Warning: this is not going to be a particularly exciting post. It is exam season, so you're going to get a lot of paper and red ink and scholar's butt.
Okay, if that hasn't scared you off, then read on, brave souls.
First of all: Brussels weather has gone from absolutely dreadful, horrible, no-good, and awful to balmy and stunning and summery in the past weeks. I love watching this city flourisse as the sun comes out and bakes the ponds and the cobblestones and the terrasses; Bruxellois get out of their cozy apartments and their rain-resistant parkas and instead show off their (often blindingly white) appendages beside ponds and in city squares and on park benches. Bars and pubs empty out; terrasses become overcrowded with people drinking white beers with lemons, or fresh-squeezed orange juice, or cold sparkling wine. Music goes outside, too: we happened upon a klezmer jam session whose wailing clarinet echoed through Abbaye de la Cambre last week; I've passed by countless guitar-types strumming lazily by the Etangs d'Ixelles during my runs/study breaks; entire neighborhoods buzzed with straw-fedora-sporting, sundress-swirling jazz fans this weekend during the mostly outdoor Jazz Marathon (Brussels, for those who (like myself) didn't really know, is one of Europe's greatest jazz meccas; Adolf Sax invented the saxophone not far from here, and Django Reinhardt, one of the great jazz banjo players (apparently this is a thing?) got his start at l'Archiduc downtown).
It's fun to watch the lines for the ice cream stands lengthen; to see the Sunday markets double in size and attendance (and quality of produce); to finally get rid of the fleeces on my bed and instead fling all the windows open to welcome the warm Brussels breeze. It's actually pretty surreal to write the phrase "warm Brussels breeze", considering how frigid Brussels was being in February. Everyone changes, I guess, even this quirky, manic-depressive city.
It is, of course, one of the great ironies of life that ULB (and actually all the Brussels unifs) have exams during this heart-breakingly beautiful weather. I have to admit that these lovely glimpses of Bruxellois profiting from le beau temps have mostly come as I've worked in cafes and bars with a lait russe or a Hoegaarden for company. My classmates have all told me not to get used to the pretty weather, or to expect it to last until exams are over (I have been eagerly planning to take Leo and one lucky person to Ostende when exams are over; I was told not to count on Belgian weather behaving. Fingers crossed.) They all laugh that their spring semester grades are much worse than their fall ones, a phenomenon which I can attest is pretty universal (you Davidsonians remember how hard it is to lock yourself up in Chambers or the libes when the lawn beckons you to sunbathe and frolic, and probably also remember the effect that that temptation had on final grades :)
To be honest, though, I have enjoyed this re-defining of the idea of "public intellectual." I don't really fancy myself an intellectual these days- more like an Anglophone naufragée (a shipwrecked sailor) trying to keep her head above the waters of French-laced philosophy and economic theory and jurisprudence- but I am enjoying the ritual of shyly ordering my drink, staking out my table near a window, and reading and writing and thinking and sometimes watching the terrasse-dwellers and ever so often blogging out in public. I'm enjoying the laughing informal bonds I've formed with a few cafe workers; the brief conversations with fellow internet hopefuls stalking wifi desperately; the funny conversations with philosophers-errant marveling at the stocky Aristotle on my table, or maybe just the fact that I type "mais vraiment hyper vite, ma belle!"
I can't make a lot of direct links between the linguistics of judicial oaths and my conversation with a bored Italian about the best gelato flavor at Capoue; but I can say that something about the ritual of writing and thinking in cafes and bars that are fast becoming my haunts fits with my hopes of living as a student in Europe. No, the past few weeks haven't produced Erasmus-style photos of eight nationalities crowded around a camera, glowing with dancing sweat and Belgian draughts; no, they haven't added a ton of ticket stubs and printed programs to my scrapbook-wall; no, I haven't discovered a lot of deep insights into the Belgian mind, or the European outlook, or the Belgo-Congolese relationship. That said, I am learning, I think to begin seeing the neighborhood where I live as mon quartier; to accept my (sometimes maddening) editing job and its memorable boss as a pretty funny learning experience; to finally face up to my academic fears and write new thesis work, new lengthy French papers; to grin, and sometimes love, the work, or at least the fun places where I get to do work.
