Sounds Of Home

I realized a while ago I love Hungarian music. All Balkan (and related) music is always sleeping somewhere in my ear, and at the first hint of it in the air, my senses are pricked up, ready to receive. In Hungarian (traditional vocal) music in particular, I find something beautifully sad and vulnerable, of which I have a deep, instinctive understanding. Something that immediately takes me back to -- if it exists, as Mr. C.G. Jung claims -- a collective cultural consciousness hoarded through generations and generations that I too can tap into. That typical and unforgettable female singing voice contains all the heavy sorrow and slow wistfulness of life lived year in and year out across the centuries in these regions: the beatings of stronger occupiers, struggling with humiliating poverty, finding strength to maintain one's dignity, losing the closest ones to disease, war, or misfortune. All the wounds and injuries of the nations I feel in the pit of my stomach; the nations I consider mine -- if they will let me. Listening suggestion: "Szerelem, szerelem" by Muzsikas (with Marta Sebestyen's haunting voice)

Augury

I've just realized I'm beginning this blog on Friday 13th... I'll take it as a sign it was meant to be! Or, as Hamlet says, "We defy augury...." (V. ii). I salute you, Danish prince, and hope to avoid a fate like yours.

Instead of a preface

Finally, it's done. I'm starting something that might turn out to be exactly what I needed, in my thirty-fourth year. Or something I might regret. Welcome to all, including me.