Variations on Eastern Lands

I met with RN yesterday, in a miserable, rainy Boston night.

The demons that haunt the young academics nowadays were all over us.  RN was sad.  We sat down among the merry couples of Jacob Wirth, drank Guinness, talked about deep troubling issues, and smirked at the shiny happy people around us.  Then, off we went, taking the B-Train on the Green Line towards Boston College.

Our destination: Paradise.

We got there along with a bunch of Boston hipsters.  We drank more… Rum and Diet Coke for me, proudly representing my hypocrisy in life, and high-life for RN, pretty much proving he does not give a shit.

Then, came the band: Balkan Beat Box

They were refreshingly inventive…  Of course, as I hear the intendended obnoxiosness of the music, I realized, I was in for the real thing. They were going to either overwhelm me or fail me miserably.  As the trumpets and saxophones came into play, I thought how much better they are than, say,  Orient Express, and I sipped from my rum and diet-coke, and started jumping.  It was the real thing.

Plus, beneath all those obnoxiousness, you could still taste the bitter melodies of the eastern lands: An inventive combination of the Narodna muzika (think Ederlezi) and the rural songs of the Middle East (think Kardes Turkuler).   They were much more authentic than Beirut, and much more inventive than Gogol Bordello.

I ended up on the stage, looking at the crowd, jumping…

It was a good night.  Boston is growing on me!

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