Yes We Span campaign

Yay! My American expat friends in Hungary made Yahoo News.

kultiplex

oh, damn. another cool pesti hang-out spot is about to bite the dust.

Coulda woulda shoulda

I should have been in Budapest today.

But instead I am writing. Writing, writing, writing. It's late, but it's coming, finally.

'Tis good, though. I think that what I'm writing isn't crap. Lately that feeling is pretty unusual, I have to say. Actually, I think it might even be good. But it's early to tell.

It's taken me AGES to get through my field data from Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania to the point that I can make heads or tails of it. I didn't leave my house all weekend, and today only went as far as the cable company a few miles down the road to restore my troubled internet service. I filed away about two inches of papers into a three-inch binder, added tabs to six field notebooks, and have been creating indexes for myself. I feel like this is the kind of stuff they don't teach you. An archival methods course would be so handy. I know there are probably more intuitive digital ways of creating cross-referencing tools. But I'm just working with the skills and tools I've got. This is even before transcribing, which will add PILES and PILES to the data I've already got in the form of field notes, photographs, and documents from field contacts.

I've started making a more comprehensive database than I've had up until now, except the one in my head, and realized today that I probably have met at least a few hundred people "in the field" at this point who have something to do with my project. No wonder I feel a little loopy sometimes, and like I haven't had a real chance of synthesizing my life while I've been doing coursework. Thank God I took a semester to do independent study so I could start to process this, a little.

Radio -- NPR, Radio C, and the whole world at your fingertips

I love radio.

When I was younger I never really understood the point. I was irritated by most radio announcers who seemed to have little to add to any conversation. And why just listen, when you can watch, I thought? TV seemed infinitely superior to radio, which seemed like its ugly cousin. And why would you want to listen to the music someone else had selected, anyway, when you could choose it yourself with tapes and records and then, wonder of wonders, CDs? (Yes, kiddies, I'm that old.)

Well, I've come around completely, and for many years now radio has been rather an obsession. I think I "discovered" (American) National Public Radio when I was on a road trip -- maybe when I was driving up to northern Minnesota with Mom and all we were able to find was the worst top-of-the-charts country, some evangelical Christian talk radio, and NPR news.

I became a real junkie around the time I started commuting by car between San Francisco and Emeryville to a job at Avalon Travel Publishing years ago. And I've never looked back. When I was in Hungary, and the streaming technologies were just getting going, and I had an incredibly crappy ISDN line for internet, I used to lie on the parquet floor underneath my desk where my laptop slowly and laboriously downloaded a program in fits and starts and I would tingle with emotion, a strange mix of homesickness and relief.

KQED was my most beloved station for a very long time, and even when I spent two years listening to KUT in Austin, I longed for its programming and schedule, which had come to feel natural as a heartbeat to me. When afternoon rolled around and I didn't hear All Things Considered, I felt irritated, slighted. Didn't they understand it was the time for that unique blend of quirky, funny, heartfelt, and off-the-beaten-track you find there?

Lately, though, I think I've been won over completely by Michigan radio, which has some wonderful programs I had never heard back in California. Through it I've discovered the joys of Lynne Rosetto Kasper's Splendid Table, Dick Gordon's The Story, which often leaves me open-mouthed with wonder, and the ever-incisive Diane Rehm, who has an amazing knack for keeping her finger on the pulse of the American zeitgeist.

Since radio broadcasts have started becoming available over the web, it adds a whole new level of possibilities. Downloading podcasts for long drives, or walking commutes. . . it's a wonderful world. But I also really appreciate the streaming capabilities, particularly with non-US-based radio stations. One day, just for the hell of it, I decided it would be quite interesting to listen to a radio station in a place I know next to nothing about. So, I settled on Namibia. And then Besim, who was sitting on the couch wondering what was going on, directed us to Trinidad and Tobago. You can go most anywhere to listen to both majority and minority stations at RadioStationWorld. You might be surprised what you find.

One station you won't find there, though, as of yet, is one that is very near and dear to my heart for a variety of reasons, one I sometimes tune in to, thanks to streaming technology, and turn on at full blast on my favored PC in the doctoral lab when it's late at night and I'm there by myself trying to finish a paper. Rádió C, short for cigány, or the Hungarian word for "Gypsy," is a station that started several years ago in Budapest. It's been plagued with financial troubles, accusations of corruption, and loads of other troubles, but for now it's still in business. Sometimes I think I need to write at least a bit about it in my dissertation.

