The Rugby Match

I've had a cultural experience that I think warrants a return to the blog from which I've been delinquent. I passed a delightful evening two nights ago at a rugby game. Rugby match. Rugby conflict.

The home team was called the London Welsh. So obviously they play in Oxford. The game began with — what else — a recording of male choral music, which got louder and louder until it was all I could do not to stand up and place my hand over my heart in tribute to the rousing anthem. The players came out in red (our side) and black (the bad guys, of course). As a side note, I noticed that the other team had the word DOWNTON stamped mysteriously across their hindquarters. No idea what that was about.

These were voluptuous men, blessed with thunder thighs and, on several of them, what can only be described as bosoms. Bedecked with tea cozies on their heads, they carried out their struggle in a manner that reminded me sometimes of 18th-century warfare.

They showed prodigious creativity in their methods of interacting with the ball. When it was thrown in from outside the line, two players would grab a third by the thunder thighs and lift, and he would rise gracefully above his teammates' heads like a porpoise to meet the ball high in the air. Often two players, one from each team, would do this simultaneously in an elegant pas de deux.

Other times several of the players would crouch down and interlock their limbs to form a solid, crab-like organism, and they'd scuttle around doing mysterious things until the ball popped out from under an edge somewhere. This, I am told, is called a scrum.

One of the key differences from American football (which obviously I am an expert in) was that when the player with the ball was tackled, play did not stop. Men kept running towards the tackled player and leaping gleefully onto the growing heap, while those at the bottom squirmed and kicked and clawed at the ball as if it were a giant jar of Marmite. When the secret signal to stop finally came, players would untangle themselves and emerge from the manpile in various states of undress, with bellies hanging free or shorts around their knees. Methinks a belt would be a splendid addition to the uniform.

The audience was positively magnanimous. (Audience? Congregation? There must be a better word than "crowd.") When we scored a touchdown thingy, we cheered. When the other team scored a touchdown thingy...we cheered. (n.b. I believe the technical term for a touchdown thingy is a "try," but that sounds far too indecisive to me.) As the match progressed and the opponents' score crept ever higher, this generosity of spirit never wavered with respect to the other side, although dissatisfaction with the (Oxford) London Welsh increased in amplitude.

The audience was diverse, and expressed their sentiments in a variety of accents and styles. The general drone of manroar was punctuated with little gems of English linguistic diversity. The group next to me shouted abuse and instructions while up to their elbows in bags of snacks. A bald man in a floral hoodie erupted into lusty hymn singing at one point. Somewhere there was a bark of "Phlogpog!" in a tone that indicated the speaker had said exactly what he had meant to say. Behind me an elderly gentleman in tweed kept saying things like, "Oh yes, old chap, but you see of course there's no forward bumble. He mustn't press the trier without the scrum flummox in the dolphin." Or something like that. I'm paraphrasing.

We lost fairly spectacularly in the end, but it was a great evening. The weather was warm, almost balmy, and the company couldn't have been better. After a short night’s sleep, I packed myself off to Grantham, where we’re putting on my opera Cantata Eliensis this evening as part of the Gravity Fields Festival (more on that at www.annakrause.com). Come along if you’re in the neighborhood!

Oh look, a post about horses and music. That's definitely never happened here before.

I have neglected you.  Mea culpa.

I've made my triumphant return to Oxford for Year 3 of this surreal new life.  I now find myself installed in a lilliputian house, shared with a friend, in a suburban corner of Oxford.  Because every good English house needs a name, we have christened ours Neuschwanstein, because the house is narrow and white-ish, because we both claim German heritage, and because the house is tiny and therefore it's funny.  See what we did there?  We named a really small house after a castle.  Bahaha.

The adventure began with a cold, rainy excursion to the Blenheim International Horse Trials.  Jet lag was powerless against the titillation of the everywhere-ness of horses against the backdrop of Blenheim Palace.

We saw William Fox-Pitt gallop past us on the cross country course to victory in the 8- and 9-year-old horse division, and we saw Aoife Clark show-jump her way to winning the whole shebang that afternoon.

Another feature of the day, memorable in a different sort of way, was a "sidesaddle dressage demonstration" given by a woman in a sparkly white princess dress and plastic tiara (no helmet).  Her gray mare bumped around the arena on the forehand as a plush unicorn horn flopped around on her face.  It was pretty special.  Don't forget to play the soundtrack as you view the photo (they played this song during the demo).

The other bizarre event of the day was a ride on Henry the mechanical horse.  This is a thing they've built to make riding more accessible and affordable, especially to beginners.  It is odd, but it's quite an impressive thing.  It feels enough like a horse to make you really aware of the ways in which it does not feel like a horse.

So that was great.  More photos and videos of Blenheim are on Facebook.

Last Thursday I went to London to see a few dear friends and to hear the premiere of Blitz Requiem, a new piece by David Goode and Francis Warner, at St Paul's Cathedral.  The first half of the program was full of glorious things by Pärt and Vaughan Williams, and was what my old music history professor would call a "mountaintop experience."  If you're near a computer on October 3, go to to Classic FM and click "Listen" to hear a complete re-broadcast of this fantastic concert.  8pm BST, 2pm CST.

I'm abbreviating this post somewhat, because I've just returned from an unbelievable adventure in Munich, and I don't want to exhaust your patience before setting the next post loose on you.

The Best Birthday Present (other than a pony)

RED ALERT ! ! !

It's happening.  This is the end.  We're all going to die.  Power outages, school closings, and train cancellations ransack the country, according to the BBC.

