Going Continental!: September 2008 Archives

Andy, in the tradition of Andy Warhol, Andy Kaufman, and Mahatma Andi, read & rapped his poetry to the sonorous sounds of a contrabass and various accompanying instruments, including electric guitar, flute, and vocal percussion.

Given the fact that Andy and The Androids deliver their art in Flemish, my interpretation is based upon the one in a thousand words I understood: periodic English terms dotted throughout, and/or phrases that my mind could hear as English, even if it wasn't! I gleaned some things by the tenor of the music and the interplay of syncopation among/between instruments (including Andy's voice) and the trio of artists.

The flavor I captured was dark and humourous: at turns optimistic (and-or-but activist optimism doesn't seem to matter?), engaged with/against violence (superspastic, illustrated by the pro- and anti-taser brigades), or calling out the Serial Thing to Kill or was it the need for Serial Pain Killers? I enjoyed watching my friends laugh, yet also noticed disparate effects on the audience-as-a-whole. At times a laugh would ripple throughout in a spontaneous wave, other times the audience was carved into thirds: those attempting to suppress their amusement, those with quizzical expressions - apparently puzzled or processing, and those whose stiff blank visages suggested a deep unease or even disassociation. Countering the bursts of laughter, silence often echoed in the cozy, filled lobby of the cultuurcentra Antwerpen (Berchem).

I enjoyed the challenge of applying my closure skills: that particular leap of faith interpreters make as their best guess as to the meaning being attempted by a particular message right now. Andy jumps from one non-sequitur to the next; how else can Albania, the ozone layer, "lesbes in El Dorado," "Income Walker," kanker zo hip, and "nipples" appear in such close linguistic proximity?

Why has the burghermeister gone underground?

Who is wearing moonboots?

What is the title of the song of Stevie Ray Vaughn's that was emulated? (I recognized the melody but my musical recall is pure lousy.) :-/

The moan of disappointment that shot through the crowd when Andy announced the last number, after the guitarist had just amended his earlier superspastic claim to a psychopathic fascination with degrading fruitcake sex with every girl, testified to the coherence of his unlikely combinations.

I am not sure if the last rap about Caesar referenced the political hate group here or some larger human entity (groups and/or institutions) seeking control, but what Andy is doing with language proves how supple, creative, empowering and membering our ways of speaking can be.

What is that noise?

I was writing in The Indian Room when the sound penetrated my concentration. There were at least 100 horse drawn carriages calumping along The Stone Way to Mechelen (Mechelsesteenweg). "These Flemish," I thought to myself, "are something!"

Sunday was A Day Without Cars, and also braderij, a regular fair but with the addition of local organizations presenting themselves to the community. The event and the weather were absolutely fitting for the last day of summer, the eve of the autumn equinox.

Saturday night, two wise women took me out to The Red Dragon, showing me a picturesque alley (not, btw, a dead end, rather a quiet way for walking), telling me tale(s) of the Antwerp hand, showing off an architectural treasure trove in one of the high rent districts, filling me up with hot chocolate, and giving me a taste of "very Belgium" de Koninck's in a bowl.

I had such a pleasant social evening that I went to bed thinking I needn't go out in the world. Then came dawn.

Shortly before the horses, Jose had called from Hoboken with the sounds of a mechanical organ reverberating through the phone. Leaning over the balcony straining for every last glimpse of the equine procession, it was obvious the day was gorgeous and only a fool would waste it. I stopped in at the fitness club to sign up (last day of the special deal), and Nabila "I'm a Morrocan girl" surprised me with membership presents - now I am a walking advertisement for Passage. (They have a sauna!)

The street festival was in high gear by the time I arrived; I walked its length grinning. Among the piles of wares a kaleidoscope of ethnicities murmured in diverse tongues. Performances, impromptu and planned, were staged at regular intervals. My first surprise was discovering that the rock song being broadcast from the church grounds was being sung live to a generation that preceded the rock era by more than a few decades. :-) Then there were the Golden Star Country Dancers, a comedic marching band of three, a pair of aliens (really!), and - yes, even in Belgium - an Elvis impersonator!

