Bonnie unit, Paris -- ha, that was autocorrected from Bonne nuit!

Have arrived in Paris with a marked sense of optimism. Everything went smoothly today, everyone I met was helpful, if not downright jolly!, I had to pay less for the bass than I expected, it arrived in one piece, my taxi driver carried it into the hotel for me, and I think the friendly desk worker at the hotel gave me free breakfast for the next two days. I wonder if isn't the spectacle that I am that makes people be nice to me--gigantic bass, little me--but whatever, I'll take it.

In the cab on the way to the hotel, heard a French version of the 80's hit, Always something there to remind me:

What?! Is it possible that this is in fact the original version of the song?!?

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rAE1vglkv7g

You be the judge.

Snow is better than slud

Snow is a lot better than slud [sloohð], and that's a fact. (Watch out for the soft d at the end there. Sounds like an "l" but with the tongue touching your bottom teeth.) Slud is, I guess, sleet, though it's hard for me to confirm because I haven't lived anywhere prone to sleeting in 15 years and these things are easily erased by season after season of California sunshine.

Happily, there was, recently, quite a lot of California sunshine in my life. I hadn't been back in two years. It felt less like home than I remembered. Or, truer, I felt less like its native daughter. I couldn't remember how to get anywhere! Neighborhoods appeared between the hills like unknown lands. Things looked like I remembered, but more, or less, real. I took the dialect quiz in the New York Times (here's the link) and a lot of those random, self-defining signifiers looked familiar to me, but I had no idea which one actually fit. Sometimes, I do use "y'all" but not in all situations, and less than when I first moved to Europe--at which point I used it more, to reinforce my personal identity as an American / Austinite. Coke? Pop? Soda? I don't know. The first day I was back in SF, my friends told me I looked "Euro". What does it mean? I remember thinking, some years ago, that it had something to do with cheesy club culture and fake zippers. But now? When I moved to Denmark, none of my clothes seemed right. None were waterproof, for one thing. But now, going back to SF, again--nothing was right. Skirt, the wrong length. Tights and boots instead of no socks and sneakers. Everything too warm, or wrong for layering. Also, recently, my California driver's license expired, and you know, I can't get a new one unless I'm living in the States. I do have a driver's license, I got it in Switzerland (in the nick of time) and it never expires, so that's cool. Probably sometime I should transfer it to Denmark, since I live here now. But the point, of course, is that without realizing it, I'm slowly letting go of many of the American, or Californian, or even Texan signifiers that were formerly and unthinkingly a part of my behavior, speech, and wardrobe. Even the term "letting go" implies too much awareness of the process. I am losing them, they are leaving me, as I grope for the simplest words and find myself saying things out loud that I've only read in books or articles during the last four years.

Sense of self, as it turns out, is a moving target.
Fortunately, the beach was just as I remembered it.

return

At some point, I woke up. My first night of sleep back in Denmark, and clearly I had failed miserably; I could hear a man laughing in a nearby apartment. Andrew seemed to be sleeping. Had I only managed two or three hours of sleep? No light came in through the curtain. But then, and I don't think I closed my eyes, Andrew's alarm went off -- it was nearly 8, and I had, in fact, slept through the night, though it had been impossible to tell because of the darkness lingering outside.

Greenland.

River.

Many things, many things. First - the new book. Conceptualized on and off over a year or so, but written, created, and printed in Basel in August, during the 10-day International Printmaking Residency that I organized at druckwerk. Surrounded by friends.

Basel, in summation.

Friends, in summation. In a minivan.

Conceptualization, in summation.

Alps, hard to summarize.

Hand inking a river, in brief.

Sad to see 'em go, the friends. Nice to be home, of course, but you know, missing, all that. Nowadays I go to the print shop and work on editioning the book. Took some pictures of the first book I assembled:

The shop here, called Al Hambra & Sons, where I have my press and sell my work (theoretically), is a nice place to come every day. Friendly people, lots of space. We officially opened the boutique to the public on August 23rd, it felt like a big success. We were all worn out after, seems like a good sign. Still working on a website, but so far we've got this.

preparing for the opening

looking in

setting up displays

I have acquired a bit of wooden type, exciting. I've even had a chance to use it already. So despite the fact that the dark falls noticeably earlier every day, I've got plenty to keep me busy.

c'est arrivé

et, voilà!

