The Road Home

This past Sunday evening, I heard CU-Boulder's University Choir give their fall concert, entitled "Positively Impassioned." UChoir has always overwhelmed me with not only their warm sound and varied repertoire, but their raw vitality as an ensemble and group of young people. This energy and joi d'vivre struck perhaps more than ever before when they came to Kecskemet in May 2006. The feelings that welled up in me as I saw their bus pull up to the Kodaly Iskola defy words....it was as if my home had imported itself across many, many miles to the place where I was, believing in its existence but beginning to doubt its force. I felt myself transform out of the profound tiredness that came from the hard weeks and months that had preceded UChoir's arrival and into a self I hadn't experienced (and didn't realize I hadn't experienced) anywhere outside my home country. When they came, I remembered a place and a time when I was neither too much nor too little, but just enough....where I could give and teach and love without being cautious or afraid. A friend described the change in my behavior (after a particularly poignant moment in the KI courtyard) as operatic. It certainly felt like that.

Now, I am back in the place where I am from, but I am living a very different life. Working in a bank is not as dissimilar from living in a Hungarian monastery as one might think....it's an odd comparison, but religion and money have always had a strange symbiosis, have they not? In any case, my artistic self is as out-of-place in FirstBank as my rambunctious American self was in the KI....though I will heartily affirm that my co-habitants in both places have been overwhelmingly gracious on the whole. But, after a week of dealing with bank auditors and blue-streak-swearing customers, I was almost embarrassingly happy to see an email from Dr. Kaptein inviting me to UChoir's dress rehearsal on Saturday morning. I have a secret love of observing dress rehearsals for choirs that know what they're doing....one is allowed to move about and give helpful comments and know little aural secrets about the hall and the performance logistics. Geeky much? Well, yes....but it's altogether lovely, nonetheless. Anyway, not only was this a dress rehearsal for a good choir, but the last time I'd been in the role of the dress rehearsal-eavesdropper for this choir was in the auditorium of the Kodaly Iskola....and all the memories, all the people, all the goodness of that experience returned to me as I listened and paced....and quietly wept. And, a dear former student of mine closed out the rehearsal and the beautiful concert with a gorgeously sung descant solo....completely reducing me to a teary-eyed sap, overflowing with joy and gratitude. The words come from a poem set by Stephen Paulus to a Southern Harmony folk song....and they put me in mind of the reality of home, created and realized and dreamt here and afar.

Tell me where is the road I can call my own,
That I left, that I lost, so long ago?
All these years I have wandered, oh, when will I know
There's a way, there's a road that will lead me home.

After wind, after rain, when the dark is done,
As I wake from a dream in the gold of day,
Through the air there's a calling from far away,
There's a voice I can hear that will lead me home.

"Rise up, follow me, come away," is the call,
With the love in your heart as the only song;
There is no such beauty as where you belong,
Rise up, follow me, I will lead you home.

-Michael Dennis Browne

1956

The statue on Gellert Hill in Budapest, known to
tourists as "the Hungarian Statue of Liberty", originally
dedicated to the Russian soldiers who liberated Hungary
from the Germans, and later rededicated to peace.


Some of Hungary's highest deeds took place on October 23, 1956 and the days that followed, as her people sought to overthrow Soviet oppression in an armed street rebellion. Those interested should click here to read the BBC's write-up, here to read an article from the Toledo Blade (gotta give it up for Ohio every now and again....), or here if you're in the Denver metro area and are interested in attending any commemorations or just being surprised by how present Hungarians are in Colorado. It's pretty amazing to me. You've read this kind of thing out of me before, but it bears repeating: szabadság (freedom) in Hungary means something different than freedom here in the States. It feels real and sacred, because 50 years isn't really all that long. So, I'm wearing my ribbons tomorrow (thanks, Tamás!) and keeping vigil with about 15 million other people around the globe.

