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SINGAPORE | CHINESE CULTURE | IMMERSIVE LEARNING
The day I bought a guzheng and started playing classical Chinese music
(living the wonders of humanity’s arts and crafts)
Getting the feel of a culture has been an essential part of my relocation history ever since I started wandering about on Mother Earth.
When I say that it’s about getting the feel of a culture, you might wonder what culture actually is and what are its constituent elements — but I won’t be going into this today.
For now — let’s take it quite literally. It’s about feel. Not necessarily understand. It’s about sensorial experiences. It’s about tactility, vibrations, butterflies in the belly.
That is why I like musical instruments so much. Wherever I go, I feel the urge to touch one, have one, play one. When we lived in the Middle East, my partner Michaela Broeckx and I, we couldn’t help but linger in a luthier’s workshop, marveling at the richness and variety of instruments in the process of being made. Deeply inhaling to not miss even one particle of the fragrance of freshly cut, chipped, or sanded wood. Making mental pictures of the craftsperson’s hands and tools. Later, in Zanzibar, the two of us enrolled at the music academy in the House of Wonders, taking ʿūd…
