Part eight: Last days in Estonia

The last posting that I offered up was completed around noon on quiet Monday (September 24 to be exact); and almost as soon as I had completed everything, John Grzinich had called me up wondering if I would be up for taking an excursion to a couple of places outside of Tartu with him and Toomas. Of course, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to visit more sites of Soviet ruins. So into Tartu, John and I go to pick up Toomas; and then we head to the north-east to a site which I'm pretty sure Toomas sited as being called "Avangard" Supposedly, this was the name of a relatively recently crumbled farming complex near the town where he grew up. Amidst the tall grasses, the complex had a large water tank which had some sort of structural damage and was left in a field to corrode. There was also a building, which I assume to be some sort of grain dispensary; and this too was left to the elements. Toomas mentioned that no less than 15 years ago, these buildings were operational... given the time frame, I have to wonder if the independence from Soviet rule had anything to do with the demise of the complex. Needless to say, we spent almost 4 hours around this location, making a ton of recordings. At one time, a local farmer pulls up to the grain dispensary, after noticing that a mysterious car was parked just outside. Fortunately, John and Toomas have been out here enough times that the farmer does recognize them and asked if we had made some good recordings that day... in Estonian mind, you. I had no idea what he said.

The weather that afternoon was perfect for these types of recordings, with no discernable wind, very clear skies, and a pleasant temperature. By the time we headed out to grab a bite to eat (pancakes and schnitzel, if you must know), the sun had set, and the nearly full moon had risen to an equally still landscape. With moonlight at our disposal, John drove us to another site further towards Lake Peipsi. This place was very similar to one I had discovered earlier on my bike ride from Mooste to Mehikoorma, where the heavy concrete roof of some massive piece of architecture had been populated with sapling trees and had also collapsed in certain areas. Concrete rubble and shattered tiles littered the concrete floors of this space, making it ideal for us to set up microphones and make another set of recordings. It all seemed quite inviting, although the gunshot we heard from a nearby field was not the most welcoming sound for the three of us. Fortunately, this was not intended for us... and we continued into the night with the moon as our only light source. All in all a very enjoyable day with two people who I had gotten to know fairly well during my stay in Estonia.

The following day -- Tuesday, September 25 -- was the day in which I was supposed to give a lecture about my work at the Y Galeri, which is the gallery associated with Tartu University. I really wasn't sure what to expect in terms of an audience or the questions that would be asked of me or the cultural context in which I was to speak. Actually, I was very pleasantly surprised. My lecture didn't appear to bore many of the people there, and I received a handful of very thoughtful questions.
As for all of the questions that were tossed at me last night, the one the caught me most off guard was "what was your favorite or most memorable experience?" Being put on the spot such as that was not what I would have expected. I quickly replied that a question like that is like being asked what your favorite music was, that it would constantly change with each day. But I didn't want to appear aloof with the answer, so I just spouting something relative trivial as an answer for that moment.. and sorry, I'm not repeating those here. Well, because, as I mentioned it's not a constant.

Another curious one, was "what was the earliest sound that caught your attention?" Again, a very difficult one to answer. So I retorted something of a history that I thought might be amusing -- that Mom got me a Beatles record for my third birthday so I could bash around on the toy drum kit I had like Ringo Starr; then seeing Johnny Rotten for the first time on television; then being hypnotized by zoviet france as an 18 year old boy so that I didn't notice the female dancer who had slowly disrobed throughout the performance. I also mentioned the high school roast where fellow students announced that in 10 years, I would only be listening to bees and bulldozers. It drew a laugh, but strange how prescient that would be!

