And the Ukelele Makes Ten

I made my peace with music, recently.

We've always had quite an intense, turbulent relationship. I started playing the piano at the age of four, going on to complete a professional diploma in performance before I'd started university as well as Grade 8 in flute within four years of taking it up, and then earning Grade 8 singing within two years of taking proper lessons. I even ended up learning and taking a performance exam for the mbira at university. By the end of my musical education, I could play:

-Piano
-Flute
-Voice
-Guitar
-Lever harp
-Mbira
-Djembe
-Marimba
-Recorder/ tin whistle (beyond primary school level, that is)

I'd performed on each of these either as a solo or as part of a group at various and endless concerts and shows, and although the relationship was time-consuming and stressful (as many long-term relationships with anything can be), I thought the love would last forever.

Until the end of university, when I burned out.

The first sign was when my new piano tutor at university began to put pressure on me to work towards a second diploma. The way the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music works is this: you have Grades 1-8 (which everyone knows about), but afterwards there are three further levels of professional qualification: Diploma, Licentiate and Fellowship. It's not particularly for someone as young as I was to reach the diploma stage. So of course when I began my music course at university, my new tutor was eager to push me even further.

The problem was, though, that I was just so very tired of relentless examination. Playing the piano had always been a source of joy and escape for me at school, even at times of high pressure. At university, despite being used to pressure, it just stopped being fun. It started to just be all about Impressing People. Even worse, my new tutor was slightly dismissive rather than encouraging, telling me 'You won't be able to play that', or 'Oh, but everyone knows how to play that' (the latter after I learned a certainly-not-easy piece completely by heart in a week). I stopped feeling like the piano was my instrument, and started feeling like a delusional child.

I made the decision, much to my tutor's disgruntlement, not to continue to Licentiate level, and to focus on other areas of music.

The course I enrolled on was very 21st century music-orientated, which at first I thought would be interesting, but I very rapidly learned just wasn't my cup of tea. Having to write experimental abstract music felt like Monet might feel if someone dragged him to the Tate Modern and told him to be more like the artists there.

I clung to every unexamined performance, savouring every gig with my medieval band, taking in every moment with my African drumming group, revelling in every rebellious piece of music I played on the piano that wasn't what I was due to play in the next exam. Slowly, though, people in the groups I was in drifted away either graduating before me and moving elsewhere in the country or losing interest in playing themselves. The day the music proverbially died for me, though, was the day I handed in my last ethnomusicology assignment in my final year.

I loved ethnomusicology. I swear I was a stone's throw away from dreading my hair, wearing tie-dye and travelling the world in the name of music because of ethnomusicology (only I've always been too disgustingly middle class for that to ever happen. Although isn't travelling the world to spiritually find yourself a middle class thing?) Anyway, when it ended, so did my enthusiasm for music. All music thereafter was  purely academic, and since music had always formerly been connected to my emotions, I became detached from it. After graduation the piano lid closed, the flute remained in pieces and my voice went back into hiding. My loving eighteen-year relationship with music had died.

Mourning was difficult. Everyone who had known me as an accomplished musician kept reminding me of that amazing concerto I performed in, or that time I sang a solo part for BBC youth choir of the year, or that gig where I only had a few days to learn twenty popular songs on the piano by heart, etc. etc. etc.

It felt a bit like the heartbreak of splitting up with your partner, but with everyone reminding you how great you were together. I tried to salvage the relationship, I really did. I tried going back to why I loved music, playing only music I enjoyed listening to. It didn't work: I put my fingers to the piano keys, and I dutifully played the notes, but that spark just wasn't there any more. Even worse, it felt too much like I was trying to reclaim my 'glory days'. I told myself that I knew from the very beginning that I'd never be a professional musician, and I admitted to myself that I'd never be the admired musician that I once was: those days were behind me. I moved on.

My creative nature, however, was still very much alive. Eventually I discovered my knack with words, and writing became my career. I started baking and decorating cakes as a hobby, discovered felting, started going to the gym and took up Mandarin evening lessons after work. Five years on, I've made good way in finding out who I am without music, having previously believed that music was all that there was to me.

I thought that the story had ended happily enough, until relatively recently.

I began to stumble across musicians and artists who reminded me that music can be fun- for example Pentatonix, who have successfully proved to the world that a capella can be awesome, and Steam Powered Giraffe, who perform as steampunk-style robots. I rediscovered old idols, from Imogen Heap to The Beatles. I started properly listening to music again. I started to sing along.

A few weeks ago, a friend posted on Facebook about a taster ukelele workshop, and something went 'ding' in my mind. I signed myself up, roped another friend in and went to the workshop last week. By the end of it I was smiling so much my face hurt. Yesterday I went to a ukelele shop, tried out a few, and bought one. I also signed myself up to regular group lessons, so I can play music with other people again.

Since since adopting my ukelele yesterday, the only times I've put it down are to bake and update my blogs (and you know, to sleep etc).

After all this time, I think my romance with music may have been rekindled.

A Friendly DFL in Brighton

I spent the day in Brighton yesterday visiting my friend Vicky (the same Vicky I visited in Berlin during her time teaching there). The subject of what Brighton thinks of London came up when I mentioned that I liked how many of the streets shared the same name as famous streets and places in London (Bond Street, Trafalgar Street, Kensington Street etc).

