeling of the city. it looks big in the let's go guidebook, but it's not actually all that spread out.

she was incredibly kind, like lili said later, a kind of guardian angel. i found the hostel quite easily, she pointed me in the direction of the best pâtisserie in sevilla (yum, as i would find out later) and told me to turn the corner. an amazing start to a short venture in sevilla (and the last phase of my trip)!

i checked in to oasis, which i thought at first was closed for construction but they were just working on a building next door, and talked for a while with the swiss guy working there, he thought i was from québec (yes, jonathan, at first i was a bit miffed. i don't have a québecois accent, do i?). basta. i took my stuff up in the elevator to the 2nd floor (also room 6) and unlocked the door to find shirtless jonathan from montréal checking his email on his laptop! (not a girls' only room, i quickly concluded) we chatted for a while and we went down to meet a bunch of oasis-ers for a tapas and flamenco tour (one of the apparently regular nightly events that happen at these oasis hostels. heads up to anyone traveling in portugal - there's an oasis lisbon!).

on the walk i met a couple of australians and a lovely double bass player from milan named alessandra (goes by ale, who i hope has not dropped off the face of the earth). i ate some delicious beef stew and a chickpea dish at the first place and then had chicken curry and a big glass of sangria (mysteriously, my glass kept refilling) at the last place. we got to the flamenco place (la carbonería) a bit too late and were only able to catch their last set. it was a trio of performers: a female dancer, a guitarist, and a male singer. the dancer was tall, intimidating, and had an amazing dress that worked well with her passionate stomping and shadowed brow. the singer had a jaw/facial hair issue - he basically just looked crazy when he sang. he had a rough, gritty voice, that went well with the guitarist's articulations. (correct me here, o michael beharie and justin riberio, for i know not how to explain flamenco guitar)

after sticking around for ale to finish her beer, we tried not to get lost on the way back to the hostel (the streets were deserted at 1 am - strange for spain, as everyone seems to stay out til 6 or 7 am) and crashed. i rose early-ish to get some breakfast in the kitchen upstairs (waffles, toast, delicious chocolate spread, and milk) and also to get ale's contact info (although she rolled out an hour later than anticipated). we experienced a blackout from the waffle iron, although we thought at first it was the coffeemaker. i also met sydnah that morning, who is originally from queens, went to morgan state (pretty local to me), and is currently teaching english à la darcy in a suburb of paris. hopefully we'll prendre un verre demain.

i returned to my room to check out my map and guidebook to lay out a plan for my day and got into a conversation with a rather pasty irish guy who was still in bed in pjs. after having traveled for over a month, this guy was apparently so horny he even went so far as to proposition me right there, in a pretty decent hostel, while i am clearly not drunk enough to consider it nor forward enough to slap him in his half-wakeful state. puke. i bounced as soon as i had a vague sense of trajectory.

i walked around for a bit in town before seeing the massive queue for the cathedral, and i hoped (and was right) that most of the human traffic was due to tour groups. the line moved pretty quickly and despite my lack of student id card (i had locked my wallet in my safe back at oasis) the lady gave me the student priced-ticket. the cathedral was IMMENSE, people, just absurd. i read that it's the 3rd largest cathedral in the world, and the largest gothic cathedral. i have a certain disdain for christian iconography at this point, but this was just impressive. i didn't even bother to listen in on tour groups as i did in alhambra. they had beautiful orange trees in the garden outside.

i was dismayed that alcázares was closed on monday, but i got over it quickly because i had seen alhambra. i tried to find these beautiful gardens down my placa españa that sharonne had gushed about after eating a greasy sandwich and an ice cream from a random place near universitad...i found them eventually. parc de maría luisa. gorgeous. i wrote a postcard to clio there, which i ended up writing too much on and had to wait to get back to france to send it because i had no room to put 2 spanish stamps. i like traveling by myself a little bit because i can find my own chemin, sans souci pour les autres, and be totally in control of my situation. if i make a mistake, it's mine, and if i take time somewhere, it's mine to take. selfish, maybe, but i love it.

i walked down by the river (it must have been 28º or 30ºC) and ignored the one weird guy who tried to talk to me (i don't speak spanish anyway), eventually making my way back up to casa sierpes, a big shopping street not far from the hostel. i looked for shoes (on the prowl for sandals), but no dice. i bought breakfast food at a supermarket (pear yogurt, muesli bars, orange juice) as my flight was leaving at 7h45 the following morning for paris. i located the celebrated pâtisserie and bought 2 pastries, one that looked like a pain au chocolat (to save for the morning) and one that looked deadly and delicious that must have been filled with chocolate mousse. i took everything back to the hostel and ate a pear yogurt and the mousse pastry while recounting to one of the aussies i had met on the tapas tour the story of the horny irishman. blech. who does that?

i was sun-scorched and exhausted by that point, so i crashed for 30 or 40 minutes before meeting 3 washington&lee guys (all shirtless, wearing jeans, having just arrived in spain from the states that day). jonathan was on his computer and told us about the va tech shooting. too strange, especially for these guys who had just arrived from virginia for their study abroad...

monday was paella/sangria night, where everyone ate out on the roof (there is also a small pool) for 5€. ching-min (taiwanese flutist living in paris studying at the école normale) and i talked shop for a while, and i chatted with lili, this totally awesome kiwi teaching at a liberal primary school in zurich. it was a peaceful, humbling end to my amazingly awesome trip.

then it was back to paris early early and the rer back from orly to a less mediterranean parisian view of notre dame with machaut motet nº17 on my mind...

alhambra (for real).

