The Flying Adventures of DOUG

Actually, it's not a world first, I think it's a world second...What is it, you ask?

DOUG IS POSTING TWICE IN ONE DAY

Not really worth the build-up, was it?

Anyway, the reason I am posting twice in one day is that I felt like a walk, and had time to use up at this internet cafe (I bought the student special of 4 hours for 10 euros; you don't have to use it all at once). It's 9:02pm and still very hot here in Rouen, which bodes well for my travels further South: it's going to get hotter and hotter, and there is such a thing as too hot (can I believe I just said that?).

Today Dad and I had a cruise round and went to the Musee des Beaux Arts (sorry French scholars about the lack of appropriate accents, I don't know how to get them on this computer, and I'm cheating by using an English keyboard). It was awesome! I got to see Rubens, Carravaggio and some other dude that I studied in that unexpected Art History paper that I took last year, as well as a significant Impressionist collection including lots of Monet, Sisley, and some R... what was his name? ...........not Raphael, wrong era...........Renoir! (I had to look in the brochure, just to prove that I'm not a pompous culture buff-oon)

I just read an email asking me, "How was the singing?" which made me realise that I haven't said much on the subject in this blog. Poor form, eh? So, here are...

Some notes on the singing (pardon the pun, I really didn't intend it; it just came out that way): The singing was awesome!!! It was, afterall, the main point of the tour that got me to Europe in the first place. There is something entirely different about singing in a famous hall or cathedral, quite removed from just visiting a place and taking photos - which, of course, we did as well, where permitted. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but when singing in a place, not only do you get to see the beautiful frescoes and marvellous, mind-boggling architecture, but you get to hear the place, too. Every space sounds different, and you can hear it, particularly when you get to sing the same pieces in many different, amazing places. The piece changes a little in each space, it feels different and you have to get used to it, like a pianist playing an unfamiliar piano. The same basic instrument is the same, but the tone is different, the pressure required on the keys may vary, depressing a pedal may have radically different consequences to what you're used to (particularly on some very "special" specimens). And I guess that's the thing, as a singer (or maybe just as a choir?) the space you perform in becomes part of the instrument you are using, and it tells you something about the character and structure of a place.

Also, just general choir stuff was really cool, you could feel things changing every day as we got massively better over a short space of time, and that affected the atmosphere of the choir, too. People became pretty close in a short time, like a big family, and I talked with people I didn't really know very well before and roomed with people I would never have expected to end up rooming with. It was very cool.

Ah... very cool.