In which we Holla! in Holland. Part I.

Surprise international flashback! Once upon a time last April (ha), the parental units hopped across the Big Blue to visit their far-flung offspring. One of the many adventures in which we partook during this visit was an excursion to the Netherlands, where a delightful reuniting of childhood friends took place. There was much laughing, much listening to the reliving of memories, much indulging in incredible cuisine, and much photographing of nifty sights. After three failed attempts to reach this supposedly windmill-speckled land while living in Belgium for a year, I was excited to certify its existence at last.

We played hide and seek with the sun out the train window as we wormed our way west. The fiery ball of gas was a better hider than seeker, though we caught glimpses of it from time to time as it crouched in the blooming rapeseed fields. It was impossible to hide all that beautiful brightness all the time.

After five or so hours of this game, we finally arrived at the semi-circular wetropolis of Amsterdam. In order for the desert residents among us to get the most out of our visit to this water-happy city, it was decided that we should spend the next couple evenings on a passenger ship. This turned out to be a fantastic idea, as the lodgings were lovely and included the warm presence of a big, floofy creature. The parentals thus oogled the H2O while I oggled the D0G and everyone was happy.

Then we left.
By which I mean, Childhood Friend put us in his car and drove us on an epically beautiful adventure across the big-skied countryside to the little ex-island of Marken (plutoed to peninsula) in the IJsselmeer.

Marken's claim to fame and tourism is its wee little fishing village with traditional wooden houses. Wikipedia says it became a hub of anthropologists and folklorists in the late 19th and 20th centuries when it became clear that its culture was doomed by the country's modernization. There were only a few tourists to be seen on the evening of our arrival. The rest must have been blown away by the strong winds whipping at our jackets and filling the eerily empty village with the sound of its screeching and jangling through the sails and ropes of the boats in its little harbor.

Somehow its personless streets had decorated themselves with flags and lights in preparation for the upcoming Queen's Day festivities.

While the sun peaced out for the day with great soporific splendor, we cozied ourselves into a feast of fresh fish and Indonesian tales in a warmly wood-paneled restaurant.

Brains and bellies full and content, we braved the wild wind once more and wound our way back to the big city and our gently rocking beds, give or take a hilarious adventure through the red light district with my parents. My friends, more and more I am convinced that-- in this wacky and wonderful world-- anything is possible.

In which we find ourselves glued to a chair.

More specifically, the past few weeks have found me snuggled into this corner:

In my own little corner, in my own little chair, I have been compiling a year's worth of research into a Great Summarizing Document. This means I've been digging through my notes, cutting them apart with a pair of mental scissors, translating them from the German into the English, and then smooshing them back together with words from the observational part of my brain into a big, colorful collage of war and life and theater and how they all interact with one another. It's kind of like smooshing an entire loaf of Wonderbread into a 1-inch cube, except infinitely more rich, interesting, and nutritious. I'll even go out on a limb and say it's more useful, but that's my own biased opinion. Whatever the case, this whole process is fascinating and the material is fascinating-- so much so that I keep getting distracted by more in-depth research about people, events, etc. and BAM! Two hours later, the sky is a little more sunset-inclined, my brain is bubbling with newly-acquired knowledge soup, and the neglected Great Summarizing Document is giving me a passive-aggressive silent treatment. So I get up, stretch, make a new pot of tea, and restart my Philip Glass playlist, and restart my Philip Glass playlist, and restart my Philip Glass playlist.

The first question that gets asked when I tell folks about what I'm doing is, "Are ya gonna gittit published?" (paraphrasing, of course). Weeell, dunno. It's actually not a goal at this point. I'm mostly just writing it for me, and to share with whoever wants to read it. This research project has taught me some pretty incredible things about how people work, for better and for worse, and I don't want to forget it. This whole thing has become much more important to me on a personal level than I had anticipated, and, yeah, I want to be able to share that-- especially seeing as the majority of this information has never been translated into English, at least not in-depth.

I remember learning all about World War II in high school, and I also remember learning all about World War II in Germany-- living in a city that was mostly destroyed by British and Americans, enjoying fireworks by a lake once filled with the corpses of burning people trying to save themselves from miles of flames, reading books in parks where thousands of terrified souls were gathered to be herded off like cattle to concentration camps, walking each day on sidewalks studded with forgotten brass memorials for people whose lives had been stolen from their own homes-- buildings where I do my grocery shopping, dance salsa, have tea with friends, forget about what had happened to the people sitting in the same rooms 70 or so years ago, and breathing in the air of a place where history, both good and bad, is still very real, very vivid-- if you let it. (You say, "Now Margaret, aren't you being a little over-dramatic?" --I say, "Well, sometimes reality is over-dramatic.") Of course, it is much more pleasant to live in this moment, in this time, in this city-- my favorite city-- the one that grew from that city with the help of the very best humanity has to offer. This history somehow never made it into the story I learned in high school. And I want to share it.

That's my excuse for an absence of July postings. Now back to work.

In which we raise one for the music nerds.

