Tuesday, September 14^th

Today, I had lessons... two hours worth of lessons. In high school, I took thirty minutes a week. At Monmouth, I have an hour of lessons a week. Today, I had a two hour lesson. Thursday, I'm going back for another one. It's a lot.

And they aren't like my lessons in the States. I'm not just working on technique and learning new pieces of music. I'm learning an entirely new way of music. New posture. New note names. New scales. New style of playing. New rules. New style of learning. New meter signatures. New name for meter signatures. The only thing that's really the same is the fact that I'm playing a violin, and when I put my finger in a certain place, the same sound comes out.

Before this trip, I thought music was universal; I thought that music was something that I could go to any corner of the world, and it would be understood. I actually still believe that, just in a different way. Music is universal. Language is also universal. However, just because I speak a language doesn't mean I can walk up to any person in the world and communicate with them. We can speak at each other as much as we want, but nothing really passes between. And that is the roadblock I have hit in the world of music. I can play my music, and Vidya can play hers, but the communication between them has not yet opened. My music portrays a mood. Hers evokes one. My music comes from a page that represents the impressions of a composer. Hers comes from her own interpretation of a feeling.

All music is learned aurally here. Nothing is written down. My instructor says a note (in Marathi) and I'm supposed to play it. My instructor says a series of notes, and I have to play them all. There isn't really any set notation because the music is so fluid and changing. But that means that I have no written guide for what I'm supposed to be playing.

Everything is in a scale of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni (like Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti or D E F# G A B C#). My instructor will say something like “Sa Dha Pa Ma Re Pa Ma Re Dha Sa” and I have to immediately associate that with the notes I know and play it for her. And I have to remember it and play it later.

I'm definitely not an auditory learner. Visual learning is my forte. I can read things and remember them immediately and for a long time. I can learn kinesthetically. I can learn by experimenting on things. I am incredibly bad at learning things just by hearing them. In classes, I solve that by taking thorough notes of what professors say, and then remembering what's written in the notes. In everyday life, if you tell me your name, I'm not going to remember it five minutes later unless you're wearing a nametag. The only way I'm making it through lessons is by watching my instructor's fingers move.

Also, my lessons sometimes coincide with the lessons of a ten year old boy. We're learning the same raga of music, so my instructor says it's beneficial for us to play together sometimes. And the boy very much likes to show off his skills. There is nothing more humbling than being shown up by a ten year old.

On another note, I'm up to eight blisters on my feet. And no, that's not my running total. That is the number of blisters that currently occupies my feet. Four of those eight are on the pads of my feet; the only time I've ever blistered the bottoms of my feet was when I went barefoot at Six Flags with Robin in 8^th grade and literally burned my feet to the point of blistering. Now, they're blistered because we walk. All. The. Time. And it isn't like my feet were particularly wimpy when I got here. My feet are pretty tough, what with the walking barefoot across college campus and the farm and everything.

Emily got back from her family's farm today. She'd been there since Friday, so I was the first American she had seen since Thursday. I was the second person thoroughly fluent in English she'd seen since Thursday. She was happy to see me. Apparently, though, she and her family talked about religion this weekend. Emily is Jewish (I think at least four of the 26 people on this trip are Jewish, and that seems like a kind of high ratio to me considering I know more Hindus and Muslims in the states than I know Jews), and she had to explain to her family that she only believes in one god and that her religion forbids shrine worshiping and things like that, and she said that they were actually kind of baffled by that idea. It's strange to go from America where a vast majority of people believe in only one omnipotent god to a place where the common religious construct consists of multiple gods. And I think I'm less phased by that than most of the other people on this trip. I keep my nose in Roman books where polytheism is the accepted norm, so I've been thoroughly exposed to the idea of multiple divinities. Because of that, I don't really find it as unusual as many of the other American students do; I'm more thrown by the theriomorphism of Ganesh than the multiplicity. On that strain, Classics basically just gives me a healthy level of detachment from modern reality, so I'm pretty accepting of any idea.

Today, I talked to Kate about her experiences in Italy so far. She complained about there not being places to pee. Last weekend, when we were traveling to Ellora, we were on buses for about six hours a day. There are 22 girls, and at varying points, we all had to pee. When we did, the bus would pull over for a bathroom break. Ten girls would, without complaint, file off the bus into a corn field or a patch of bushes. All of India is a bathroom, and frankly, it smells like it.