Viborg-ing

So at the end of May, I went to Viborg for ten days to have a little retreat, in order to come up with some new projects to make. (It's been a while.) It was incredibly nice. I stayed at the Brænderigården, a former brandy distillery that is now a contemporary art museum, where there is a graphic workshop and a "villa" where visiting artists stay. I was the only person around at the villa, and so had a lovely perfect quiet room to stay in. The museum is situated just on the edge of the lake, and is a quick walk from the center of town. The night I got in, I had a lovely long walk around the lake. It took me a long time, of course, because I was dawdling, taking pictures of things, picking leaves off nice-looking trees and bushes, and the like.

Just down the lake from the museum is Vingaards Officin, and during the week I went there to meet the guys, see the presses, and take proofs of the linoleum blocks I had been cutting.

MEGAN MAKES A MESS

At Vingaards, I had the chance to print myself a little logo using some of their incredible type:

How about that Ø. Yes.

But one of the most special parts of my time in Viborg was my visit to the west coast of Denmark with my new friends, Bent and Bodil. Bent I know from Druckwerk, he worked as a typesetter before his retirement, and Bodil worked at a library. She retired just three months ago. They are both from the west coast, and knew just where to take me.

This beach is just near the town of Ferring. There is so much wind out here that you don't see many trees. Just down the beach is a lighthouse, called Bovbjerg. It's a nice view from the top. Looks almost like the drive from Half Moon Bay down to Santa Cruz. Know what I mean?

On the way to the lighthouse there was this special thing:

WHEN WILL THIS BUNKER BECOME PART OF THE SKY

Painted blue by an artist who lived out by the ocean, tired of looking at the same old grey WW2 bunkers, standing out against the green grass and yellow rapeseed and of course the ocean and sky.

We walked back along the water's edge, pausing to pick up many interesting rocks along the way.

granite!

After our walk, Bent & Bodil magically produced a folding picnic table and camp stools, and a very lovely homemade lunch including freshly baked bread, cheese, yogurt, and a tasty salad. Plus, how perfect, a tiny bottle of wine. They set up in a lee provided by a museum dedicated to the artist mentioned above. The sun was out, we were protected from the wind, and a lark hung in the air nearby making its special lark-noises.

Scenes like this make me excited for my retirement! Or, at the very least, for my next trip out to western Jutland. 

Press Installation!

It has arrived.

After a day on the pallet, two massively strong dudes arrived to move it into place. I think they brought special equipment for the job, but then decided to just muscle it over. There was grunting involved.

Nearly sculptural.

Anyway, then I cleaned it, as it smelled vaguely of horse shit.

And after that, and a few days of head scratching and general procrastination, I finally put ink on the press! Yesterday. Finally. That's a feather lino block I cut while in Viborg.

Breakfast, dinner.
Cherries that were formerly in the bowl, I have just eaten. Summer solstice approaches. Writing and reading, farting around, snacking off of other people's plates. Two days ago I made a joke about becoming a scary grandmother, serving people salad using my bare hands, whether they wanted salad or not. Then, last night, without thinking about it, I did exactly that! Or, nearly. Dreams can come true, is what I'm saying.

CASE IN POINT.
It has happened, of late, that I have moved into a big lovely storefront on a wide, tree-lined street, a quiet but major thoroughfare that begins at a hip and trendy corner, and ends at the entrance to a park. In this storefront, which is possessed of two huge plate glass windows and several rooms comprising over 2000 square feet, several other artists-printers-designers and I are in the process of turning the space into a workshop and boutique. I don't have any pictures of this yet. Part of the reason for this is that my press has not yet arrived from the countryside, and so I have as yet had nothing to focus my attention and affections upon; the other reason is that our building has recently erected 5 stories of scaffolding, then covered that with sheet plastic, so at the moment the light isn't so good. But they've given us two months rent-free to make up for the inconvenience. Anyway, we need time to get everything set up.