What is this terror laying waste to the United Kingdom, bringing civilization to a standstill?  So far, about an inch of snow.

The Telegraph has posted a video of haggard drivers creeping through the dusting, navigating their way through a graveyard of stranded trucks and abandoned cars.  They report "thousands" of school closings, panic buying at supermarkets, and "travel chaos."  The Mirror posted the following dire headline last night:

Gripped by the big freeze: Panic buying and travel warnings with up to TWELVE inches of snow due

Lord have mercy upon our souls.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.  I'll stop.  Yea though I mock, I mock in love.  I'm sure there are few cities in the world that look as beautiful as Oxford looks right now:

Speaking of snow, I have discovered something delightful about English weather.  No, really.  Stop laughing.

Let me explain.  It's a normal state of affairs here for there to be a light, gray, endless drizzle going on and on, making everything just damp enough to be limp and wet and cold.  Sounds great, doesn't it?  Well I didn't come here for the weather.  BUT, yesterday I made an amazing discovery about drizzle in winter.  If the temperature drops low enough for this misty not-quite-rain to freeze, what we're left with is a light, sugary sprinkling of tiny dry snowflakes that don't make a mess, don't get you wet or make you cold, and don't accumulate.  They're just tiny white specks of glitter in the air.  I call it snizzle.  Yesterday it snizzed all day long.  It was lovely, especially after dark when the snizzle glowed white in the city lights against the black sky.

So now the snizzle has been upgraded to actual snow, just in time for my birthday tomorrow.  Since I'm pretty sure a pony is not on the agenda this year, I'll put this snow down as my #1 birthday wish.  Let the rejoicing commence.

The Appendices of Rejoicing:

 

 

Three Things You Should Attend This Weekend

1. Polo Tournament

WHEN: Saturday, Nov. 24, day (specific times TBA)
WHERE: Rugby Polo Club near Coventry
HOW: Email me about transportation
COST: Free
WHY:

2. Arcadian Singers Concert: Winter Songs

WHEN: Saturday, Nov 24, 8pm
WHERE: Exeter College Chapel
COST: £5
WHY:

These reasons.  Also this:

3. Wadham Carol Service

WHEN: Sunday, Nov 25, 5:30pm

WHERE: Wadham College Chapel

COST: Free

WHY:

• Because it's the only chapel in Oxford lit completely with candlelight.
• Because we are awesome.
• Because our chaplain is awesome.
• Because I think there's free food.
• Because I wrote the Introit.
• Because carol services look like this:

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Year Two

"He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme."
- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

I'm inside, wearing a sweater, sitting right next to a hissing radiator and shivering violently as tiny raindrops spritz against the window.  I must be back in England.

As everything happens a second time, the excitement of the new adventure is infused with the memory of the first time, when the thrill of this new life in Oxford was so intense as to make it not quite plausible.  You know that feeling as Christmas approaches?  It's completely new and completely familiar; it's comfortable and it's exciting.  It's young, and fresh, and ancient.

That's what it's like.

Life now is a whirlwind of work, lectures and seminars, rehearsals, performances, riding, evensongs, and countless little moments and conversations not worth writing about and yet precious—little pearls on an ever-lengthening string that is the gift of a little time here.

I lost control of myself briefly and joined the polo team.  Now my friends will tell you it's all I talk about.  It's a good thing I can ride.  Everyone likes to say they were picked last for dodgeball as a child at recess, as if it's some sort of clever way to be self-deprecating; I actually was always picked last.  Always.  PE class was the dreaded event of the week from the age of 5 to when I graduated at 18.  When my PE class did its baseball unit and it was my turn to bat, that one really loud boy would shout and gesture broadly for all the kids in the outfield to "Move in, move in."  Confidence-building, I can tell you.  I always failed the annual flexibility test, I was among the last few stragglers to finish the infamous Mile, and I have never in my life done a pull-up.  Ever since that elementary school trauma, I have retained my complete inability to do anything useful with a ball.  So, as I say, it is a good thing I can ride, because hitting that little polo ball is proving not to be my greatest strength.  I pick up a lovely, smooth, steady canter, point the horse at the ball, sail towards it, lift slightly out of the saddle, raise my right arm above my head, let the mallet fall in a graceful arc behind me, and watch it swing harmlessly several inches over the top of the ball as we canter off harmoniously into the sunset.  My favorite trick is to dart ahead of an opposing player and physically block him from getting to the ball.  Because if I can't hit it, dang it, neither will you!  How far that technique will actually get me remains to be seen.  The introduction of a ball into the only sport I'm actually good at is proving to be an interesting plot twist.

I'll leave this here, because I have to put my breeches on now and go compete in my very first polo match—actually, my very first athletic competition of any kind, ever.  I'm playing for St Cross and Wolfson against other Oxford colleges.  See facebook for photos of polo and other Oxonian adventures, and I shall endeavor to update this with a little more regularity in the future!

It's on, elusive polo ball.  You're going down.  Let's do this.

Part One: The End

(Written July 13)

Where to begin?  I’m back in St. Louis now (unless I find Wi-Fi in Heathrow…not likely), but there’s a lot to cover from my last month in Oxford.

Sara visited at the beginning of June.  It was a week of grand adventures and riotous living.  We saw a play about Mary Shelley.  Five minutes into the play an actress broke her wrist onstage.  It got better after that.

The annual choir punting trip was nothing short of idyllic.  We dropped anchor (so to speak) somewhere along the riverbank to eat little bits of things and sing madrigals at very fast tempi.

