{"id":3723,"date":"2011-01-13T07:13:52","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T15:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3723"},"modified":"2011-01-13T07:13:52","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T15:13:52","slug":"amsterdam-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2011\/01\/13\/amsterdam-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Amsterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well not really.\u00c2\u00a0 Technically we’re in Groningen, which is two hours away.\u00c2\u00a0 For Eurosonic-Noorderslag<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Funny how you can get in a tube and end up halfway across the world.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re reading your domestic papers and suddenly you emerge through the fog into a foreign land.<\/p>\n

And it is foggy.\u00c2\u00a0 Reminds me of nothing so much as driving on I-91 from Connecticut to Massachusetts.\u00c2\u00a0 At this exact time of year.\u00c2\u00a0 During the January thaw.\u00c2\u00a0 When it’s raining and miserable.\u00c2\u00a0 I like that.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s romantic.\u00c2\u00a0 It never rains in Southern California, but when it does it pours, but that’s pretty rare.\u00c2\u00a0 But on the east coast, there’s all kinds of weather.\u00c2\u00a0 The prognosticators do their best, but the temperature could drop twenty degrees in a matter of minutes and what was supposed to be rain could be snow and vice versa.<\/p>\n

What do I know about Amsterdam…<\/p>\n

It was funny driving down the highway, so much comes back.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe not enough hard core facts, but the process of learning.\u00c2\u00a0 All those days spent in school, staring out the window at bleak days like these.<\/p>\n

They told us there were windmills.<\/p>\n

And there were a plethora of them.\u00c2\u00a0 I only saw one old school model, but there were endless towers with the big turbine blades.\u00c2\u00a0 I always thought these messed up the landscape, but what’s worse, this blight or the greenhouse gases that are gonna ruin the ozone layer with the end result we’ll be burnt up?<\/p>\n

And speaking of fossil fuels…\u00c2\u00a0 I was stunned how small the cars were.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean really tiny.\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like a cartoon.\u00c2\u00a0 Hard to rationalize those behemoths we drive in the U.S.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to ride high, in our SUVs, because…\u00c2\u00a0 Because?\u00c2\u00a0 Because we’re into image and fashion and..?<\/p>\n

And the driver told us the endless plain upon which we were coasting used to be under water.\u00c2\u00a0 Nigh near twenty years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 It was all coming back, how the Netherlands was beneath sea level.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the story of the dikes, right?<\/p>\n

But I was disappointed the canals weren’t frozen.\u00c2\u00a0 That was one of the big books growing up, "Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates<\/a>".\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to lace up a pair of blades and go cruising through town under my own power.\u00c2\u00a0 Alas, that will not happen.\u00c2\u00a0 Although the driver said the canals were frozen back in December, but there was too much snow atop the ice, making skating both daunting and unsafe.<\/p>\n

But speaking of traveling under your own power, I’ve never seen so many bicycles as I’ve seen in Groningen.\u00c2\u00a0 Supposedly it’s a student town, but I saw gray-haired ladies pedaling in the rain.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t get the impression their mode of transportation was purely economic, that they couldn’t afford cars, but that it was more practical, you could go anywhere you wanted and park wherever you wanted and you did save the cost of fuel.<\/p>\n

And what always stuns me in Europe is the electronic signs at the petrol stations.\u00c2\u00a0 Seems much more efficient, they can change the price effortlessly.\u00c2\u00a0 I know, I know, I said "petrol".\u00c2\u00a0 But I love how they use different words for the same things.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the baggage carousel was the "belt".\u00c2\u00a0 And when you emerged from the baggage area, the train was right there.\u00c2\u00a0 If only this was the case at LAX, if this was only so in so many U.S. metropolises.\u00c2\u00a0 But no, we’re entitled to drive our cars and get stuck in traffic and…<\/p>\n

I was reading a fascinating book on the plane.\u00c2\u00a0 I almost wanted the flight to go on ten more hours so I could keep reading.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what’s great about a good book, it calls to you, it waits for you, it’s there to satisfy you.\u00c2\u00a0 But every good book ends.\u00c2\u00a0 You can play your records endlessly, but after one time through a book it’s just not the same.<\/p>\n

And the book I’m reading is entitled "Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel<\/a>".\u00c2\u00a0 By Gary Shteyngart.\u00c2\u00a0 I downloaded it to my Kindle because I just read too many good things about it, even though I didn’t like the blurb and I don’t like books set in the future.<\/p>\n

What I love about books is most people don’t read ’em.\u00c2\u00a0 So those inflamed by reality don’t carp, because they’re out of the loop.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, they’re editing Mark Twain, but most books go unscathed.\u00c2\u00a0 You open them up and you see truth and you’re positively thrilled, you feel like you’re not alone, that your whole life makes sense.<\/p>\n

And the future in "Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel" is not that distant.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s got an iPhone-type device that allows you to call up anybody’s history.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re almost there, privacy keeps eroding.\u00c2\u00a0 And all the companies have merged, the airline is called UnitedContinentalDeltamerican and the United States is at war with Venezuela and it’s trying to recapture its glory.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, the mantra of United States citizens is it’s the greatest country in the world, and don’t you ever deny it.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like these "patriots" believe everybody outside the country’s borders lives in a hovel and survives on gruel.\u00c2\u00a0 But so many world citizens are living just fine.\u00c2\u00a0 And in so many other countries things are in certain ways better.\u00c2\u00a0 But at least by traveling, you get insight, your horizons are broadened, just like going to elementary school and learning about windmills and…<\/p>\n

How come we grow up with facts inserted into our brains and we end up somnambulant, chock full of irrelevancies we learned on TV?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like people reach their third decade and stop learning.\u00c2\u00a0 Like learning is for losers.<\/p>\n

But learning keeps you young.\u00c2\u00a0 And alive.\u00c2\u00a0 And wise.<\/p>\n

So we’re resting up in anticipation of tonight’s inaugural dinner.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what to expect.\u00c2\u00a0 But this I know.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is the universal language.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you write a hit tune, you can visit lands far beyond your normal scope.\u00c2\u00a0 Because people want to hear you, they want to touch you, they want to get closer to you.<\/p>\n

And it was not so long ago that the music dominating the world was American.\u00c2\u00a0 But no longer.\u00c2\u00a0 Music has become Balkanized.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s different in every territory.\u00c2\u00a0 The days of making it worldwide have faded.\u00c2\u00a0 Not for lack of trying.\u00c2\u00a0 But marketing doesn’t sell great music so much as the music itself.<\/p>\n

You may not be a banker.\u00c2\u00a0 You may not have even gone to college.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you can write and play the whole world is open to you.\u00c2\u00a0 Get crackin’!<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well not really.\u00c2\u00a0 Technically we’re in Groningen, which is two hours away.\u00c2\u00a0 For Eurosonic-Noorderslag. Funny how you can get in a tube and end up halfway across the world.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re reading your domestic papers and suddenly you emerge through the fog into a foreign land. And it is foggy.\u00c2\u00a0 Reminds me of nothing so much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Y3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3724,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3723\/revisions\/3724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}