Wednesday, December 4, 2013

On church bells and the call to prayer

The season was still summer, albeit late september, and the circus was escaping Montenegro which had all extremes of welcome, from putting us on national television to chasing us down threatening cops and face bashing if we did not stay at threatener's house. Even the 'hippy beach' which somehow everyone in Europe talks about, had a funny sort of welcome, once we got past the feral street dogs, the hippies also grouped together in the packs they had come in and somehow treated this like any other beach resort- with umbrella drinks and sunglasses, just this one was free- so no beach chairs and no 5am garbage collectors. Sometimes a newbie would come to the beach, dazzled by the beauty and saddened by all the trash and would spend hours picking up the offensive bottles and bags, and would lie satisfied and self-righteous before the setting sun, only to wake up the next morning to find the beach once again buried in the plastic floating in from last night's tide, and oh how the locals would laugh! But this was not our fate, we decided internally that Montenegro was a country of insanity and Albania, with the calming force of Islam, with the emphasis on hospitality and giving to the poor, Albania would have peace for us.
And indeed, crossing the boarder was magical. The scenery abruptly changed from coastal mountains to middle eastern looking hills, dry rocky riverbanks with spindly twisted trees and bright pink flowers, and as we biked, wide-eyed at this new kind of beauty, we heard a voice floating toward us from upstream, a voice that tasted of dark flavorful stews, an arabic maqam which leaned into the tension of the melody, the tension of life, and resolved it with a sigh, come to pray. It was the first time I had heard the call to prayer, and I dismounted my steed and stood by the river to properly soak it up. And soon later as we biked into town we saw in a restaurant a wedding party dancing to some turkish beat, and I was so excited to be surrounded by this kind of music, the original reason for my trip.
I was not successful in collecting traditional songs with the big group, nor really as a solo cyclist. For some reason even in eastern europe every guitarist you meet still just wants to play obnoxious western rock covers, or maybe the covers are from a balkan band, but they follow the same formula bands do back in the states. And in all the cafes, western european radio stations would be playing euro trash techno, and I'd hear oh so comforting german coming in reporting the weather in Hamburg while I sat in Belgrade. But not in Albania! Here the stations were all albanian and the music was so much more influenced by the east. The ottomans were rampart through all the balkans, until croatia, austro/hungary, but in Albania they embraced Islam and the Eastern values, probably first due to tax or violence, but the slavic peoples had Orthodoxy or Catholicism so strong, they rejected the Islam, and thus didn't take on the culture or not nearly as much, which the music reflects. All balkan music was influenced by the Turks for sure, but in the rest of the balkans I heard a distinction from Turkish music, here there is more tempered tuning (necessitated by the accordion) and different beats and tempo. Of course, the standard circle dances you can use the same basic step everywhere, from serbia to albania, bulgaria to turkey and all the surrounding countries. But there was such a clear difference even just in what was blasting out of cars as they drove by. In Serbia it was pretty western sounding, and there was a mix of what you heard. But in Albania it was just these middle eastern beats, maybe fused with techno, but never would you hear officious english or german stammering out of the speakers, never the shredding of an electric guitar. At first I was so glad of this, I thought that here in these lands, their music is so steeped, traditional music so ubiquitous, so uniform, I will have no choice but to learn it, that's all people will play on the street and I'll meet tons of musicians in no time to teach me their folk music!
But what I failed to realize was that really the music was my first warning sign. If eyes are the window to the soul, I find traditional music is the eye of a culture's soul. If the music is solo based, or if everyone plays at the same time, if the dancing is a private or public event, if there are "masters" or just teachers, if women and men dance together or separate, all these things and many more are reflections of a society. And the complete absence of any other musical styles was a warning sign to their disinterest in foreign sounds, ideas, people. But I blamed the coldness I felt as a reaction to being in a big group and I made plans to set off on my own for Istanbul, reputedly a musical hot spring.
I arrived, after what was indisputably the worst ride of the trip- an endless highway over endless rolling hilled desert, next to endless trucks blaring their horns at me, against an endless headwind into a city that rose up on a hill and I thought, finally I've arrived! as I saw the 20 story buildings shimmering above me, but when I got there, I just saw more stretched out before me, and more, and more. I stopped thinking and merely rode flabbergasted at this endless jungle of buildings until dazed and battered, I stumbled into an irish pub, the James Joyce, I had cycled over 700km just in time for the jam! I must have been a sight to see.. and smell..
There at the table sat my to be most gracious and generous host that I could have imagined, who besides making my stay so comfortable and easy, did the ultimate miracle for my soul- he played banjo with my to my heart's content! How wonderful to hear that good old-timey stompin, how I missed the perfect combo of the twang of the banjo with the wail of my fiddle!
