the future

This evening, after a full day of practicing and working at the print shop, I went to a concert at Martinskirche in the old part of Basel, next to the Blau Haus and the Butt-Knight, whom  you may remember from my first walkabout in the city.

The concert was by a historical performance group called L'Arpeggiata.  Their website is worth a visit, though it's entirely in French; very high-quality recordings of their music play as you look through the site, and the pictures are quite nice.  There wasn't much that I could see of the group tonight, being in the back and peering through two pillars (one of which had a watering can painted onto it!) but still the performance was very interesting.  It was an hour and a half long, no intermission.  In fact, there were no breaks at all between pieces; the concert theme was Via Crucis, and each short-ish piece by different composers brought you (musically) through the Crucifixion (much more pleasant than it sounds).  I initially wanted to go to see this guy, Philippe Jaroussky.  Here he is with L'Arpeggiata:

Unfortunately, he couldn't make it tonight, I don't know why, I still don't understand German (disappointing, I know).  It didn't matter, in the end, the group was so good.  Similar to the video, the ensemble tonight consisted of two theorbos (those crazy-looking lutes with very long necks), harpsichord, baroque guitar, baroque violin, harp, and two instruments I had never seen before: a psalter, which is like a cimbalom I had seen played in Gypsy music, it's a type of hammer-dulcimer at which you stand and tap upon the strings with two sticks looking like wooden spoons; and a cornett, not to be confused with a cornet.  The cornett looks like a weird, crooked oboe, but it has a mouthpiece like a trumpet, and definitely sounds like a brass instrument, even though it's made of ebony, or ivory.  An amazing sound!  The wikipedia article is interesting.

Anyhow, the place was packed.  PACKED.  The church is enormous, includes a balcony, and there was literally standing room only.  Student tickets were 15f, "unnumbered seats" were 35f (on the sides of the church and behind pillars--students got to sit here as well), and the good seats were 45f.  I'm sure there were 300 people there.  After the concert, and upon finishing my Cheever book, I can't help but think with regret on my dear home country (except maybe not now, so much, with all the lame-ass violence and posturing in the political arena) and how much I miss it: being a native speaker, the open spaces, living in a house, being closer to family, making jokes with my friends; and how, if I'm serious about my career, I'm probably not going to move back any time soon. 

In all ways but socially, my life here is practically ideal.  I love working in the print shop, it is so close to my house and the work is satisfying and fulfilling.  I practice several times a day, and am working on music that is challenging.  If I am lucky I will develop a busy schedule of concert work, with groups that are good.  (That probably has as much to do with how much I practice as it does with luck.)  I knew this might happen, I expected it.  But part of me wishes it didn't have to be like this.  I don't want to never come home.

In other thoughts, I noticed that *many* of the instrumentalists in L'Arpeggiata have degrees from the Schola.  I had ruefully entertained the thought (today, even) that I am enjoying my school-free life so much that I should figure out how to just take lessons, and then keep up the rest of my timelessness.  Of course, those are just the thoughts that have kept me in musical mediocrity my whole life.  I really should try to get this degree, and try to make a better future for myself.  Maybe it will buy me a way back home after all.

project

spent 11 hours in the shop today, finished printing a little project i thought up not to long ago.  here are just a couple images.

John Cheever

'In warm months writer slept in attic, surrounded by boyish museum of minerals and curiosities. Also facsimile of Chinese junk carved in ivory. Two feet long. Three balls of ivory within one another. Large as an apple. Brain corals. sea shells as big as melons. Others like peas. Held to the human ear there was a sound like surf breaking on shore. Some shells with spikes. Two tame crows among cherished possessions. Taken from nest on Hale's island in April. Swordfish spur and eye socket. Powerful odor from same. Attic illuminated by skylight, approached by several steps. Fine view of river to the sea.'