2007-04-23T10:30:00.000-04:00

(n.b. i am loosely translating from my let's go espagne book as well as commenting on my own experiences at alhambra in this post)

sharonne and i started with the palacios nazaríes (named for the nasrid dynasty, founded by al-ahmar in 1236 after he fled cordoba and took refuge at al-cazaba [Ar. fortress]), now known as alcázar (royal palace), built by 2 major moorish kings, yusuf I (1333-54) and son fils mohammed V (1354-91). i can't even articulate how amazing it was to be face-to-face with the kufic and cursive epigraphy that we had seen photos of in my islamic architecture class...sharonne has very little background in islam (or architecture), so i was able to point out some of the major elements, though some of the terminology escaped me. i took some photos, but sharonne took the bulk of them as my battery in my camera was running dangerously low, but not even the resolution of a digital camera can capture every dimension of the brilliant stucco work.

we also saw the palacio de carlos V (palace of charles quint), which was actually constructed by pedro machuca, a student of michelangelo. it is considered to be on of the most beautiful edifices of the spanish renaissance, with 2 floors of doric columns. sharonne saw it as a symbol of the blatant decadence of the époque (it is huge and circular, empty, and all in marble, and charles quint didn't even live there), but i think in many ways it fits with the idea that monarchs wanted to perpetuate their memory (and maybe create enormous empty spaces to demonstrate their wealth and power).

the views of granada and the sierra nevadas from the watchtower of alcazaba were incredible. it is said that al-quiada thought about bombing alhambra because it was the last muslim stronghold. the bells were rung (back in the 13th century) to announce imminent danger and also to signal different stages of the irrigation system set in place by the moors.

i know this is a big sin, but i didn't see generalife (the gardens at alhambra). i was tired, starving for some shawarma (the veiled lady at picadilly circus also gave me free falafel on my last afternoon! i think she liked my henna), and my bus left granada for sevilla at 4:30 that afternoon...

tripartite

2007-04-21T05:45:00.003-04:00

i dozed in and out of the train ride through the sierra nevadas to granada...the sun helped motivate me to write...upon arriving in granada, i found the right bus with the help of two other hostelers from singapore (i think?) and got off at cathedral. the pdf i printed out from the oasis granada website was pretty simple to follow from there. i lugged my rickety (noisy) small rolling suitcase up the narrow alley lined with moroccan import stores (you could practically taste the incense from 3 feet away) and followed the signs to the oasis hostel! the check-in was easy enough, i spoke to the german woman who i later learned was the head honcho and she said that it was a good thing i made my free call (what am i, in jail?) because otherwise she would have canceled my 2-night reservation alltogether (they were booked solid that weekend).

room 6, bed 6. took the elevator upstairs and met a nice aussie girl named belinda who had been traveling around spain with a friend and had also spent a little time in morocco. she's just moved to london, and hasn't found a PR job yet (so is traveling to put off the unemployment). i was relieved to find that the travelers at oasis were talkative, open, and full of tales traveling adventures. i took the map they gave me and went out walking, caught an alhambra bus (1€) up to st nicolas and tried not to get lost in the windy little corners of albaicín. i regret that i didn't make it up to sacromonte to the caves. apparently they have great flamenco there.

i went back down to the hostel to relax a little bit and caught up with a group that was walking back up to albaicín. the weather was pretty, if a little chilly in the late afternoon, so i decided to go back out with them. i forget the name of our guide, but she loves the phrase "hella" and hadn't heard it our used it in a long time. i took a picture of a garage that had "hella" painted on it in her honor. maybe i'll send it on to the people at oasis granada.

but i digress. in that group i met rick (not greg), a long-haired blonde, tan guy from atlanta georgia (and at that i thought of my aunt and uncle living around there) who has been woofing for the last few months (working for food and accommodation on organic farms in italy and spain, most of which are run by german or english people); paula, an austrian painter and graphic artist from vienna who had left her painter boyfriend behind, in granada to learn spanish; sharonne, a zany non-spanish-speaking, wheat-allergic and lactose-intolerant australian dentist who worked for 7 years after university, saving every last penny to buy a round-the-world ticket and travel for at least 1 year (of which she has completed 9 months) - she spent the winter in canada (started west in vancouver and ended in québec...wouldn't be my choice for a winter!!), 2 weeks in cuba and guatemala each, and got laid up in sevilla for 2 weeks with a terribly sprained ankle; some guy from south africa who's living in london; sam also from australia who has been traveling for a while selling stuff at these big road shows all across europe (people drive really fast on windy roads? i don't really know)...basically, i was kicking it with people living in the moment, seizing life by the horns. i like that aspect. everyone has a different tale to tell.

sharonne and i decided to get out to alhambra early (6:30-ish) the following morning (as i only really had a bit over 24 hours in the granada) as tickets are very hard to come by (they let in around 2,000 people the day of, and people line up for hours to get in in the morning). slept a bit after eating a ton of food at this all=you-can-eat buffet not far from our hostel, i think sharonne consumed at least 4 plates of mixed salads (she eats meat, but finding a rice-based diet is hard to come by across the planet), and walked up the *slight* hill to alhambra and arrived in the queue at 7 am. there were about 50 people ahead of us, and the line continued to build...we were able to get into the 8:30-9 am time slot to enter the royal palace. i was freezing my bum off in my sepia h&m shorts because the sun hadn't risen by 7 am, but by the time we started walking to the palace, the sun had come out and the ground had started to unshiver...

et deux

2007-04-20T14:13:00.000-04:00

alors...i feel like a storyteller reading to imaginary children and possibly adults...darcy and i ended up on our last day roaming the streets in search of candles, and instead stumbled upon people hawking henna, so we thought, why not? and both got our hands henna-ed by this woman with stained hands in her living room while she and her family watched spanish soap operas dubbed in arabic. it's fading now, but it was beautiful...it wound up each hand from my wrist to my pointer and middle fingers...we opted out of the black. it was more expensive, and i think is a little too close to the henna muslim women actually get when they get married...