Final thought, before I return to typing notes: when I study for exams in French or write papers in French, I like to listen to French music. For some reason, half-hearing francophone lyrics makes it much easier to think, write, copy, and argue in French than listening to anglophone lyrics or even classical music (and no, silence is not an option; I am miserable without music). I've gone through most of my friends' recommendations for good Francophone pop artists (and am actively seeking new suggestions, if you have them!) and have returned to the classics: Brel, Piaf, and Gainsbourg. I just realized that Gainsbourg wrote an album called "Rock Around the Bunker" about the Nazi era, Hitler, Eva Braun (yes, there's a song called "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" about her which, like the rest of the album, is in pretty dubious taste), yellow stars, and what happens when an SS officer escapes to Uruguay (he wears a flat straw hat and drinks papaya juice, duh). I don't exactly know what to think of this little album- it's very different from the rest of Serge's stuff, which is mostly nouvelle-vague, full of breathy jazz and suave innuendos and impossible coolness. This album, instead, has music that seems plucked from either the King or the Beach Boys' cutting floor, complete with singing backup bimbos; the lyrics are sparse and full of silly puns that at first seem innocuous. But Gainsbourg sings his soda shop melodies with intensities; he spits his satiric jeux de mots with anger at the injustice and the wrong and the horror. This album came out in 1975, a little before Shoah and then Schindler's List made Holocaust memorial both mainstream and serious. Gainsbourg, who was a kid during World War II and wore a yellow star in Paris, remembers his own experience and that of his country and his continent with angry humor: this is not the goofy, pretzel-and-iron-cross-sporting chorus girls and effeminate Adolf of "Springtime for Hitler", nor the jerky, silly Little Dictator, nor the wide range of lightening-bolt-sporting absurdity in "Allo Allo"; but neither is this the unequivocally sad, sometimes moralizing gaze one finds in the two films I just mentioned (as well as Au revoir, les enfants, and even The Sound of Music). This is infuriated laughter. It's interesting to see this kind of goofy, deadly serious satire, especially from the French singer most noted for his cool detachment (he was perhaps the only man who could let Brigitte Bardot go at the height of her beauty with very little ruffling of his feathers). We don't do memory like this much any more.
(Actually, it would be interesting to see if Congolese rappers do. I wouldn't be surprised. Music is a funny, furious medium.)
Okay, well anyway. Gainsbourg's songs about the SS have little to do with ice cream and sunshine, nor with the ethics of economic theory. Back to work, and laissant le beau temps rouler (sans et avec moi).
Okay, if that hasn't scared you off, then read on, brave souls.
First of all: Brussels weather has gone from absolutely dreadful, horrible, no-good, and awful to balmy and stunning and summery in the past weeks. I love watching this city flourisse as the sun comes out and bakes the ponds and the cobblestones and the terrasses; Bruxellois get out of their cozy apartments and their rain-resistant parkas and instead show off their (often blindingly white) appendages beside ponds and in city squares and on park benches. Bars and pubs empty out; terrasses become overcrowded with people drinking white beers with lemons, or fresh-squeezed orange juice, or cold sparkling wine. Music goes outside, too: we happened upon a klezmer jam session whose wailing clarinet echoed through Abbaye de la Cambre last week; I've passed by countless guitar-types strumming lazily by the Etangs d'Ixelles during my runs/study breaks; entire neighborhoods buzzed with straw-fedora-sporting, sundress-swirling jazz fans this weekend during the mostly outdoor Jazz Marathon (Brussels, for those who (like myself) didn't really know, is one of Europe's greatest jazz meccas; Adolf Sax invented the saxophone not far from here, and Django Reinhardt, one of the great jazz banjo players (apparently this is a thing?) got his start at l'Archiduc downtown).
It's fun to watch the lines for the ice cream stands lengthen; to see the Sunday markets double in size and attendance (and quality of produce); to finally get rid of the fleeces on my bed and instead fling all the windows open to welcome the warm Brussels breeze. It's actually pretty surreal to write the phrase "warm Brussels breeze", considering how frigid Brussels was being in February. Everyone changes, I guess, even this quirky, manic-depressive city.