Early in her visit Sara and I set out in the morning on a great expedition to find the horses in Port Meadow.  Undaunted by an ominous sky, we set off into the great unknown with nothing to guide us apart from the vague rumour that there were horses somewhere within the county.  That was enough to be going on with.  Roughly two hours later we emerged from a thicket to find our way blocked by the Bridge of Death, a rudimentary alliance of three planks of wood that were slowly sinking into the bog and floating/melting away.  Lesser adventurers might have been thwarted by the threat of plunging into unknown depths (maybe two feet) of icy, muddy swamp water.  But not we.  Armed with my wellies, I ventured forth first to test the structural integrity.  To be fair, my test of the bridge did in fact confirm our suspicions that this was a totally unsuitable structure that was likely to disintegrate at any moment…on the other hand, I didn’t fall in.  And there were horses out there.  Good enough.  Sara followed (barefoot, in the absence of wellies) and together we conquered the Bridge of Death.

The herd was somewhere in the vicinity of the next town, but dang it, we found them.  They were a sociable bunch.  Most were in need of a serious hoof trimming and a diet, but they were as pleasant and cheery as could be.  Having satiated our need for pony snuggles, we set off through the mud in the direction in which we thought Oxford probably was, and eventually found our way home, exhausted but victorious.

The rest of the week was a procession of one adventure after another, irritatingly punctuated by my battles with printers and envelopes and candidate numbers and other logistical aspects of submitting my portfolio of essays and compositions for my degree.  I’d written the thing before Sara got here, but even though the real work was done, there were still many skirmishes to be had.  I was thwarted at every turn.  I marched the thing over to the Exam Schools, in much the same way as one marches to the scaffold, through driving rain that Friday morning, and Sara and I promptly collapsed into a coffee house.  That evening, once I had unwound myself a bit, we joined Bill Spectre (dressed as a nineteenth-century undertaker) on his theatrical ghost tour of Oxford.  So worth it.  I recommend that tour to anyone with a healthy sense of whimsy and an appreciation for silly ghost stories.

We spent our last day of Sara’s visit at the varsity polo match with a gaggle from St Cross.  We braved the tempestuous winds and largely worthless alcoholic teenage upper class spectators and saw most of four polo matches: an alumni match, Eton vs. Harrow (Eton won by a healthy margin), Oxford vs. Cambridge (we’re not talking about that match), and Harvard vs. Yale.  Now, why Harvard and Yale had to come to England to play each other is a mystery to me, but whatever.  But it was great fun and I am sorely tempted to get involved in polo next year.  I am currently investigating the possibilities.

That night I sent Sara off to Copenhagen via the midnight bus to Gatwick after a week of legendary Sara/Anna adventures.  The next day was the leavers’ service at Wadham (meaning the last evensong of the year) when leavers (people who are graduating or otherwise moving on from Oxford) choose the music.  I had the great privilege of conducting this service.  The musical high point of the service, for me, was the anthem we sang:

The next few weeks were consumed by the composition that stood in place of the dissertation for my master’s degree.  That was a labour of love, but it was a long and arduous labour.  It was a mostly instrumental piece based on the structure of an Anglican evensong service.  It was more consonant than a lot of the music I’ve written: each brief movement was written using its own seven-note scale.  Some of these scales aligned with traditional modes, and some did not.  I was pleased with it, but I’ll feel more secure, of course, once I’ve been given my results.

The Olympic torch came through Oxford on Monday the 9th, and since I’m not going to be here for the Games themselves, I volunteered at the torch relay, wanting at least to have some role in the Olympics.  My job was to hold back the raging crowd as the convoys of vehicles, performers, and torchbearers came through.  My friend Will joined me in volunteering.  The torch wasn’t expected to come through the street where we were stationed until about 18:15, but we had to be there by 15:30.  I donned the surprisingly complex uniform (comfortable shoes, ginormous white polo, fluorescent day-glo yellow vest, lanyard with event staff ID, random blue silicone bracelet, and drawstring backpack), put on my usher face, and went forth to herd humans.  Moooooooo.

On Wednesday the 11th I went to London to see Les Misérables at the Queen’s Theatre.  It was a spectacular performance.  Jean Valjean is being played by a legit Argentinian tenor, and Sierra Boggess, a personal favourite of mine, is in the role of Fantine for a short period this summer.  I’d seen the show live three times before, and I’ve seen recorded “in concert” performances a number of times and have listened to the CD to the point of memorization, but still this performance was truly thrilling.  It was certainly the best live performance of the piece I’ve seen.  After the show I pranced around to the stage door, and I got a photo with my girl Sierra Boggess.

The rest of the day in London was delightful.  We went to the British Museum, where I found the most fantastic factual error:

On my last day in Oxford, I got back to St Cross at about 11:45pm to nap (not to sleep, but to nap) before catching the 6am bus to Heathrow.  In the end I only got an hour of sleep last night because I was freezing—I had moved my sheets and pillow and duvet into storage yesterday morning, and without my duvet it was too cold to sleep, even wrapped in a hoodie, my bath towel, and my bathrobe, with various other bits of clothing from my suitcase piled on top of me.  I gave up at about 2:45am and got up to take a hot shower and warm up.  I fiddled around cleaning my room and perfecting my suitcase until 5:30, when I left to catch the bus.

And here I am at Heathrow, way too early (but better than too late), waiting for the screen to tell me which gate to go to.  I am sore from dragging around heavy suitcases for two days, I am tired, and my stomach is slightly upset because of the bus and because I ate breakfast at 4:00 and my body doesn’t really know what to do with that sort of nonsense, but I have had a glorious last week in Oxford, at the end of an unbelievable year.  I said goodbye to the City of Dreaming Spires reluctantly, but I am looking forward to a summer with family and friends and horses, and joy of joys, I get to come back to this amazing place at the end of September.  So I am glad.

