Wednesday, June 26, 2013

water


“Looking in the mirror thinking I can’t believe what I’ve become. Swore I was gonna be someone. And growing up everyone always does. We sell our dreams and our potential, to escape through that buzz. Just keep me up, keep me up.”

Yesterday I got the opportunity to visit Tivoli with my festival friends. I was excited to get out of Rome and spend some time in a different area of Italy, one that is a little less tourist-centric and crazy. I was not disappointed. Tivoli was beautiful—the parts of it that I saw were thick with waterfalls, beautiful caves, amazing scenery, and green. So much green trees starkly contrasting with the beautiful blue sky. The power of the waterfalls overwhelmed me throughout the day as I realize that these caves, these hills, these valleys were all a result of the waterfall. The beautiful Sirens Grotto was a result of a devastating flood way back in the day. As I’m sitting there enjoying the view and thinking about life I read the sign and it tells me that, that the flood was a hugely damaging moment in history and it makes me wonder how something so beautiful and good can be the result of something so awful and bad.

 A constant trickle of water from a waterfall, from a faucet, from a stream, has the power—when combined with time—to completely alter the landscape around it. Something so small with the patience and stubbornness to keep existing will change the way the world looks around you. Sometimes this happens and results in beauty, like the grottos and waterfalls at Tivoli, but other times it results in ugliness and decay.

This makes me think about the clichéd concept introduced by Ms. Niemi in my Advanced Placement Language course in high school: man’s inhumanity to man. I often ask myself how people can continue to live and treat others in the ways they do, whether it’s racism, gender bias, homophobia, or simply close-mindedness and a lack of empathy. How can these people not see that those they judge are people too, that just because someone is gay does not make them a lesser being. It happens everywhere, on the global stage of cultural genocide, the national stage of homophobic marriage laws, and on the personal stage of judgment and stereotyped treatment of strangers. And yet why, why does this have to happen?

Because that’s the way it is and that’s the way it always has happened.

That’s always what I hear. “Things like this just happen when you get a group of people together,” or “Yeah, that’ll happen you just have to ignore it,” or whatever weak excuse blaming something external for a personal bias and the unwillingness to take responsibility for your actions.

If we keep telling ourselves that it’s okay to treat each other like this, that it is okay to clique up and bash each other simply because that is what always happens, then it will never stop and we will never change! Don’t tell me that I’m naïve, that I just want everyone to like me, that I don’t understand how people work. I am very aware of how people “work,” one does not bartend for as long as I have without learning about people. One does not sit and watch as much as I have in different settings, comparing the actions of people at the bar, in the pool hall, and at the casino to the people in college, the professors, and the musicians on stage, without drawing connections and learning more about people in general.

The lame excuse of letting things continue to happen because they always have is not good enough for me anymore. We are killing the world with our pollution, we are killing each other with our close-mindedness and lack of empathy, and we are killing our selves by blaming everyone else instead of taking responsibility for our prejudices and preconceptions. We fear that which we don’t understand and in order to avoid that uneasiness at the unknown we simply place everyone into neat little boxes in our minds. It’s a mechanism of self-defense. Nobody wants to admit that it is fear that drives their actions, but I think that is a big part of it. We are afraid of that which we don’t know, we don’t understand something and it makes us angry because it shows us our weakness. Lack of comprehension means that we don’t know everything, and not knowing everything is terrifying for some people because if you admit that you don’t know something you can easily begin to question the things that you think you already know. Descartes started this struggle as he tried to find his one clear and distinct perception. We fear that a slippery slope of doubt and despair will result when we begin to question ourselves, so instead we pretend to know things we don’t for the safety and comfort it brings us.

But it does not need to be that way. We can change the way we approach each other. We can alter our excuses and take responsibility for our actions. We can teach our children to do the same, or our friends, or even our friend’s children. We can be kind to strangers and open to new ideas. We can quit being so self-centered and let others live their own lives. We can learn to work together, even if we don’t like each other. We can put a tiny pebble at the beginning of the river and let the new trickle form a completely different waterfall.

We can slow down our lives and open up our minds. We can find creative solutions to our problems. We can change the world. 

Monday, June 24, 2013

Can't Hold Us

“Here we go back, this is the moment, tonight is the night, we’ll fight ‘till it’s over. So we’ll put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us, like the ceiling can’t hold us!”