The Daily Grind

Alas, my blogging! I'm kind of a bad girl about it these days, largely because of a rather breakneck schedule of working 40 hours a week for FirstBank as a new accounts representative, about 15-20 hours a week for Westminster United Methodist Church as Director of Music, 5 or so hours a week as the conducting intern for St. Martin's Chamber Choir, plus the odd tutoring gig, participation in friends' doctoral projects in various capacities, STILL trying to get settled into my new digs and dealing with car trouble and the joys of lumbar disc disease (and the expensive physical therapy that goes along with it). God, I feel so boring! And, maybe also a little hollow and unbloggerly because life seems to have a lot of activity without a readily recognizable center. There is a bit of me that longs for the monastery even yet, even with the evils of fried cheese and weird plumbing and homesickness factor.....I miss the quiet, and I romanticize to myself that it was a more centered, less hectic existence.

It's funny, too, though.....the profound feelings of gratefulness that overtake me every now and again that I have the luxury of loving both where I am and missing where I've been, all the while having hope for a bright future that will be born of the help of those around me, a little luck, and the sweat of my brow. Everything is not coming up roses.....it's being ground out the hard way, day by day, new account by new account, rehearsal by rehearsal. But, behold....it is very good.

Pacific Music Camp

Since 1999, I've worked as a counselor at Pacific Music Camp in Stockton, CA. When I started, I'd just finished my freshman year of college and was younger than some of the campers. Now, at my venerable age, I have conversations like this with the campers:

GD: "Yeah, I started at University of the Pacific in 1998."

Camper: "Uh.....I was, like, eight in 1998."

GD: "Oh my God, I'm SO OLD!"

These are children who are seeing 1980's fashion for the FIRST time around now, children too young to remember the first Gulf War, children who were born after the Berlin Wall fell....and people who are driving and getting things pierced and falling in love and performing standard Western Classical repertoire. It's amazing to me. And, for the first time this year, I've felt removed enough from them that their occasional inattentiveness and lapses in judgment are mostly just a source of amusement to me....I actually think I might be starting to mellow out a little bit (I wouldn't hold my breath, though). Anyway, this is the Pacific Music Camp Chamber Choir of 2006....my cherubs, who incidentally gave quite a respectable stab at pronouncing Kodály's Esti dal in Hungarian....and put up with me shouting at them in magyarul all week long.



If you're one of the campers and you're reading this, please don't sue me for putting your picture on the internet without your permission. Y'all were just TOO cute and wonderful NOT to blog about. Best of luck in all your endeavors!

The Fourth of July

National holidays in my own nation aren't really my forte. Yes, it's true that in my childhood I did listen somewhat compulsively to the Wee Sing America cassette tape and read along diligently with the book.....but I don't remember the stirrings of deep patriotism burning in my bosom or anything. Mostly, I remember thinking that it was an important part of my education to know every US patriotic tune I could get my hands on (systematically building my musical mother tongue....I think I was about 9 when I was doing this....no wonder I ended up at the Kodaly Institute....). And, while I've made and eaten my share of Flag Cake (Hurrah for the strawberry, blueberry and Cool Whip!), I must say I don't really LOVE the Fourth of July. It just has always felt a little like we were flaunting it, lording it over everybody else. And, naturally, this feeling has become intensified over the last year. So, now that the holiday is here, upon us, I'm left fighting my own curmudgeonliness in the face of a lot of happy-sappy patriotism that has no idea what its existence even means. Self-righteous of me, ain't it?

But you see, national holidays in Hungary (and I imagine in places like it) have a meaning that we know nothing of, because what they are celebrating still seems so fresh, so immediate, and people have to gird up their emotional loins in order to celebrate. It's not just an excuse to have a barbeque and set off fireworks there, and there's no way that any sensitive person could mistake a Hungarian holiday for an excuse. Obviously, I am projecting my experience onto a lot of people who may not feel the same at all, and I don't have an incredibly vast experience, but I'm pretty sure that's what I felt, standing in the square on 15 March. I felt a sense of fealty, a kind of somber pride that isn't to be found in the Cool Whip cake and Uncle Sam hats and general hoopla on the Fourth of July.

I'm not sure that I think the United States as a nation should go digging for that somber pride, because I'm not sure it's in our national personality and I *am* sure that our current situation at the top of the international food chain doesn't suggest such feelings to the average citizen. I have no idea what I think we should feel or how I think we should act. I just feel a little weird about the way things are, and it makes me a little homesick (????????????) for the spirit of Hungary that showed me a new way to perceive the world.

