Author: dcmenzies
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Le sens commun nést pas si commun
Music Music Music: Warning this week’s blog is a lot of music. The Musica Festival was established in 1982 to celebrate and present to “the curious audience” contemporary classical music by established and up-and-coming composers. The music explores themes that, until now, I did not know could be expressed musically. The overarching themes of loss…
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Je connais la musique
I found a small campus choir, maybe 30 strong, who were practicing a cappella pieces of Poulenc and Boris Vian jazz pieces. I found an advertisement for the choir the same day as rehearsal, emailed the director, and just showed up. Everyone was friendly and welcoming. The warm ups were more nuanced than I was…
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avoir le coeur sur les lèvres
It is covered in locks. Locks between the iron cross-hatched bridge. I want some keys so that I might open these padlock hearts on the place used to cross an obstacle (in this case water). I wanted to discover these locks intimately and inspect their background, their lives which I will never know, their social…
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Bonne renommée vaut mieux que ceinture doée
Today’s idiom means “a good name is better than wealth” or literally, “a good name is worth more than a golden girdle.” Last week at a house party with some locals, our discussion lead to the question “what do we value in life?” This arose from a personal fascination between value placement and the feminine/masculine…
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Entre le marteau et L’enclume
A friend, Jordan Rawling, from Moscow is letting me borrow two books to help me with my study abroad, they are explaining french idioms, for which there are much! We met at a coffee shop before I left and stumbled our way through French. The title means literally “between the hammer and the anvil,” it…
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Home?
It has only been three days and so much has happened. Arriving in Strasbourg, I had extreme jet leg (nine hours time difference) and only three hours of sleep on the plane. I arrived at 7:30AM on tuesday morning. I got my bags and went to the Deutsche Bahn to buy my train ticket and…
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Gumby Goes to Harvard
Reflections on Place: Spending four days with my very good friend, Gustave lester, was a refreshing, artful, and informative experience. With the historic air of buildings and architecture from as old as the 1600s, was a thirst for knowledge; a craving to know more and question more. When I ponder the atmosphere of what a…
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CINDY: SHE HAD BAGGAGE
Cindy SHE HAD BAGAGGE I was waiting in line at a homeless outreach event underneath the Burnside Bridge in downtown Portland. It is a weekly event where hundreds of homeless guests come to have a great meal, haircuts, clothing, and manicures. The hustle and bustle of a restless city; productivity and consumerism layer the…
Duncan Clark Menzies 