i had decided before leaving for morocco that it would be a genius idea to take a boat, yes, a boat, from the eastern coast of morocco to andalucia (spain). because fez is in the center, and i had booked my flight back to paris from sevilla, i thought it silly to go all the way to tanger on the north west tip, cross the strait of gibraltar, and then have to go all the way through andalucia to get back to granada.

well...it may have been easier to eat the 200€ and fly from fez to granada.

here's how it happened: i bought a bus ticket from fez to nador. 110 Dh, 11 euro-ish for a 6 hour bus ride through the atlas mountains. downside - it left at 3 am. step two = ferry nador- almería. something like 50€, but i had to pay in Dh, in cash. that was another 7 hours of travel crossing the mediterranean. also note that i have not eaten, nor slept much this day. and all the moroccan or spanish people (of which there were maybe 20 or 30) on the ferry looked at me like i had 4 heads and a tail, some white chick wearing a green corduroy hat she bought in sweden to hide her unwashed hair traveling alone with henna on her hands who doesn't speak arabic or spanish. you can imagine.

so i arrived in almería exhausted and deliriously hungry and found the bus station but was AGHAST to discover that the last bus to granada had left a half hour before. i had not taken into acount the 2 hour time difference between morocco and spain. that's right people, next time you travel this way, always pay close attention to subtle things like NO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME IN AFRICA. oh god, was a pissed. i broke down crying in the station. i think that transcends all languages.

i stayed the night in a pension in almería (hot shower, bed, that's all i needed) and bought a train ticket to granada for the next morning.

next: martha in alhambra!

début de l'aventure au maghreb

2007-04-18T18:02:00.000-04:00

i get pissy when i'm dehydrated, hungry, and tired. i think i was all of these things on our day of plane travel to morocco. darcy graciously covered the price of my lunch at the airport in barcelona, and our flight to casablanca was definetely more on time than the one out of casablanca to fez. we saw some extremely trashy spanish people while we were sitting outside of the duty-free shop in casablanca, though this perception may have been skewed by my pissiness. i didn't have any euros, and of course there aren't any atms within the perimeter of the airport, and none of the restos take credit cards. so there i am, sans water or food, pissy mostly because darcy is there to witness my weaknesses while traveling, mais tant pis, there it was. we had to wait to board our flight for god knows what reason, but it was blessedly short.

we got 1000 Dh each out of the atm at the airport after being brisked through security (the scary guy was charmed by my french, and when i said darcy was my friend, he let us through without ripping open our bags) and took a taxi for 45 minutes (140 Dh) to our hotel. along the ride we began to see how geographically morocco fits into those blurrily defined categories of "second" or "third" world. it was intense, and we were only just seeing landscape at night.

we ate dinner at our hotel (named, paradoxically, "hotel fes inn") because we were too exhausted to wander around the new city to try to find a restaurant (and the neighborhood in which the fes inn was located left something to be desired). it was nice actually to just crash our bags (although the room they gave us had an enormous unidentifiable bug behind the bed so we quickly changed rooms) and not have to think about anything. the servers were nice to the point of artificiality, but no matter. we were tired and hungry.

the next day we asked for a map at our hotel (to no avail) and were directed to go to place mohammed V to the office of tourism. we decided to walk there as it was an astonishingly beautiful day. we got lost along the way, and had to ask for directions at some pharmacies, but people in general were very kind and sufficiently clear. eventually we found the small office, grabbed a map (shittier than the large, vague one we picked up at a tourist shop), and by this point were ready to eat. food is incredibly cheap in morocco, you can get a tea or fresh orange juice for 10 Dh (1 euro) and a full menu sometimes for as low as 40 Dh (4 euro for more food than you can possibly eat).

we then set out for the mellah (jewish quarter) and tried to find the old city (none of our maps agreed). the beautiful weather helped motivate us. upon entering the old city walls, however, all 3 disparate maps were rendered useless, and the 15-20 year old boys taunting us with their offers of berber massages and guided tours were tempting but since they tried to swindle us out of cab fare i played the role of cold-hearted bitch at all times. we never asked for directions. darcy can get berber massages from soufiane back home any time she wants.

...continued...

debt (maghreb-ish adventure part 1)

2007-04-17T13:44:00.000-04:00

scene: rer b towards charles de gaulle airport
time: roundabout 9 pm

this will teach me and my sense of military time...i arrived just 2 or 3 minutes after the last flight to barcelona boarded out of charles de gaulle on vueling airlines. i thought my flight left at 11 pm, but it boarded at 9 (i switched 22 and 20h)...so i was panicking, and found the next flight out was at 6h45 (early in the morning) on air france, and the very gracious woman at the air france desk got me the last "under 26" price ticket for that flight. i stayed in one of the ultra-expensive but hella convenient hotels right next to the airport, exchanged textos with yvonnick and concluded all he wanted was to baise an anglo, and slept 4 hours before hitting the long security line. i was able to check in pretty quickly with the automatic check-in (i had a paper ticket) and from there things were ok.

upon arriving in barcelona, i caught the bus from the airport to placa cataluña and then the metro from there (my let's go espagne [in french] served me well throughout the trip) to tarragona, the closest stop to calla de bejar (darcy, sandrine [another toulousene swing dancer], and i were staying at a pension there). the spanish schedule seems to start around noon, with brunchy type meal at 1 or 2, dinner at 10, and partying til 6 am. we didn't exactly follow that, because swing dancing takes it out of you!

darcy and sandrine were in the advanced levels of the workshops, and generally had classes at opposite times (darcy would have one in the morning, sandrine the afternoon, so i was able to spend time with both of them, in alternance, each day). we walked around a lot, and i saw the fondacion miró and the picasso museum, as well as the barri gòtic on my own (i loved it for its windy streets, closed shops with graffiti and sunny open windows). la rambla was beautiful, full of vendors and travelers and tapas bars selling sangria and various fried items (food was cheap, but i didn't eat healthily in barcelona).

the swing soirées were really fun, it had been so long since i danced! people of all levels came from all over the world -- berlin, the states, sweden, ukraine, obviously france and spain, ... -- but they were still short some leads and even proved to be cliquish! so just like at the cleveland exchanges i had been to in the past, it paid to be agressive. i particularly enjoyed dancing with sebastien, a quiet, small, bespec-ed parisian that reminded me of daniel from oberlin in his light leading.

for the crazy dance, i wore hot lime green leggings bought at that store near the mediathèque musicale at les halles (-3), a black mini skort with a silver band, huge star hoops, sparkly barettes, and a bright yellow wife beater. i think leads may have hesitated to dance with that. darcy called the outfit "a 12-year-old's idea of a rock star." i also decided to wear my huge sunglasses from h&m inside the metro. i couldn't see anything.

darcy and i left by train from the central station at around 9 am for the airport...