So I finally figured out what I’m going to be doing with myself after this festival. I decided to join my friend Ilana as she goes to Prague for a few days before returning to Rome for five days before hopping on my flight home. This seems to be a good compromise for what I had originally wanted to do with this extra time and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s really fortunate that the money conversion in Prague, the dollar to crown ratio, is in my favor for once. The euro costs more than a dollar right now, so everything in Rome is super more expensive than it would be in America—without even considering the fact that I’m trapped in the tourist quarter where things would be marked up in price anyways.

I’ve been having a lot of fun here these last two days, I went to the Collosseum yesterday and then to the Palatine and Roman Forum today, so naturally I took all of the pictures. Which is actually a bit strange for me. Usually I don’t take pictures of everything, I’m more of a live and let be, enjoy things for the moment and try to build memories type of person. However, that means that I usually don’t have any proof of the good times that I am having. Proof is a bad word, no picture memories? I’m not sure. For whatever reason I decided that this trip I need to take more pictures. So I’ve been taking pictures of everything that I think looks cool. I don’t take a lot of time with it because I don’t want to be that guy holding my friends back every five minutes, plus I just don’t really have the patience for it anyways. But if you are my friend on facebook you will have seen the overwhelmingly vast amount of pictures that I have uploaded in the last weeks.

Pretty badass, I think.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go to Tivoli, which is an hour and a half bus ride from here. Rick Steve says that to fully enjoy that experience you need to spend at least two and a half hours there. Add in the hour and a half bus ride back and we’ll be gone almost all day. Which is unfortunate for the festival, as they scheduled rehearsal at 15:00. I’ll be enjoying my cultural experience at that time, so I probably won’t show up to rehearsal. Not that they need me anyways. ;)

Rome is really starting to tantalize me. Sitting on the roof of my hotel drinking wine with my new friends is really the only way to spend my time, I feel, and I am going to be really loathe to leave here. I didn’t manage to find my pool hall today though, so maybe I will change my mind later on as I start going through real withdrawals there. It feels good playing my flute everyday, but not as good as it feels playing pool everyday. What does that say about my future? Who knows, but right now I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and see where it takes me. I never thought I’d be going to Prague for a vacation adventure, so this wandering musician is keeping true to her name.


Ciao.





Saturday, June 22, 2013

thoughts on antiquity

It’s funny how quickly you can adapt to your surroundings. I’ve only been in Rome for seven days now (I can’t believe the time is going by so fast) and yet I already find myself walking quickly from place to place without looking around. In America we never look up, I don’t anyways, and here in Rome you miss out on eighty percent of the awesome if you are always looking down. The first few days I was a wide-eyed American, taking it all in and shamelessly gaping at the architecture, the beauty of the sculptures and fountains, and walking slowly. But just as the body adapts to exercise, so to does the mind to visual stimulation. That’s why most people who live in beauty, which is almost everyone if they look hard enough, don’t recognize it for what it is. You’ll hear about greener grass, but I think we just don’t look at our own lawns often enough.

I was talking to my roommate about how awesome these buildings are, and how old. The water systems here are the same as they have been ages ago, and they still work! Every fountain isn’t powered by electricity, just by the ingenuity of the creators of the aqueducts. There are water fountains strewn throughout Rome and each has fresh water that is cycled through the water systems here. It’s awesome. But if you think about America and the things we have surrounded ourselves with it has one thing: new, novelty, different. In America we will tear down the historic old building out of disgust and ignorance. Rather than allowing the old things to be revered and kept alive to remind ourselves of our past, we are constantly tearing them down in order to put something new and fresh in our yards. It’s such a shame. That is not to say that all new things are bad, bur rather that some old things are good too! Can’t we sacrifice some of our modern conveniences for the sake of these historic and old buildings? Perhaps we will figure it out eventually.

A lot of the excitement I get from my travels here in Rome stem from the age of these buildings. When I enter the Pantheon I can only look up and wonder how that huge building was constructed. How the hole in the ceiling was constructed without everything falling apart. Wondering at the sculptors that took the effort to add painstaking detail to every surface of the church I wander into, even areas that are hidden from the view of most people. Marveling at how these buildings were constructed in an age of “lesser” technology. It’s a good reminder of what we are capable of doing that does not rely on fossil fuels, oil, gas, and other devices that have polluted our world.

