languages of animals

Just got back the other day from a tour with Tel Aviv Soloists to Switzerland and Austria. mostly Austria, actually, only spent the last few days of the tour in Interlaken. It got funner and funner. Started out kind of ok, kind of a drag. The orchestra has this incredibly tightknit social vibe. I specify social because it doesn't always manifest itself musically! Maybe it was the stress of the tour, a city a day, a concert a city, a lot of time in the same bus. All the social stuff, it tends to feel a little bit like high school when you're not super comfortable with the language. But I got less and less stressed about that aspect as I felt more comfortable with more and more folks. I think it was the mid-tour break I took to go visit with Peter and Wendy Moes, my viola family, at their farmhouse outside of Munich. I was only there for a night, but it chilled me out as much as a week at a spa. Good healthy food, good conversation, purring cats and a midday rainbow sprouting out of the middle of a field will do that.
A nice thing for me was being put in the "married" hotel for our first couple nights- the 9 wedded members of the group (none to each other) were put in this adorable little inn outside of Villach. It was nice to get a little bit of air, an early break from the crowd. Hadas and Tali were in that hotel with me, so we had an opportunity to just hang out despite all the weirdness of my impending departure. The hotel was a bit too adorable, in fact: no phones in the rooms. But I did get to use their ancient computer in their office for email. At one point a man with a giGANtic handlebar moustache in traditional south-Austrian costumer stopped by to check that I knew how to use the computer just fine. Later that night I channelsurfed the TV stations and found Full House and the Cosby Show dubbed in German, as well as a comedy about a man in lederhosen and his dachshund. The dachshund had it in for is master and peed on his leg.
Why am I writing about the TV?? Well, I did have one enlightening TV experience (in English). Christopher gave me an amazing book to read on the tour: "A Language Older than Words" by Derrick Jensen. It's hard to describe in even a few sentences what it's about. Basically the author sees his abused childhood through the same lens he sees the abuse of the whole natural and native human world, and charts the destruction Western European society has wrought all across the planet. He ascribes part of the reason this has happened to the fact that humans long ago stopped believing they could communicate with the natural world. He writes about making deals with the coyotes who've been stealing his chickens and finding mouse poop in his sink after he'd destroyed the mice's nests in his garage... Anyway, at one of our little Austrian town stops, I found a movie in English, which made me happy (Germany doesn't subtitle, just dubs, so usually the only English TV is CNN) I don't know the name of it, but it's computer-animated, and about a deer and a bear running away from an evil hunter. I think one of the voices is Ashton Kutcher maybe? The movie felt like a manifestation of this book, about the possibilities of interspecies communication, and how much we miss when we assume we're the only beings on this earth with a language.
I think the book's turning me into a hippie.
Or--- back into a hippie.
I tried asking Spinoza nicely to please stop gnawing on my leg, but we haven't yet found a mutual language.
The best thing of the tour, aside from this book, and the views, and the lovely time with the Moes',-- was getting to know the people in the orchestra. First time in a while I feel I have really good new friends in Israel. And I'm leaving in a month and a half. It's sad I guess. But I've learned over the years, many times, that there is no goodbye in the tiny world of classical music.
I put up tons of pictures of the trip on the flickr site, www.flickr.com/photos/hollerames