...to be continued...

jolivet rituals and cool air

2007-04-04T17:24:00.000-04:00

my first ever contrôle, or partiel, or whateveryoucallit, was a mild success (hasn't been graded yet, but tant pas): the subject was "chant de linos" by jolivet. he gave us 10 points to consider before giving us the first hearing of the excerpt, and from the downbeat of the first bar i was home free. it was the version with strings and harp. i talked about ritual and jolivet's compositional color palette...

iván is intellectually provocative. of this i have no doubt. yvonnick is having coffee with me tomorrow afternoon. i might have to feed him leftover hummus. we concluded at dinner that it's probably too strong for a 9-month-old's taste pallette. she's cute though, that maéva. i played her the solo from "boléro" and thought about the crisp, windy air.

plan for crazy dance at bar"swing"ona: wild stripey tights from the sock store at les halles (to buy tomorrow) and black short skort with a silver band, bright yellow tank top, star hoops and bright glittery barettes bought at pimkie. feel free to ajoute something if you can think of anything else that would make the outfit more tacky.

yahya al-shabih, fatimid cairo, egypt

2007-04-02T17:33:00.000-04:00

what i should be looking at. instead i created a flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/parisianmelon/

i miss listening to alison krauss.

a freewrite i composed yesterday after a weekend of late night reflections.

hand on the small of my back wine
stained your shirt fruit salad with
chopsticks gummy obsession emerging
from pockets inevitably squishy from
constant body heat jointed hands fluid
i slept deeply subconsciously imagining
flamenco and a deep tan away from the
harsh words of boys not-yet-grown-up
i am not sick because i am not dying
taxes voting ballots visas contracts papers
the trails of bureaucracy could not touch
your mission does it come with 10 years
6 months of hungarian cigarettes
how to formulate the right thought in
each of your six languages such a virgin to
all of it in many more ways than one
one ear to caceres this argentinian whose
rhythms touched me i never understood
the lyrics never guessed their political
underpinnings assumed their romantic liens
and throaty disclaimers ultimately he
overdramatized the case misread my
interpretation maybe he's right but
the least i can do is give the smooth
blue-eyed harmonica player a shot
idle at a café consider the present a gift
i can never return reimbursement out of
the question ink drying quickly the the
page the scattered drunken drippings
of my incandescent mind though sober
my network connection slowing to a
trickle with six languages do
writing and turns of phrase become
empty and without dubious implication?
jean was right i stick to my borders
théophile bra drew mystical pictures
and scribbled almost illegibly in the
margins his second wife died young
but it barely paused his stream of creative
output she probably never asked questions
or demanded explanation he required
precision of language and intention
i was never quite that lucid my carte
orange guaranteed free public transit
but the time factor was never taken
into account maybe intimacy will
come with the dawn of spring rain
banished come april self-portraiture
a way of immortalizing a moment
a thought an expression that belies
a glimpse of my perplexed sometimes
muddled soul a soft cheap grey
hoodie quest for a clearer path for
someone to "meet me one day on the
street and get me, take me at face
value, and not be blown asunder"
even if once in a cirulean blue moon

bonne fun soirée

2007-04-01T06:14:00.000-04:00

friday, all day, shopping for swing shoes and cute going-out-in-fez-and-andalusia clothes in les halles. accompanied by, of course, meredith benjamin.

friday night, soirée at the 5th bar with caro's friends, rue mouffetard. too much drinky smoky for me. not my scene. nice couch surfers though, have to seriously think about joining tea/coffee, because i don't at the moment have a couch on which people can surf. if i move in with kat in new york, we will have to get a futon and join couch surfing. best idea ever.

saturday afternoon, musée de la vie romantique. the collections of george sand. anyone know what other famous literary person she had an affair with? frédéric chopin for sure, i learned that in "impromptu" with hugh grant. there's someone else. cyrille suggested albert camus, but i'm not so sure. i don't think he was the same époque.

karine had the sweetest party for which i for some reason bought almost 2 kilos of super-expensive hummus imported from greece and a mix of delicious strong olives. needless to say, i returned home after a looong walk from the 18th with ivan the 6-language-speaking spaniard with half the olives and hummus. we ate sushi rice, drank ginger pineapple and kiwi lime juice (those are 2 separate juices, they were totally delectable and freshly made) and had fresh fruit salad and/or these other delicious tart-type desserts. even though it was a little chilly outside, the party was so nice, lots of artistic types, a lot of musicians, though i did meet a woman who has a british father doing her doctorate in art history here in paris (?) and works as a professor of "art plastique." she should teach me all she knows.

overall, a fine fine weekend, and the sun has finally come out! i read that the weather will be 60s and 70s-ish in spain and morocco. thursday night it's bon voyage for darcy and martha-she leaves by car from toulouse with some people, i'm flying out of charles de gaulle at around 10 pm and arriving in barcelona at around 23h30, and hopefully i'll find a taxi or somesuch to carry me off to the airport, where i will crash and wake up anew for my first day in barcelona!

the plan is: with darcy, 4 swingin' nights in barcelona, 4 nights in fez (possibly a train ride to chaowen for a day); solo, a boat ride nador-almeria, 2 nights at oasis hostel in granada, 2 nights in sevilla, fly back to paris april 17. true adventure!

is my bed disponible pour le PEB?

