3 weeks of exploring.
Wondering while wandering around historic European cities.
London, Edinburgh, Cumbria, Liverpool, Oxford, and Manchester.
While reestablishing our TGS bubble with the 16 new students, we were reminded of challenging assumptions and what it feels like to be curious about a new city. Of course we did the stereotypical touristy things you do while in London, such as visiting the Natural Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert, going on the VIB boat tour on the London River, and watching a play. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time was an excellent performance. In Scotland I visited Mary King’s Close, Edinburgh Dungeon, Camera Obscura, and learned to play the bagpipes. We hiked, canoed, pet puppies, and collected a lot of data at the Cumbria biology center. We took a day trip to Manchester to watch a match because you can’t go without experiencing a try English game. When we got back to London, we watched another play, the Commitments, however it was not as entertaining as the first production we watched.
However, one of the best cultural experiences while in the United Kingdom was the music project we did while in Liverpool. After visiting the Beatles’ Story Museum, we did a music workshop with a woman named Meika to learn the parts of a song and the writing process in order to write our own. My team, lead by Tashi, included Yuan Yuan, River, Samtak, Pablo, Ayesha, and Izzy. We decided to emulate the Beatles’ song Eleanor Rigby because we were inspired by the lyrics, “Wearing the face she keeps inside the jar by the door.” River took the lead of writing the story and then we decided upon the original chord progression. We came up with the verse and chorus lyrics and even decided to add in one of Yuan Yuan’s poems in both English and Spanish in the introduction. We added a guitar riff to match the piano and then focused on the song and melody.
We all learned the lesson that imagination is a concept that pulls together your influences, ideas, and memories. Also, we had to match the emotion of the words and piano melody to convey our desired message. Our group focused on the lyrics because we were not the most musical group. We used the syllables and rhyming structure to keep the song simple. We also learned to handle stress as a team.
The recording studio was an extremely stressful half hour, especially since Yuan Yuan was in New York and not London. I was on the piano, Samtak on the guitar, Ayesha on the maraca and the introduction poem in English, while Pablo recited in Spanish, and River and Izzy were the lead singers. As we were rushed, we were all nervous in the beginning. I almost had a break down because I had to play without messing up for the entire song and had three different people counting their beat to me. We had one amazing run through where there were no noticeable mistakes, but Victor walked in before we finished recording. W were forced to restarted again, but it was the best we could do.
As you can see, I learned many lessons from this project. It was a good project to do while in the UK, not only because the Beatles were British, but because it allowed me to relate to Englishmen. The people who I had been walking past in Holland Park and sitting on the subway with on the Piccadilly line. The rushed and introverted people. Maybe the people at Old Spitalfields Market and at the Waterloo just needed their alone time away from a stressful collaboration project as they walked to and from work or college.
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