Why is it great to listen to? Well, think about Romani musical talent, for a moment, whether or not you buy into the "it's in the blood" ideology that even Roma themselves often promote. And then think, don't musicians always listen to the coolest music of all? Well, I sure think so. There's lots of Hungarian Romani music, for sure, but they also play unexpected jazz, plenty of pop from all over the world. You even hear Hindi filmi music sometimes. And sure, yes, they announce in Hungarian, and have some talk-radio shows. But most of the time it's music, and a mix you won't hear anywhere else. Check it out. (Just choose your preferred media player and format under the heading "Élő adás!")

They say about themselves: "Budapesten és környékén körülbelül 200,000 cigány ember él (ebből csak Budapesten több mint 100,000!). 2001. október 8-a óta létezik egy rádió, amely közvetlenül nekik szól, az ő nyelvükön, az ő problémáiknak hangot adva. Ez a Rádió ©."

"In Budapest and its environs, about 200,000 Gypsy people live (out of which, in just Budapest, there are more than 100,000). Since October 8, 2001, there has been a radio station that speaks directly to them, in their language, giving voice to their problems. That is Radio C." (translation by yours truly.)

If you find yourself wanting a Hungarian-English dictionary while looking at the site, I recommend the SZTAKI dictionary. However, given the intricacies of Hungarian grammar, with its prefixes and suffixes, and all, it probably won't get you very far. So, I'd encourage you instead to ask your favorite Hungarian-speaker to help you navigate, if you get as far as their website! :)

You may think that this is what those Romani musicians look like.

Well, maybe they do when they dress up in costumes to perform in a square for a Hungarian public. (I took this photo in Budapest at the Spring Festival in Erzsébet tér in 2003.)

But when they're just hanging out, playing music, they're more likely to look like this.

These are my friends Orhan (on accordion) and Dragan (on guitar), at the Amala School of Gypsy Language and Culture in Valjevo, Serbia, in August of 2003.

Orhan is (or was, back then) a director in a Romani theater in Skopje, Macedonia. (I've lost track of him and would love to know what happened to him if you know him!)

Dragan Ristić is the head of the band Kal, which he founded with his brother Dušan. It has an album out that has become immensely popular in Europe, according to my friend Sani Rifati, founder of Voice of Roma. Yup, and they've even made it onto Wikipedia. I should be up on these things, but I've been hiding out in my little world in Detroit & Ann Arbor. But lucky for us, Sani is helping to organize a tour for them in the United States in fall of 2008.

Okay, now, um, back to the task of grading undergraduate papers, which I'm doing a very good job of avoiding here, clearly.

Nyócker!

Damn, I want to see this. I think it's going to take some searching, though, unless I'm willing to wait until my next trip over the pond . . . whenever that is.

bittersweet

(Photo from Au pays des homes integres)

For some reason, this afternoon and evening my mind is lingering on a humid, crowded, underground dance floor in Budapest, Hungary, underneath the old space of a popular outdoor bar, in May of 2005. But of course you know the reason, because you were there, dancing, sparkling at me, drawing your exuberance all around me like an embrace that foretold the other kind. That is one snapshot of us.


And here is another. Morning. Coffee from your French press, two cups, little spoons, sugar. Two of us sitting at a right angle on the L of your black leather sectional couch, our images reflected in the mirrored panels of the closet door. The decor not to your tastes, but the now-familiar (then unfamiliar) mismatch of it endearing somehow, anyway, in its very reminder of our shared liminality as visitors, as foreigners, and the ironic lens through which we both saw this world. The midsummer yellow light and breeze filtering in from the heavy double windows soaring above the market in the square.

And a lapse in words, filled in instead with music, of a kind I had never heard. (Mustafa Kandirali, was it? I always forget the name, but never the sensation, never the sound.) Clarinet, at once mournful and ecstatic, reaching higher, and yet deeper, finding secret untouched places, lifting me up outside of myself, to sweep me out on wings, quick, through the windows, over the roof of the csarnok, to the Duna, and rushing back, to realize with a dizzy glance at you that I am falling in love, against all sense and reason. Too soon even to say the words, they expanded, percolated upwards, and settled in my chest. Silent on my lips, though, they were transparent in my eyes, which I tried to settle anywhere but in yours.

To this day, a taksim unfettered by accompaniment is almost too, too naked, too burning, too frighteningly alive, to hear in mixed company, for it still seems like our secret, locked in that moment on that day in your flat, that space to which we will never return.(I wish now I'd captured our view from the windows, to remind me, to remind me. . .)

(Photo from Budapest Daily Photo)

Such a sweet tender sadness and joy, to miss you.