The plan is to leave on the 31st of December and make a stop at Philadelphia to complete the trip overseas via Paris, France. I will meet Nassim at the Charles de Gaulle and then stay at his grandparents' house in the heart of Paris, blocks away from the metro.
From there, we have crafted as follows:
January 1-4 (Through First Weekend): Paris and neighboring points of interest in France.
January 4-8 (First Full Week): Travel up to Brussell, Belgium; visit my family from Mother's side; visit Guillaume and Roemaet Family.
January 8-11 (Latter Half of Week): To Amsterdam and the Heineken Brewery!
January 11-13 (Second Full Week): To Frankfurt and Germany; visit more family from Mother's side; visit Berlin!
January 13-17 (Latter Half of Week): Finish off the trip by traveling south and passing through Switzerland's chocolate, and then staying in Milano, Italy until the overnight to our return to Paris.
January 18-19 (Last days in Europe): Jetlag.
This is going to be a great kickoff to the new year. I have never experienced Europe on my own, and this is my opportunity to learn as much as I can about the second half of the world that I've been thirsting to see.
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Last practice, we burst into a couple of songs that have began to take shape in the hands of both Dan and Ian during their first Fall semester. One of these songs has quickly become a symbol for defining how we have come to form the sound we have grown to appreciate together. We have named this song "La Viada".
"La Viada" opens with a beautiful and mysterious melody that the lead guitar and bass guitar complete together. It's a story that is told by having a call-and-response function to emphasize a strong, successful layer of communication created by musicians alike. Consequently, the sounds produced by these two instruments are harmonious, and the melody lifts off above common time, ignoring usual time structure and instead indicating uncertainty in the direction of the song. The suspenseful yet melodic questions these two instruments bring up in their time alone also suggests that level of uncertainty in the air, which lingers on until the lead guitar introduces a deep, minor and depressing segue that opens the song in another dimension.
The song itself contains many passages that give off so much uncertainty as to where it's going to go and how it's going to get there, but all that becomes clear when the drums pound away at a 4/4 meter pulse that dramatically changes the mood of the song. The haunting yet almost hopeful phrase, "The light is coming" conjures the bass and the lead to fill the void into a linear drive (i.e., like a linear progression) that ultimately dominates the second half of "La Viada".
This linear progression goes to show the listener just how much we've gone back in time. This drive serves as a time-traveling device, a means to travel back and show everyone where we have come from. The unconventional, yet tacky consistency of the pounding drums pulls them away from the foreground and brings out the guitar solo as Dan works on stimulating his greatest influences including David Gilmour, Joe Satriani, a little bit of Santana, and countless others. It sounds all too unfamiliar in relation to our repertoire, yet it is a breathtaking diversion into the past, where 60's and 70's rock music still has a grapple on the teenagers of our generation, and the viada that came from our hard work thus far reaches its hand backwards from the precious influences that has never been lost. The bass drives away at an impulsive phrase that reflects the groove of the drums, and the exemption of voices pulls away at the experimentation of the keyboards and synthesized sounds, also indiciating at the sounds that we remember 30 years ago. The end product is a passage that mirrors a bit of Porcupine Tree linearity and fuses that with a touch of head-heel musicianship by incorporating a raw, ever-growing intensity. That head-heel musicianship just goes to show how unpredictably confident we can feel about the direction of our music.
"The light is coming" refers to the coming of our age, the dawn of our generation and the music driving it. As we confront the listener directly with the change in direction, so we travel together with that listener and show him/her the path we are taking with our music. So, in fact, "La Viada" is the careful example we have chosen to show all of our listeners that we respect the music before, during, and after us, and we are not afraid to understand the uncertainty behind the future of our lives and what it has in store for us. We are also determined to demonstrate the root of the music that has affected our own and will affect the music that will come after us.
Then, of course, "La viada" is the momentum through time with which we have only a specific time frame for the delivery of our own influence in music history.
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