Farewell to Cambridge

This was the last full day in Cambridge.  Tomorrow I'll head back to Japan.  We spent the day with a walk into town to buy various things, a run through the meadows for a scone with jam and clotted cream at the Orchard, and another visit to Evensong at King's College Cathedral.  I had gone to all these places before, either during this visit or when I was here two years ago, but they are always different.  In the summer there were leaves on the trees in the meadows, at Evensong there was a different choir and different reading.  And this is what makes leaving so hard.  I won't be here for the blossoms on the trees at the Orchard.  But I will see them in Japan.  Always, there is some part of the daily liturgy of life somewhere in the world that I am missing.  People that I love doing things that I will not share.  Seasons changing, choirs singing, performances, and ceremonies.  It is hard to say goodbye.  But perhaps the more I do it, the more I will learn to let go and welcome the place where I am.  

Fukunari-Sensei in London

As luck would have, Fukunari-Sensei is in London this month visiting her son and his family to help with their soon-to-be-born new baby.  I had sent her an email earlier in the week to suggest that we meet while we were in London and this morning we awoke to find a voice message from her.  After enjoying a lovely breakfast served to us by our hosts, some of Andrew's relatives who had  attended the concert the night before, we headed into central London to meet with her for a tea.

I was wearing a very conspicuous cello on my back, and knew what Fukunari-Sensei looked like, but somehow Andrew was able to pick her out of the crowd before either of us noticed one another.  Walking with her in London was something very special.  The pace of her unhurried step matched with the briskness of the London gait, her patient waiting at all the traffic walk lights while others took advantage of a break in the cars, her courage in being in such a foreign place with all the energy and security that I knew of her in Japan.  Here she was in a country closer to my upbringing, not my home, but at least one in which I could maneuver in language, and still she was my teacher, still my guide, still a model in a foreign world.  

We found a chocolate cafe in a nearby mall and Andrew got a flapjack for us to share, some black tea and chocolates.  She started to drink her tea without milk, but added a bit after we did, almost as a sign of politeness rather than preference.  She took bits of the flapjack that we divided, and the chocolate.  I asked her if she liked the English food and she complimented the bargain prices at the grocery store.  We chatted about places to see in England and she invited us to come to her home for dinner the next time Andrew came to England.  When we had to leave to meet a friend for lunch, she contentedly and graciously helped the meeting come to a close and stayed behind in the mall to look for clothing for her grandchildren and the new arrival.  We bowed farewell and left her alone, more than capable of dealing with a day in a very foreign place.  

London Concert in an Adams Home

I imagined last night's concert to have been written by Kurt Vonnegut.  A unique and ironic feeling of being comfortably out of place in a world that seemed to have been constructed with very specific intentions.  A beautiful Adams home in central London whose owners host concerts and master classes about three times a week.  The two floors I saw had 18 foot ceilings with intricate wainscoting, a huge kitchen filled with workers preparing the night's canapés for the post-concert reception, a huge dining room where Andrew and I sat to eat our ready-made sandwiches and sushi from the grocery store before the concert, a huge drawing room with chandeliers and dozens of paintings covering the walls where the concert was held, a well-used master bedroom whose door was unashamedly open, and two large guest rooms that served as dressing rooms for the performers.  There was a staircase leading to another floor of curiosities never to be explored.  The walls were covered with books where the paintins stopped

In an explanation on the provenance of the concerts, the host said that when their youngest son passed away, they sold his flat in London and used the funds to start a scholarship fund for architecture students.  To escape the sadness of their memories, they also sold their home in southwest London and searched for another space, one which might have a large room to host music concerts whose tickets sales would go to support the scholarship fund, as well as other funds.  Their idea has grown far beyond what they envisioned and it seems to keep them fully occupied now, fourteen years after their son's death.

Indeed their concerts seem to have become a beacon for many different organizations and musicians with varying ambitions and purposes.  Some musicians use the space as a warm-up for Wiggmore Hall or other prestigious venues. Others use it as a space for master classes.  And last night's concert, as it turned out, was something of a fundraiser for The Cambridge University Musical Society.  All the other performers on the program were affiliated with the University in some way and it seemed the concert was meant to be something of a showcase for Cambridge musicians.  There were Lords, Ladys, and Knights on the guest list, and I even had the fortune to meet Benjamin Britten's nephew afterwards.  As out of place as I felt as an American Midwesterner in this canapéd Adam's home (whatever that means), as awkward as it seemed to maneuver in a new culture and social circle I'd only seen in movies, and as strange as my short little bio must have read compared to others filled with concerts at reputable British halls, I felt very comfortable.   Just as Vonnegut writes of an absurd world where all things are equal, so too did I feel quite at home in a place very foreign in structure, in language, in custom, in shared knowledge and experiences.  If they had known, perhaps I would not have been in their home, but there I was.  And the world made space for something unexpected, it stretched effortlessly to accommodate me.  Perhaps I was in Japan.  Perhaps I just live among a world of people who have far more kindness and acceptance in their hearts than any of us realize.  