Is it possible to turn our back on what we have created and live as those before us had lived? Not entirely, I’m not saying to forsake everything about modern medicine or forget the countless different things we have learned about the world and how it works. But is it possible to look at the changes we have made in this world and get rid of the ones that are clearly not beneficial to our earth and ourselves? Even if it means that we have to be inconvenienced, that we have to walk a little farther or work a bit harder? I don’t know if it’s possible. Humanity has gotten lazy, or perhaps it is just us Americans, I’m not sure. But these are the things that I’m thinking about while here in Rome.


I’m looking forward to these next few weeks; let’s see what else Rome has to offer to this wandering musician.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Arrival.

What did I learn about myself today? That throwing me in a foreign country with absolutely no idea of what’s going on and taking away my cell phone with its internet and gps system results in a very flustered, very lost, very angry attitude for me. I definitely wandered around for about two hours trying to find my hotel after the sketchy “cab” driver dropped me off and pointed me in a vague direction down a street. “It is right down there, you can’t miss it,” drives off in a hurry. Well he was wrong. But that’s okay! Because you know what else I learned about myself today? That take away everything that I have always relied on, and my ingenuity kicks in! I bought a map from some random guy on the street, tried to mime and communicate with locals looking for my hotel, and got some damn good exercise after sitting on a plane or in an airport for eighteen hours all before finding my hotel and getting in to my room. Boom. Beautiful.

Rome was both not what I expected and totally what I expected at the same time. Which I know is a contradiction but that’s the way it is. I look forward to exploring more of it tomorrow. Getting off of the plane and hopping onto the train Rome was very rundown and kind of icky looking, but the closer I got to the city the prettier it became. I can’t wait to go to St. Peter’s, The Fountains of Rome, the Colosseum, the piazzas of rome, to the Vatican Museum and anywhere else I can wander to! The first day of the festival was a bit disappointing if I’m to be completely honest. I had very different expectations for the end result, although the vocalists that were featured at our concert tonight (yes I played for forty five minutes in a rehearsal and then performed in a concert on that repertoire, nuts) were excellent. That’s a good sign. But rather then dwell on the missed expectations there I think I’ll leave the discussion of the festival for a later day. Maybe it will get better. If not I will just spend more and more of my time wandering around this beautiful city and planning my week and a half backpacking adventure after the festival is over. Let’s stay optimistic about the festival though! If anything I can use this time to practice and prepare myself for my final year of graduate school.

I miss have instant access to my good friends back at home every time I want to chat. It’s ridiculous how reliant we become on our technology like cell phones, internet, facebook, email, and countless other things. Ask yourself, how many times did I check my email today? Or how many text messages have I sent in the last hour? For me those numbers are extraordinarily high so I’m even looking forward to the opportunity to wean myself out of those addictions as well. That being said I’m still on the lookout for a pool hall. Because lets be honest, how many of you thought I could stay away from a pool table for over a month?



Thursday, June 13, 2013

Looking back before leaping forward

So today is technically my second to last day in America, although it feels much more like the last day since tomorrow will be spent learning more about various different airports around the world. And what a beautiful way to spend my last days in Minnesota.

Yesterday found me travelling the well-worn path to Minneapolis to meet up with my friends Katie, Dana, and Danielle at Psycho Suzie’s Tiki Bar for dinner. The sky was blue; the weather was beautiful, green grass and trees, basically the perfect summer day for the first time since I’ve been home. What could ruin such a beautiful day? Cue a flat tire from stage left. I was all dressed up because I was meeting up with a guy I had met recently, Nick, that night and wanted to look nice. So what did I do? Naturally I jacked up my car, pulled out my spare, and changed the tire in my skirt and boots. It was hot, the sun was blaring down, and I looked like a fool as I attempted to retain my honor as I bent over and crawled around positioning the jack under my car in a skirt. But I did it! It was awesome, I was extremely proud of myself. After our lovely dinner at Psycho Suzie’s my posse and I went to St. Anthony Falls, an area of North East Minneapolis that I fell in love with years ago, and had countless different mini-adventures as I took in the glory of Minneapolis, a city I love.

I ended the night with drinks with Nick at Pracna, a bar that has a wide variety of tapped beers that from 9-11 go on happy hour at $3 a glass. We talked about everything and anything, laughing raucously, giggling innocently, and really just having a jolly good time. We ended the night with a moonlit stroll along the stone arch bridge and I couldn’t have been any happier with my day.

