Last week I went to the market to buy flowers, and well, let's just say it put me in a "something is rotten in the state of Belgium" kind of mood for a short time, and resulted in a post in like manner, more or less bemoaning my own state of being in Belgium.
However, if I have one quality that I can boast of, eventually, even when moving towards a negative slant, I am able to find the silver lining in the clouds, and to make the lemonade from the lemons. I have my maternal genetics to thank for that to be able to counter the tower of dour of my paternal genes, and the former have always triumphed, as they do now.
It is easy for one to get down on a country in which that person is the foreigner, lo straniero, l'étranger, de vreemdeling, and so on and so forth. Sometimes you are excused of certain social customs, but other times you are excluded from them, and both situations can call for a modicum of dis-ease or anxiety. You always feel that you are being watched, judged and at times ridiculed. Paranoia? If you have lived in such a scenario you would not say so. It exists. The paranoia comes into play about the extent that it is actually happening. It is happening, but often not as much as we feel it to be.
Finding the balance, then, as in all things is the key.
Finding the balance.
So, there are several things that are very "right" about Belgium, and I will take a moment to highlight them here, for, despite the incredibly small size of this country, western civilization has much to thank the Belgians for, again for better and for worse. Everything has it place, and time, and there have been many things that have happened in Belgium that have their place in history.
The Solvay Conferences
The two biggest of these were the 1911 and 1927 conferences funded by the Belgian Ernest Solvay, who is chiefly responsible for carbonated beverages, and had a list of attendees that has made every theoretical and experimental physicist drooling for decades. Here are some of the names for the 1927 conference: Schrödinger, Pauli, Heisenberg, Bohr, Born, Einstein, Dirac, Curie and Planck. The average IQ of that group just mentioned would be a Richter-scale event of any single group of minds coming together, and they were just part of it. It was at that fateful event that the (in)famous quip of Einstein made the record books for his attack against the randomness of Quantum Physics that "God does not play dice" to which, unbeknownst to most who know that quote, Bohr, the pre-eminent QP advocate answered, "Stop telling God what to do..." or along those lines. Neither has been definitely proven to be right or wrong, something I like to think of God's little joke or gentle reminder that no one knows everything all the time as I like to tell my daughter, meaning me so that she knows Papa's can have faults too.
Belgian Lace, Beer, Fries, and Cheese
For anyone who visits Belgium, you will most likely come across one or more of the above. The lacework of Belgium, specifically west Flanders is legendary. The comestibles and digestives of the latter hardly need mention except for the fact that what the world has erroneously known as "French Fries" (and for a god-forsaken time as "Freedom Fries") these are actually Belgian and there is a museum in Bruges to prove it, and the fact that the smelly "Limburger" cheeses in all of the Bugs Bunny type cartoons would be none other than the Belgian Limburger cheeses.
Music Festivals
Belgium, and specifically Flanders, is the proving and testing ground for bands around the world. Only Austin's SXSW could boast of having more direct influence on the make or break of a band. In addition, many of the world's most renowned DJs are, you guessed it, Belgian.
Movies
Look on IMDB. For some reason, nearly every major movie is released in Belgium first. It is kind of like the New Hampshire primaries. Actually, not kind of like, exactly like. Do the math.
Art
Okay, if Belgium has a corner on anything, it is art, and in a big way. Whether the Northern Renaissance is officially Belgian or Low Countries is a source of debate, but it is impossible to deny the talent that has come from this area: the Breughels, Van Eycks, Memling, Bosch and Magritte, to name but a very, very small number of monumentally important artists for their respective times. Without a doubt the latter two have been huge influences in my own life with regards to thinking about the relationships between art and life (as Bosch was for Henry Miller, inter alia), but I cannot imagine my own artistic world view without each and every one of these. Ceci, n'est pas une pipe...Derrida would have never existed without this one. Think about that for a moment and let it disseminate.
There are many, many more things. I never live in a place to which I am not drawn to for a variety of reasons. I will, never, and I mean NEVER be drawn to Belgian folk music with the accordion and whatnot, but there are many reasons that I realize why I am here, and the various paths that lead to the doorstep that I walk out of each morning.
I do fully embrace my charge as a Fulbright to be an ambassador of goodwill both to my home country and those others that I live in.