2007-03-29T11:25:00.000-04:00

possibly a little too much time in sudoc, poking around for my bibliographies and syllabi...

scene: sunside, a jazz bar near chatelet.
pour quoi faire: to see yvonnick prené, that ambiguous blue-eyed harmonica player, play a gig with a jazz quintet. 12€ at that. worth it? read on...

the first set started at around 22h30. i of course have become nearly as flaky as michael beharie in terms of punctuality (mais je rigole). still, i was significantly late in showing up to metro chatelet with meredith (who constantly plans well, and got there just shy of 21h45). the bar was easy to find though.

the ensemble was pretty good, in general. twins, scott and tony, on violin and piano respectively, a girl i can't remember the name of on drums (pretty freaking good), some guy joe i think on bass, and yvonnick on harmonica. it's interesting, actually, the sound of the harmonica in a group like that. it's like a saxo, but not quite, with more of a mellow sound...and it apparently gives your mouth hella blisters if you play it too much.

their sound in my opinion (take that as you will) was a little too consistent. scott's solos were blasé at first and then grew into craziness (impressive, and then tiresome after he gave similar solos in other tunes). yvonnick's playing is extremely agile. i remember trying to play harmonica in my childhood, i think my dad taught me...yvonnick sounds way better than the lame-o sounds of small martha.

anyway, after a long "pause" (with jazzers i suppose intermission is too brief a term), meredith had to check her watch because she wanted to catch the last metro home (she lives all the way in the 17th and had to transfer). i bought her a nutella crepe (the forlorn anemic ballerina) and she stuck it out until the end of the 2nd tune of the final set. i chilled in the back til the end and proceeded to get sleepy.

i think yvonnick was glad i came though, he was very appreciative. there was a brief instant at the end where it wasn't clear whether or not he would be walking me home, but he was smoking a cigarette and got distracted, so i took off into the night. i wrote in my journal for a while after getting back and before turning in noticed i had a new call. apparently, he called me to see if he could crash at my place (which isn't really mine at all)...and i have absolutely no clue how that would fly with my host family. not even an inkling.

he's moving to new york next year, and i've been storming ideas for the fall too, like: what if...i don't get into grad school?...i don't get the fellowship i want?... i don't get enough money?...i decide that living with kat in nyc sounds damned good?

geographical tongue and crêperie-bound pompiers

2007-03-24T07:50:00.000-04:00

date: 23 mars

time: 16h

location: the 7th arrondissement, and surrounding area. start, musée rodin. end, the terminus of line 8.

persons involved: chelsea from harvard and erin from yale. pompiers, around 17h30 til arrival at hospital. crazy sick people, 18h30 forward. doctor who gave me his cell phone number, 23h.

i have never experienced this before in my life. i think i had an anxiety attack yesterday. it was basically a cascade of unfortunate events: the start of that time of the month, exhaustion from not sleeping enough because of the small dosage of prednosone (steroids for the sinus infection), really cold weather (plus rain), stress froma long week of classes and studying, the medium-sized stress of planning spring break with darcy...basically, as one of the pompiers said, "it's just not your day."

needless to say, i started having cramps at the musée rodin and had to take a couple of sitting down breaks, and by the time erin arrived the museum was closing and i was feeling worse. we tried to make it to a café, but a lot of places were closed, inexplicably for a friday mid afternoon...eventually i found a place to go to the bathroom and erin ran and got me some meds close to ibuprofen to ease the pain.

we got to a creperie, where i proceeded to slump to the floor (i was very sleepy and just wanted to lie down, but was also nauseous). this couple in the corner was terrified for me. one of the people working there called the pompiers (an ambulance, i guess), and 4 guys rolled out in uniform with a gurney, and a first aid kit and everything. they tried to calm me down - by this point i was shaking, my hands were numb and trembling, and i was basically just freaking out - and thought maybe it was my blood sugar, so they tried to have me drink a coke, but i don't really like coke, so i was sipping it very slowly.

then i asked if i could just lie down, so they sped me off (chelsea and erin included) in their ambulance-type vehicle to the emergency room (by this time i had not vomited, was still just convulsing). i was lying on my stomach, and they convinced me to turn my head towards them and not fall asleep.

when i got there, i was slightly calmed down, but i had to check in and get seen my an initial person who evaluated the state of my emergency (not very grave, i guess). while she was taking my blood pressure, i felt much more nauseous and proceeded to give up my lunch (there was a little warning), which was a camenbert sandwich. maybe it was food poisoning?

after that, we waited for 5 hours, and honestly i felt a lot better after vomiting. we waited until 11 pm at the georges pompidou hospital, where we saw all sorts of types come in and out - broken bones, one guy foaming at the mouth, one older man yelling at the hospital people fairly insistently, one very depressed marching philosopher who talked to me about his anorexic girlfriend and his metaphysical despair and his hypersensitivity - lost of people who needed to get seen before me.

when i finally did get to see the doctor, he diagnosed it as an isolated incident of vomiting, and gave me a scrip for something and his cell phone number (is this typical?). i recounted my life story, including my psychiatric diagnosis 3 years ago, my stomach flu history when i was in high school, and my utter lack of panic/anxiety attacks. all in french. i think he was impressed that i was american, maybe for the fact that i could so lucidly explain myself in french.

we all bounced at around midnight, and i hope that erin was able to catch the train at porte de versailles alright. they're troopers, man...i was hungry when i left, and of course madame cheminal left me a complete dinner: crepes with ham and mushrooms (delicious), a salad with balsalmic vinagrette, ratatouille, avacado slices (which i love), and yogurt. i had some orange juice and drank some water and went to bed around 1 am.