Click here for the full album on facebook.

Update (20.7.12): Passed my degree.  Bam.

Good New Days

There are some days I will always remember.  Some days that are so intensely full of joy I don't know what to do but sit in the corner with wide eyes and listen, and give as many hugs as I can.  Here in Oxford, those days come far more often than I have any right to wish for.  They come as part of the routine.  To live here is to be very awake.

I met C.S. Lewis's stepson a few weeks ago.  Douglas Gresham, the son of Joy Davidman, spoke for an hour and a half at C.S. Lewis Society.  He elected to answer questions rather than deliver a lecture, and his answers were full and thorough and often blossomed into stories.  He was a gifted storyteller.  People asked questions about his family, being raised by Lewis, his life in America, England, and Australia, his writing, Lewis's writing, and his involvement in the Narnia movies.  He compared film and stage depictions of his story with reality.  He asserted some political views I could have done without, and related scenes from his childhood at the Kilns, which I could have listened to all night.  He said he was once criticized for writing an autobiography because he hadn't done anything worth it.  But, he told us, no one should be arrogant enough to write an autobiography because of the great things they think they've done.  His was worth being written because such extraordinary have happened to him.  And it was true.  His life has been extraordinary.

A good friend finished two grueling weeks of exams in May, and I was introduced to another delightfully bizarre tradition: trashing.  Friends of the examinees clustered behind metal barracades outside the Examination Schools, after subjecting ourselves and our bags to a security inspection, and there we waited for Rachel to emerge victorious.  When she appeared in sub fusc, wearing a red carnation to signify that this was her last exam, the caged party assaulted her with confetti, champagne, and gunpowder-powered party poppers.  (Say that five times fast.  I dare you.  Gunpowder-powered party poppers.  Gunpowder-powered potty papa.  Gunpowder-patta patta patta heyyyy, batter batter batter.  I give up.)

On May 24 the William Jewell College choir finished its tenth triennial UK tour in St Peter's College Chapel in Oxford.  I had been looking forward to a reunion with my Jewell people for months, probably driving people crazy with my jittery anticipation, but I underestimated what it would feel like to come around the corner of the St Peter's chapel and see those bright red robes and white collars, which I had spent so many sweaty hours inhabiting, singing with aching back and feet, packed into a space that was inevitably too small with elbows pressed against some of my favorite people.  It's been three years since I graduated from Jewell, and I only expected to know one or two people, but when I rounded that corner I was greeted by the faces of almost the entire Jewell music faculty.  The next few minutes were a blurred succession of warm exclamations and hugs from some of the kindest people I know--people to whom I owe enormous gratitude for some of my best memories, and for being where I am today.  The choir gave a stunning performance under their excellent new director, and I swelled with pride to hear the choir that will always be my choir making such music.  Two good friends came with me to the concert, and it was a thrill to be able to share this thing that was so important to me with them.  It meant a lot to me that both of them took the time to come.

That Saturday, May 26, marked two years since my Patrick died.  It hurt during the first year--a lot.  In the second year I have found myself recalling all of it with a more settled sense of fond, thankful contentment.  I am thankful for the two years I got to spend with the best horse I've ever met, who was a great friend to me as long as he was able to be.  I'm thankful for the adventures we had together, and for all the fun we had, and for the honest hard work he gave me.  And, when it all went wrong, I'm glad no one got hurt, and that his needs could be met.  And I'm thankful that he died quickly, while he was having fun being ridiculous, with the same inappropriate level of drama that he brought to every situation.  Your heart didn't just fail, Patrick--it exploded.  Well done, sir, well done.

All joking aside, that's really what I want to say to him:

Well done, Patrick.

I didn't spend that day being sappy by myself.  I spent it out on the Cherwell watching the season's big boat race, mysteriously named Summer Eights.  The riverbanks were packed with Oxford rowing fans exhibiting varying degrees of rabies.

After an entire day spent achieving a hard-earned sunburn (no mean feat in England), we retired to Wolfson for EUROVISION.  What, you may ask, is this obviously highly significant and so dramatically-named event?

WELL.

Eurovision is not any massive international effort to save the world or eradicate poverty or wage an intergalactic war on bloodthirsty vampire aliens intent on our destruction, as its grandiose name might suggest.  Oh no.  This is a song contest.

But this is no ordinary music competition.  We are not searching for the grandest symphony or the loudest ground-shaking rock concert or the most olympian aria.  No, this is an epic monument to Europop.

On the Continent, Eurovision is taken rather seriously.  Here in the UK, the attitude is somewhat less reverent.  While each country mounts its grandest spectacle of Europop power ballads, seizure-inducing light shows, fanciful costumes, and tornadic hair, British commentator Graham Norton offers UK viewers a constant stream of thinly-veiled mockery.  The champion of the evening was Sweden with this fabulous number:

However, my comrades and I felt that Russia's singing babushkas were far and away the strongest entry:

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us up to Sara's visit and the grand adventures thereof, which will be the subject of my next post.  Peace, love, and Eurovision.

Confirmation

Hi folks,

I know I just wrote one of these, but I've been promising a post about my confirmation, and I thought I'd better get that done before I start to forget the details.

It was a wonderful experience, and one I'll always remember.  Angela emphasized that, from the church's perspective, I didn't need to do this to be part of the community, which I really appreciated.  I wanted to do it because I felt that it was a way for me to enter this community, and also to recognize how my faith has grown and matured since I've been here.  That's why I wanted to do it.  And I'm so glad I did.

