I visited Pittsburgh this month and it was a blast. My visit confirmed to both me and Boyfriend that our time there isn't quite over yet- the city has a strange attraction to us both (though Boyfriend would love to uproot us to Seattle first, if he had the chance).
I love so many things about Pittsburgh, including its many neighborhoods with individual character, like this wall on the North Side that has both ghostly remnants of attached buildings, and shadows of other buildings around it. Boyfriend and I agreed that the city has one of the better-integrated racial mixes of many cities- not that it's all hunky-dory, but perhaps people from many races and cultures just happen to have to interact more here than in sprawling Denver.
Pittsburgh's mass-transportation, however, is a hot mess. The Port Authority bus system was bad when I lived there from '06 to '10, and it's gotten worse since I left (with the one exception of a new light rail over to the North Side from downtown so all the football fans can take a shuttle home drunk rather than driving). I waited for a bus that should have theoretically come every 15 minutes; 45 minutes later, I missed my meeting as the bus never showed. Thankfully I was able to reschedule; I walked the whole way and arrived on time. Nowadays in Denver and Boulder, CO, I rarely have to wait more than 15 minutes for a bus to show up. Buses here are scarily efficient, but it does help to have a flat, gridded, and arid topography to work with, compared to Pittsburgh's vine-winding and hilly landscape. But that's something I love about Pittsburgh, so it's a blessing and a curse. What would a view of the Golden Triangle be without Mount Washington and its inclines.
I went to Pittsburgh for a premiere of a new work by Trillium Ensemble, which went spectacularly, and a friend's wedding, which also went spectacularly. Boyfriend saw some old friends from his days in Pittsburgh, and I saw some of mine. I conducted some Biznass about music and hoped to plan a trip back in the fall to guest lecture. We both got to visit Mattress Factory, where coincidentally we both have worked in the past and is one of the best art museums, hands down, in the world.
(On view: Nina Marie Barbuto's 'Glory Holes', part of the 'Gestures: Intimate Friction' exhibit featuring local artists' works.)
Pittsburgh is constantly popping up on the 'hot cities to watch out for'-type blogs and newspapers, and I can see why (aside from transit systems). The Andy Warhol Museum, cheap rents, big spaces, friendly hip places, and new stores appearing regularly. Phipps Conservatory (Botanical Gardens) is one of the most "green" and energy efficient greenhouse buildings in the world. They're adding a new building to the back which should be beautiful, behind this cascading pond and waterfall.
I even got to visit a place I had never been, but had always wanted to visit: Allegheny Cemetery. Known for its old mausoleums, winding paths, and lush greenery, it didn't disappoint. It was a post-rainy day, common to the city, and the skies were grey: perfect gravestone-viewing weather. This tomb's the King of them all. Or at least houses the King family.
Perhaps one day I will have a reason to settle down here, maybe buy a house and work as an artist full-time. I would eat burgers all the time at the new Burgatory restaurant, and fancy cuisine at 'Salt of the Earth' (cuisine of the duck/sweetbreads/endive/polenta/cardamon/tartar varieties, but not all together in one dish, that would be so gross). Until then, I do love to visit, and thank all my friends, colleagues, and relatives for making it such a memorable trip.
Some photos that I don't think I had a chance to post yet, of the filming of my percussion quartet 'Chinook' up on the mesa of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The piece is a site-specific work about weather patterns in Boulder, and the film will eventually be shown on four separate (but interlocking musically) screens or projectors.
Tonight I saw the new movie 'Weekend' and enjoyed its minimalist, dialogue-heavy look into the intimate weekend of two men in Britain. Highly enjoyable, and it satisfies my desires in films for 1. gay characters 2. colorful items, 3. beautiful languid shots of people looking at stuff and each other and best of all 4. elegant use of typography.
I knew right away the film would be enjoyable because of the use of nicely kerned Gil Sans! At least I'm hedging my bets that that is good old Gil Sans, known also from my old museum Mattress Factory. In light weight and medium, I believe. Lovely! It was an excellent typographic choice to fit the film, so kudos designer Sam Ashby. A great complement as well to the candid-style shots for posters by Quinnford & Scout, who seem to be counted among the gay bearded young men that I do enjoy so much. A personal message to the guys in this whole design and artistic realm: let me know if there's ever any music you need for anything, I think we could work well together...our beard powers combined.
Side note: this poster for the film Fay Grim is probably my second favorite contemporary movie poster ever, which lovingly uses the typeface DIN and it soon started my DIN obsession.