I spoke with the guy who lives with the granddaughter of the organ builder for several minutes. :-) The 100th anniversary next month will bring some fifteen of these original beasts together: now that is gonna be something to experience! Even the one by itself was delightful, now I am looking forward to the symphony.

Jose snuck away from the music school booth (to secure batteries for my camera, an important mission in its own right), which enabled me to eat pancakes at the Communist House. Yes, I know its sacriligious for an American to mingle with communists, but they win high praise in Hoboken for providing real, tangible, affordable health care to everyone, period. I have not gotten all the European political distinctions sorted out yet: the Communists are different than the Socialists and the Liberal Democrats are not the same as the Democrats in the U.S. although maybe all of these folk are somehow lumped in under the umbrella "Democrat" in the U.S.? Then again, some of the Liberal Democrats here would probably qualify as moderate U.S. Republicans, and the far right parties here align with the fundamentalist Christian wing of U.S. Republicans? I am not planning on getting this sorted out all too quickly but I am going to make the effort. The politics is more sober here - more intent on practical challenges and policy distinctions than the vicious sporting contest it is in the U.S.

From the festivities, I headed directly down to Antwerp's Center to meet Annmarie and Arlette. Oh Arlette! What fun we have in store! ;-) We had a rousing discussion about languages, particularly the autonomy of sign languages from spoken languages. We meandered through conversation to a spontaneous pasta dinner and called it quits only after hours of half-baked plotting.

My dominant impression so far is of a people with a high degree of social concern and an equal passion for individual pleasure - not just their own, but as a social good which should be shared.

Some days are just quiet.

I decided to play tourist and went looking for a museum and a recommended bookshop. I found a church! (Make of it what you will!) Street names here change every few blocks, requiring navigational vigilance.

Some time thereafter, I stumbled upon a square, Mechelse Plain, in full preparations for an art opening, featuring the photography of a Belgian artist who died last year, Patrick De Spiegelaere.

A coalition of NGOs hosted the event, Wereldbeelden (World Images). There were some speeches, improv, and then live music. Perhaps folks got to dancing, eventually? It seemed everyone was enjoying mingling. The improv artists promised me a word in English - I suppose I did not wave vigorously enough from the audience but it was a bit tough (!) to gauge timing given my three phrase Dutch vocabulary ("ja," "nee," and "dank u"). The audience did provide a few words I could recognize: macaroni, John Lennon, and eyeliner are the ones I recall. :-)

Belgian NGOs are "debating development" this year, in concert with initiatives agreed upon by the World Social Forum.

Phillipe, our tour guide, said "Belgium is surrealistic" in reference to the language alliance of the German-speaking population in the east with the French-speakers of the south. Belgium, he explained, is "a small country with complicated problems." The majority language speakers of Dutch are the Flemish in the north. I will need to devote a single blog entry concerning what I have learned about these language dynamics to date - I think I have enough to sketch an outline of the main discourses. (We'll see!)

Meanwhile, I put most of my energy towards my new colleagues. What a fascinating lot! You may guess I gravitated toward Colin ("metaheuristics") and Jared ("neurogenesis") immediately. :-) Colin's description of metaheuristics as a huge simplified abstraction of simple rules applied to a population which then generates complex interactions put me immediately in mind of Asimov's "human conglomerate." Jared's work on bird brains led to a comment that there are now two known areas of the brain that produce new cells throughout life: the subverticular zone (responsible for smell) and a region above the hippocampus engaged with memory. What better start to this research project than optimization forces and new cells in the brain?