a story for the grandkids, people. and erin and chelsea will take a pompier each. i failed to notice their charm at the time. i think i was thinking too hard about trying not to convulse and/or vomit.

sometimes i wish, i do

2007-03-20T17:13:00.000-04:00

that i could breathe and not cough. that it wasn't 0ºC and raining in paris. that lawrence earp could do my motet analysis for me. so that then i could prepare my bibliography for my paper on the mosque at al-azhar in peace. that i could snap my fingers and a lonely planet/lets go morocco would appear in my hand and i could instantaneously book hostels. cheap ones, with no sketchy people. that i could stock librarie imagigraphe with wanderlust stationary, so i don't have to buy tacky high-heeled andy warhol paper. that the things sold at museum gallery bookstores didn't always break my wallet (except in sweden, where i bought a book in the icons series about extraordinary objects bound upside-down for 20 kronor, which is about 3 dollars). that somehow, someone could meet me once on the street and get me, take me at face value, and not be blown asunder. that the desks in st genevieve library could be as accomodating as those in michelet. that my legs didn't ache. that i could play the flute again. that i could have a pocket version of maéva to smile and blink at me.

freebox and lhasa

2007-03-18T07:10:00.000-04:00

FINALLY, finally, people, i have a consistent airport signal. flaurent cheminal is awesome. i no longer have to steal from neighbors, nor deal with weak signal insufficient to send email attachments or gmail chats! with freebox, i am free.

rejoice.

last night meredith and i skipped the free baroque concert in the 15th arrondissement and ate at a tibetan restaurant called lhasa between blvd st g and rue des écoles at place maubert. there's another tibetan one right next to it, an argentinian one slightly closer to the metro, and a vietnamese place across the street. basically, a little international haven. the prices weren't too bad. i had friend beef dumplings with homemade sauce, a beansprout and carrot salad, and a sweet lassi. it was small, if a little smoky, and very peaceful for st. patrick's day. then we ventured on to this canadian bar near odéon in the 6th called moosehead, it took us a few minutes to find it even though we were stonecold sober (which i remained throughout the night, i bought a liter of water across the street)...they were playing the march madness basketball games. in particular, all the girls from georgetown were out in full form to support their team...there was also talk of buying tickets to fly back to the states to see the final if they won the game (which they did)...coming from oberlin, i guess i have no perspective on that, although i do remember when maryland beat duke my senior year of high school. that was sweet. they couldn't burn their blue benches.

today, it's raining and it looks like a cool front has returned, at least for this week. i haven't really brainstormed about flight tickets to barcelona yet, but hopefully the prices won't be abominable by the time i book them. i also am going to have to work on my machaut motet analysis during spring break.

is no news always good news?

2007-03-14T10:10:00.000-04:00

this sounds like the start of a "sex in the city" episode, but nonetheless: when dealing with summer programs and grad schools, in no news always a good news? or are they just putting off the rejection? alice teyssier, don't be discouraged. music is a subjective candyland anyway, especially in voice and flute. tone color, technique and sound production are things that everyone does differently, and chacun à son goût, you know?

i bought a blue yoga mat today, excited that the spring is coming, but i still am dehydrated and wish that my feet didn't hurt all the time. i think i need to give in to some highly expensive european shoes. i'm currently listening to tété's 2001 album "l'air de rien" and it's putting me in a good place. he started as a musician in the métro, i don't know for how long.

i have no excuse for feeling blue. i am still recovering from my rotten head cold, but that shouldn't make me have a headache and long to eat chocolate several times a day. fabiola told me that chocolate (except white chocolate) was her only craving when she was pregnant with maéva.

this summer, and next fall, no matter what happens, i hope that i do something that pleases me (une chose que me plaît). be it waitressing at home, interning for mostly mozart in nyc, playing penniless at bowdoin, or auditing pmf, something meaningful.

ligeti and a blue cavalier

2007-03-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

last night i saw cat cantin (my flute professor in paris) play at palais garnier (opéra national) - GET THIS - the boulez sonatine with pierre-laurent aimard. basically, awesome. no one plays this piece, um, ever because it's SO hard. wild stuff. i was able to get in for an astonishing 10 euro. the sunday night concerts are not at all expensive, and even though i arrived a little late, i was able to sneak in during the debussy cello sonata (cyrille lacrouts). then susan graham sang debussy trois poèmes de mallarmé, ravel chansons madécasses (terrifying, even though she has a light soprano), and i missed her last set of ives songs (sue me, i was tired and hadn't eaten dinner).

immediate plans: tonight, bang on a can all stars at théâtre de la ville (near chatelet), one of my *free* cupa spectacles; wednesday (possibly), 18h, at a bar called le cavalier bleu, a jazz trio that a harmonica player named yvonne is playing in.

today in XXe siècle langage musicale we studied #6, 7, 8 of ligeti's 10 pieces for wind quintet. here's to the obies who rocked miller theater fall 2005 with the violin concerto with jennifer koh and mysteries of the macabre! lovin it. i announced several concerts in class today, trying to bolster the enthusiasm of the 50-some-odd students for contemporary music...particularly for ensemble intercontempo because they're playing some GREAT concerts here in the coming weeks. can't wait!!

the summertime

2007-03-10T12:56:00.000-05:00

return to reality for a sec - i'm storming my brain for cool ideas for the summer. i applied to pmf, banff, bowdoin, and back to cc, although i doubt any will come through. then i was thinking about radio internships...there's an interesting one for the chicago public radio, which is unpaid and 3 days a week. i would have to get a paying day-job and a place to stay in the city (or at least not far from a t).

erin wang is coming with nick to paris in a couple of weeks!

