Chopin in Amman

This post was written 2 days ago but only today I got internet connection to send it.

Some things which you take for granted just are so different when you are in some other place. Well for me classical music turned from boring and repetitive to the best soul soundtrack since I went abroad. I had noticed this already before – when I attended the first classical music concert maybe ever in my life but at least as far as I can remember.

Because whenever I go to a classical music concert what happens to me is that I enter in a different world – still like my world and my thoughts but somehow it seems an alternative, third-person perception. I reflect and lose myself in my thoughts at the sound of a prelude; a sonate ends up creating the cozy mood of somewhere rather distant and familiar – so familiar that it’s my life but through a different perspective. So I get my twilight zone by listening to classical music – music that I normally don’t listen to at home, or maybe this is exactly why, because it’s somehow different to what I am used to – and I like what’s different, have you noticed? :)

Well I started thinking that I was with a foreign group of friends and even if there were about three Jordanians in the group it was still a very international group, the same for the people we had around us and strange as it may seem we internationals become more interested in what’s happening around us, we get more curious and we actually are more active in our lifestyle when we are abroad. This happened to me before when I was in France for a year, not only with my introduction to classical music, but also with theatre (something I miss so much here, because there isn’t much and what there is sometimes it's not in English), concerts =), films, art galleries premieres and much more! And it’s not because there are more things here, it’s rather because the foreigners learn to search more, don’t settle for old or lazy habits and won’t make so much presumptions about what they are about to attend: we just want to live and breath all that we can and at the same time connect to what is familiar from back home.

So I went to an unusually familiar concert organized by the French Cultural Centre and the Polish Embassy and I felt suddenly in Europe. A couple of trainees working here came too – well more than a couple but what I found ironic is that beside a Polish trainee who came with another Polish friend and myself the other trainees were not even European. In fact a couple of them were from two apart countries and continents: Asia and America and, curious thing, the only European living with them was exactly the one who didn’t come to the concert.

And then I got to see a dear Jordanian friend, who I’ve been planning to see for weeks and always miserably failed! And a good friend who doesn’t join the group often also came, we still didn’t manage to mingle everyone together totally but we are trying and we will keep until she is part of us. So it was definitely a night with friends, just a different type of night out – though it did involve shawerma (this is how we spell it here in Jordan) and soft drinks – the typical Jordanian fast food on the concert hall minutes before it started :D That way, I can actually say there was something Jordanian about tonight.

Well then, and going back to the topic that made me start this post, I started rambling around in my head and thinking – mainly about the things that happened recently and what is on the back of my mind. I started by noticing the movements in the pianists – the second one was the most active, expressive pianist I’ve seen in a while, he was living the highs and the lows in the melody in such a dramatic way that I then begun to think how could this possible – could this be someone who lived solely for the music and that is why he was giving so much and expressing it so deep with every note he played OR could he personally be quite the opposite, someone who just lives at the highest pitch, in a crazy and ridiculous intensity that it takes so much energy out of him that he can afford to play the exact same way and keep it up – that he knows nothing more than being intense?

I will never really know about that pianist (Nima was his name), but I can reflect on that for myself. I can recognize that most of the times, my best me is the one who also lives things intensely, the good and the bad but that always has a positive outlook on the outcomes, so someone who hardly goes down and usually tries to lift the others around – sometimes even before herself. And then today I was told to be less inclusive. And I want to disagree, I feel like I should and somehow I know I won’t change much in that sense because deep inside I feel like it would no longer be me that less inclusive being. But maybe I should start being less inclusive, maybe I should be less of an optimistic, maybe I should experience things in a lesser higher pitch like the saddest and happiest moments in a piece of music and the amazing faces the pianist was making while playing them. Maybe I should be less black or white but I don’t know if the should is what I want, so I am not sure if I’m willing to change that and become more centered, more halfway, more mild and never getting so down but also not reaching so high neither.

I always tend to consider the overall, the big picture of things and how the way you love should relate to the way you are friends with, to the way you hate or lose interest, to everythig you do in fact. If you are intense about one, then you should be about the others, if you are selfish in a sense it is difficult to imagine that you are truly selfless in some other context, that we are in the end sometimes divided into those who use others and those who are used by others – and I like none of those options, but could this really be the way the world revolves?

This is a very important thing that has become more and more conscious to me over these past months, more than it ever was when I was abroad, maybe because usually there were much more similarities: to what extent is the change within you a new place brings good and desired, according to yourself? And this makes me as aware as I can about who I want to become. And I want to become a wholesome person, I strive for that and I try to show the same face everytime, just with slight variances and shades of course, but the same core when I’m at work, when I’m partying, when I’m resting with friends and when I’m with myself looking back on my way. I wrote this in the beginning of my blog and I meant it – this is also a trip to becoming the person I want to be, not only about the good things I’ve learned and acquired but how to cope and improve the lesser good parts in me and around. The balance so far is that I’m learning to reject those things which I don’t identify with: behaviours, mindsets, feelings, statuses quo. I have to question them and I won’t settle for the norm of not doing so. But this is far from peaceful sometimes...

And I thought as well about some news I just got today – something that made me have a mix of feelings in the beginning, very honestly, but then made me be quite happy for two friends of mine who are now together and it is a rather complicated situation (a Jordanian with a non Jordanian), that I really just wish them the best of luck! I also thought about the fact that I still don’t know any other Portuguese in Amman except for my consul and his family (but they are actually not Portuguese at all, rather Jordanians, so it’s still not the same) and how strange this is – would it be better or worse to have some other home citizens around? I have never much thought of this before, but can someone be lonely for not knowing their unknown compatriots who by random chance live in the same city or country as them?

Then I thought about how tired I’ve been recently, how much I have been abusing of computers since all my work revolves around them and I need them for the biggest to the smallest things: sending emails and communicating with members, checking facebook and being updated on my friends’ news from around the world while I also update them with the most (ir)relevant info that I highlight from my days (yes, here as well :P).. That I have to use it to talk to my mom in particular but I was unable to do so since I got back about 2/3 weeks ago because of other things and now coz I have no internet at home. That I also use it to check pictures people tag me in (and to upload the pics I’m still supposed to show about my Jordan!), so in the end it's like a life in itself, a life behind a screen :S

I was trying to close my eyes on parts of the concert, which might be why I found the 2nd pianist much more vibrant (I missed part of the first)– but then I guess it’s also my eyes and I like to see those people that put their lives and souls into what they do… and I thought about things that I may be doing wrong here, how to fix uncomfortable situations (what’s the point of enduring them, even if for only 4 months and something now?) and if the end of my Jordanian life will still have a twist like in the Hollywood films.

Don’t get me wrong, this has been an amazing experience and I will probably look back on this year filled with nostalgia, but this has also been one of the toughest, unclear and exhausting years I’ve ever had, in many ways it has been impacting me for the best and worst reasons and that is why Jordan will always be in my heart and like a local I will never really quite get it entirely.

And what’s best, I can’t read the end of the book yet and I am not sure how it’s going to end up – this is the best suspense story I’ve ever lived.