The Wapshot Chronicle

focus

Every day this week I spent some time at the print shop, even if it was only an hour or two; there was type to set, type to sort, drawers to consolidate.  And there is more still.  I haven't gotten on the press yet, so far lacking gumption or some such thing, but I'm building up to it.  I hadn't realized how much I needed a place to go.

How about this tiny, tiny type?  This is a 6 point ch ligature (two letter forms combined on one piece of type so that the serifs can overlap properly. The typical ligatures we have in the US are ff, fi, fl, ffi) which you use quite a lot in German, especially setting something book-related, which I was.  (das Buch, die Bücher.)

The type was so small, it took me about 2 1/4 hours to set 18 lines.  I'm helping one of the printers (Florian) with a project.  It's nice to not have to be creative, and to just have a task.  The mind empties out.  You can focus.  Capital H, o, l, z.  Where is z.  Do I need a ligature?  Etc.  It's quite satisfying.

easy to spend, hard to save.

Today the farmer's market had about quadrupled in size.  Hot food vendors, cured meat vendors, people selling knitted things, sewn things, wooden things, jewelry, people with plants in pots.  I tried very hard to only buy the vegetables I had come for, but then I saw this.

It's not all that hard to save, of course; I just don't leave the house too often, and when I do, it's to work at the print shop or do official business.  It's a good thing that I'm not (too much of) a compulsive spender because, as I wait to get paid for my playing work, I am getting close to broke, with all the bills I've got at the moment: school tuition, visa, compulsory health insurance.  Congrats, by the way, on the insurance success at home; yesterday the Insurance woman and I talked about how relieved we were that something positive had finally happened with all that.  Here, as I said, insurance is compulsory, and typically quite expensive; it starts at 300+ chf per month.  Fortunately they have inexpensive insurance for foreign students, 72chf/m, and for that price I get everything, really everything.  Surgery, dental work in case of an accident, inpatient, outpatient, the list goes on, and with only a 500chf deductible.  I have to admit, it's a good feeling.  In the process of getting the insurance, I was amazed again at how small the country is, and how efficiently things can be done.  There is, for instance, one woman who deals with foreign students' insurance matters, and probably few other things.  She sent me a letter to inform me of my options, then when I went to the office she came out to meet me, and when my insurance is paid for and settled she will receive the paperwork.  What happened to an army of people dealing with all these little issues?  I'm grateful and a little surprised to be getting so much personal attention by the State.

I was thinking this morning that I'll probably look back on my time here, at the beginning, as one of the healthiest times of my life.  I eat in 3 meals a day, make tons of brown rice, I cook fresh vegetables, I ride my bike or walk everywhere.  I'm still too skinny (sorry, Diane) but maybe it's less of a gaunt-skinny and more of a muscly-skinny?  I'll keep telling myself that. 

my name

I always knew my name was difficult to pronounce, but I never thought of it as being weird. Welcome, Ms Adie, to Switzerland. People here have never heard anything like it. I think I've not had one instance of telling someone my name here that it wasn't met with a queer stare. What kind of name is that, they ask. Not from around here, I tell them. No indeed. Things become even more complicated when I try to spell it, as English speakers and German speakers pronounce vowels quite differently. For our ay, ee, eye, oh, you, (and sometimes wye!) the Germans have ah, ay, ee, oh, oo (und manchmal uepsilon!). So those three crucial letters--A, E, I--spelling them in English gives the wrong impression entirely. (Megan Ed?i) Now I just kind of apologize to people, and tell them I know it's weird, and then I spell it again, sehr langsamer (very slowly), in German. Oh well, I think their words are funny. All those umlauts? The alphabet has so many damn characters here that the drawers of type are heavier than any I've known. Harder to put away, too, since there are so many more compartments. How interesting, that the world has so many languages. I heard once that the Hawaiians had no written language until printing came to the islands, and then our alphabets didn't have enough of the letter k. Rather than waiting months for a boat to bring more type from the mainland, Hawaiian printers started breaking the tops off of upper-case Rs in order to make more. Veeery smart.