Singing in a Cambridge Choir

Andrew sings in the Wolfson College Choir at Cambridge and the director allowed me to sing in two rehearsals and a small concert this evening.  It made me remember my time in choir at high school, that fulfilling feeling of singing with thirty other people, the physical pleasure of sound, the power and visceral quality of the voice.  There were several members of our choir in high school that came from a tradition of gospel church singing and they brought a passion and fullness to the group sound that was uplifting in a way I'd never experienced in music before.   A sincerity, conviction, and joy that was at once serious and carefree.  

The choir experience this week was a little different.  Certain words were pronounced differently than I would have guessed, there weren't assigned seats, and the atmosphere was a bit more casual than the strictness required to keep a group of high schoolers in line.  The American gospel church tradition wasn't there.  In place of it was a model of the choir at King's, of pure voweled motets, of chorales by Bach.  And yet in it was the same powerful respite in which I had taken refuge over ten years ago, the place to which I had turned in the confusing emotions of growing up, before so much of life as I now know it had even begun to form.  That this act should be such a universal joy that extends across varied traditions and models of music performance is a very comforting thing.  To create a sound with others, to take pleasure in a sound with others.  Incredible to be human and to be able to do such a thing.  

Evensong at King's Cathedral

I wonder if the sound is still echoing in the stone columns.  From hundreds of years ago, from this evening, from tomorrow.  Does a sound know what it will become when it opens to the world?  If not in that place, then please, within me.   

Preserve Your Memories

We stepped into King's College Chapel this morning and left the half-marathon cheers outside.  We were escorted to seats with the small congregation facing one another on the sides of the aisle leading up to the alter.  The boys' choir walked in procession to their seats a bit further from the alter, closer to the organ, facing one another, dressed in red and white robes, some very young, some soon to graduate from the position.  The procession walked between us, the minister, the cross, the candles.  The stained glass light shifted over the course of the hour, the blues moving down the wall as the sun rose higher, the high-vaulted ceiling echoing the pure chants, the Kyrie, the Angus Dei, all parts of the mass and sermon.  The candles gave their gentle light and the time passed in peace, unrushed even by the jittery legs of the adolescent boys who had nevertheless been immaculately well-trained and seemed to know the priviledge of being a part of such an esteemed choir.

We sat and listened to the organist finish Bach's Prelude and Fugue in b minor BWV 544, before rising and leaving.  What is it like to have music so closely connected to such an act of spiritual devotion?  To create it only as an act for God, as Bach always did?  

There was not a cloud in the sky in Cambridge today.  We got a scone and rhubarb brazil nut cake before heading to a very popular boat rental, far understaffed for the miraculous weather of this Sunday afternoon.  Punting is one of the most popular pastimes in Cambridge and everyone was hiring one with their friends, boarding with bottles of champaign and potato crisps.  We got a double kayak and headed upstream through Grantchester meadows which were filled with people picnicking, taking in the sun, holding one another, playing with their children, walking with their dogs, awkwardly operating punts.  

As the sun set, we walked in to town for dinner.  Andrew pointed out Newton's apple tree and his office at Trinity College.  He was a person and walked these streets.  

The swans in the river were going to sleep during the walk home, the ducks were quiet and the people of the afternoon had headed to the pubs and formal dinners of their colleges.  The sky was clear and studded with stars and a half-moon.

A day is so full of experiences.  

To Grantchester and Back

After our concert this afternoon, Andrew and I went for a long walk through the Grantchester meadows, green pastures that run along the River Cam right outside Cambridge.  Many people were out on this spring-like day; British voices accompanied our walk, softening the green, making the pastoral stroll even more idyllic.  We arrived at The Orchard, a historic tea house in the outskirts of Cambridge where one can get a low lying table under the flowering trees, picnicking as many famous people of the past had done over the past century since its founding, including Virignia Woolf, Watson and Crick, John Cleese, Prince Charles and dozens of others.  We enjoyed Twinings tea, and though quite disappointed that they we're out of scones, we made do with a Bakewell cake, a sweet cake with raspberry jam and marzipan topping.

We walked back through the meadows and into town, stopping in a candy shop that was filled from floor to ceiling with mysterious delectable treats.  Behind the counter were huge jars of licorice, fudge, gobbstoppers, chocolates.  We decended the wrought iron spiral stairs to the basement to discover more incredible treats and teas.  The overwhelming possibilities and a fast approaching closing time allowed us to somehow leave empty-handed but my eyes will not forget, and surely I will return.  

We continued our walk further into town and found our destination Japanese restaurant to be so filled that we chose not to wait the hour-and-a-half.  We will have to return another day and perhaps find another curry on the way.  

Cambridge is so full of possibilities and experiences. Restaurants, teas, landscapes, people and ideas. Everywhere we go it seems that there are people who know Andrew, such is the nature of a small town where everyone is collaborating with one another.  They stop and share new ideas about apps they are designing, or recitals they want to give, or asking about performances of his recent musical Science! about life in the lab, something to which many people here are sympathetic.  

It's wonderful to be in the culture and the graces of this beautiful city.