Hey/Hej!
This is a bit of an in-between post, as Monday was spent in England, trying to get back Sweden, and Tuesday has been in Sweden. So you get two affectations for the price of one - lucky you!
6/18:
Monday was a day I am likely to remember for a long time, and for good reason (though not for good reasons). I was sad to leave the hostel. Especially the night before, after I had finished posting, I talked with other people who were staying there from all different countries: Australia, Germany (living in Hungary), Italy, Scotland, to name a few, and it was really cool to hear some of their stories, exchange cultural quirks (the woman from Italy says that she never wants to eat pasta again, it's all she had growing up!), and just know why some other people were in London. Though London is expensive, I would have loved to stay longer, or maybe to stay in a hostel in a smaller town, then come into London if I needed to. My stay was amazing, but, as I mentioned in the previous post, London was a hub from which I branched out to the South and East of England.
That was Sunday evening (6/17), so let's move onto 6/18. At 8 in the morning, I went down to the computer in the lobby to check my flight itinerary for details like the flight number and confirmation code. I noticed a small problem. My flight plan said that I was leaving on the 18th of July. Obviously that was problematic. Very problematic. What to do? I had to buy a plane ticket right then and there, which I did - the cheapest I found that didn't have an 8 hour layover in Berlin was a direct flight costing about $230.
Considering that unfortunate beginning, I went straight to the airport even though my flight didn't leave until 2 PM, just in case. I paid for a one-way ticket on the Tube in cash, and headed for Blackfriars station. When I got to Blackfriars to buy my ticket to go to the airport (Gatwick), I discovered my debit card had stopped working. Fortunately I could pay for the train ticket in cash, so I got to the right airport, but went first to the wrong airlines. It had been the one I didn't choose between the two options I was entertaining (British Airways, I ended up going with easyJet). When the man at the British Airways desk told me that they didn't fly to Copenhagen, the floor sort of fell away from under me. Fortunately, I was able to use the complimentary minutes for the Boingo Hotspot Wifi to access my flight information and found out the correct airline (though I had to schlepp back to the Northern terminal, I had gone to the Southern terminal, which was farther away, first).
I tried to use my debit card again. It still was not working (the first time, I thought, might have been a fluke). The reason was obvious, though, it didn't take much to see how booking a one-way flight to leave london earlier than my 'original' (mistaken) flight plan had me leaving would raise some sort of alert in the system about possible debit/credit card fraud.
After wrestling with the obnoxious Boingo Hotspot Wifi, I was able to skype-call USBank from my phone and have my card re-activated. That was a great relief, for otherwise I wasn't sure how I was going to get from the Copenhagen airport to Malmo. One relatively calm plane-ride later, I dragged myself through Copenhagen airport, about done-in by the amount of stress, frustration, and panic that I had experienced.
I thought I was out of trouble, but getting off the train in Malmo, I somehow left my house-keys on the train, and was only just able to jump back on the train. I was all turned-around, in every sense of the word, because for an instant after the train left, I thought I had gotten on the wrong train altogether, and was riding farther away from my keys. However, I had turned around beforehand to go up the escalator, and so, by seemingly happy mistake, I had gotten onto the train I had just left (I realized this when I stumbled into one of the compartments and saw a woman sitting exactly where she had been when I left the train). One of the strangest things was that my keys were just lying on the seat, and the person sitting across from me did not so much as blink when I snatched them up and hurried out again. If she had been there the whole time, why didn't she say anything when I left them in the first place?!
It doesn't matter now, I'm back in my apartment; an unfortunate coda to a truly excellent adventure. Carving out monday like a tumor, my British invasion was exciting, enlightening, entertaining, and full of tea, 'mind the gap's, and nice people. Better to think about the excursion in terms of my two 'interlude' entries. The story had a happy ending, though its protagonist was sadder but wiser by the end...
6/19:
I took the opportunity to do nothing today with reckless abandon. I have hardly anything to report. Practiced guitar for a while (after tuning it, it was bound to go out of tune after 5 days), re-arranged the time for my next lesson (it was supposed to have been yesterday, but the debacle prevented me from being in Malmo during the time we were supposed to meet. Anticipating this, I canceled my lesson when I bought my plane ticket, a good thing too, since I didn't make it back in time for the lesson, and wouldn't have been in the mood for it anyway.
I did do something today, though. I tried to write a piece, though not the kind of piece I usually write. I This piece constitutes my second attempt at what is known as 'computer-music.' No, it's not used for video games (necessarily), but it it uses computer programs, rather than musicians and instruments to produce the piece. My piece involved 'found sounds,' meaning that I took recordings I had made of particular sounds, then organized them into a way which I find meaningful or aesthetically pleasing. Ironically enough, this piece used as some of its main material sounds that I recorded when I went to London in March, but I haven't thought of anything to do with them until now. Such is the way of almost any idea, whether electronically recorded or just half-remembered, though. You think of it (and hopefully write it down!) or record it, and tuck it away until you can find a use for it. The first electronic piece I wrote used sounds I recorded in Nashville's Centennial Park, as well as the resonance of piano strings after they had been struck. I'll include it here. It's called Water(fowl) Music, a not-very-clever pun on Handel's Water Music
I don't really have a title for the piece, but it is dedicated to Emma Dansak, with whom I have been exchanging a lot of ideas while I've been in Sweden. I've appreciated her (if only through g-chat) company, and will hopefully write her a piece she can play, not just listen to, sometime soon. Electronic Piece #2 (Piece for Emma) uses recorded sounds of carillon bells from a church bordered Trafalgar Square, sounds from the London Underground, sounds of bird's from Regent's Park, and a musical excerpt from my one of my Historical Performance Practice classes which I recorded surreptitiously. Professor Carl Smith, and violinist Luke Witchger are my unwitting accomplices in this composition. Obviously, the medium for electronic composition is very different than 'acoustic' composition. There's no notation, just the direct input of information to how it is going to sound. I used the program Audacity to construct both of these pieces. It can sometimes to really nice to work with different materials, not have to think so much about 'notes' but think about crafting sound gestures. Even if this isn't the greatest thing I write in my whole career (let's hope it's not!), it was fun, and a refreshing change.
Tomorrow, I'm going to go (at the correct time) to Helsingor to see that soprano I met coming back form Copenhagen perform.
Godnatt!
-Trey
No comments:
Post a Comment