Did I mention that it is finally warm here? I've done some planting. With any luck, these little suckers will start popping up before I head back to CA for the summer...

from top left: chard (aka mangold, ha ha ha), peas, peas, and peas; in the front, lettuce.Also repotted both the thyme and basil.

You know, it doesn't help me to think how stupid it is that to say "Meryl Streep is an American actress" you must say "Meryl Streep ist eine amerikanische Filmschauspielerin" -- instead, I should just accept the length and complexity of the words and move on to learning them. Must. Stop. Resisting. Must. Stop.

some type history.

Most of the typefaces at Druckwerk are from the Haas type foundry, which was located not far from Basel (one could drive there from my house in about 15 minutes). It was the first foundry in the world (though it closed in 2002); up to that point, it was typical for individual print shops to cast their own type. Haas began by making spacing material (to go in between the lines of letters, etc) in standardized sizes and shapes, and this put them on the map. They are the foundry responsible for the famous Helvetica typeface, among others. It's easy to write all this stuff off as only being interesting to a printer, or a typographer, but in a more philosophical sense, we're really talking about the history of communication, literacy, and the transfer of information. Not small things, those.
On a more humorous note, rather than referring to Serif and Sans Serif typefaces, here they are called Serif and Grotesk - because the idea of a letter without the feet on it was such a grotesque idea. Heh heh.
The building where Druckwerk is located used to be a brewery. It's got a deck on the 4th floor, and it was almost hot up there, as I was eating my lunch. I love being warm. It's the best. How's that for a philosophical musing?
Falafel seems to be Turkey's answer to the burrito. It took me a while to find, but I'm glad I did. Here are before and after shots from lunch today.

exciting bit of news

Just got a call to play for 2.5 weeks in Paris -- a couple Beethoven symphonies -- it includes concerts and recording. Ha!

ZwiebelFisch

Well, how about this: I got a key to the Druckwerk studio today. Druck = print. Letterpress printing is known as Buchdruck (buch = book) and, in exchange for volunteer hours (1:1) that's exactly what I'll be doing. Some Things I Learned At The Print Shop Today:

1. If a letter in your case of type is in the wrong spot, it's called a fish (Fisch). If it belongs in another case entirely, it's called an Onion Fish (ZwiebelFisch).
2. Everyone knows about points from their word processing program. Turns out, points in America are slightly smaller than points in Europe. What?! I wrote more about this on flickr.
3. Spending 3 hours thoroughly vacuuming and sweeping up a print shop can make you sore in the haunches but is still worth it for the earned trust and brownie-points.
I'm going back tomorrow to do some more organizing, and start setting type for a business card. Check out the shop's website, if you feel like parsing through some German.

More pictures, of course.

Spring is warming things up around here, and I had lunch today by the Rhein (about a 2 minute walk from the studio) in the sun. I possibly even got a tiny bit sunburnt. And, I stood (briefly, briefly) in the river, which is full of snowmelt at the moment. Marcel, one of the printers, told me that during the summer he often walks from the studio down to the river for a quick swim. What a perfect way to take a break.

and in other news

check out these sweet editions
and this delicious polenta

ps. the Wm Trevor was incredibly good, as expected.

awake at 5:20, on my way by 6:30, off the train in Egg at 8:50; or, The Morning Commute

Hoo boy, I wrote a whiny post about trains when I got home this afternoon. Sorry about that, just the kind of blogger I never wanted to be. Good lord. How mortifying. For anyone without Google Reader (or similar) be glad you missed it, and enjoy the following humorous signage from one of the trams this morning:

(my personal favorite is the figure with the saw.)

The opportunity to see the country, under the auspices of going to work, is pretty awesome. This morning I had a performance in Egg (which means corner, or overlook) at a church there.
Unlike the other performance, we played today during the church service; selections from the Bach cantatas were interspersed throughout the two hours. Not speaking German gave me plenty of time to stare at the stained glass windows and think things over. Highlights of the morning certainly included the jazzy Swiss-German rendition of "He's got the whole world in his hands" though I admit I got a bit bored during the 40 minute explanation of Fair Trade goods (one thought: did I just hear the word banana?).