The press I will be receiving is being cleaned and oiled, just now, by a new friend of mine who lives in Viborg, a city 4.5 hours west and in the middle of the part of Denmark that is attached to Germany. He, Bent, is involved with a working museum of printing and book making out there, called Vingaards Officin, after the German printer (Herr Weingarten) who came up to Viborg during the Reformation. The museum is currently housed in an old garage and has no fewer than 3 Intertype machines (for casting lines of type from lead - also known as a linotype machine), two Heidelberg presses, an Eickhoff (Danish-made) cylinder press, and a small Korrex cylinder press. And type. And some friendly guys, retired from their jobs as printers and binders and machine-fixers and teachers. One of them, it turned out, had grandparents who had moved to Austin, Texas, maybe a hundred years ago. Back when it was a tiny town! They had a son, this guy's father, and then eventually moved back to Denmark, leaving sweet, hot, dusty Austin far behind. I visited this place not too long ago, but that will be another post.

printed in Viborg.

Today, I begin a short project with Concerto Copenhagen that will take us to Potsdam, near Berlin, for the weekend.

Also, today, rain, after several weeks of perfect weather. On days like this, I can take a taxi with the bass and feel no guilt. Thanks, rain!

How it happened that I have come to have a place of my own to print.

Story starts back in Basel. Marcel told me I should come to breakfast at the studio, and meet two printers, visiting from Denmark. They had recently finished a beautifully printed edition of Joseph Brodsky's Watermarks, the same text, coincidentally, that had initially inspired my own Venice print. One of these guys, Bent, was involved with a working museum in Viborg [Vee-bor(g)] called Vingaards Officin [Vín-gords Offeeceen]. Sounded nice, so we exchanged contact information. Among the things I recall about Bent was a sort of turtleneck shirt, that was just the neck part. It was for biking, he explained. My first glimpse of the (completely justifiable) Danish enthusiasm for bike gear.

Later on, Bent put me in touch with Louise [Louisa], who was just moving into a new space in the old Carlsberg brewery with a few other artists. She had some equipment on loan from Vingaards, and often worked closely with the guys out there. Louise and I quickly became friends, and I started hanging around the studio, putting together the equipment for a proper print shop. The other folks in the studio were great, too, and it was always nice to hang out. Somehow, though, I never got used to doing real work there - maybe because I hadn't been in Copenhagen long enough, or because I didn't have a dedicated space of my own in the shop, or even, shamefully, because the shop was at the top of the only hill in town and I'm a lazy schlub. So when, in May, Carlsberg decided to kick everyone out of the space so that they could replace the building with a road, and people began looking for a new place to work, I joined in the search, though mostly out of curiosity. Louise decided to stay at Carlsberg, but move to a different location, but the other artists were looking for something around the city. That's when they found the storefront on Frederiksberg Allé.

Last year, in Basel, I began contemplating, scheming, considering, hypothesizing, about my future as a printer. In my mind, I envisioned some kind of storefront in Copenhagen, the letterpress visible through the big plate glass window, with prints and books for sale, and workshops in the back. But, oddly, when the possibility of this exact thing presented itself, I wasn't sure I wanted it. I had become so accustomed to my lazy, do-nothing life that I developed during the cold months. I watched a lot of TV on the internet. Sometimes I took multiple naps during the day. I eschewed doing household chores and neglected the double bass. But you know, because of last year's dream, I thought, what the hell, just go for it.

So, in about three weeks, Alléwerk will have its official opening. My compatriots include textile designer Anne Nowak; Hanne Zachariassen, whose clothing design company is called Asfalt; printer Stig Stasig; designer and architect Sofie Jensen, and designer Line Rix. We'll have a boutique with all of our work on display, I have a table of my own, and soon enough, Vingaards Officin, led by the thoughtfulness and kindness of Bent, will send out a press that I can borrow for as long as I need it.

Pictures to follow.

Sun comes in the front window at an angle. It is close to noon. The plants in the window cast shadows on the floor. On the table by the wall is a New Yorker magazine, open on top of the placemats from my grandmother, on one side, and some tax documents on the other. Also scattered around the table are chocolates and a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant; salt in a small stone bowl; and several letters and postcards waiting for responses in the other corner. In one of those letters was a request for some blog activity. I can see that it has been an unseemly amount of time. I'm sure I had interesting and clever things to say in the intervening months but they are now lost to time. Oh well, there are always more words to say.

