Hvordan sier du . . . på norsk? Unnskyld, jeg snakker ikke norsk.

"A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life." This (out of context) quote, along with that cheesey Lennon Christmas song and the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," was running in my head during my Nowegian Christmas extravaganza.
Bergen, Norway is the most splendiferously resplendent place I have ever been. Ever. And my extended family made this Christmas one of my most memorable. They taught me some norsk; took me on short hikes and gave me detailed explainations about the geology of Norway; took me downtown, to see Edvard Munch and Edvard Greig, and taught me about the history of Bryggen; fed me traditional Norwegian meals and toothsome home-baked sweets and bread; introduced me to Norwegian brown cheese, Christmas beer, Akevitt, new Norwegian free-jazz-electronica; were most generous in making me feel welcome (my most common phrase was "tusen takk," theirs, "værsågod"); and basically had me constantly resisting the temptation to kick my legs rhythmically in an excess of life. Skål (cheers) to them!

I spent 12 hours in Amsterdam en route. I hadn't slept the previous night, but it was good to see the city again

This is the view from the 'backyard' of the house I stayed at in Bergen

Christmas Eve is the big day in Norway. Left - Right: Svein-Petter, Guro, Borghild, Beate (my dad's cousin)

The rest of the fam-damily. Left - Right: Beate/Edgar's mum, Thorbjørn, Eirik, Edgar (my dad's cousin)

My Great Uncle Ian Dobi with a tea cozy on his head (Dec 25)

Bryggen i Bergen: the oldest part of Bergen, on the UNESCO list

Narrow alleys of Bryggen

The Dobi-Kviem house

Paris, France, Underpants

Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain

Unlike in the movie, it's actually a dive


La Tour Eiffel



Dans le Musée D'Orsay

A bridge across the Seine

One Great City!

Edinburgh at its finest.

Revenant: "40,000 ans de musique"

Richard Taruskin is one of the biggest names in ('traditional') musicology. So it's notable that on page 2 of the introductory chapter to his 4252-page History of Western Music (2005), he's dealing with bombs that have been dropped by one of the preeminent scholars of popular music, Robert Walser. Walser's critical acumen is precise and powerful; he cuts straight through the ribs of the debate, piercing its heart: the subject of Taruskin’s tome – ‘classical’ music – is extremely diverse, so much so that it only makes sense as an “invented tradition.” In the name of present (elitist) interests, this tradition "construct[s] a cohesive past to establish or legitimize present-day institutions or social relations.” Ouch.

So how does Taruskin justify one more – “potentially the last” – stab at a comprehensive examination of the impossibly heterogeneous body of Western art-music? In his own words, “it is the basic claim of this multivolumed book – its number-one postulate – that the literate tradition of Western music is coherent at least insofar as it has a completed shape. It’s beginnings are known and explicable, and its end is now foreseeable (and also explicable).”

And that’s when it hit me. The sober black cover, the delicate gold lettering, the fresh and un-turned pages, the carefully-preserved smell, the somber tone – the book is as much a tomb as it is a tome. A funeral. Ashes to ashes: One part history, one part eulogy.

So: A living 'popular'-music scholar is editing some dying 'classical' music.
The appropriately titled "En me Revenant": Allmayne, ff. 8v-9r. In Margaret Board’s Lute Book (ca. 1620-1630), owned by Robert Spencer. Fascimilie: Robert Spencer, ed., The Board Lute Book. Leeds: Boethius, 1976.

The tedium of the 4:4 beat

" . . . on the one occasion when Derrida publicly attempted to associate words with music, he was, for the only time in his life according to his own account, booed off stage." - Dayan, Music Writing Literature, 2006.

I was saying 'booerns.'

Ze Germans set up a Christmas market in das Gartenhozen ein Princes Straße for the whole of December. I went there. I had mulled wine -- a recent addition to my "Most Favourite Things in the World" list.

Otherwise, very busy. Very tired. Positive feedback on my forays as a wannabe-contemplative into the bowels of academic sociomusicology -- my essays. There's even been some talk of what it would look like to take the training-wheels off my musicological bike. We'll see.

Photograph the Wheel: no charge. Ride the Wheel: £3. Both were worth it.

Round. And round.