the institut de monde arabe will be a stellar place for research for "le monde islamique"...quiet, and super-close to where i live. still haven't chosen a topic for my 20-page dissert. ((quaking in my shoes about the topic and bibliography due at the end of the month))

quelques mots

2007-03-06T17:55:00.000-05:00

hejhej = hello, pronounced "heyhey"
taktak = thanks
other favorite words: "exact"; "absolut"

when i went to the nationalmuseum in stockholm, i had to ask a policeperson (policewoman?) for directions, and she looked it up on her map and couldn't find it, but eventually when i get there there was an expo on flowers. i especially liked the "design 1900/2000" exhibit, which featured, among many other things, chairs, tables, textiles, and other cool art objects from each decade of the last century. some american pop art, but mostly swedish/scandanavian designs. while wandering around in old town later that afternoon, i bought a ring made out of a fork (bevin confirms that it's totally sweet).

st. genevieve is forcement confusing as hell. sending packages is expensive. note to self: i really, really wish i were braver. i need to learn how to improvise musically, and to learn not to be socially inept. even with the language barrier.

back in the game

2007-03-05T11:21:00.001-05:00

and...it was a good trip. mille mille gracias goes to anton for putting up with me for 4 days and 4 nights...i had a great time in stockholm. coolest part? sofo and the many design stores and little funky nooks. a fashion store called "grandpa" - overpriced, but still cool. all their clothes would have ended up incredibly wrinkly on the plane, and my legs are too short to accomodate those weirdly shaped dresses and leggings anyway. anton, tall lanky and especially tall, can basically pull anything off. the swedish know how to throw a soirée, that's for sure. saturday night it was 3 friends, anton, his parents and me, around his 75 kronos second-hand, recently refurnished coffee table, in candlelight, having just eaten a delicious pasta salad-type dish involving twisty colored pasta, pork, bell peppers, cucumber, red onion and chili-flavored crème fraiche and had a little too much wine/beer, while anton and this PHENOM guitar player ola (this is a bad spelling, but a joke went around that in spain they'd have a lot of fun due to the pronunciation of his name) jammed to works by a canadian badass guitarist (don ross? correct me?) and also to the more acoustic-y side of dave matthews (luther college). let's just say: "let you down," "#41," "crash," with ola and his husky voice and anton on the cajones...pure bliss, basically.

today, i met a harmonica player in my 20th century musical language class who is moving to nyc next year. he needs to work on his english...and might let me into his gig in a few weeks for free?...we'll see about that.

i got back from beauvais at around 10:45 pm, ate a yogurt, wrote a letter to angie wood, and crashed. 9-11 am at michelet was GRUELING. made it there barely on time, and halfway understood all the comments about mosques in cairo from 900-1180...?!

darcy has a beautiful man. it's time for me to locate one for myself.

back in the game

2007-03-05T11:21:00.000-05:00

stuck...

2007-03-01T05:53:00.000-05:00

so what happens when anton's roommate forgets and locks the door? martha is stuck in the apartment. i tried, yes i tried, pounding on the door and even sending a note written in terrible swedish out the mail slot to try to get someone to unlock the door, to no avail. tragic, really. i had planned to go to the nationalmuseum, wander around old town...but no, i'm stuck here. comment on this post if you have suggestions on how to weasel my way out of this situation!! i tried yelling "help" and "hello" and things like that...but my hands are raw, and i don't want to abuse my hands.

fauvists and the color blue

2007-02-27T15:13:00.000-05:00

remember that expo you went to with your brother, darcy, of that guy that invented a certain pigment of blue? because i think i saw 2 of his pieces at the musée de l'art moderne de la ville de paris (16th arrondissement, next to palais de tokyo) this afternoon. i was supposed to go with our art contempo class at cupa but since i'll be in stockholm on thursday...i like fauvist art. it seems gentler than later cubist works. also, L.H.O.O.Q by Duchamp is small, and funny. i wonder how many people actually understand the title (if you speak french, and even if you don't, say the letters together as they would be said...and comment on this post if you get it! no cheating).

such as it is, i am using cyrille's huge desktop computer in my host parents' absence, which is quite a luxury. then erin, bevin and i met up at petit palais on the prowl for ice cream, to no real avail...but we did get hit on by a french/tunisian guy named ali. he offered us couscous (and possibly marriage). oh wait, no, he was really just hitting on bevin. he complimented her eyes, tried to get her number at least 4 times, and gave her his on a used lottery receipt. did i mention that he works security at the petit palais?

sketchy, but harmless. off to see "nue propriété" at odéon - my first french movie in paris!

sweden-bound

2007-02-26T10:48:00.000-05:00

the plan for wednesday: leaving home at 10 am with as little luggage as possible (keeping in mind it's under 0° C there right noz); taking the metro (line 10 to odéon, change to line 4 jusqu'à chatelet, take line 1 almost to the end); pick up the 13 euro shuttle to beauvais airport, pay 12 euro to check a bag (and cry a little because they will lose the bag inevitably, and i don't have many clothes) and take the 2 hour ryanair flight to stockholm. arrive in stockholm, frantically locate bag, take the 90-minute, 130 SED bus to the center of stockholm, where i will be picked up by my friend anton that i haven't seen in 2 years!! (we worked together at french woods summer of 2005) i will most likely be checking out fauvist art (so says pascal, my art contempo teacher) as well as some post-impressionists. frankly, i'm psyched to be getting out of the somewhat familiar and having pretty much free accomodation for a few days! i return sunday, which is my (real) father's birthday. i am a jerk and didn't send off his birthday card in time. maybe i'll be able to do that tomorrow. yikes!!

hiding away

2007-02-25T16:36:00.001-05:00

this apartment represents a fluid environment, in which people tend to pass in and out...the best analogy i can think of is a selectively permeable membrane, where the selection is by relationships with the native (i.e. children or parents) inhabitants. in my suburban maryland household this never happened. the one sofa we have in our house does not collapse into a bed. every one other than the leather one here decomposes into a mattress and even has a drawer underneath for bedding. ingenious, really. it makes me feel like i'm never alone.