Outside the window, rooftops, and clouds steadily moving across the sky, now covering the sun. There are other piles around our living room. It is a busy time over here. I've been playing an opera in Malmö,  Sweden, across the Øresund from Copenhagen. Tonight is the Scandinavian premier of Lear, based on the Shakespeare play, written in 1978 by a German named Aribert Reimann. The piece is composed mathematically, and there are very few moments in the 3-hour opera in which any two people are playing the same note at the same time. It's maybe as distant a piece from what I was doing in Basel as can be imagined. Fun, challenging, like a Sudoku puzzle. Also cacophonous and jarring. Also, occasionally, beautiful. But mostly not. I just found an illuminating interview with our American conductor, Erik Nielsen:

I'm also playing the Rite of Spring with an orchestra in Copenhagen, accompanying a professional dance troupe and 200 children dancers. Next to each other, the Rite seems a bit like Lear's grandpappy. Cluster chords, strong rhythmical figures. A quote from the conductor about Lear: 'It's not intended to be ugly. It's intended to be pure emotion.'

As a beautiful antidote to all of that Pure Emotion, I was just revisiting the site of the Statens Museum for Kunst, where you can look at all the pages of the 17th century Gottorfer Codex. It is a painted record of all the plants in the collection of the Schloss (Castle) Gottorf, in northern Germany, maybe belonging to Denmark at that time. They're pretty stunning.

Here's a link to the viewer.

Lunch time in Denmark. I am eating lunch while you are sawing logs. Sleep well, friends.

away. around.

On the 36th floor of a tower of a Radisson 'Bluh!' in Lyon, with views over the city. I plan to leave my curtains open tonight so that I can awake to sunshine in the morning. The sign on the door says this hotel room goes for 245 euros a night. All the same, it's a funny mix of really fancy and incredibly run-down. I can see weird liquid stains on the wall (on further inspection I think it is red wine), and the closet clearly hasn't been remodeled since the hotel was built in the early '70s. The doors don't close properly, the paint is all scuffed up. But the desk console is new within the last ten years, probably, and the bed is outfitted as fancy beds are in this kind of hotel, with a simple white duvet cover over the bedspread. And out my window is this:

Turned out that room wasn't so good for sleeping. Uncomfortable bed, hard flat pillows. But, here's what I saw in the early morning hours:

And then the next sunset. Couldn't help but document. Not often I find myself in Europe's tallest hotel.

We are in a more modest hotel tonight, and the window opens, and I'm expecting a good sleep. Tour is funny. I won't want to do it forever. I feel like I'm collecting experiences for the next part of my life, which will have a smaller radius of activity. At least geographically. I like it though, now. Still working it out. What to bring, how many pairs of pants, what kinds of snacks. (Best not to talk or even think of food right now.) 

*****

What a funny random life I'm living! Tonight in Perpignan, in an Adagio apartment-hotel, several of us bought food and cooked for each other, and a few others, the orchestra's English-speakers. Finally, a lovely in-house meal. The main street here has palm trees. Palm trees! And on the train, out the window, I saw flamingos. In the wild. Where am I! And to think, not ten days ago I was in  Scandinavia, doing whatever one does there. Riding a bike. Cooking at home. Drinking beer. Wine in France, yes, can be extremely cheap. Not to mention the heaps of produce we bought for 5.50 euros. Where am I? Is it weird that I still feel that way? Today on the bus I happened to be sitting behind our Venezuelan percussionist, who was watching clips from the World Series. GO GIANTS!!! I got so excited. Why am I so far away? From everything? I don't know. It's just like this. Well, good night, Perpignan. Sleep well.

*****

We are back in Basel, bass and I. Cold, clear weather. Done with traveling, and traveling mishaps, for a few days at least. The Giants swept the World Series. I made some colorful soup to celebrate since I couldn't be part of the riots. This morning I relinquished my Swiss residency permit. Not without a touch of sadness. The man who deregistered me was the same one with whom I registered, nearly three years ago. I mentioned this, he confirmed, and said he was pleased to be able to close the circle of my time here. At my going away party, my first roommate, Celine, made the same comment -- she had been at the airport to pick me up when I first arrived. Recurrence of circular awareness by native Swiss people. A key to their culture? I'll tell you what is a key, it's called yogurt, and it is so incredibly delicious here.