Solfege Sangha aka Guido's Girls aka Mozart's Madamoiselles

So, these people have been my solfege girls at least since September...except for tebazile here, who's been in my solfege sangha for much longer. So, in the picture on the left, we have (left to right) Jorgie (Edmonton, Alberta), Sarah (London), Laurissa (Perth), Kati Kiss (Kecskemet), and Hailing (Shanghai), out for coffee at Cafe de Columbia on Kettemplom Koez, Kecskemet (just up the alley from the KI). In the next picture, we have tebazile (Boulder, CO) and Megan (Upper Sandusky, OH) at Geniusz, also in Kecskemet. All of these women have made me think smugly to myself, "I am in the presence of greatness," and I have been fortunate to work and grow alongside them.

It's all about the dismount

So, I'm not in Hungary anymore.

I'm sitting in Vic's Espresso in North Boulder, using free wireless internet for the first time in a LONG time, reflecting on my dysfunctional bloggerness and the general unsettledness of my life, but feeling a sense of quiet. I feel strangely at peace (for the most part) with the fact that I don't know anything about the future, and I have nothing huge on the horizon for once in my life. In the last year, I've flown across the Atlantic 4 times, traveled all through central Europe and England, gained about a 300-word vocabulary in one of the most difficult spoken languages in the world, given a voice recital, coordinated a trans-continental choir tour, been a Fulbright alternate and the recipient of an inter-governmental scholarship, applied for about a dozen jobs, sung in 20-odd performances of a Hungarian singspiel, gotten a diploma (with honors) from the Kodaly Institute, lived and worked in a monastery with 20-odd strangers (none of whom I killed), managed a friend's medical care in a foreign language, laughed, lived, loved, and survived it all. I don't know how it happened. I don't know how I did it. I do know I couldn't have done it alone....material support, emotional support, laughs and kind words from some of you have been my sustenance through this adventure of mine. The ragged edge of existence has been very, very close to me on a number of occasions (and on a pretty much constant basis since about May 1), and really all I could do for the last month and a half was just put one foot in front of the other and pretend that I knew where my next breath was coming from.

But.....I think that life is always like this, really. I think that's the big secret. We are never really secure, no matter what we tell ourselves. We all tend to move through our lives, our so-called "routines" as if we do know the future, as if we are assured of what is next for us. But, this is only an illusion. Being away, being in a place where I knew for bloody well certain that I didn't know what was going to come next and having to just keep my center of gravity low and expect the unexpected has taught me that really, that is just simply life. The wordless immediacy of that kind of living isn't really extraordinary....it's just more naked than what we usually allow ourselves to perceive.

I'm not saying I think the other way is wrong, and I'm not saying that I don't think I'll go back to it in a way, but I think having this kind of perspective has changed me forever, and I don't really know how yet. I don't really know yet what I'm going to be because of what I've done, who I've interacted with, what has happened in my field of perception. I just know I'm not the same, and that the end of the race was maybe the most extreme of all. It's funny, because the whole thing was quite intense, and somehow, I guess I'd expected my level of familiarity to make things easier towards the exit.....but, no, that was NOT the case. Until the last possible moment, it took everything, every ounce I had and then some (and just to say again, the "then some" has come from some of you). The dismount....it really was all about the dismount, and there wasn't really any way to save up my energy to make sure I could stick it. I just had to do it, and now.......it's done. Sort of. I still have the minor (haha) details of a job, a place to live, etc., etc., to get settled. But, I'm back. I'm in Colorado, surrounded by the people I've known and loved for four years now. And I still say "sziasztok" and various other Hunglishisms, mixing my environments, forgetting that I don't have to check in with the Porter's Desk anymore. It all feels like a strange and wonderful and terrible and unforgettable dream.

Anyhow, this is all much more philosophical than I generally allow myself to be in this venue, and so, to make up for it, I think this blog will be mostly about pictures and short captions from here on out. I won't be taking it down....I'll just be using it to catch you up. And, if you're reading this as one of my KI/Hungarian friends, I'm starting up a new blog to keep in touch with all of you....the URL is:

http://magyarorszagmemories.blogspot.com

Not much is there yet, but it's on its way.

For now, love to all, and I promise pictures soon.