(brief) Return to America

Last week I left Scotland for a brief return to Columbia and the City of New York. Whew – it was a whirlwind tour – I left Edinburgh early in morning on Thursday and returned early Monday. I cannot say I would recommend such a trip – I spent half the time in New York zonked out and confused, but seeing friends and rehearsing with the Bach Society kept me awake and semi alert. On the plane I spent most of the time reading David Mitchel’s “Cloud Atlas” – a crazy novel from 2004 set in six different historical and future epochs and that the story of six completely different characters. While approaching New York, I was reading the two parts of the novel set in dystopic future earths, which never fails to make me depressed, but I looked down and saw big houses, wide highways, and yellow school buses crawling along beneath me, and I suddenly felt better. Big, crazy America – awesome! After I arrived I promptly took the public bus to Newark Penn Station and then the PATH train into the city (I recommend this highly cost effective means of getting from Newark to Manhattan). There are two things that struck me immediately. 1 – New York is so diverse! I had forgotten how many different kinds of people there are in America, especially New York City. After the mostly white and occasionally Indian or Arab population of Scotland, America’s diversity was suddenly extremely vivid. 2 – New York is so gray! While it was a beautiful, sunny weekend in the city, I realized how used I have become happily used to the verdant coloUrs of the UK. In Edinburgh, my flat sits on the edge of a bright green golf course, while the hunter and brown hulk of Arthurs Seat and the Crags lumbers up above the surrounding landscape. New York is so concrete – I am sure I will miss the foliage of Edinburgh when I return. The weekend itself was quite enjoyable – I saw all the usual Columbia suspects, and spent a night in Mark’s room and two nights over in Plimpton with Laura Mericle, who kindly donated her air mattress to my cause. My parents were in town as well. At one point, during lunch my parents at Café de Soleil, I wondered for a few seconds why CNN and not the BBC was being played on the television. The reason for my return was to hear my piece “Tremors: A Report” performed by the Bach Society. The concert, on Saturday night, went very well – a few mishaps with missing orchestral parts, but other than that, the piece sounded great and it was clear that everyone involved had put in a lot of time and effort. After the concert on Saturday night, Laura, Maeve and Rachel Arky hosted a party in their suite. I had brought some classy Scotch and a bottle of Irn Bru back from Scotland for everyone to try. I spent the first half an hour trying to convince people to enjoy the “national soda of Scotland,” but by the end of night there was still plenty of Irn Bru to go around. The Scotch, meanwhile, required no extra effort on my part to be taken care of. I returned to Newark airport Sunday evening after a long trip via sketchy Newark Penn Station, and managed to clear the horrific security lines in time to catch my flight. For the past few days, I have been sleeping a lot (I think the trip tired me out), and enjoying the spring time weather, which is simply wonderful. Eventually I need to start “revising” for finals, but I feel as if my studies are all over (coming home to NYC didn’t help), and the weather is great, that reading about Wagner and music history is proving difficult.