He was, however, the bearer of bad news. He who has been living in Turkey the last 15 years, fluent in Turkish, an amazing all around musician, including Turkish Saz player, came here for the sole purpose of learning Turkish music, had not yet found a traditional turkish music scene, or people to play traditional music with. He said that he has met more people to play Turkish music with in the states than in Turkey. I think this is because of the tradition of the music. It is a solo based one, with a master to teach all the proper maqams. According to Bob, my host, most people study Turkish music in the university and it is treated like classical music in the states. Ensembles are arranged at school or between professionals hired for weddings or other private events. There isn't a jam or session culture like there is for old time or irish, and it seems there isn't as much even a culture of amateurs that just get together to play for fun.. this too is a little like what I know of the western classical scene. So there was all that standing between me and my desire to learn this music, which was wasn't prepared to let stop me at first, and I got books and CDs of the maqams and started practicing. But what really ended it for me, or let me be convinced to leave Istanbul, was a different part of the musical tradition, was was of course a reflection of the culture- that women don't play.
It was in varying degrees of discomfort that I went about a couple months of life in a muslim country. I know that there are so many perspectives on Islam and its oppression vs liberation of women, that Istanbul is a very mild case anyway, that I really wasn't there long enough even to make any definitive statements about my feelings that will hold for any set amount of time, but I do know that it was hard for me. It was hard for me to walk down the street lined with cafes where dice clacked melodiously against wooden tavla boards, where I so desperately wanted to play too, but there were only men who filled the chairs, and I knew to sit down would be breaking cultural rules. It was hard to see every cafe this way, not a woman in sight, and not think of what women do to have fun and socialize? It can't be only shopping and the movies! And it was with difficulty that I rationalized that the home is the woman's domain, that it was her strength and authority that forced husbands out of the house, out of the way and into the cafes. I got myself to understand this. But it is hard for me with a superhero mother, with her hand in a million projects, as my role model, and with my western ideals of challenging conventional gender roles, and of course being a street rat with nowhere to go when it is cold but into a cafe. It was hard to be uncovered in a colorful sea of hijab, so I covered. It was hard to perform as a solo woman, so I just performed in groups. It was hard to walk alone in some parts, so I stayed with a man. It was hard to speak out against that man in public, so I stayed silent. But slowly, I found that I was assuming the role of house keeper. I found that I started to be afraid of being alone.. and the worst, I found that more and more even privately I was keeping silent. I found that I was stepping into a role, into a mentality that isn't mine, that I was assimilating to a culture that I didn't want inside of me. I could have stayed. I did find people to play with, all westerners, but it was certainly the most thriving musical scene since Berlin. I could have made a life for myself, I could had fiddled my way maybe even into a traditional music scene.. but that act in itself is of course breaking tradition, the very thing I am seeking to learn. And, had I stayed, five times a day I would hear a voice commanding me to come pray, and reinforcing my subconscious acceptance of my subordinance.
And so I silently turned around and followed a man back the way I had come, back west.. and when we crossed into Bulgaria and heard the calm distant chiming of church bells, I think I cried. It was like coming home.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Sleep on a snowy night

Looking out my window last night, I noticed how bright the backdrop was for the barren tree, this tree whose presence I'm usually only vaguely aware of as a spot blacker than the black of the 8pm sky, but last night it stretched up with all the fierce loneliness of a true november tree against this white sky and I realized that light must be getting caught between the abundant clouds and the year's first snowfall in Kosovo, and it was at that thought, nestled under 2 down sleeping bags, behind a solid glass pane, in a bed elevated from the ground, in a house with a toilet inside, I admitted for the first time in my life, that it is a joy to sleep.
It was not long ago that I used to declare that were it an option, I'd never sleep again! I was obsessed with time and it's stinginess, and I found ways of tricking my body to save time lost on tiresome sleep. I tried self hypnosis, walking down stairs into a pool that shimmered in my unconscious, or go on walks through woods of my own sleep deprived creation, seeking energy balls of light, which I'd hungrily swallow like some magic drug and continue on with my sleepless day. But once, I got caught in my shimmering water and could not find the stairs back up into consciousness! I felt my physical body hyperventilating and shaking all over, and I started to panic, swimming around frantically and finally decided to kick off from the bottom and jump back into consciousness instead of going the gradual pleasant way up the stairs. The shock was jarring and I decided to give up on self hypnosis. But my demands for time were insatiable and I tried a new method- polyphasic sleeping. I slept only in 20 minute sections, 6 naps dispersed throughout the day, totaling 2 hours in a 24 hour period. This worked for a few months, but being on a rhythm completely alien to all of my fellow humans made me feel a vampire, walking through the night, sleeping in the day, but also just the awareness of being so alone in this contrived state made me give that up too, and I ceased with the alternative sleep methods, but still relished my disdain for this sublunar need. I wanted to be a being entirely reliant upon my mind, my time entirely dedicated to the advancement of my thoughts and ability of my fingers. Sleep was frustrating, and even eating, the time that goes into acquiring, preparing and even merely chewing on food became a nuisance and a bore.
My cycle tour would logically have been a place for me to shed these notions, my stomach was much more demanding and being now and outside cat, my rhythms were now tied with the sun and moon, and it did feel healthy to rise and set with the sun, and of course it felt miraculous after a long day's ride to collapse into my tent and disappear entirely under the moon, but I always knew that this trip was a different sort of existence, and once I got back to the city, where days fly faster than ducks, I would roll up my newfound sleep dependence in my tent and leave it there for the next adventure.