As is customary in my life, there have been a great deal of music-themed happenings toodling around in my sogennante "free time" as of late, as of earlier, as of now. And now, now at 10:30 p.m., the sky still bright with northern summer light, now with my stomach singing sweet tea-digestion tunes and the birdies tweeting along outside the open window, ... forgot where I was going with that... hmm.

Possibly the most exciting music-related event of 2012 thus far was a weekend choral workshop in, erm, February. This workshop involved Hamburg's most prominant church being filled on multiple levels by over 700 singers, all of whom had gathered there to play Superchoir with one of the world's most well-known, most drooled-over, and certainly the most beautifully friseured rockstar composers of our day-- Eric Whitacre. I have long been a lover of his delicious dissonnances and nearly flipped my own friseur upon hearing of his impending arrival AND the fact that anyone could take part in his master plan for a mere sum of 15 euro. FLIP! FLIP! FLIP! Needless to say, I signed me up for that business, oh yes.

Also needless to say (but saying it anyway), it was a flippin' great experience. To be in that biiiiig, ooold, symbolic space with so many other people who had come from all over Germany just to sing was such a lovely thing to feel and experience. Of course, there were many challenges involved with this a project, such as keeping everyone in the same tempo when half the choir was watching the conductor and the other half of the choir was watching the memory of the conductor via big screen projection, but there was such a juicy reverb going on that it all mushied itself into scrumptious sound porridge in the end anyway. The sound, the sound, the sound pumped out of all of those trained diaphragms and up and over and all around in the air was... yeah, it was eargasmic. Luckily for you, technology has made it possible to share the yum! For example, you could click on thisword to see a wee video summary of the project, as documented by the npr-equivalent radio sponsor. After you do that, you could also listen to all the songs performed by the superchoir by clicking here! The whole concert was actually much longer and included many (too many, in my opinion) other original compositions performed by the smaller radio choir. A word about the recordings: this one (Lux Aurumque) is reallyreallypretty, this one (Cloudburst) is reallyreallycool, this one (Sleep) is reallyreallyohmuhgawdyum, and this one (Bach {again}) is reallyreallystrange-- it involved corresponding hand motions to help inform the audience that each singer was rocking their own tempo when things start to get funkily painful, saving many from an unnecessary sprint to the otolaryngologist. Additional note: keep listening! It ends beautifully! I actually had a lot of fun with this song, though I can totes understand how it could be unpleasant for those caught off-guard.

Here's my favorite rehearsal shot, cloudbursting away in the sopranosphere:

Summary: A couple days of makin' sweet music with one of my favorite composers in my favorite city in the world = an actual event that happened in my life?! Additionally, this fellow was so excited by the whole thing he said he wanted to make it an annual event. I hope that happens.

An entirely different but also wonderful music-related experience happened several months later in Hamburg's biggest alternative performance space. Scooting back a wee bit, I am a big appreciator of npr's First Listen series, in which upcoming albums from many different musical genres are previewed each week. Actually, their whole music program has been my main source of tunage for many months, particularly after the death of my laptop and the absence of an iPizzle charging cable. Righto, so last fall I fell for one such previewed album by this strange and fantastically whimsical classical singer gone rockstar. I thought about going to see her in Berlin around the same time, but to no avail. Therefore I was quite tickled to see her face on a poster while zooming out of a U-Bahn station, and was then even more tickled to learn that her face was connected to an upcoming concert in my fair city. Complete with chamber orchestra and dirt cheap. Oh, yez!

I convinced a friend to co-attend and we had ourselves quite an evening. As it turns out, she was way kookier than I had anticipated, and therefore also way cooler. I would imagine her train of thought over the course of the concert being something like this: "Oh, boy! I'm going to surprise the Germans by coming out masked and caped while doing interpretive dance! Whee, I just love my homemade outfit covered in neon poofballs! Singing singing, playing playing, doot doo dooo! Ooh, let's have the Germans sing along! Now for some more interpretive dance and drumming! And now I'm going to throw confetti on everyone and call it SNOW! And and and now I'm going to put on a hard hat and totally rock the metal out of this place! And now, and now...!" And she did all those things and totally pulled it off. In these days of tone correction it's hard to know if an artist will actually be any good live, and she was. Her voice made my head go BAM and YUM. The whole audience, though confused at first, had fallen under her spell by the end and ended up calling her back out for a double encore. Then everybody went home happy. She became a real role model musician for me after that night-- she's creative, she's incredibly talented, and she's not trying to fit into anyone's cookie cutter stereotype of what a famous poppy musician should be. She does what she loves, she does what makes her happy, and she doesn't seem to give a damn about anyone that might criticize her for it. And she got lucky enough to make a fine living out of it. Way not to sell out, Shara of the Neon Poofballs.

Three weeks later I cleaned out my bag and found a pile of confetti at the bottom. It was great.

So that was a musical event turned semi-philosophic life experience. The next story is more of a life event with lots of other colors and a hip soundtrack.