After the service, I thought I'd take advantage of the trip through Zürich, and the cellist of the group, my new friend Zin Young, showed me around a bit. We were limited, of course, by the bass situation; I did get a new shaft for the wheel, but it's too small for the endpin block and so is constantly turning itself around. Anyway, here is the Zürisee, AKA Lake Zürich. It was a bit rainy.

Zin Young, cello, bass, walkway by the lake (which is just to the left here).

The best part of the day, certainly, was the half hour between the Vorprobe (dress rehearsal) and the start of the service. I made my way out to the churchyard, where it was lightly raining. You could barely see the beginnings of snow-covered mountains out in the distance. At 9:45, the church bells began to ring; there were five, maybe six, they began as a triad and then kept adding notes at the bottom. It was wonderful to be alone on the grass, looking at the mountains through the mist and rain, surrounded by that overwhelming din. For all the times I think about home, about what it is like to be a foreigner (Auslander), to not belong, to feel strange and surrounded by strangeness, there is a moment like this.

books, trains, luck

Swiss countryside. From train. Will try to do better today.

Started reading The African Queen but it committed what I consider to be an unforgivable sin: Cockney accent. Had to put it down, couldn't see through the inanity. Thought I would combat the accent with some American Fiction, and went to Tropic of Capricorn. It is aggressively negative, a diatribe of things like this: "I think of all the streets in America combined as forming a huge cesspool, a cesspool of the spirit in which everything is sucked down and drained away to everlasting shit" and sometimes worse than that, though that's fairly representational. Honestly, reading that sentence made me laugh; sometimes when something is so far from your viewpoint or experience you can enjoy its difference. And, for about 40 pages, things were going well, in this vein; but then. My luck with thrift store finds might have run out, and I may actually have to go buy a new book. All this time I'm wasting without a good book, it's depressing. If only I could speak German. I have a new theory; maybe if I stop trying to get the sentences to make sense in English, they will just start making sense in German. As things are, it still takes me too long to break down the sentences in order to get a cohesive whole; today in rehearsal, whenever the conductor would tell us where to start I would have to repeat the number silently to know what it was. "Vierunddreißig. Vier. Und. Dreißig. Thirty Four." It's a bit laborious. I would stare at the conductor when he talked to us, as if that would help me understand what he was saying; I think it may have convinced him that I did understand, which was a mistake, on my part, since, after all, I did not. (Vierunddreißig. OMG.) It is good to be playing, but heck, the length of the rehearsals is epic. The good old union kept me sane in the US, and I never took it for granted. Rehearsal is not to exceed 2.5 hours. Break must occur within 1.5 hours of the start of the rehearsal. Second rehearsal is not to commence until 1.5 hours have elapsed since the last rehearsal. Our schedule today: Rehearsal 2 - 5:15; break until 6:30, then rehearsal until 9:45. EPIC, I tell you. My little arms might fall off. But one good thing about having that much rehearsing in one day, is that tomorrow, rather than more rehearsal, we have a concert. So.

as seen from the train.

I had good luck today on the train ride home. My exasperated sigh, a response to the Henry Miller, made the guy sitting across from me laugh; he was trying to read, too (though I think his book was not nearly as aggravating as mine). Anyway, we had a nice chat, although he'd never been to the US he was quite interested in the country, and had some interesting ideas about all of it. He and his girlfriend are taking a road trip this summer to Syria (I still can't believe I live in a place from which you can just drive to Syria), and one of his jobs is reading aloud for audio books. Our conversation made the last hour of the commute significantly more bearable. Thank goodness for the English speakers.