Autumn in Boulder, Colorado is beautiful! Even with a power plant in sight. A and I went to a pumpkin patch that was basically picked clean of pumpkins, but we did get to walk around in the beautiful day, see a working steam-powered tractor, and then crunch in some leaves. We found a lopsided pumpkin but still enjoyed carving it. Well, I enjoyed carving it, but made A scoop out all of the guts. It's just never been my thing. I'm still so surprised here at how dry it is, and how infrequently it rains. In Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Boston, Iceland- almost all the places I've lived or visited, it has rained fairly frequently, and in some places, so frequently that it makes sense to carry around your umbrella with you. Here, I look at the forecast and they're rarely rain even predicted, if so, it's a tiny scattered shower. The leaves here are mostly turning yellow; it's not the red and orange New England fall, but it's wonderfully colorful all the same. There are lots of crunchy leaves on my walk to school, so I am in a good mood to start teaching. It's even been quite warm here during the day, enough that I'm catching some rays mid-day as I eat lunch outside! Try that in Buffalo, not likely.
I've finished the percussion quartet and am moving on to a chamber commission from the Trillium ensemble in Pittsburgh- flute, clarinet, and piano. Meanwhile, I still have one percussionist to record, and filming of the percussion piece outdoors at the National Center for Atmopheric Research. Here's hoping for continued beautiful autumn weather as we head out of October and into the 'wintry' months.
As a last hurrah, I traveled to the north of Iceland with a visiting friend from Italy who is currently living in France. And he speaks four languages. Intimidating! But luckily I'm the one who knows a little Icelandic, and can find my way around here well. We took a long drive and racked up about 2000 kilometers, saw a lot of places I had not seen before, and of the places I had seen, I'd either visited last in September about 10 months prior, or over the winter when everything was snow-covered and usually closed for tourists. So this was a lot of new experiences!
We visited Akureyri and I finally got a nice shot of the mural there (click for a larger view). It's a lovely town and I wouldn't mind spending a decent amount of time there! Sadly we only stayed for dinner, a swim, and then a short walk. On the walk we noticed that some kids had somehow gotten themselves onto this jankety wooden raft, and had basically floated into the middle of the fjörd. Whether is was on purpose or just random I don't know, they seemed to be kind of obnoxiously goofy and nonchalant about the whole thing. But then they went through a lot of effort to paddle themselves back with some plywood paddles, and when they approached the shore, angry parents/onlookers and the police were waiting. Akureyri drama!
We drove across the fjörd in the morning and by some stroke of amazing luck, the museum I have wanted to go to for ages was actually open. Safnasafnid, or the Museum of Museums! It houses a collection of Naive and Folk art from Iceland, a small permanent collection, research offices, a tiny café, and rotating exhibits, all in one beautiful open-plan house. The museum's mission is not so much focused on one field but to promote the creation of connections and thought between disparate fields and interests, perhaps why I love it so much. My favorites were the cabinets of curiosity- named after Renaissance-era collections of unexplained objects for perusal, the cabinets house a well-placed collection of really really random things. This particular cabinet photographed housed collections of dolls from all over the world. Driving further west, we visited a couple places near Myvatn that I had not been to before, including sites near Krafla geothermal fields. There is a beautiful implosive crater called Stóra-Viti and several steaming lava fields and mud pits, which were bathed in beautiful weather. Strangely Stóra-Viti still had snow in it, even in the middle of July! But is has been unseasonably cold in Iceland this year (even for Iceland). Heading then up north we stopped for the night in Húsavík and our guesthouse owners were kind enough to tell us about a free hot pot up on top of a beautiful flowery field, with a great view. I soaked it all in. Almost too tired, but not willing to give up, we then managed to drive to the very farthest northern point of Iceland, Hraunhafnartangi. The weather was so gorgeous that it would have been a shame not to go, being so close. And if I couldn't make it to Grímsey, which crosses the arctic circle, then I am happy to be so close at this point! It is a lonely and desolate point for sure, with the midnight sun shining on a small lighthouse at the edge of the world. Nothing between here and the north pole!
After much anticipation, it seems that summer has finally arrived in Iceland! It's a shame that it was so dreary when my friends were recently visiting- it even snowed on the first of May. But I suppose that's the chances you take with weather! And this lucky streak of warmth and sunshine may be fleeting, but I'm still going to run outside and play in it. Everyone else has the same idea!
The atmosphere in the city totally changed. It feels like a different country. Tables and chairs were pulled out from storage and now the streets are lined with coffee-drinkers and diners. The trees have the first tiny leaves popping out, and the grass is getting very green again too! Though it will still be some time before the countryside and colder areas of the country see the green. And Esja looks incredibly clear and bright without fog or rain getting in the way. The light here is now really intense and direct, and long-lasting. I have to use both sets of my blinds to sleep, as it gets quite bright really early in the morning. Though it's not quite the 24-hour brightness yet, which should arrive in a few weeks, it was still quite pretty and sunset-like last night after 11pm! Several people i know got sunburned from being outside lounging too long- something I thought would never happen in this nordic country. But that sun is a sneaky guy. Welcome back, vitamin D, good to have you in my life again! Just don't get too hot, Iceland, 'cause I sure didn't come here to get all sweaty.
