Moving is challenging; I've learned about shopping at IKEA (it always takes at least an hour more than you think); about constructing a European-style bed (there is no such thing as a box spring, just a sommier, a thing with slats that look like balsa wood but are mercifully a little sturdier); about putting curtains on a stubborn curtain rod (scrap fabric is our friend); about whether or not your Vespa poster not matching your duvet is a problem (it is not). It's disorienting to change addresses, commutes, grocery stores, routines. Disorienting, but good; the challenge forces you to think about how you divide time, about where your priorities lie, about how you want to invest the always-limited resources at your disposal. Moving, like having company for dinner, forces you to clean, to rearrange, to reconsider the things you've accepted as inevitable in your daily life. You see things as an outsider, because for a brief moment you are an outsider; and your life invariably changes as your perspective shifts.
Outsider-vision and its incipient, almost-imperceptible life changes happened yesterday morning during the VUB-ULB concert du St. V, an orchestra concert to celebrate Paul Verhaegen, the founding father of both universities, the first non-Catholic-affiliated schools in Belgium. St. V's day is a joke, a mock saint's day for the man who declared that the Church should not dictate what and who was taught in this fledgling country. This concert, however, was not really a joke: though VUB, the Flemish-speaking university, and ULB, the Francophone university where I study, are about 15 minutes away from each other on foot, this concert was one of the only opportunities French and Flemish students have to collaborate with one another. Most courses in the Flemish language at ULB are, incredibly, taught by Francophone professors with a background in Flemish studies; likewise, most French courses at VUB are taught by Flemish speakers who minored in French. Though both universities conduct high-level research in law, business, and the social sciences, their efforts are almost always divided; there is little dialogue between the two vibrant academic communities who are quite literally a stone's throw away from one another. In many ways, VUB and ULB embody the redundancy that results from the politico-linguistic divisions that hamstring Belgium in so many ways. They spend double on resources, facilities, faculty, when they could easily accommodate their students and research and more in a shared, bilingual campus.
Thus it was particularly special to have the opportunity to play alongside VUB's orchestra as part of ULB's orchestra yesterday. Most of the concert was divided; VUB played Broadway standards, we played a Bizet overture. However, the last piece was a symphonic suite from the movie The Prince of Egypt. Each stand contained a VUB and a ULB musician, playing side by side; the ULB conductor directed, as ULB students translated for their stand partners when necessary. Halfway through the piece, Zofia, our director, stepped down, grabbed the VUB conductor, and let him finish conducting the piece. The two joined hands and bowed together on the podium at the end, as the swells of the oh-so-metaphorically-powerful piece "(There Can Be Miracles) When You Believe" died away in the auditorium. The music was schmaltzy and the execution good but not extraordinary; the fact that the crowd leapt to their feet in the loudest standing ovation I've ever received as a member of a symphony had much more to do with political symbolism than with musicality. They demanded encore after encore; they took photo after photo. This concert, coming just over a week after Belgian politicians finally signed a (hopefully) working political accord and formed a (hopefully) stable parliamentary coalition with a (hopefully) mutually agreeable prime minister, was in many ways a metaphor for changements: for learning to see things as an outsider; for stumbling through a second or third language in order to communicate with one's neighbor; for laughing as one shared power; for universal things, like music or national identity (or the ever-present beer served after the concert :) , that unite otherwise disparate people.
In other words, the concert was pretty cool.
I am now on a mission to understand more about Belgian history. Most of what I know about Belgium comes from colonial history; I've learned the bare minimum about Leopold II in order to understand what happened in Congo. But I think the secret to some of the seemingly incomprehensible acts Belgium committed in its colonies may lie in its own, complicated, divided identity and history. The more I see of this country, the more complex, convoluted, and fascinating it seems. It's a strange, interesting mix of North African immigrants, Central African refugees, Eurocrats, left-leaning students, stodgy Flemish, droll Walloons, and a decorative monarchy; a place where trilingualism is expected and five languages is nothing extraordinary; a place where Egyptian wraps coexist peacefully with traditional moules-frites; a place where there is little definition of "normal," because everyone is profoundly, fascinatingly different. A place constantly struggling with "changements," constantly shifting boundaries and identities and perspectives; a place blessed and cursed with perpetual outsider vision.
The finale of the VUB/ULB concert, filmed by one of the ULB parents.
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