AND, speaking of luck, British Airways is preparing to have a strike, and the dates just happen to include my return flight to SF (due to depart next week, scheduled for the sake of caution). What that means is that changing the date of that flight, to a date in the summer, was Free. Free! I just saved $300. So, see you all on July 7!

Unfortunately, we can't be lucky all the time. This happened on my way to the tram, in the middle of the street. Breathe easy: bass was unharmed.

sleeeepy

Had my second lesson today. It was difficult, and good. You arrive at these ideas in your head about the kind of player you think you are, and it is unerringly positive to have someone take all that apart and show you how to put it back together. I've never really had a regular teacher who spent a lot of time on technical issues: hand position, bow technique, etc. Being here is going to make me a better bass player. Which is, after all the point. Two hours spent concentrating on bow stroke and trying to play in tune; followed by two hours of tandem speaking; then an hour at a print shop, convincing the printer to let me trade work for press time; capped off with a well-earned beer with my teacher and another bass player and a nice bike ride home; brings me sleepily to bed. How pleasant. Sorry for no current pictures (though I am including one taken a few nights ago from the Mittlere Rheinbrücke, of GroßBasel, the old part of town). I'm off to Bonstetten tomorrow for a gig (south of Zürich) and will bring the camera for proper documentation.

ps. It got up to 14 or 15c here today. Warm! I was practically jolly with delight.

übermorgen

morgen = tomorrow
über = everyone knows what über means

übermorgen = the day after tomorrow. Ha!

So, übermorgen, I finally have work. PHEW. And morgen, I go from having 0 things to do during the day to 3. Why does everyone want to do stuff all at the same time, I ask you? Believe me, I am *not* complaining. Not one bit.

I have been keeping busy, though:

mail long promised and long unmade

portion of an interior page (you may recognize the boyscout?)

signature page

the other thing I have been doing, besides thinking seriously about finishing my taxes (isn't that the first step? or, possibly even the second?) is exerting incredible amounts of willpower to prevent myself from eating even one more bite of these most delicious organic, honey-filled waffle cookie things.
I have had three today. The only way I was able to stop was to think that this, the single Honig Waffeln left in the package, could also be eaten tomorrow. Good lord.

more carrot info from Maggie

"Since anthocyanin (the purple-red pigment in your carrot) is water soluble and beta-carotene (the yellow-orange pigment) is fat soluble, it makes sense that in a soup the purple pigment would be transferred into the broth while the orange pigment would stay in the carrots."

She really thinks on her feet, that Maggie.

purple carrot

Check out this crazy carrot I got at the farmer's market.
Orange interior? Didn't see that coming.
it turned my soup purple, too

Got a letter from the Swiss Post today. What did it say? I knew it was a response to my letter, contesting the customs charges on the packages of stuff I had shipped to myself. But the rest? There were no checks enclosed, so any other clues to its contents were locked up tight within the German language. With a quickly beating heart I laboriously typed the text into Google translate. And: Yes! they agreed, I had been wrongfully charged for my packages by customs. This means a return of 238chf. Ha! Pocket change (and then some).

Today no pants under pants were required. It was quite a relief. In celebration, I rode my bike over to Germany, where, I had heard, food is cheap. The first market I came to (circuitously) was called Lidl, and it was a truly bizarre experience. There were shelves, sort of, but instead of having nicely arranged items for purchase there were the cartons those items come in - all stacked up - and then within the cartons, the goods themselves. Boxes were piled on the floor. Cardboard everywhere. Dim lighting. There was a loose organizational scheme, but the overall feeling was more of a "HERE IT IS" kind of sentiment. I bought two bottles of wine (2 euros each) and a loaf of bread (1 euro). Feeling a bit overwhelmed, I made my way home, and spotted a much more normal-looking grocery store on the way; success, and yes, quite inexpensive.