I had seen the glacial lagoon Jökulsárlón twice before, but both times were either cold, windy, rainy, foggy or a pick-2-or-more combo platter of bad weather. But this time it was miraculously springtime warm, sunny, windless, and the clouds were amazing! I saw things around the lagoon I'd never seen before. Hello, mountains! Why I never even knew you were there. So nice to see your glacial features in such beautiful dreamy light! Even more strange is that I was the only car seeing this sight tonight- during the day the parking lot can be lined with buses and vans, but somehow nobody was visiting at this time of the evening. What a nice memory to have to ourselves.
Here's a panorama, should you want to click and enlarge for fuller effect. I still use my trusty old 2004 3 megapixel camera, but it still seems to captures the moment just fine.
Phwew! We made it out of that tunnel alive. Thank goodness. Now we just have to worry about avalanches in Flateyri. Well, not really. This area had some serious avalanches in 1995, which caused the deaths of scores of people in several towns, so the area has been heavily protected with avalanche walls and relocation of homes. There's just not much place for those homes to go, being nestled on these little spits between a mountain and the fjord!
Flateyri is a really cool place for a population of only 200 people. There's one restaurant-slash-bar-slash-community hangout, and in the summer there is kayaking, hiking, and lots of historical-iceland fun facts to read about. If you're looking for a great, reasonable apartment to rent short-term, check this out, where we stayed! But for late-april, it's a quiet town in the middle of nowhere. I took a long walk around town, recorded some water noises, and went up to the top of the avalanche wall, which now has a lookout point on it and a playset built inside it. A little creepy and slightly perilous, but a little exhilarating too. Nicole and I took some shots for my upcoming album, hoping we could get a cover shot for it. I haven't decided on one particular image yet, but I have a couple great non-serious outtake pictures in the wind. It got pretty stormy in the fjord that night, which I can't say wasn't all that inappropriate for the album, being written in many a crazy location throughout Iceland. We went to check out Ísafjörður again and see the rock festival 'Aldrei Fór Ég Sudur', or 'Never Went I South'. It's a free music festival! (If you can get there.) It was cool, and I love the spirit of everyone just coming into this tiny town, and sharing the good music with their neighbors, no matter what the weather. This band is Soley, before the place filled to the brim with music fans. There was also this small art festival going on and I saw some graffiti-based work that was a little dated, but also some hilarious comics and cool paintings. I went to buy a teeshirt as my weekend's souvenir, but didn't have cash on me, only debit card. But the worker gave the teeshirt to me for free! Thanks, dude, whoever you are. Now I can say, 'I went to Ísafjörður and all I got was this awesome, totally not-lousy free tee-shirt!'
Winding back along the coast toward Reyjavík, we passed a small town with a geothermal area that feeds a random pool, hotel/apartment, and a couple small buildings. I took a picture of a quintessential Icelandic moment here. A baby, inside a baby carriage, taking a nap while its mother is inside the building, keeping an eye out but also probably having a coffee. Carriage next to a grill. Grill next to a geothermal steam vent in the ground that just popped up unexpectedly, dangerously hot and steaming, but covered for 'safety' by some big rocks. Wind blowing fiercely outside. Life as usual for the West Fjords.
I went on a three-night trip to the West Fjords of Iceland, and it was indeed full of fjords! But also a lot of other majestic, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes curious things. I thought I'd share some stories and photos about it.
We drove up to the West Fjords thinking that we'd take a drive all along the coast, up from the south section, cut through the west side and see the big waterfall there, and then over to Ísafjörður on the north, with the excuse of having the 'Aldrei fór ég Suður' rock festival to see. Then we'd head back eastward, over the north part of the fjords and back again. It didn't quite work out that way though. On the way the road was rough going. Unpaved roads, lots of potholes, some intense climbs through the mountains! But some unbelieveable views, too. Rows of waterfalls, calm fjords with blue mountains covered in snow. Then other times, purple-y plants and red rocks, changing to snow-covered deserts that you couldn't even tell the difference between snow and sky. I can see how people might need this antarctic-looking emergency hut. We reached the cut-through pass only to find that the road that had been open a few days prior was now closed to snow, and there is no other road that will connect between the two parts of the fjords, you have to go all the way around. So with some last-minute phone calls, we found a place to sleep for the night a change of plans.
