April in history

I will share two articles here to mark the passage of time, which astonishes me more and more for each year, each decade, that passes.

NIRVANA:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/apr/11/nirvana-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-collaborations-lorde-joan-jett-st-vincent-kim-gordon

RWANDA:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/06/magazine/06-pieter-hugo-rwanda-portraits.html

Twenty years ago in April the world convulsed, and the death that surrounded you depended on where you were and what you were aware of. Close to a million murders in six weeks in Rwanda - inescapable for them, wholly ignorable for us - but one suicide in Seattle overshadowed all of that for my generation and most other Americans.

It may take another twenty years for me to sort this all out in my head and heart. I didn't even know Rwanda existed until I was almost thirty, until I sank to my knees on the floor the genocide museum in Kigali in July of 2008 and cried my eyes out, having seen, heard and read too much.

Nirvana, however, had been an almost constant presence in my life since I was thirteen. Their music and what I perceived to be their values influenced me enormously when I was at my most impressionable age, but that influence had faded (or so I thought) by the time Anette and I were traveling around East Africa by bus.

Reading these and other articles this April has caused myriad emotions and thoughts to congregate and agitate against one another. The experiences that shape us do so differently, varying in duration, intensity and resonance, and they surface and resurface in our lives on their time, not ours; a pleasant process of 'non-control,' especially for a control freak like me.

As I've written before (and say often to my students) my identity and even personality changes based on which culture I'm attuned to on any particular day - punk, African, Spanish, banjo geek, ski enthusiast - and this is of course influenced by the books I read, music I listen to, people I meet, food I eat, etc. My experience of imbibing Nirvana, acting out my own version of Kurt's life through Meridian (we covered Aneurysm, too, but never as well as Kim Gordon:-) is still just as important to me as my more recent East African identity and our incredible two years there.

Over a lifetime, certain dreams are achieved while others will remain (sometimes painfully) in the firmament, and feelings of regret and nostalgia change places like the sun and moon. What is important is being able to connect to both things, all sides, and to still find yourself in the middle of it all. New father laughs at self-obsessed post and returns his attention to Sunniva:-)