Just a quick note on what this is all about:  If you're raised Anglican (which I wasn't), you get baptized (usually) as a baby.  At this ceremony, your parents, godparents, and the church community make a commitment to raise you well and do their best to teach you about what they believe is true and important.  There is also a belief among Anglicans that God is actually acting on the person in some way at the baptism.  It's definitely not your "ticket to heaven," but it is a sacrament--"an external sign of an internal grace."  God claims you during a human act of submission.  Then, when you're older, you decide when you're ready to return the favor and make your own commitment to God, so you take a confirmation class to discuss what you're actually committing to, and then you get confirmed.

My upbringing was a little different.  In the Baptist church, you get baptized when you're older, when it's your decision, like Jesus did when his cousin John, a rabbi, baptized him.  We emphasize that it's not a magical ceremony, it's not the price of admission to heaven, and it doesn't change how much God likes you.  It is like a wedding.  When I was baptized at 13, I was saying that I was going to do my best to follow God for the rest of my life.  We do it because we're told to.  Jesus said it's good to be baptized, so we get baptized.  So the "what happens" of baptism differs a little bit, but we agree that it's a good thing to do, it's important and a duty, and it's representative of becoming a follower of God.  Baptists don't have confirmation because that public promise is at the core of our baptism ceremony.

So I had already made the promises involved in confirmation at my baptism.  For me, Anglican confirmation was a way to learn about the tradition in which I now find myself, a way to join the community and participate fully, and also just a personal statement: a reiteration of commitments I made twelve years ago but continue to hold to.

Still with me?  Excellent.  The rest will be lighter.  :)  I'm going to give you a slightly irreverent account of some of the features, but be assured that at no point do I mean to be contemptuous or dismissive.  Some of you who read this might not know me very well--I love finding whimsy in situations, including situations I think are meaningful and important.  Please don't mistake my amusement for disrespect.

I showed up for rehearsal at Christ Church Cathedral on the afternoon of the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter.  John, a priest at the cathedral and someone of whose I am a big fan (give me a second to recover from that disastrous game of grammatical Twister), asked me if I was ready, spiritually and otherwise, and I went off to the side to let the little butterflies of stage fright accumulate and gather speed.  The Bishop of Oxford, who would be conducting the ceremony, wasn't actually there yet, so for a lot of the time John had to go through the program and say in effect for each item, "We're not going to rehearse this part now because the Bishop isn't here, and I don't know how he's going to do it, but it will be fine."  Move on to the next item in the program, and: "We can't rehearse this part because the Bishop isn't here yet..." and repeat.  So a lot of the rehearsal was us going through each thing in the program and not rehearsing it.

When the service started, it was of course before Easter, so we were observing that period of time when Jesus was dead.  They constructed a somber atmosphere to reflect this, with each congregant holding a candle to dimly illuminate the otherwise dark and gloomy cathedral.  The fire for the candles came from a little symbolic fire lit outside using some kind of scented wood that smelled really good.

As I learned only last week, the Anglican church celebrates the start of any particular festival at sunset on the previous day, so at a certain point in this service, it was suddenly officially EASTER.  And boy did we know it.  All at once, in the same sudden moment, the lights blazed on, the choir brought forth a fanfare, somebody in the back shook bells like he'd just stuck his finger in an electrical socket, a choir member whipped a pair of giant cymbals out of nowhere and crashed them together, and the organist--oh, the organist.  It was like bam lights on PLAY SOME LOUD STUUUUUUUFFFFFFFFFF.  I bet he looks forward to that moment all year.  I would.

For the confirmation itself, each candidate was presented to the Bishop by the clergy member responsible for preparing him or her for confirmation.  Angela Tilby, a canon at the cathedral, had given me my confirmation class, so she presented me to the Bishop when the time came.  Then the great Bishwop himself asked the eight or so candidates a short list of questions, asking us to commit to a few basic ideas.  Each of us went up to him individually to be confirmed after this.  When I went up, he looked me in the eye and said, "Anna, God has called you by name and made you his own."  He pressed both his hands onto the top of my head and prayed.  I got a little slimy oil smeared on my forehead for good measure and returned to my seat an Anglican.

I was so grateful to be surrounded that night by good friends.  It meant a lot to me to have them there.

This memory is on my mind today because this morning I had the privilege of going to the University Church to witness Rachel, a friend of mine from choir, being confirmed herself.  The Bishop conducted her ceremony as well and gave a magnificent sermon based on two assertions: all this stuff only matters if it's true, and all this stuff only matters if it somehow makes you, your life, different.

Rain Boots in the Cathedral

and other reflections on English weather

A few weeks ago we had a period of seventeen consecutive days during which it rained every single day--often for most of the day.  The world is wet.  And yet, in all that rain, we could hardly seem to manage a respectable storm.  There were two claps of thunder on April 22, and two more rumbles on Tuesday, but really.  If it's going to rain this much, I think we at least deserve a good rousing storm.

The wellies/rain boots have been given a near-daily outing during Monsoon Season 2012, and have been worked to the point of springing a leak.  But they are mighty and shall endure.

I have been criticized for wearing my wellies into church on multiple occasions--both in Wadham Chapel where our choir sings and in Christ Church Cathedral.  While I agree that pairing sky blue fake wellies with so-called "church clothes" and an academic gown is one of the more daring fashion statements I have attempted, I would also like to remind everyone that here in the land of walking miles on cobblestone through a neverending procession of five-minute rain showers, sensible footwear is next to godliness.  Make fun of my fake wellies all you want, but at the end of the day, you will look great and be freezing, and I will look silly and have dry feet.