Thankfully, this was kind of a fun and funny experience! The owner of the farm/guesthouse we stayed at was talking on the phone with us while herding some sheep around. The whole family was visiting, so we shared the space with some cute rugrats. The ocean was steps away, and I haven't had an oceanfront bedroom view like this in a long time. The milk offered to us was straight from the cows on the property. The next morning we were not defeated so we went back along the rocky coast to where we could cross, and then on to the northern part of the fjord roads. We stopped in Holmavík for food, but while there we were lucky to find the Museum of Witchcraft and Sorcery open!
This was a peculiar place indeed. Iceland has actually had a long history with witchcraft, but all the witches accused were men (except for one woman). The owner of the museum was a quirky guy who gave us free coffee, and I had tea made from Icelandic moss (tastes better than it sounds). We saw the exhibits including the 'necropants', a replica of what would have been a a real skin of a human body that a sorcerer would step into, feet and legs and genitals and all, and presumably receive special powers and abundant wealth. I won't include an image here, it's not great for the kids. We also saw runes, a stone used for Viking beheadings, and read a lot of great facts about strange rituals of olde times. And then it was so nice outside that we got to sit out on a stone table and eat a picnic lunch! I made a chow-down panorama. The weather report called for gross rain and wind (we'll get that later, don't worry), but today it was warm and sunny, and made for a quick and much more pleasant drive. This side of the fjords has the biggest 'town' on it, Ísafjörður, with 2500 people, so the roads are quite well-kept. Still dangerously close to plunging into the ocean, or be caught in a rock slide on the other side, but still very well-maintained.
We arrived in Ísafjörður, which indeed feels like a booming metropolis after driving for several hours past hardly a building or two along the way. There's a grocery store! In fact, there's more than one! There's a swimming pool and museum, library, and a small airport. The mountains of the fjord are so close you could almost taste the snow on their caps...or something delightful like that. I'll leave this post at about the half-way point, en route to our sleeping place for the next two nights in Flateyri, a small town near Ísafjörður. Which to get to you have to drive through a one-lane tunnel, about 4km long. But, here's the dramatic catch: the tunnel is not one-way. You have to pull off to the side in strategically-marked pull-off points to let the other direction pass you. One of the strangest and most unusual experiences ever: driving down a dark, dripping, seemingly endless one-lane tunnel through a mountain and having a car come straight toward you. We stopped our car and waited for another to drive by in the other direction, and I recorded the eerie buildup of sound of the passing vehicle.
Even weirder is that the tunnel splits in two different directions, right in the middle of the tunnel. Just a simple turn is all it takes, no lane divider, no extra stoplights, still one-car wide, just a sign illuminated in the dark saying: turn right for Suðereyri.
This past weekend I took an afternoon trip with friends to Keflavík and around the Reykjanes Peninsula (more commonly known as 'the area with the blue lagoon and the airport'.
We first stopped at Duushús, which could be considered one of the only 'cool' places in Keflavík, being the town that sprang up to service the US Army base that was in Iceland for decades (from about 1942-2006). Duuhús houses a multitude of things, count 'em: art gallery, restaurant, cafe, model ship museum, photo museum, theatre, army artifact gallery, and possibly other hidden surprises. And it's free to visit! I loved this model desk of the army base, here I am making a very important phone call on a 1990's phone. I'm not even sure if you should be sitting at their installations, but there's nothing saying you can't reenact some top-secret conversations about nuclear warheads, the cold war, and whale meat.
We saw an art exhibit of printers from Reykjavík, among them my Fulbrighter friend Nicole Pietrantoni had a few great prints on glass, which when light was projected upon them, would show their images as shadows on the walls.
And here is a recreation of the American foods that came to Iceland. It's all a little strange, as it's quite familiar for me to see these products, but really out of their natural context (i.e. in Iceland, where we don't even have a McDonalds, thank heavens, but thankfully we do have Honey Nut Cheerios). Near Duuhús was a little cave-like thing attached to a coastal rock cliff. I wandered over to it and it turns out to be the home of a literal giant- one named Sigga who is definitely involved with Christmas celebrations. But the best part about the interior of the cave was this: A million icicles; we must have discovered the cave at just the right time between freezes and thaws, and the light coming in was beautiful!
We drove on to see several lighthouses around the coast of the peninsula- I had been to the Blue Lagoon before and to Seltún's hot spring area, but never in the other direction on the coasts. It has been snowing a bit lately but the weather was quite beautiful for a drive. The southmost coast of the peninsula has the most dramatic rock formations, and you can see the bird-filled island of Eldey in the distance from here. These cliffs are known for their bird colonies all swarming around- it's not yet crazy bird season but it will be soon! This will be a beautiful place to hike in the summer, and perhaps reenact a little Sound of Music. The hills will be alive...with the sounds of gannets.
