Overseas travels 2010 - part 1

Recently (for say the last six weeks) I've been mainly occupied with travel and marking. Appropriately, this blog-post is being partly written in Singapore airport on a stopover on my way back to the Northern hemisphere. I propose to talk more about the former in this post, for, let's face it, marking really isn't much fun. Sometimes the pain can be attenuated by a fine crop of bloopers, but sadly there was nothing outstandingly hilarious in the scripts I read this time. Certainly nothing compared to this gem from a previous session, a description of the beginning of Mozart's Magic Flute: 'Tamino is fleeing from a serpent, who is trying to bite him in a liminal location'. (The phrase which gave rise to this delicious double entendre was one we had employed in seminars to describe places where the boundaries between our world and the supernatural dimensions are thin and permeable).

My two overseas trips took me to the US and New Zealand, both motivated by conference activity. In my Nov trip to the States, I attended the Annual Meeting of the AMS [American Musicological Society] in Indianapolis, which this year had somewhere around 2,700 delegates in attendance. This, in case you hadn't guessed, is the world's biggest annual musicological jamboree, a chance to catch up with old friends and make new contacts, to sample what's new in the world of music research, spin book projects to publishers, and generally revel in the feeling of being part of a large community. Like many in the humanities, my research is largely a series of solo projects, so it's always good to get a chance to reconnect with my peers and discuss the burning issues in Strauss scholarship.

Compared to other US cities that I've visited, Indianapolis was rather non-descript and featureless, although admittedly all I have to go on is what I happened to see during a couple of pre-dawn runs. Moreover, I had already visited Chicago during this trip, and most urbanscapes in the States will suffer by the comparison. Having walked down Michigan Ave, I can see why the Windy City is rated so highly by cognoscenti. In comparison to the cramped (if stimulating) streets of NY, there was a spaciousness to Chicago that appealed strongly. Moreover, several buildings really took my fancy, in particular Marina City Towers (two honeycombed structures which apparently were designed as integrated communities, with a mixture of office and domestic spaces). When one adds to the architectural attractions Chicago's well- known music scene (sadly I didn't get to sample either the CSO, Lyric opera or the jazz clubs this trip), its cuisine (deep-pan pizza is surprisingly good, even though normally I prefer Italian-style thin crusts), and the visually stunning lakeshore panoramas, it could be a great city in which to live as well as to visit. With one major caveat - the temperatures. Legendarily cold and harsh in the winter (a local friend told me that negative Farenheit (-22C) was not uncommon), it apparently also gets uncomfortably hot in the summer. Thankfully, I lucked out - it was really mild when I was there, as the locals confirmed.

Another stop on my tour was Minocqua. No, I hadn't heard of this part of rural Wisconsin before this trip, either. My purpose in going there was to visit a friend, a trainee medic who had a placement in the boonies. Thanks to the kindness of my friend's sister, who was also due to visit Minocqua, I was able to be the passenger on this mini road-trip. The third and fourth members of the party were an 8-week old baby and a bull-terrier, both of whom were impeccably behaved throughout. With the former needing regular feeding, I was deputed to look after the latter at the rest stops. Willie (for such was the dog's name) may have looked like the kind of animal owned by the murderous Bill Sikes in a version of _Oliver Twist_ I once saw, but he was in fact the most timid and quiet chap imaginable. In fact, he was so shy that I had to drag him out of the car to relieve himself. Incidentally, having to mop up the animal's defecations was another new experience for me. I had a sheltered upbringing, don't you know.

We stopped off for lunch en route, which enabled me to see at least cursorily Minneapolis and Madison (once going, once coming). Minocqua, when it was eventually reached, proved to be a one-horse town set in some moderately attractive countryside. One of its claims to fame is that it contains the restaurant where John Dillinger had his altercation with the FBI. The bullet-shattered glass is still preserved in the frames, set between the more functional double panes that keep the restaurant moderately warm. This location was recently used for the film about the gangster, _Public Enemies_, starring Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard.

The last stop on my trip was Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I was scheduled to give a guest lecture and seminar for grad students at UNC. I was also enabled to visit another ex-Cantab friend, who's been living there for some years. What will remain in my memory of this part of the world is the glorious autumnal colours of the trees, 'yellow, black, pale and hectic red', as Shelley said. Both the UNC and Duke campuses were pretty, the latter having a particularly impressive quadrangle. The lecture on Friday afternoon seemed to go over fairly well, and was followed by supper with some of the faculty and students. UNC has the name of being a demanding grad-school programme, and this is perhaps nowhere more clearly evinced than in the fact that the 2-hour seminar took place on Saturday morning (sic). It was lots of fun, engaging with 16 or so bright grad students, and 8 of them took me for lunch afterwards.

The whole experience reminded just how professional the academic training is in the States. After spending anywhere between 5 and 8 years in their doctoral programme, the students emerge battle-hardened, with a breadth of knowledge and an intellectual rigour that really isn't provided by PhD programmes in Ireland, the UK or Australia. As a graduate of the UK and Irish systems, I do not mean to denigrate the many virtues these possess - they perhaps encourage intellectual autonomy to a greater extent - but still the exclusive emphasis on one's thesis topic from the very beginning by definition means they have a narrower focus.

Anyway, this post is already extensive enough - I'll take up the tale of my NZ trip in the next. (OK, the real reason is that this is being written at 3.30am in Singapore airport, as I wait for an already twice-delayed flight, and I'm about ready to try and see if I can't sleep a bit on the floor.)