Today is Ascension day, which if you're an Anglican is apparently a separate event from Pentecost.  I got up this morning at the crack of dawn* and trekked down to Harris Manchester to sing a little service on top of THE TOWER.  We were given a health and safety speech ("This tower was built nine bazillion years ago and has never and will never pass any safety inspection.  If you die, you may not sue us.  Try really hard not to jump off the tower because it's not good for you.") and then crept up the teeniest, creepiest, most claustrophobic spiral staircase I've ever seen.  We sang a ten-minute service, complete with prayers and readings, for a congregation of exactly zero people--which is only slightly smaller than last Monday's congregation, when we had a choir of 7 and a congregation of 3.  We pack 'em in at Harris Manchester.  Anyway, we had a good time, and the view speaks for itself.

*I use the term "crack of dawn" here in the figurative sense.  As we creep towards summer, the sun does not, in fact, rise at any hour that I would expect to be awake for.  The other night I didn't bother to close my drapes before going to bed, because I was getting up at 7:00am.  That's pretty early, I thought.  The sun won't have been up for long, surely.  It will be fine.  Next thing I knew, I was waking up at 5:00am to blazing sunlight setting my room aglow.  Fail.  We are currently at 16 hours of daylight and climbing.  I hate my skylight more than ever.

Spring has sprung.  The grass is riz.  I wonder where the daisies is.

Siyahamb'ekukhanyeni kwenkhos'

It was a month ago tomorrow that I found out I get to stay here for three more years.  In that time, I have borrowed an opera from a famous conductor, gotten confirmed as an Anglican, unwittingly watched the equine equivalent of dogfighting on BBC1, stayed up late with the Titanic victims to witness their demise, and conducted a choir in a performance of African music.  Just another month in Oxford.

Earlier this year, I got it into my head that I should write an essay on an opera called La Esmeralda by Louise Bertin (1805-1877).  This is a terrible idea for several reasons, which I shall now list for your disapproval:

1. I do not speak French.
2. No one has heard of this opera or this composer.
3. The opera was a catastrophic failure and closed after six performances, and has only been performed once in its entirety in the 176 years since its premiere.
4. The orchestrated version of the opera is unpublished and unavailable.
5. There are exactly zero English-language books in existence devoted to either this opera or this composer.

Armed with my list of reasons why this was a bad idea, I launched myself into research.  I already own a copy of the only recording of La Esmeralda.  What I really needed was the score, which it is not even published, much less in print. So I tracked down Maestro Lawrence Foster of the Orchestre et Opéra National de Montpellier, the conductor on my CD, and wrote to his personal assistant asking for advice on where I might be able to find the score.  Then something unbelievable happened--Maestro Foster totally lent me his score.  It arrived from France a few days ago.  I think we can put that one down as a win for the Oxford email address.

I went over to the dark side and got confirmed as an Anglican the night before Easter, but I think that dude deserves its own post (too much to write about here already), so stay tuned.

I watched the Grand National on BBC1 last weekend, but I'll refrain from describing it here.  Horse people: call me.  I'll just summarize by saying that it's always a treat to have equestrian competitions on TV, but I was shocked by how violent and barbaric this event was.

I'm sure the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has escaped none of you.  If you haven't already, you should definitely check out the new drama miniseries on the subject (online at ITV for the UK and ABC for the US).  You may also be aware of the bizarre reenactment that went on during the last week.  For the low, low price of about $10,000 you could dress up in Edwardian costumes and board the one ship in the world that fully intended to hit an iceberg and sink.  One of the less historically accurate features of this strange cruise was a constant procession of tweets issuing from the ship, documenting in real time the detailed goings-on of the original Titanic voyage.  These began before the ship sailed and continued through the time at which the Carpathia would have arrived to rescue the survivors.  Many of the tweets were from the point of view of various passengers and crew members--some historical and some hypothetical.  This, while fascinating, was also problematic.  The tweets conjured images of people dodging explosions, being trampled by mobs, plummeting into the ocean, clinging to floating shrapnel, convulsing with hypothermia, drowning in icy seawater, and periodically pulling cell phones out of their pockets to tweet about it.  Oh no, I'm trapped in boiler room 6 and the water is up to my chin!  Hang on, Ima just send a tweet real fast.

A splendiferous choral opportunity came to me this week in the form of an invitation to teach and conduct a few rousing African pieces with the Wadham choir.  I can't tell you how much fun that was.  We did "Siyahamba," "Hamba Lulu," and "Si njay, njay, njay."  Gesundheit.  You should have seen our English chapel choir moving and dancing and improvising and giving that joyful music every ounce of enthusiasm it deserved.  My choir was thrown unsuspectingly into a choral tradition that is in vivid contrast to the one in which we live and function, and they committed to it wholeheartedly and totally rocked it.  I couldn't be prouder of the choir I get to sing in.  And it was just so much fun.

