TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Friday, December 21, 2007

12:46 AM
Posted by jodi rose

Goodbye to the border guards on the Maria Valeria Bridge.
Now the Danube flows between Hungary and Slovakia with a friendly, peaceful absence of passport controls and soft, porous intermingling. My good wishes and thoughts are with the people in Sturovo and Esztergom tonight.

Random ideas drifting across my consciousness and conversation this past week include: fake is more interesting than authentic (talking with andrew p about bridge sounds at henry's exhibition opening) and don't imagine that you can ever 'not' intervene with the bridge. The act of choosing to record it, of amplifying and placing the microphones is already an intervention. Even before you select a sound. What we choose to listen to creates the framework that already informs what we will hear. All too esoteric again?

One of my much-loved writing group made the following comment at our Antipodean-only final meeting of the year - plus one ultra-reserved Finn, who dealt with the never-ending innuendo and in-jokes remarkbly well, only commenting afterwards that everyone seemed constantly on the verge of hyperventilating... yes, we're an excitable bunch ;) - anyway, the comment was something along the lines of 'what? I never thought you would do low-brow' and I had to admit to enjoying a wide spectrum of brows; low, middle and high, despite my reputation as a highly abstruse abstract philosophical conceptual sound artist.

Which is not entirely undeserved, I grant you.

Conversation with Jacob K. before he headed off to holiday in Cuba, about how to be more precise and rigorous in the selection and collecting of sounds from bridges. Really tuning into the specific frequencies, and feeding them back to create ambient audible tones.

I'm still working out how to do this without impacting on the safety of the bridge, think we need some engineers here to help...

Which leaves me to jump on a plane and go dance on some bridge for a surprise secret christmas day concert, the location of which is unknown even to me. I just hope they remember to pick me up :)

This year was a strange mix of incredibly difficult, just surviving - literally - scraping by and wondering why on earth I do what I'm doing; and absolutely inspiring, feeling so connected with this wonderful community of creative people, and totally focused, fulfilling the intention to complete this wild and quixotic journey to bridge happiness. At one point I was ready to give it all up, to write off 2007 as my 'lost year', and find something else to do with my life. Then somehow focus and faith started to flow back in, all of the loose threads that I had been tearing my hair out over, found a way to untangle themselves and create a new pattern, and of course the magic of a night out dancing helped re-inspire me with joy and wonder.

Here's to Berlin, the City of the Eternal Weekend. And to all the truly magnificent people who keep spontaneously appearing, filled with beauty and poetry to light up the dark nights and warm our souls.