Hier Spricht Radio PMR

While we're at it . . . I'm also incredibly curious about this, a new book by an old friend of mine. To see more of the photographs, (or for the German-speakers among y'all), see the book's website.

Marcell is someone I met years ago in Lisdoonvarna, Ireland, who caught my attention immediately as someone intensely thoughtful and sensitive, who pursued his interest with passion and focus and a refreshing lack of cynicism. He also took photographs that had a way of showing you an entirely new glimpse of something, even if you'd seen it a thousand times, whether it was a face, a metro station, or the old stove you cooked on in your own kitchen. Back then in the mid-'90s, he had penetrating things to say about Yugoslavia and beautiful images to accompany his ideas in one of those rare slideshows you wish would never end. We haven't been in touch in a very long time, but I still follow his career with interest.

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.

even the grey days are stunning . . .

European Integration and Franco-German R&B

Sometimes I just have to think that Europeans do it with more style. I can't say I love the R&B number that the French and German foreign ministers have just recorded on the theme of European integration, but the concept of working with artists and new media to demonstrate a sentiment is one that I can subscribe to, and there's a freshness and a candor about their message of inclusivity and the appreciation of cultural diversity in the new Europe that I can't imagine too many of our politicians generating.

As they explained on the PR Newswire, "Steinmeier and Kouchner brought two messages with them as they met and exchanged ideas with the young people in the studio in Berlin's diversNeukolln neighborhood. "We are not here to learn how to sing," Steinmeier said. "We want to show that we benefit from the abundance of cultures. Even with all the mistakes, the omissions in the process of integration, there are successful cooperations," Steinmeier said. The second message, he said, is that young artists tell their own people: Learn German, get training." There's something intriguing about the promotion of German language here too . . . and something telling in a French minister singing along to the German lyrics.

The song, by the way, was written by Muhabett, a German-Turkish musician, and a 17-year-old budding artist, Sefo. The style is apparently a newly emerging one called R'nBesk, which "combines American R&B, Turkish Arabesk and Pop with German lyrics" (PRNewswire).

And just for your enjoyment, here's a video of the ministers jamming with the musicians and a handful of other energetic youngsters. It's even better than the clip I heard on PRI's The World the other night on my car radio (pretty much locked in place on NPR).

Why I moved to the country?

People in Ann Arbor, who know me as a full-time doctoral student -- or perhaps as their Anthropology instructor -- are often bewildered when I announce that I live in the country. I can tell by the blank looks or even by the curious responses. Why did you decide to move, they want to know. How can I begin to articulate the meaning of the transformation I have undertaken in my life recently? It is so much greater than I could possibly convey in a casual conversation. The explanations for me, besides, seem to be captured in the senses far more readily than in words. In fact, the departure is about the distance from language. (Words, words, words. . .)

It's captured, for instance, in the smell and concentrated pulse of heat and the ambient glow from the wood fire in the fire place . . .



And my fingers rediscovering dough. . .
. . . and the smell of homemade quiche baking in the oven.
. . . for instance.

Autumn Sunset