I will conclude with the latest development in my endeavor to learn English as a second language.  Tonight's subject is the word practice.  Or practise.  See, apparently here in the land of black pudding and mushy peas, there are two ways of spelling the word, depending on whether it is being used as a noun or as a verb.  So I go to practice to practise.  I feel that this is unnecessarily complicated, and it leaves me with two dilemmas:  How do I spell the word when the noun becomes an adjective, and when the verb becomes a noun (gerund)?  Is it a practice room or a practise room?  Is practicing a necessary part of my day, or is practising?  Or maybe in these cases we're supposed to use an entirely new spelling.  Maybe my pracktassing in fact takes place in the prægtizz rooms.  Or maybe--

No.  You know what?  I quit.  I just quit.  Any language that considers semihemidemisemiquaver to be a reasonable and legitimate word has serious issues that should be addressed.  I mean, that's on par with some ridiculous imaginary language that has sixteen forms of the, thinks pineapples are female but girls are not, and lets you invent compound words on the spot that aren't even in the dictionary.  Oh wait...

She practises during practice in a prægtizz room because she likes pracktassing.

At the end of the secret week

I have no intention of publishing this post today.  I'm not even sure when I will publish it.  The exact date depends upon the speed of the combined efforts of the Royal Mail and the United States Postal Service.

Let me explain.

You see, there's a letter on its way to my parents' house right now, maybe somewhere over the Atlantic, explaining that I've been accepted into the DPhil program at Oxford.  And I want a few days to live with my secret news before I make it public.  The arrival of that letter will be my cue to share this with everybody.

Here are some animals who feel the way I do about this news.

I've been waiting for this answer ever since I found out last March that I was coming here for the one-year MSt course.  It's been a year of learning to live in a state of uncertainty without being afraid of it; of learning to wait and trust and listen and follow and put down roots knowing that they might be torn up.  Of doing good work not because it will earn you a prize, but because it is good to do good work.  Of enjoying gifts like carol services and nights in the pub and the smell of ancient buildings without knowing if these things would be repeated or if they would remain little fixed gems in my memory.  Above all it's been a year of living in the present and getting into the habit of saying thank you for today.

I have felt a little like a balloon, floating around in this amazing place, not knowing if I was allowed to actually stand on the ground or if I would simply drift away.  In past situations I've joked that "all that worrying paid off."  But that is one thing I will not say now.  Nothing has paid off; nothing has been earned.  I have been given a gift that just about knocks me over, and I will respond with gratitude and good work and an ever-deepening trust.  And I will say over and over for the next three years,

Thank you for today!

The Fire Alarm

I don't know what I ever did to the St Cross fire alarm, but it's out to get me.  The first time it went off, I was in the shower.  The second time it went off, I was in my pajamas and no one else was.  The third time it went off...oh, the third time.

I was out late last night for a string orchestra concert, and by the time I got to sleep it was about 12:30am.  At 2:00am, the blaring fire alarm ejected me from my bed.  It's the kind of noise that is so offensive that it causes you to throw yourself out of bed and stand up before you actually stop sleeping.  Then when you do wake up, you find that you are standing, and you have to figure out a) why you're standing and b) what that horrible noise is.

I stumbled blearily around my room for a minute, trying to figure out how to put on flip flops and struggling to distinguish between my bathrobe and my keys (I was pretty sure one was for wearing and the other was for locking the door, but I wasn't all that clear on which was which), all the while under the relentless assault of the fire alarm.  I achieved a reasonable level of organization and shuffled down the fire escape to join a huddled gathering of similarly delighted-looking flatmates in the rain.  Facebook was promptly updated on mobile phones, and we stood around and shivered while we waited for the fire department to materialize.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I am less than impressed by the reaction time of Oxford's Finest.  The firemen took nearly a half hour to show up, and they came in carefully disorganized waves of giant men with ever-so-slightly differing job descriptions and the same clumsy questions.  One of the "early" arrivers had the nerve to issue some kind of threat about the bad things that would happen if we dared to go back inside before permission was given.  I thought that was particularly helpful at 2:30 in the morning.

It took our huddle of freezing half-asleep students about forty-five seconds to figure out what had happened to trigger the fire alarm.  Our neon-clad heroes, by contrast, stomped up and down the same stairs and asked us the same questions repeatedly for about twenty minutes before it was all over.

Their confusion was surprising, given that there was a smoking pot of charred pasta sitting on the stove in the kitchen.  They were deeply troubled by the fact that there was more smoke in the hallway than there was in the kitchen.  Well, Einstein, you took a half hour to get here, and all that time the windows in the kitchen have been, as you might observe, open.

They were so disturbed by this that they decided the fire must have occurred somewhere other than in the pot of smoking charred pasta on the stove.  Because the fire alarm itself was physically located in the hall near my door, they decided that the fire must also be in my room.  This seemed to me to be a case of confusing cause with effect, but they were thrashing around with too much enthusiasm for me to explain that the location of the fire alarm does not actually influence the location of the fire.  So I stood outside my room, in my pajamas, at 2:30 in the morning, while about seven well-meaning giant neon men clodhopped through my room in big muddy boots.

It was at this point in the proceedings, and not before, that someone thought to turn the fire alarm off.  Eventually we were given permission to re-enter the building.  The firemen continued to stomp around as we all crept back into our rooms.  I locked my door from the inside, having very little interest in any further interruptions by firemen poking their heads in to ask questions that were answered forty-five minutes ago.

Ah, dorm life.

I could have danced all night

This Saturday I took the plastic cover off of the burgundy ball gown I got four years ago in Vienna, pulled on a pair of flat black shoes and ivory ruched opera gloves, and sat in front of the mirror for about an hour while my lovely friend Serena pinned my hair on top of my head in a chaotic tangle of twists and curls and braids.  I met Andy (in white tie) outside, and off we went to the ball.

Yup, the ball.  As in:

(Look out for the couple at about 0:17 with the woman in a blue scarf.)