Of course I enjoyed this sleep enriched way of going through the world. Between long nights of dreaming, I would spend days on the saddle first in Germany, loping up the new scents of spring which budded all around me, and seeing bright sunny days filled with bright sunny people and I thought this tour could go on forever. But of course my legs brought me into more dismal places. First it just started with the ugly looming soviet buildings that went on for miles abandoned, which spoke of a complex history I was inevitably going to hear more detailed. But really countries simply started getting poorer as I progressed east. I would see the ruins of a once functioning village, whose fields were now nothing but dust from the flippantly laid road, which cut the village and many fields clear through the middle, and I poked behind these roaring trucks, kicking up anything in their path, and watched the villagers silently looking away from these monsters destroying their food. And then biking through eastern Europe, Romani don't have to hide their shanty towns, they know that hidden or not the local police will pick fights only if they are bored, so I so so many houses of tin and trash. Now they all wash together in my mind into a river of aluminum cans, cardboard roofs and wary faces, peering at me through cracks in the wall of garbage.
And to see all this was certainly distressing, even though I knew that they all existed. Of course, we all know that there is extreme poverty, that it gets so much worse.. but then I started going into the villages with romanesque speaking friends. I went when the leaves on the trees were already past their prime. They had glowed with embarrassed beauty for maybe a week, stunning or boring their observers apathetically, but this too shall pass, their fire withered into a crumbling brown and piles of these once collectable beauties now crunched underfoot as we entered the fortress of plastic bottles and torn shopping bags, dogs fighting over their spilled contents.
We were going to pick up the kids for kindergarten and as we walked in, children rushed at us with huge smiles and open arms. My friends are well loved here and it was beautiful to see such unrestrained joy. I was not so trusted, my broken few serbian phrases didn't get me very far and my hat was too big, I may have looked scary. But one slightly older girl, maybe 9, took pity on meand showered me with hugs and smiles. I was charmed, but only to realize she was trying to pawn off the baby she had been made responsible for so that she could go play. But of course I couldn't take that baby! I had to tear myself away from her sobbing little figure to follow my friends and all the smaller, yet unburdened kids back to school, the squat. Most of these kids were barefoot, none had jackets. Apparently they all had bronchitis and the leaves were all already off the trees. Winter is coming. The squat is collecting clothes but they had just brought all the warm things to the migrants, whose stories put me at such a loss. They are spilling out of the refugee camp which the government has provided but only has room and resources for maybe 10% of them. 300 or more are just in the woods with absolutely nothing. No food, water, warm clothes, roof, floor, tarp, stove, nothing. How they plan to survive through the winter I have no idea. People from the squat are trying to go every week with clothes and water, but it is not enough, and really what the people want the most is that their stories are heard. Many who have been through Hungary and Greece say that Serbia is so much better. They talk of just being thrown in prison for years, where they also starve and freeze, but are also beaten and tortured.. and yet, they keep fighting.
This is really what has been sticking in my head. Throughout this trip, I am continually thrown into closer contact with extreme suffering. With standards of living so low that as a white western person of privilege, I just have to wonder why? What are they fighting for so dearly? To live another day of hunger and cold? To sleep another night next to a husband who beats his wife daily? To be spat on and despised for merely being born? These are things that to me, I feel would be unbearable and simply not worth the effort. I have to wonder if I would just give up, and perhaps that is what the western european governments also think as they spare hundreds that distressing choice, and simply let them sink at sea. But those refugees, or these Roma parents, or whoever across the world, they are fighting for something, something infinitely more precious than anything else- life. Life, survival, it is obviously our whole world, it is all we are really meant to do and it is worth it. And I'm sure for many it is to an nth degree when they have children worth living for, love more powerful than death, this too carries people on to the next day. And I am so inspired by these warriors for life! They make me so ashamed of my afore mentioned disdain for those earthly necessities. I'm so ashamed of how I yearned to be a robot, that I wasn't even willing to do the basic things an animal needs to survive. But oh how glad I am to survive! How glad I am to be inside looking out, to have a full belly and 2 pairs of wool socks on. How glad I am that I have this life I can cherish and protect and that I share this with every being on this planet. How glad I am that I made it to a home just in time for snowfall, that I can curl up under 2 down sleeping bags and enjoy, fully enjoy this basic human need- to sleep.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Cycling into life

My dear friends and family, it has been a long time since I have come to this site, and I am afraid I have left many wondering and finally inquiring as to what has become of me and my travels. They continue! But perhaps, like this blog, in a different form. I have realized through my journeying that travel is simply life, varying levels of itinerancy are probably going to be shaping my life for a while, and therefore it has been weird to write about my everyday life on this site. But I am still thinking and writing, and I plan on posting thoughts here from time to time about culture, about travel, about life.
For those that appreciate knowing the route, it went as follows: Germany, quick flight over to Catalonia, back to Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, quick hitch over to Croatia then hitch back to Hungary, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, U TURN, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo. I am now in Kosovo living with my cousin for the winter, writing, reading, playing, hibernating, who knows what the future will hold for me and my steed!
Thanks so much for all the love and support from all my wonderful friends and family, and until next time!