It is, of course, one of the great ironies of life that ULB (and actually all the Brussels unifs) have exams during this heart-breakingly beautiful weather. I have to admit that these lovely glimpses of Bruxellois profiting from le beau temps have mostly come as I've worked in cafes and bars with a lait russe or a Hoegaarden for company. My classmates have all told me not to get used to the pretty weather, or to expect it to last until exams are over (I have been eagerly planning to take Leo and one lucky person to Ostende when exams are over; I was told not to count on Belgian weather behaving. Fingers crossed.) They all laugh that their spring semester grades are much worse than their fall ones, a phenomenon which I can attest is pretty universal (you Davidsonians remember how hard it is to lock yourself up in Chambers or the libes when the lawn beckons you to sunbathe and frolic, and probably also remember the effect that that temptation had on final grades :)
To be honest, though, I have enjoyed this re-defining of the idea of "public intellectual." I don't really fancy myself an intellectual these days- more like an Anglophone naufragée (a shipwrecked sailor) trying to keep her head above the waters of French-laced philosophy and economic theory and jurisprudence- but I am enjoying the ritual of shyly ordering my drink, staking out my table near a window, and reading and writing and thinking and sometimes watching the terrasse-dwellers and ever so often blogging out in public. I'm enjoying the laughing informal bonds I've formed with a few cafe workers; the brief conversations with fellow internet hopefuls stalking wifi desperately; the funny conversations with philosophers-errant marveling at the stocky Aristotle on my table, or maybe just the fact that I type "mais vraiment hyper vite, ma belle!"
I can't make a lot of direct links between the linguistics of judicial oaths and my conversation with a bored Italian about the best gelato flavor at Capoue; but I can say that something about the ritual of writing and thinking in cafes and bars that are fast becoming my haunts fits with my hopes of living as a student in Europe. No, the past few weeks haven't produced Erasmus-style photos of eight nationalities crowded around a camera, glowing with dancing sweat and Belgian draughts; no, they haven't added a ton of ticket stubs and printed programs to my scrapbook-wall; no, I haven't discovered a lot of deep insights into the Belgian mind, or the European outlook, or the Belgo-Congolese relationship. That said, I am learning, I think to begin seeing the neighborhood where I live as mon quartier; to accept my (sometimes maddening) editing job and its memorable boss as a pretty funny learning experience; to finally face up to my academic fears and write new thesis work, new lengthy French papers; to grin, and sometimes love, the work, or at least the fun places where I get to do work.
Final thought, before I return to typing notes: when I study for exams in French or write papers in French, I like to listen to French music. For some reason, half-hearing francophone lyrics makes it much easier to think, write, copy, and argue in French than listening to anglophone lyrics or even classical music (and no, silence is not an option; I am miserable without music). I've gone through most of my friends' recommendations for good Francophone pop artists (and am actively seeking new suggestions, if you have them!) and have returned to the classics: Brel, Piaf, and Gainsbourg. I just realized that Gainsbourg wrote an album called "Rock Around the Bunker" about the Nazi era, Hitler, Eva Braun (yes, there's a song called "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" about her which, like the rest of the album, is in pretty dubious taste), yellow stars, and what happens when an SS officer escapes to Uruguay (he wears a flat straw hat and drinks papaya juice, duh). I don't exactly know what to think of this little album- it's very different from the rest of Serge's stuff, which is mostly nouvelle-vague, full of breathy jazz and suave innuendos and impossible coolness. This album, instead, has music that seems plucked from either the King or the Beach Boys' cutting floor, complete with singing backup bimbos; the lyrics are sparse and full of silly puns that at first seem innocuous. But Gainsbourg sings his soda shop melodies with intensities; he spits his satiric jeux de mots with anger at the injustice and the wrong and the horror. This album came out in 1975, a little before Shoah and then Schindler's List made Holocaust memorial both mainstream and serious. Gainsbourg, who was a kid during World War II and wore a yellow star in Paris, remembers his own experience and that of his country and his continent with angry humor: this is not the goofy, pretzel-and-iron-cross-sporting chorus girls and effeminate Adolf of "Springtime for Hitler", nor the jerky, silly Little Dictator, nor the wide range of lightening-bolt-sporting absurdity in "Allo Allo"; but neither is this the unequivocally sad, sometimes moralizing gaze one finds in the two films I just mentioned (as well as Au revoir, les enfants, and even The Sound of Music). This is infuriated laughter. It's interesting to see this kind of goofy, deadly serious satire, especially from the French singer most noted for his cool detachment (he was perhaps the only man who could let Brigitte Bardot go at the height of her beauty with very little ruffling of his feathers). We don't do memory like this much any more.
(Actually, it would be interesting to see if Congolese rappers do. I wouldn't be surprised. Music is a funny, furious medium.)
Okay, well anyway. Gainsbourg's songs about the SS have little to do with ice cream and sunshine, nor with the ethics of economic theory. Back to work, and laissant le beau temps rouler (sans et avec moi).