Bill, who is here to teach about the color line in American literature, said there is no other approach for addressing matters of race/ism than "to start with the present and proceed to the past." (I want to take his class!) He really got me excited later, inquiring about this blog (!), when he described the inevitability of a diurnal narrative structure emerging with and without the writer's conscious intentions. Yes! Indeed this is what I have grasped (over five long years and a lot of nudging from friends to present my thinking in a more organized fashion) and - hopefully - put into deliberate motion with the three new categories linkable from the cutesy flash animation (above). How much force/creation can be generated is a function of participation/response (so it seems to me). I am in agreement with Bill that one can only begin with the present. I am hopeful the past can help us learn how to make choices toward more preferred futures (presuming some agreement can be forged on a vision).

Vanja and I compared notes concerning our respective "Institutional Review Boards" processes in order to receive authorization for "human subjects research." I received varying advice on approaching the Members of the European Parliament. One person is convinced response rates will be low. :-/ Jen suggested I follow 'chains' of connections by developing each contact slowly and deliberately. Meanwhile, I'm still hoping to find people to translate a few more of the initial invitations so that I can approach MEPs in their official national language. It's just a hunch (as is most of this action research project), but I'm thinking I might up the percentage of interest just a nib by making this gesture. We'll see!

Zac "The Architect", Cathleen, and Kathy "The Medievalist" had an interesting conversation about the differences between studying the work of live persons (or those who lived recently enough that people who knew them in person are still alive) and studying those long dead. Is it really true that one can define clearer boundaries about a past subject than about a more current one? I'm not sure. I do know that I'm grappling with the liveliness of my own subject , its "superfluidity" to use Zac's term, and have struggled to impose a boundary of location and membership (the European Parliament and its current Members), as well as to define the locus of study on MEPs discourses concerning the choices they make in terms of which language to speak, when and why, and how the attitudes revealed or exposed by these discourses establish a certain frame of reference in relation to interpretation. What is/are those frames, and how do they establish behavioral rituals that instruct (by example), thus limiting and enabling potentials of communication across cultural/linguistic differences?

Cathy's artist of study, Marcel Broodthaers, kinda seems like a guy right up my alley (not necessarily an ally - so many people read my business card mistakenly! I guess ally is either not much in favor or largely unused.) He is famous among Belgians for his mussel pottery. Cathy described how some of his work "pretends to teach" and that he interspersed text in his work in an anti-modernist way . . . there was something she said about his use of space that I'd like to understand better. Later, on the tour, Phillipe explained that symmetry in buildings was a feature to emerge during the Renaissance in the 16th century. It had never occurred to me before that symmetry was not always a desirable geometry, or at least a frame of reference anchoring artistic deviations!

We're all waiting to witness Alyssa in action, meanwhile I was reminded of the incredible cello performance I saw in Northampton some years ago - dang, can't find a blogpost about it! - when they surrounded us with forty or more cellos and played deep and low like whale song. Still gives me shivers! Finally, Caitlin has also carved out a language-related project. I may even have a lead for her! :-)

When I got home yesterday evening, my host and I had a long conversation about the day and all its learnings, ending with a bit of collaborative poetry:

I am being graciously hosted in a flat surrounded by the paintings of Tony Mafia. This afternoon, I passed a Ganesh Festival, and then found classical dancers had taken over the main lobby of Central Station - perhaps it was a waltz? Today was gorgeous: a tad cool in the shade (19 C) but perfect in the sun, and the full moon rose over dinner.

Yesterday, for the first time, I touched London.

Nigham showed me around. :-) We took in an exhibit at the Tate Modern, States of Flux.

We also enjoyed a (smallish) river festival along the Thames, where we ate, and witnessed an absentee ballot voter campaign for Barack Obama.

While Hurricane Ike crashed into Texas, I recall Mother of Storms and consider the juxtapositions of our time. I am still too jet-lagged to offer more than this pastiche, but the poignancy of multilayered moments is on my mind.






I do believe we need groups - big ones! - to weave sensibility among the gaps produced by all the challenges that face us.




Note: Blogentry title quote from "On Going to the Airport" by Alain de Botton (On Seeing and Noticing, 2005).