The last time I was in Berlin, it was on a school trip. We stayed somewhere near some remnant of the Berlin Wall, in a dingy hostel. We went to the Legoland centre and the Opera, and apart from that I don’t remember much of it (it was almost 10 years ago). I do remember […]
I had the pleasure of presenting at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) in Cologne, Germany this week. If you’re thinking that’s an odd choice for a musician, you’d be slightly right, but even though it says “theatre”, really it was all about performance. My research does look into performance a lot, and it […]
I’m sitting on the 2nd floor of the Beethoven Haus Museum, which is situated in the historic house Beethoven grew up in (although, renovations have changed it significantly from Beethoven’s time). It’s a little room, with a set of couches arranged in a cross in the middle of it, a few windows, and a sign […]
On Thursday, I hit a personal record — 5000 words written in a day. On Thursday, I backed this up with another 4000 words. I’ve been trying to finish a chapter of my thesis before I leave for conferences in Europe — I quite like this as a deadline, as it means I won’t feel […]
Last week, I was listening to some Indonesian news through SBS, one of Australia’s publicly-funded broadcasters. They do a range of news programs in many languages, and it’s a great learning resources. Now, normally, when listening to Indonesian I can make out the general gist of a story even if I don’t know the meaning […]
Hello there! Long time, no post. I promise, it’s not you, it’s me. Just a note: this post contains some descriptions of sickness, including vomit. If you’re squeamish, you may want to pass. When I was due to leave Bali, I woke up in the morning absolutely freezing cold. If you’ve ever been to Bali, […]
Yesterday was Nyepi, which is the Balinese new year. Unlike the Western new year, where people are rowdy and hungover, Nyepi is famously a day of silence in Bali. Everything – and I mean everything – on the island shuts down for the entire day. All the shops are closed, the airport is closed, no-one […]
Something I’ve been developing in Indonesia is a concept of how music evolves. We’re all familiar with the biological concept of evolution: organisms have random traits introduced into generations, and the traits which stick end up becoming more and more common, resulting in a species that is more successful in its environment. The story I […]
It surprises a lot of people to think about research as having a particular type of lens, particularly in the arts. It shouldn’t, but it does. I think part of this is that science conditioned people to believe that science is objective. The scientific process is great, and the process helps a lot, but we […]
Last week, I had the pleasure of going to Kuala Lumpur for some, shall we say, administrative reasons. I went there briefly last year, too, but this time I was doing it more as a splurge trip: I was in a nicer hotel and spent some more money doing nice things than the backpacker cheap-as-chips […]