One sporadically sunny June Sunday, I went with a friend to check out a mysterious brunch snuggled somewhere in the heart of the city where music was to be pumped. We stumbled upon a suspicious-looking outdoor brunch which looked like it corresponded with the internet knowledge I had fed my brain earlier that morning. What a groovy concept was afoot that day! My understanding of the whole thing is such: there is a group of people, a "breakfast club", persay, which puts a lot of time and creativity into preparing many, many interesting brunchable dishes-- all vegan, all tasty. When the special Sunday rolls around, they put all the dishes out buffet-style with a pile of plates and utensils and open it to the world. They also have a special tea stand and a kitchen full of coffee and fresh fries and exquisite beverages with and without alcohol. People come, people eat, people make merry, people wash their own dishes, and people donate as much moolah as they see fit to the cause. It's a "moving brunch" based in one old neighborhood of young and fabulous hip-hipster-hippy-lefty types who have turned run-down factory and housing buildings into a mecca of color and head-scratchingness, for lack of a better description. Most of it was still run-down, but I think the danger aspect is all part of the look. It's personality was einfach so, so, so, big. Apparently the area is a large tourist attraction, as evidenced by the big group of Japanese tourists that infiltrated the brunch half way through with big smiles that harmonized nicely with camera clicking.

I don't know how long this tradition has been around, but there were a lot of people there who were kindly able to help explain the system to our wide-eyed and head-scratching selves. All kinds of people, too. Bafefoot tattooed ruffians, preppy young families, a loud American with a Jack the Pumpkin King hairclip, fluffy beasts, and the list goes on. There was a DJ pumpin' some sweet tunage through the loud speakers. Plates were filled, bottoms were seated on old benches, a various assortment of chairs, and exercise machines; plates found their homes on rickety picnic tables and old tires nailed together, topped with nice tablecloths and flower pots.

The highlight of the event was a 7-musician band that made itself a stand amongst the potted plants and naked mannequins and got down to business, fueled by fries and free rummy beverages that kept mysteriously appearing before them. A touch of klezmer, a touch of gypsy, a touch of jazz, a touch of pirate, and a giant dollop of photogenic fun.

The other highlight was the rainbow cake that strutted out once most people had left. I'm sure this was the inspiration behind Oreo's latest pride and controversy.

My favorite moment, however, was when a proper-looking, dazed and confused old woman wandered into the bustling courtyard. A co-attending friend had a nice conversation with her and later told me that she had grown up in one of these old buildings and just happened to come back that morning to see what had become of it. I can't imagine how much of a surprise it was to return to this scene. She stayed for a long time, just standing in the middle of all the action, talking with people, taking it all in. It was hard to tell what emotions she was experiencing, but I had the impression that happiness was playing a big part.

The fourth and final music-related occurrance upon which I would like to elaborate is the university performance of Carmina Burana, which took place yesterday (--it's taken me a few days for this post to get here). Carmina Burana? You know, the one that starts (and ends) with this bit (you should probably turn your volume up before hitting that link). Of course, many linguistic variations upon this theme have come out with time, but this one remains my favorite. I'd seen it/heard it several times in the past and had it pegged in my mind as That Cliché Piece That Eeeeveryone Has Done, NBD, except for me, so I was excited nonetheless. As it turns out, it was a Total Blast. Sure, some rehearsals were better than others, but the fun-factor definitely grew with each one as we dug a little deeper into the music. Finally performing it with a giant choir and giant orchestra under the direction of a fantastically expressive conductor on the swanky stage of the swanky Laieszhalle for a full house packed with over a thousand bodies, including such important luminaries as some awesome friends and former Bundeskanzler, Helmut Schmidt, was pretty much the coolest thing I could have done on any given 1st of July. I stood in that sea of black under those hot, hot lights and sang and grinned my face off. (Which reminds me, I should probably call up the Laeiszhalle and see if they found any spare faces on stage afterward).

Another neat little nugget of fun: there was a big Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea concert on the same stage the evening before our performance. On the way to the dress rehearsal that morning, I had a little daydream in which I ran into Bobby backstage, told him how much I wished I could afford to attend his concert (which is so, so, so true), and he invited me to come for free. Daydream, remember. I kept my eyes opened for any sign of his perfectly dreaded locks once there, but there were none to be seen. Sigh. Rehearsal shot:

Rumor has it that the music selection for this semester was inspired by the Euro Cup, particularly as the concert happened to preceed the final game. This would have been more exciting if Germany had not been knocked out of the runnings in its semi-final match with Italy... the mighty Elbe flowed saltier on that tragic Thursday. In case you missed it, however, Spain avenged this loss by beating Italy 4 to Spaghetti-0 to take the title. O, Fortuna.

One confession before peacing out-- it wasn't until we were O FORTUNAing the audience to smithereens during the concert that I was finally able to sing the lyrics correctly. When we go from singing all whisperlike back to IN YER FACE MODE, I was almost always concentrating so hard on singing "SORS SALUTIS" instead of "SALSA COOKIES" that I lost my place in the page turn and ended up automatically singing "WINDMILL COOKIES" instead of "ET VIRTUTIS". Luckily I always found my place again before mistakingly shouting "GONORRHEA!".

Now you know all my dirty little secrets. Have a nice day!