tonight, florent and claire ate with me and we watched the last half hour of a fairly morbid film with kevin spacey (dubbed in french of course) called "swimming with sharks." i have not the energy to stay up til midnight to watch the oscars. i suppose i will have to read about the moving speeches given by the teary-eyed directors and in-shock actors.

goodnight, tout le monde, and i hope that someone jettes un oeil at this blog sometime. and comments. i refuse to create an alternate universe. this is me, stealing a bit of wifi from a neighbor, in my hardwood floors room with high ceilings and leftover jazz posters from when cyrille slept in this lofted bed. i thought i would be scared of the height, but climbing down the ladder has become just another morning ritual, like pulling on my robe, bleary-eyed, and opening the shutters to greet the grey paris day.

hiding away

2007-02-25T16:36:00.000-05:00

this apartment represents a fluid environment, in which people tend to pass in and out...the best analogy i can think of is a selectively permeable membrane, where the selection is by relationships with the native (i.e. children or parents) inhabitants. in my suburban maryland household this never happened. the one sofa we have in our house does not collapse into a bed. every one other than the leather one here decomposes into a mattress and even has a drawer underneath for bedding. ingenious, really. it makes me feel like i'm never alone.

tonight, florent and claire ate with me and we watched the last half hour of a fairly morbid film with kevin spacey (dubbed in french of course) called "swimming with sharks." i have not the energy to stay up til midnight to watch the oscars. i suppose i will have to read about the moving speeches given by the teary-eyed directors and in-shock actors.

goodnight, tout le monde, and i hope that someone jettes un oeil at this blog sometime. and comments. i refuse to create an alternate universe. this is me, stealing a bit of wifi from a neighbor, in my hardwood floors room with high ceilings and leftover jazz posters from when cyrill slept in this lofted bed. i thought i would be scared of the height, but climbing down the ladder has become just another morning ritual, like pulling on my robe, bleary-eyed, and opening the shutters to greet the grey paris day.

alors, and we go...

2007-02-25T09:22:00.000-05:00

recent events. in no certain order of importance.

last tuesday i went to a free flute and piano recital at the sorbonne. the pianist is in my machaut class. she played half-stick and drowned out the schumann violin sonata (transcribed for flute) as well as the 4th movement of the prokofiev sonata. tragic. the flutist was clean though. didn't love her tone, but these french flutists play cleanly, consistently.

haircut wasn't half bad. i got it done right by st paul metro, a hop skip from the wine bar/café meredith and i found a few weeks ago - 5 euro for a crêpe and a café crème. the cut is hipsterish (gasp!)

thursday i heard my flute teacher (cat cantin, of the paris opéra) play the complete mozart quartets on a grenadilla wood boehm system flute at st germain-des-près cathedral. the wood was all the better to match the strings in a very wishy-washy acoustic space. i dined after.

nadia, a former exchange student with the cheminal family, was visiting for a few days hoping that she could get a visa straightened out for her turkish boyfriend that she met at the london school of economics. she is a few years younger than claire, and speaks very good french (and apparently spanish as well).

cyrille leaves for london tonight by eurostar for his "stage," which i learned from darcy means basically anything that had any duration of time. in his case, it's a 6 month internship with dannon yogurt. he wants to learn english - and what better way than by immersion?

friday i wandered around les halles and found the mediathèque musicale, which is sweet! i got my free library card - it extends to scores and books, not to cds and dvds - and took out a score of bach inventions, only to find on my return to 18 blvd st-germain that the piano is woefully out of tune. d'hommage. i'll dream about the inventions, i suppose...

yesterday i went to the marmottan museum with bevin morrissey, a fellow cupa student who hearts monet, to see some estampes japonais from monet's collection, as well as some of his lesser seen paintings, some abstract ponts from late in his life (when his eyesight was decreasing), as well as a few renoir portraits of he and his wife. i then hung around the 16th with bevin, had a coffee at a nice relatively quiet café before taking a brief RER ride to blvd président kennedy to maison radio france for my next adès adventure.

this time it was mostly gerald barry's "triumph of truth and deceit" (opera in two short acts, for 2 countertenors, tenor, baritone and bass). i found the bass and one of the countertenors most compelling. it was unstaged, and the birmingham contemporary ensemble was unspeakably tight. the trumpet players and clarinetists in particular rocked the house. percussion wasn't bad either. i sat next to this extremely gentle older french man who struggled with stairs and didn't particularly favor barry's piece. he found it too repetitive. i would agree on some level, but i also thought it extremely compelling, especially in his use of vocal contour to highlight the text.

for the two concerts that i've seen there, the composers have all been in attendance. i think to play in adès' présence, in the maison de radio france, is a high honor. and all the concerts are free!

this morning, after a brief night's sleep, i walked out (rainy, grey, kinda cold) to chatalet to meet maggie eisenman and her husband at the théâtre for an 11 am recital given by joshua bell (violin) and jeremy denk (piano). the program was: mozart sonata 24 k 304, faure sonata 1 op 13, prokofiev 5 mélodies op 35 bis, and he added rach vocalise, sarasate introduction and tarantella, and as an encore a transcription of a tchaikovsky song. 1h30, beautifully executed, no surprises. denk was SUPERB, in caps because i had never heard of him and was surprised they chose full stick...but this man can play so cleanly, so quietly, and the prokofiev was spot on. mozart too, just beautiful.

please tell me what you think of this blog, i am a newbie, and i have really no idea what the hell i'm doing. it's just me rambling for the benefit of all me obies across the atlantic.

it was time.

2007-02-25T07:45:00.000-05:00

i have caved. it is time for me to have a blog page for this experience. facebook is old. i am a modern girl! so here's my debut message. my blog inspirations are joel selby and sean nagamatsu, and though i might not have profound art or words to scribble into this page, i will do my best to convey this experience.