But maybe these snapshots are not sufficient. It hasn't been clear how to rally a sufficient summing up into writing. I live in Copenhagen, actually called København, a port town. From certain vantage points you can see giant cruise ships in the harbor. I haven't been yet to see the Little Mermaid. One of the main streets is named after H. C. Andersen, the first two letters of which are pronounced similarly to Jose. (Latinos in Denmark! But not enough to make a proper taco.) It is often very windy. It often rains, just a little. I live with my husband in an apartment which we own, on the top floor of our building. We are furnishing it simply, and trying to make good decisions. It is very sunny in the morning, when it is sunny. I noticed, in the first month and a half, how drastically the light changes day to day. In Oakland I was able to tell the time by the position of sunlight on the wall in front of my bed. All attempts in Copenhagen were confusing at best. Soon, I hear, it will be very dark for much of the day. And work? Yes, it is beginning to happen. The city has three professional orchestras, plus the opera. Malmö, just across the bridge in Sweden, has an opera and an orchestra, for which a new hall is being built. I've had a week of work with Andrew's orchestra, and one in Helsingborg, the Swedish just-across-the-water from Helsingør, just a bit north of us, maybe by an hour. Also, I continue to work in middle Europe. Now, for instance. I am in Basel. Cold, clear Basel, preceded by ten days in France, in a variety of climatic conditions. Imagine, packing a bag for three and half weeks in which the weather would range from 65 and humid, to 28 and snowing. I did ok, at least so far. Mostly I don't have to travel with both suitcase and bass. But sometimes. Although I repeated to myself something I'd overheard once, about the cold not being related to catching a cold, two hours in freezing weather waiting for a delayed train doesn't seem to have done me any good. I am sipping homemade ginger tea and looking forward to my hearty colorful soup later. Also two baths in two days. Making up for the bathroom situation back home.

In France it is very easy for me to not get proper food to eat, being a vegetarian (though, admittedly, I did see an ad in the metro for a sort of veggie burger, so maybe things are changing?) and after a week of miserably eating large portions of bad food, or small portions of not much at all, I was extremely hungry. I ate a few bites of chicken off a friend's plate, out of desperation. And then I decided to be content with less, and specifically not to overeat, even if I wasn't sure when the next meal would be. Oddly, this helped me to be less hungry.

One of my closest friends in Basel is quite pregnant. I will go to see them tonight, and bring over that colorful celebratory soup. We have spent a lot of evenings together, over the two years of our friendship, watching movies and cooking and drinking wine. Sometimes three or four times a week I'd be over at their house on Oetlingerstrasse. Before long, there will be one more of them, maybe not for the wine drinking but for all the rest of it. 

And language? How funny to be back in Basel, surrounded by Schweizer Deutsch (Shveetze Dootch!) while preparing to begin to think about learning Danish. I'm reading a book written by a linguist, about the ways in which differences in language are reflections of differences between cultures, and have noticed so far the appearance of many a prominent Danish linguist. From a country of 5 million on a good day, it seems surprising to have such a wealth of language studies but maybe it has to do with the silent letters (33%!) hiding among, to the American ear, a host of very foreign sounds. Which reminds me of something else, a German friend of mine was watching television with his grandmother, and someone from the US was interviewed. The grandmother asked, 'Do they really speak like that? RruRruRru!' Ha. Yes. We do. 

You know, in Denmark we have these really serious windows that do a decent job of keeping the heat in, despite their size. But these old Basel windows, while charming, aren't quite cutting it. Though they're not even comparable to the windows at Monte Vista, rattling in their frames as the wind blew through. One of them even had a tiny bullet hole (the work of a BB gun?). Good old Oakland. 

What else? A beautiful morning in Lucerne,

delicious Korean food (& kimchi!) cooked by my friend ZY,

a burrito in Dublin,

colleagues in Dresden's Frauenkirche,

winter out the train window,

and boy, aren't those long shadows for 3 o'clock??