out a car window

Today, I rode in a car. Two, actually. It's really a different kind of life, being in a car. I mean, I saw little villages, and empty hillsides; running cows; old people drinking their afternoon beers outside the Gasthaus; it felt more like Living. People say that having a car makes you disconnected from the place you live but I feel just the opposite. All this train travel gives me a one-dimensional view of this country, and not a sympathetic one. The same shitty sandwich shops, and all the funny town names you see as you speed by (Wankdorf is a current favorite). The truth is, this country is beautiful, and it was like I felt it for the first time today, looking out my car window at the green, green hills, and the trees touching their branches to the ground.

Then, of course, we parked in a garage, and walked (not through the city center) to the church in Aarau where we were playing a Vespers service. If I hadn't taken the train yesterday, I wouldn't necessarily know what is charming about the place, its odd fountains and curving streets. If, if. We could go one step further, and I could mention the impression I got from the train station, each time I've gone to Zurich (it's on the way), and how, if I'd never played there, I would think Aarau dumpy, depressing, industrial, and sad. Too many "a"s all squished together in one word, it makes you wonder. Heh.

On the way there, I rode with Fredrik, oboe player of Norway. He has a station wagon because he has two children. On the way back, I rode with Joanna, violist of Poland. (Tangent: it occurred to me that the presence of "foreigners" in cities throughout Europe is not unlike the presence of people from Connecticut or Minnesota or Texas living in California; in this giant landmass, travel is easy, and relocation can be done for reasons like a job, or a relationship, or a whim. The only real difference from relocation in the US is that we share a language, television shows, Triscuits; while my childhood in Texas was undoubtedly different from my friends' childhoods in their respective states, we still operate under the same giant economy.) She has a station wagon because her husband plays harpsichord. She joked that the only people who drive this particular model of car are harpsichordists and retired people; she pointed out several examples of old-folks while we were on the road. My thoughts on foreigners moving freely throughout Europe (her husband is French) prompted me to ask her about her childhood in Poland. I think I initially won over this girl by proving my interest in Polish culture; I've read several books by Czesław Miłosz, who taught at UC Berkeley, and have of course seen all the same Krzysztof Kieslowski movies that everyone else has seen (The Double Life of Veronique; Bleu; Blanc; Rouge); plus, fortuitously, I had just read an interesting NYT article about the irrational tight-fistedness in Polish banks' willingness to give out loans to even wildly successful businesses, despite Poland's relatively stable economy. So. Joanna told me about life, as a child, under communist rule, where nearly everything was difficult to come by. The three things she was obsessed with having, she said, were bananas, chewing gum, and coca cola. Life in communism seems like such a foreign and ancient thing to me, I can't believe I have a friend--someone my age--who experienced it first hand.

I didn't manage to take any pictures today, and have only a few from my recent trips out and about. I'll include a short movie from this old church I visited in France, where, incongruously, someone was playing, with gusto, Pictures at an Exhibition on the organ. Other visitors to the church seemed annoyed that the music wasn't something predictable, or Baroque. I thought it was funny.

(Have I already mentioned how much my neighbor yells? He's really outdoing himself tonight.)

Here are some other random pictures. Charming statue of an observant boy.

Obscenely expensive shoes I bought and returned in Paris.

And, finally: what happens when your old bow is a little bit too tight, and the room gets colder, or drier, or something. I wasn't using it; I was, in fact, playing my other bow, when all of a sudden I heard a tremendous crack, and then, down at my feet, saw this. Shocked me to my core, I'll tell you. To my core. Oh well, it wasn't the best bow, and it can be fixed. It did have a really nice rehair, though, alas...