last week, my cross-atlantic return flight landed an hour early.
the pilot was extremely apologetic over the intercom: because we’d arrived so quickly, there wasn’t time for the second meal service that had been promised with the purchase of the plane ticket.
for us passengers, an in-flight meal was a small price to pay for an hour back in our lives.
on this most recent trip, I visited two cities I had never seen before: Madrid and Tunis.
I was struck by the differences in their familiarity. the Spanish capital leans in on you, with crooked and narrow streets that harken back centuries but now offer the buzzing hum of modernity. Tunis sprawls across the Mediterranean coast, an endless network of civilizations that have learned to coexist—accepting of everyone and no-one at the same time.
Plaza Mayor
the Ruins of Carthage
both are steeped in colonial history, which reflects in their languages: Spanish and French (& Arabic), and in both cases, English. tourists complicate the conversation, with all parties consciously aware of they will never fully be understood by one another. and yet everyone there is on the same page: the stories of these cities are worth knowing.
those stories proved to be much more intertwined than I expected. tour guides recounted the interactions between the Phoenicians, Berbers, Arabs, and Romans, outlining the inflection points in time that led to dramatic changes in culture and tradition.
for Carthage, the ruins of which lie just outside of Tunis, the Roman poet Virgil had a dramatic and deleterious effect on the remembering of its history.
in Madrid, the Carthaginians and Romans paved the way for Spain to crystallize into its own empire—which continues to exist, albeit in mutated form.
as much as I love the history, my favorite part of traveling is that moment when, a day or two after arriving, you take a drink of water and a deep breath of fresh air and fully realize you are in a different and unique place. just by inhabiting it, you become a little bit that new place and it becomes you.
for both Madrid and Tunis, generations of people have stood over the same hills and lived echoing lives: long and sun-baked days, big meals with friends and family, crowded and busy city centers. what a joy it was to join in that tradition.
on the music front:
new show coming up in early july—announcement about that coming soon.
in the meantime catch me in tompkins most weekends (mornings) and look forward for a full band show toward the end of the summer.
album continues in earnest.
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