Virtually Home

Sometimes a moment in my life gets stuck in an album, like a mosquito in amber. From then on, hearing that piece of music reminds me strongly of being in another place at another time. Just after I moved to Bordeaux, Monsters of Folk released their eponymous record and I walked around the streets listening to it on my iPod repeatedly, relentlessly. Our washing machine was broken from the moment we moved in, and the repair process took an agonizingly long time. The sound of that album is the dryer spinning in the laundromat down the road from my house. It's the automated voice announcing stops on the tram on the way to the Université Bordeaux III for my linguistics classes. It's the long walk home from the guitar store where I bought the Cort electric-acoustic guitar I played that year (and which I recently gave away to a friend, to downsize my belongings before moving to Australia). This musical fossilization doesn't always happen and I can't always tell in real tim...

Saturday night at the State War Memorial January 26 is Australia Day. The occasion is celebrated in mid-summer, typically with drinking and barbecuing among friends, followed by fireworks. If this reminds you of the 4th of July, you're not wrong to draw the comparison. In recent years, some Australians have advocated for moving or abolishing Australia Day because the data was chosen to commemorate the arrival of a British fleet, and celebrating the colonial history of this nation, which is marred by numerous massacres and injustices against its indigenous people, strikes some as uncomfortable and inappropriate. Think of the vibe on Australia Day, then, as about two-thirds 4th of July, one-third Columbus Day. Australia Day is the only day of the year on which new Australians become citizens. We happen to know someone who became a citizen on this Australia Day, which I thought was pretty cool. This year, the holiday fell on a Saturday, with an official observance the follow...

This is just a stub of a post to say: I went to see The Decemberists with a recently-opened venue in Saint Paul. Gaelynn Lea opened with her violin playing, loop pedal, and intriguing vocals. Chris Funk came out to play a song with her. I thought her set was captivating. The Decemberists continue to impress me with their technical precision on stage, even though they tend to play a predictable set and use the same gimmicks over and over. Their new whale featured in their Mariner's Revenge encore was beautiful, and I had a blast at the show. I have now seen them a bunch of times, in Texas, Washington, Maryland, Minnesota, and England. Even the tours supporting albums I'm not as crazy about have been really fun.

I've been living in Australia for a few months now, and the main thing that experience has taught me is that my accent is dumb. American vowels are flat and lazy and nasal. I pronounce too many R's on average. It's really quite unseemly. The culture here feels like a weird blend of UK and US culture, partly because goods and media are often imported from both places. I've enjoyed learning some of the features of Australian English and hearing a wide variety of Australian accents. There are tons of immigrants from the UK and elsewhere in my department, so I'm encountering a lot of those accents too. Some Aussie words and phrases I've been interested or bemused by so far: "How are you going?" is used instead of "How is it going?" or "How are you doing?" Tasty cheese = cheddar Barbie = grill, but grills tend to be fireless electric cooktops in this wildfire-prone region Bushfire = wildfire Lollies = candy "Hey" is...

Arriving in Australia was a surreal experience. If you have never moved to a foreign country to which you have never been, I'm not sure I can relate the experience. It's like diving off a 10-meter board into a pool of unknown temperature, in which there may be saltwater crocodiles. We touched down in Sydney after a 17-hour red-eye from Houston. Getting through biocontrol and customs took us our entire layover. I had just watched six movies and was exhausted. Ever since getting a blood clot on a plane, I can't sleep in a chair. I just watched a bunch of not-so-memorable movies and stood up obsessively to stretch my calf muscles. And all that was between crying jags, since I had received news of a close friend's death immediately before getting on a plane. We ran through the airport and got on another plane, across the Australian continent. I had an aisle seat, so no view out the window, no access to movies, and insufficient bandwidth to read, by that point. It was a lo...

Jacob and Jessie on NYE 2018 was kind of a whirlwind. There were a lot of highs and lows, but mostly highs. I had some wonderful adventures this year. Here are some highlights. January Oberst with Taylor Hollingsworth of MVB We kicked off the New Year in the best way possible: by seeing a Conor Oberst concert in a California. Jacob and I flew out to Los Angeles and met up with friends from all over the country to see Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band play their first show in years. We caught up in line all day in the gloriously warm (by comparison with Minnesota) weather. We ate amazing Mexican food. And the show was brilliant -- the new venue in Silverlake was really cool and made custom cockatils for the show. Miwi La Lupa played a fabulous solo acoustic set to open. At midnight, the band played "Auld Lang Syne". The New Year couldn't have begun in a better way. That day turned out to be the last time I hung out with my friend Christina outside a ...