However, we can be human, well, we are human, and with being human comes being human.
And, BTW, here are this week's spoils from the Market.
However, if I have one quality that I can boast of, eventually, even when moving towards a negative slant, I am able to find the silver lining in the clouds, and to make the lemonade from the lemons. I have my maternal genetics to thank for that to be able to counter the tower of dour of my paternal genes, and the former have always triumphed, as they do now.
It is easy for one to get down on a country in which that person is the foreigner, lo straniero, l'étranger, de vreemdeling, and so on and so forth. Sometimes you are excused of certain social customs, but other times you are excluded from them, and both situations can call for a modicum of dis-ease or anxiety. You always feel that you are being watched, judged and at times ridiculed. Paranoia? If you have lived in such a scenario you would not say so. It exists. The paranoia comes into play about the extent that it is actually happening. It is happening, but often not as much as we feel it to be.
Finding the balance, then, as in all things is the key.
Finding the balance.
So, there are several things that are very "right" about Belgium, and I will take a moment to highlight them here, for, despite the incredibly small size of this country, western civilization has much to thank the Belgians for, again for better and for worse. Everything has it place, and time, and there have been many things that have happened in Belgium that have their place in history.
The Solvay Conferences
The two biggest of these were the 1911 and 1927 conferences funded by the Belgian Ernest Solvay, who is chiefly responsible for carbonated beverages, and had a list of attendees that has made every theoretical and experimental physicist drooling for decades. Here are some of the names for the 1927 conference: Schrödinger, Pauli, Heisenberg, Bohr, Born, Einstein, Dirac, Curie and Planck. The average IQ of that group just mentioned would be a Richter-scale event of any single group of minds coming together, and they were just part of it. It was at that fateful event that the (in)famous quip of Einstein made the record books for his attack against the randomness of Quantum Physics that "God does not play dice" to which, unbeknownst to most who know that quote, Bohr, the pre-eminent QP advocate answered, "Stop telling God what to do..." or along those lines. Neither has been definitely proven to be right or wrong, something I like to think of God's little joke or gentle reminder that no one knows everything all the time as I like to tell my daughter, meaning me so that she knows Papa's can have faults too.
Belgian Lace, Beer, Fries, and Cheese
For anyone who visits Belgium, you will most likely come across one or more of the above. The lacework of Belgium, specifically west Flanders is legendary. The comestibles and digestives of the latter hardly need mention except for the fact that what the world has erroneously known as "French Fries" (and for a god-forsaken time as "Freedom Fries") these are actually Belgian and there is a museum in Bruges to prove it, and the fact that the smelly "Limburger" cheeses in all of the Bugs Bunny type cartoons would be none other than the Belgian Limburger cheeses.
Music Festivals
Belgium, and specifically Flanders, is the proving and testing ground for bands around the world. Only Austin's SXSW could boast of having more direct influence on the make or break of a band. In addition, many of the world's most renowned DJs are, you guessed it, Belgian.
Movies
Look on IMDB. For some reason, nearly every major movie is released in Belgium first. It is kind of like the New Hampshire primaries. Actually, not kind of like, exactly like. Do the math.
Art
Okay, if Belgium has a corner on anything, it is art, and in a big way. Whether the Northern Renaissance is officially Belgian or Low Countries is a source of debate, but it is impossible to deny the talent that has come from this area: the Breughels, Van Eycks, Memling, Bosch and Magritte, to name but a very, very small number of monumentally important artists for their respective times. Without a doubt the latter two have been huge influences in my own life with regards to thinking about the relationships between art and life (as Bosch was for Henry Miller, inter alia), but I cannot imagine my own artistic world view without each and every one of these. Ceci, n'est pas une pipe...Derrida would have never existed without this one. Think about that for a moment and let it disseminate.
There are many, many more things. I never live in a place to which I am not drawn to for a variety of reasons. I will, never, and I mean NEVER be drawn to Belgian folk music with the accordion and whatnot, but there are many reasons that I realize why I am here, and the various paths that lead to the doorstep that I walk out of each morning.
I do fully embrace my charge as a Fulbright to be an ambassador of goodwill both to my home country and those others that I live in.
However, we can be human, well, we are human, and with being human comes being human.
And, BTW, here are this week's spoils from the Market.
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