DFL. Down From London. It's not generally something that's said in a positive light when uttered by Brightonians- wealthy, rude, arrogant Londoners buy up holiday homes and drive property prices up, make an almighty mess during raucous hen parties and stag nights, and generally clutter up the streets as clueless tourists during weekends. However, since I fit into none of those categories- especially not the 'wealthy' part- I'd classify myself as Mostly Harmless, like the entry on humans in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I love Brighton. I love London as my home and territory and have no illusions of leaving, but I love Brighton as its own separate entity, with its own separate personality. It's something I never felt about Birmingham for example, despite having lived there for five years. It does have some similarities to Central London (particularly Camden Town in some areas, and Camden Town is one of my favourite places in the entire world), in terms of diversity and wonderful quirkiness. However it embraces these sides much more heartily than London rather than being politely embarrassed by them. As for the atmosphere, it's simply more pleasant. People joke about having to be a certain kind of person to be able to bear London: big, bustling, hectic, shiny, dangerous, brilliant London. Well, it's true: you do have to be a certain type of person to survive my city. I say this with a unique and exquisite mix of pride and shame.

I think you do have to have a small, bitter, hardened kernel at the centre of your heart to stand a city where millions of people are crammed into one small place, always in a rush and not allowed to look each other in the eye- or worse, smile at each other. I am definitely a Londoner: I can phase seamlessly through a solid wall of bodies on Oxford Street, mentally shut myself out on a Spam-packed tube carriage and never feel safe while feeling like it's normal to never feel safe. However, I also notice strangers that need a hand and help them, chat to sales assistants like they're human beings and, horror of horrors, smile. I think this small, alien part of me belongs in Brighton, even though the rest of me is and always will be organically Londoner. I'm not saying Brighton is without its own problems, but in any case, it's nice to know that that little part of me has somewhere to feel at home in for a while when it feels like an outsider the rest of the time.

Also, you can see the sea!!

Quasi-Multilingual Adventures

My status update from Facebook, 31st May 2014 (last week):

Brussels Chinatown = speaking French AND Mandarin today. 'Bonjour, 早上好!' Chinglish. Franglais. Franglese. Ow my brain.

It's awesome to know other languages, even if only a little. I can't understand three types of people: people who don't like animals, people who don't like music and people who don't believe in learning a little about another country's language before visiting.

You can't learn a language fluently just like that, but you'd be surprised at how just learning a few words and phrases can do, and how that in turn makes you familiar with the structure of another language, making you instantly feel a little less like an alien on someone else's planet.

Last week, I went on the trip to Brussels I won from the Godiva Chocolate Challenge (you can read all about the trip and all the lovely things I ate on my blog Tashcakes!) and I got to exercise some of my language skills. I was nervously looking forward to dusting off my rusty French, having done well at it at school up to GCSE level, after which I dropped it to take sciences instead (a regretful decision in hindsight, but you can't go back in time). Even so, although all I could only remember basic conversational French, I felt secure in the knowledge that I wouldn't have to know how to converse with someone about something like politics or global warming.

As a result, I was able to visit restaurants that the locals like, and experience more warmth and smiles from strangers (after all,  people do in general appreciate if you try to speak their language even a little). In fact, I ended up barely speaking English at all to anyone aside from my non French-speaking mum (my travel companion for the trip) and occasionally the hotel staff.

What I wasn't expecting was getting the opportunity to put the Mandarin Chinese I've been learning into practise.

I've been taking evening Mandarin language classes once a week for nearly a year now, having decided that it's high time I learn how to converse in the common language of one half of my heritage. It's been going well- I impressed my Chinese family when I went to Malaysia earlier on this year (okay, more like entertained, but at least I was understandable when I spoke), and my fellow classmates often tease me for being the 'teacher's pet'. However I've only been able to practise in 'safe' environments- up until last week.

We ended up stumbling into Brussels' unofficial Chinatown on the second day of the trip, and to my delight the common language of the community was Mandarin. London's Chinatown seems to have more Cantonese speakers, my Chinese friends are all Cantonese speakers and my Chinese family primarily speak Hakka and only a little Mandarin, so I don't often get to practise with others outside of the classroom.

So, I went to a Chinese supermarket and spoke a little to the cashier in Mandarin, who to my relief understood me through my surely glaring Western accent. Best of all, mum and I decided to test our Mandarin skills at a little Chinese restaurant, where they literally only spoke Mandarin and a bit of French (at one point I asked our waiter- in Mandarin of course- if he spoke any English. He said no, and looked a little panicked, but relaxed when we continued in Mandarin). Both my mum's and my own Mandarin skills are a bit basic, but between us we were able to order, ask if they had Chinese tea, ask for extra utensils to share one dish and handle the bill.

It's a unique, amazing feeling to be able to speak to someone in a language other than the one you grew up with, and an even more amazing feeling to do so in another country. To many English people and Americans believe that they don't have to try learning another language before going on holiday because 'they'll probably all speak English there anyway'. I've even known some people who believe that everyone should know English when you go to another country. I believe this is just arrogance and laziness. Maybe I only believe this because I'm a linguaphile, and I find the variety of languages on this planet beautiful and interesting. Even so, people often forget that English itself is a patchwork mishmash of other languages that has been developed over a very, very long time.

Besides: when you go to a friend's house, you respect the fact that they have a different way of doing things, don't you?