I did get the "what kind of instruments did you use" question from this older gentleman with a massive white beard and big thick glasses. He had also asked if I was familiar with a composer / philosopher named "George Gurgov." I had to say no, but could he write down his name for me? Then he made some references to Sun Ra, and bid goodbye on his way to a Fassbinder film. It turns out that this man is something of a Tartu icon, as a former semiotics professor of Russian descent who had a head injury some time ago. After the lecture was done, somebody in the audience mentioned that his Russian accent was mispronouncing the composers name. He meant G.I. Gurdjieff, and of course I'm familiar with his work! Grumble. Oh well. I also learned later that this bearded eccentric is the namesake for the MoKS cat!

There were a couple of other questions about my relationship with the environment and the differences between mental states / emotional states that I think I got through okay. Somebody also asked me how I should describe "experimental music" to someone who hasn't any introductions into the work; and that one was one I've addressed many times at Aquarius. I tried to give clear explanations as to who Nurse With Wound was and what The Wire was. I just hope that I didn't say anything that was too self-referential or too patronizing. Given that I don't talk about my work all that often, I can easily look at the discussion in terms of the things that I should have said. But the audience was really attentive, and I got the feeling that I may have communicated something. If anything, I was really glad that the discussion moved beyond the "how did you do this?" question. That one seems to be that I get most often; and last night, the Estonians exceeded my expectations. Hooray for smart people!

By Thursday, September 27, I had packed up all of my belongs at MoKS, bid John & Evelyn a pleasant goodbye, and headed off to Tallinn to ultimately catch the first plane that would get me back to San Francisco. Tallinn is both the capital of Estonia and the gateway to the rest of Europe, as a clearly cosmopolitan city. The draw to Tallinn for many people would be the Old Town, the oldest part of the city that dates back many many centuries yet has been re-vitalized by a number of chic / tourist driven business that have carved out chic / tourist-centric spaces within these historical stone buildings. After being in the Southeastern part of Estonia, where most everybody has at least some knowledge of English but speaks their native tongue, English was pretty much the language I heard throughout the Old Town... mostly from tourists. Tallinn has been a destination for the British who want to drink very heavily and very cheaply, and this proved to be true to some extent, although I did hear quite a lot of Americans through my wanders.

As absolutely fascinating as the Old Town was in terms of the well-kept antiquities (with their age of many many centuries made for an ironic counterpoint to the thorough decay of many of the Soviet built structures just a few decades ago), the Old Town left me with this Las Vegas vibe... that is was somehow themed for tourist consumption. I felt much more comfortable wandering out towards the east of town, where I found a nice cafe that served great food on my way to Estonian Art Museum. I hadn't great expectations of the museum, but was pleasantly surprised by the work within. It's obviously an institutional space with a particular historical / sociological agenda... but it was an agenda stating a position that was slightly dissonant with the agendas found in similar American institutions. Yes, the museum wholeheartedly championed Estonian art from the 17th Century to the present. Many of the artists were clearly influenced by work being made in Paris, London, or New York (with the only glances to Moscow & St. Petersburg during Soviet times), and many of these homages were quite effective. Johann Koeler's massive allegorical painting "Lorelei needmind munkade poolt" owed quite a lot to Delacroix in terms of the swirling use of paint and demonstrative antipathy to Catholic legalism. Alfred Hiry's painting of two soldiers playing cards (which strangely I could not find anywhere on line, perhaps due to my semi-decipherable scribbles that I made to myself throughout the museum) could easily be mistaken for a Manet at the pinnacle of his career. And the contemporary artist Jüri Okas balanced between the artwork as evidence strategies of Robert Smithson and the taxonomic photographs of Bernd & Hilla Becher. But at least one was wholly unique: Eduard Wiiralt, who could have been pegged as a Surrealist and was actively producing his best work in Paris during the '20s and '30s. His etchings oscillated between humorously seductive and psychically tortured.

Soon after leaving the museum, I found myself at the Kompressor, one of the few cafes in the Old Town that didn't appear to cater to the tourists. Rather, this pancake house seemed to be the cheap hang-out for students. I treated myself to a minced-meat pancake and beer before calling it a night, as the next day, I would begin the 21 hour journey across 10 time zones back to San Francisco.