His Excellency the Austrian Ambassador Dr Emil Brix brought himself and his impressive title here from London to host the Grand Viennese St Valentine Ball in the Oxford Town Hall.  We waltzed and polkaed and quadrilled and marched and galloped and polonaised and mazurkaed as a vivacious orchestra frolicked its way through three hours of Strauss and company.  It all evoked the strong sensation of being in Vienna again.  I danced two dances--a staggeringly athletic polka and waltz--with a French friend, and spent the rest of the time hanging out with my date, dancing and having a wonderful time, enjoying the fabulous music.  We ended the night dancing to An der schönen blauen Donau.

Just like that time four years ago in Vienna when I went to the ball in the Hofburg palace with my roommates, I have caught myself in the days after the ball absently humming songs like "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "Shall We Dance."  I've earned some odd looks, but have made no effort to do anything about it.  I intend to hang onto this sensation of having visited a fairy tale for as long as possible.

The photo album is here on Facebook, and there are two more very short videos from the ball: waltz and polka.

This is a short post, so I will now provide you with an appendix of relevant youtube videos so that you can waste as much time here as you normally would if you were reading one of the long effusions I usually write.  The following three videos sum up Saturday night quite nicely:

Address to a Haggis

The evening gatherings in pubs are becoming less like events worth recording and more a routine part of this surreal life in Oxford.  They're not any less joyful, but they are less surprising.  There is less of an urge to document every moment so that I can relive my time here later--which is kind of a problem, because when I'm not here, I know I'll want to relive every moment.

My two biggest accomplishments since we last spoke have been submitting my DPhil application to Oxford and turning twenty-five, both of which happened on the same day.  Doing battle with an online application system does not the best birthday make, but I had a lovely evening out with friends and saw War Horse in the cinemaaaaaa.  And as we all know, watching a horse movie DOES a great birthday make.

The next day I attended a gripping recital of my supervisor's compositions, and that weekend my mom arrived for a ten-day visit.

One event I will document in gory detail is the Burns Night dinner at Wolfson on the 26th.  A brief context for the benefit of the Great Unwashed:
Robert Burns was an 18th Century Scottish poet who has since become a national hero and the inspiration for a glorious holiday.  Those who require more historical detail may take advantage of the bibliography at the bottom of this post, but what I want to talk about now is the dinner and what followed.

Burns Night is a highly scripted ceremony that is observed with a strange combination of self-deprecating amusement and almost religious reverence.  The guests followed a bagpiper into the hall where long tables were laid out for a formal dinner.  After we found our places, the bagpiper established himself directly behind me and blasted those ungodly notes for all he was worth.  This led me to the conclusion that bagpipes, while delightful, are really an outdoor instrument.  Next a nearly-intelligible prayer was recited:

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

And sae the Lord be thankit.

It was now time for the pinnacle event of the evening: The Piping In of the Haggis.

I mean, really.  We start with the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep ground up with some oatmeal and onions, and this is all smashed into the poor sheep's stomach and boiled.  Which pretty much sums up the philosophy of British cuisine, as far as I can tell: when in doubt, mash it up and boil it.

(I hope my English friends will forgive me for that.  I love your country--I really do!)

So this bulging sack of boiled sheep guts is plunked on a silver platter and paraded around the perimeter of the hall in a procession of bekilted men, lead by our favorite bagpiper, who is still honking away from the bottom of his plaid little heart.

Oh, don't worry, it gets better.  Now we address the haggis.  I am NOT making this up.  Robert Burns wrote a lengthy poem, not about some haggis but rather to a haggis, in the same non-English as the above blessing.  I understood about four words of it.  Maybe if you record it and play it backwards it turns into English...it's worth a try.  Or maybe it's the same backwards as forwards.  I don't know.

Having said all those nasty things about haggis, the food was actually really good.  I decided to go in a spirit of adventure and eat whatever landed in front of me on my plate, which turned out to be cock-a-leekie soup, a flap of beef, a pile of haggis with neeps and tatties, and typsy laird for pudding.  Don't ask--I have no idea what most of that is.  After finding out what haggis was, I decided to stop asking "what is this?" and just eat it in blissful ignorance.  Eating the haggis was more of a mental exercise than anything else.  I can honestly say that I enjoyed it.

After the meal, a few more people stood to perform various poetry recitations and toasts.  The highlight was the traditional Toast to the Lassies.  A Frenchman and an American put on their best Scottish accents and delivered this raucous tribute in the form of a hilarious poem that was rather determined to rhyme.  Our friend Sneha retaliated with the Toast to the Lads.

We went upstairs for coffee and returned to the hall before long for the ceilidh.  Rather than make you give yourself a hernia trying to pronounce that, I'll just provide the IPA:

['keI lI]

This is essentially a Scottish squaredance.  The band played folk music while the announcer called out the steps and we all hopped and spun around the dance floor.  I think the announcer was a little mystified by our general inability to follow the dance steps.  The great minds of Oxford found it extraordinarily difficult to form a square.

Make world-changing discoveries and publish them in academic journals?  Sure!

Stand in a square with three other couples?  Easy there, skippy, don't let's get carried away.

Figure out how to do-si-do right shoulder to right shoulder?  No one can live at that speed!

It was another one of those enchanted Oxford nights.  Any day now I'm going to wake up and find that I've been working in a car wash all this time and happened to doze off and dream up this unbelievable adventure.

Well, that's enough for tonight.  Sometime I'll have to tell you about the classical music pub quiz, Spamalot, Iron Chef Wolfson, and the Wadham Choir ladies' night, but this is plenty for now.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Wikipedia: Robert Burns

2. BBC explanation of a Burns Night