New Continent, Same City

Howdy folks! It's been a while since I last wrote, mainly due to my having moved to Üsküdar on the Asia side of the city, and only today getting the Internet connection set up. Above, I've posted a little movie showing the view from my balcony (and office, bedroom, and living room)... I invite you to think of it not as a pretty dull movie, but as a rather interesting postcard, like the paintings in Harry Potter films. But keep the sound on if you'd like - finally - to hear that new lâvta of mine; here, after a short taksim, I'm playing Segâh Saz Semaisi by Neyi Osman Dede (1642-1729). One of my favorites. (I've been practicing Mesut Cemil Bey's Nihavend Saz Semaisi to play for you, but it's not ready for prime time, yet.)

I was hoping to catch some of the normal traffic on the Bosporus in this video but I had a run of mediocre luck with it - at the very end there's a short bit with one of the huge cargo ships that, along with oil tankers and other vessels, are constantly taking heavy stuff to and from Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria (except when you're trying to film them. Leftward is south, by the way). It's still surprising for me to see them casually passing by so close. While I was downloading the raw footage from my camera two days ago, a smallish Turkish Navy submarine passed by going north, and about half an hour ago I saw it heading back south, but I didn't catch it on video... ah, well! Quite the Zen experiment, watching the sea for hours, hoping for six and a half minutes of continuously interesting events. This was the best I could get, but at least the wintry sunrise colors are nice.

Haven't had any more snow here, so my snow-naming project is on stand-by, but the research is coming along bit by bit. Yesterday had a long interview (but no music) with two ney players, then a music recording (but no interview) with an ud-ist whom I'd first met in Santa Barbara last year when he came to UCSB with a group of dervishes ("Didn't you used to have long hair and a Mongolian beard? You play cümbüş right?" Indeed, I confess). And I have appointments to meet with them and other folk tomorrow and next week, so it's all good, as they say, on the research front.

Well, I'll leave you with that, then. Healing wishes go out to Denise's dad, and to friends Lou and Will... "geçmiş olsun."