California sky

Last bit of news: it looks like I'll be in the Bay Area this summer! School, of course, takes a vacation for several months each year, it's called Summer Break, and I now get to be a participant in said break. I'd stay here, but there won't be any work, as far as I can tell; plus, I've already scheduled a class at the SF Center for the Book for the end of August. Before I buy my ticket, I'm going to make sure there is some more work for me to do, so if anyone has any house painting they need done, or yard-digging, or letterpress printing, or bass playing, or dumb blog writing, you just let me know.

j'aime la France

Went to Mulhouse today (say: Mull-looz) for my first lesson with David since arriving; he is there for three days, recording Brandenburg 1. I got to town early and had a chance to get some lunch; walked to the main square, bought some goat cheese with fig jam inside (incredible), some crusty bread covered in seeds (delicious), an apple (cold, crisp, tart, sweet) and a mélange of macaroons: café, chocolat, agrumes (citrus) and plain (all of them delectable). I don't want to say that France is better than Switzerland. But maybe someone else could say it, and I wouldn't disagree. I'm sorry, Switzerland. You're great at a lot of things, and I like you too.

canal by train station

cheese shop is just out of view, to the left

macaroons purchased just on the other side of the carousel

traveling companion

free concerts

Met with a new Tandem partner, and she's about perfect. Talks quickly in German but will go back and explain; feels awkward and unsure about her English; we trade off speaking in each others' language. She bluntly chides me when I slip into English. It is excellent.
Following our meeting I went to the 6:15 organ concert at Leonhardskirche, it happens every Friday evening. Tonight was all Buxtehude. There's a famous story about the young Bach walking 200 miles to see Dietrich Buxtehude play the organ. It may not have been D.B. himself tonight, but I only had to walk about 25 minutes. I took some video from inside my bag. It's kind of short. Sorry.

There were probably 80 people there, mostly older, but not exclusively. Can you imagine 80 people coming to an all-Buxtehude program anywhere in the US? And that, my friends, is why I moved here. I was reading an interview with an American bass player who moved over here maybe three decades ago; he was asked to recommend teachers or courses for students interested in focusing on early music, and he recommends coming to Europe: "I now believe that to be essential –for many reasons, language, culture, tradition. Early music here is a basic cultural entity, like jazz in America."
Don't think I don't miss the US, though. Oh California, I intone your name daily...

Die Sonne scheint

The final box, finally, was located. At my own post office, no less. Thanks, Nadia, for all your help! I had almost let go of the idea of ever getting these clothes back, and without many exceptions, that seemed OK. But then they got here! And so I take it back. I am excited to see them. Plus, "the sun shines" today, and I went for a bike ride down by the Rhein. Parts of the street are old and cobbled (so, not the most comfortable ride) but quite pretty, anyway. It felt incredibly good to be outside. Not because it was warm, per se; I'd forgotten a scarf, but then I decided that rather than have it be uncomfortable, it would just BE. That worked OK.

everyone is happy that the sun is out

There was a little sign explaining that this structure is for wild bees. It was pretty neat looking. tennis court, snow, shadows on snow (sky in background should be blue, I think my camera is slowly winding its way towards death--not too quickly, I hope)

camo-tree

close-up for confirmation

the camo tree makes its own little mines

I'll be putting more pictures from the ride up on flickr. Speaking of pictures, I got to find out a little family history as a result of the honoring at the Capitol in Washington of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, of which my grandmother Adie was one. Turns out there's an excellent web archive, thanks to the Texas Woman's University Library, with hundreds of pictures of the WASPs hanging around planes, or on the beach, or doing other things. Here's my grandmother, Lewise Coleman (not Adie, yet):

and here she is (striped shirt) with some friends

Caption from the website: Houston Municipal Airport, Houston, Texas. Mary Darling (43-W-2), Lewise Coleman (43-W-2), Carol Fillmore (43-W-2), and Hedy Lemar in front of a Cessna Bobcat.

Yea, WASPs. Unlike my mom's mom, the famous Milly, "Grandma A" died when I was 14, and I barely got to know her. So, seeing these photos is pretty great. Here's the link to the website, if anyone wants to poke around some more.