Today I drove home early to meet up with my mom so that we could kill some time on the pontoon. Because, you see, Mother Nature hates me and decided to have the two nicest days in weeks immediately precede my departure date. But alas, such is life. I managed to get some sun, have some drinks, and burn my skin with my mom all before 2 p.m. that of course necessitated a nap of epic proportions. This being my last day in Brainerd I had to celebrate the town in the same way I always have: Applebee’s with my mom (spinach and artichoke dip aww yeahh), a drink and pool at Shirley’s bar (9th Street), and time spent at Paradise with the one and only Ashley Deem.



It seems only fitting that right before going on the adventure of a lifetime I took the time to remind myself of why I love the place I live in now. Minnesota, Minneapolis and Brainerd in particular, is a beautiful place with wonderful people and countless different things to do. I have lived here for the vast majority of my life and have done so many things with so many people. As I prepare myself to jump into the sky and go around the world tomorrow it’s a good thing to remind myself of where I’m from and who I am. I’m sure I will be missing the lakes, the trees, the wide open spaces, and of course the pool tables while I’m in Rome. But hopefully that feeling of empty longing will be replaced with the novelty of a new place, the excitement of a city older then America, and the freedom of going somewhere new to be exactly who I have always known I would wind up being: a wandering musician.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Looking ahead

Everybody that I have told about my upcoming trip to Rome has asked me if I’m nervous, excited, or worried about travelling alone. They are all excited for me; they have all said that they will be thinking about me and that I should be careful while I’m gone. And all I’ve been able to say is that I’m super excited about it, that it’s going to be the adventure of a lifetime, and that of course I will be careful. I’ve got a good head on my shoulders, I’ll be fine meeting new people, and everything else that I can think to say to make them feel better. All the while I’m standing there thinking about how I should feel more excited, or how my nerves should be eating at me. Maybe I should be more stressed out, or maybe I should be more worried about travelling alone. But honestly it still doesn’t feel real. This trip of mine. I’ve known about it since October and it’s always been one of those trips in the future, at the back of my mind, sort of things that always has a surreal quality. But now it’s becoming reality, I really am hopping on a plane on Friday and flying across the world. And it’s starting to sink in. And damn am I getting excited!

I’ve been assigned to play the second flute part for Haydn’s London Trio for two flutes and bassoon, a piece that will be played five or six times while I’m there. The repertoire that the symphony will be playing includes Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony, Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun, two different Beethoven symphonies, and a handful of other pieces. There are dozens of different opera scenes and arias that we will be playing, including portions of La Traviata, Bizet’s Carmen, and Mozart’s Magic Flute. Although I won’t be playing for all of these performances, I was signed on as a section flute—which essentially means that I will be rotated in to different parts throughout the festival—I will be there for all of the performances. I’m excited about all the cultural expeditions that will be happening, and damn straight I’m going to go to all of them. Regardless of how late I was out the night before I will be up at 7 to go check out all that Rome has to offer. Even if it’s not considered the “cool” thing to do, many of my colleagues will be from Italy why would they want to bother going on these trips if that’s where they are from? Well I’m American, from a small town in Minnesota, and I will be immersing myself in every element of Roman culture that I possibly can while I’m gone.

I keep joking about how maybe I’ll find a job and stay out there. Maybe I’ll find a professional opportunity, a paid gig, that I can’t turn down and I’ll become an expatriate. I’ve been considering applying for a Fulbright to study abroad in England after I finish my masters here in America to get a performers certificate from a European school. Although I feel burnt out now, tired of school, looking for a change, something new and exciting to do beyond music. I have a feeling that if I were to go abroad for my next level of schooling that cultural change alone my reignite my passion for music. But that seems like a big gamble. This is where the Rome Festival comes in, if I fall in love with the attitude abroad, with the musicians and maestro(a)’s, and the culture maybe I will stick it out there for a few more years to see where life takes me.


Who knows, that seems to be the theme of this blog (and my life) lately. I’m starting my 23rd year of life with my biggest adventure yet, who knows what will happen in the next few years? And who wants to. Really. I’m just going to keep living my life and seeing where it takes me. It’s been working out pretty well so far.