vagabond 1977 0831 on the Danube

wednesday 31 august 1977

aboard the Volga on the Danube

0835

we passed kilometre 1860 ten or fifteen minutes ago while we were at breakfast.. kilometre 1869 brings us to Bratislava and a new country. the land on each side continues to be flat though the trees at the water’s edge are not so persistent. the banks are lined with large stones which seem to serve to keep the edge from crumbling into the stream. there are meadows to be seen. and in one quiet junction where stone partially dammed the flow, a boy in red bathing trunks was fishing. he waved to us. I hope there were those on deck who waved back.

there is now a sense of the ending of an episode. a sense intensified no doubt by the energetic demands of Budapest. travelling was hot. there was much to be crammed in. it was worth it. I think of the occasions as an intense episode approaching an unavoidable conclusion. The one strongest in my mind is the post final show of the Solid Eight. That was in 1944. Thirty-three years ago. I was the sixteen-year-old boy-wonder-pianist. I had learned to be effective in styles that were new to me. My own classical work improved out of mind as a result. I grew to thrill to the applause of audiences two thousand strong.

We are all jongleurs. Mountebanks. Troubadours. Wandering minstrels. Clowns? The extravert response to popular attention. 

Now I have seen the realisation of a dream. We have travelled more than a thousand miles of Danube. The roman legions have not been waving their spears on every inch of bank, but the impression of Trajan has grown stronger and stronger. It’s not a very popular code today, but Great Men do make a difference to history. Trajan did it. The greatest extent of the Roman Empire. His signs are everywhere. His tablet at the Iron Gates. His defence works. His bridges. His edicts. ‘Aquincum shall be a town : the capital of lower Pannonia.’ We shall do this. Those people shall carry out my orders. After him, Hadrian. The importance of defence. The Wall across Britannia to keep the Picts and Scots at bay. Where did Hadrian go wrong? Or was it simply that external conditions had changed? Did he try to maintain a familiar status quo in a changing world? The legend of Canute, the danish king of England, set to keep the rising tide at bay. Some things cannot be done. 

The ravenously conservative make life miserable for others while they cling to their familiar ‘standards’. But if you try to stand still in a moving world, you move backwards. You must move forward even to maintain yesterday’s position. Every fine practising practical musician knows this. Ricci once told Joseph Post’s director’s class : ‘it takes me three hours each day to reach the point at which I left off yesterday.’ Only yesterday’s written word, yesterday’s brush on canvas, yesterday’s brick on brick remain for tomorrow to be seen. The mind must always move on. and on. and on.

Creative Dreaming

saints Sergius and Bacchus ..

the Aquincum organ .. 

Biró and his black wife ..

boys and girls with arms interlaced in the streets of Budapest ..

the happiness of people whose roots are secure ..

currency

I am profoundly grateful that my preparation included small sums of paper money for most of the countries I shall visit. Grateful, too, that the mental prompting put some american dollars in my hand despite gloomy newspaper implications of a shrinking value. Dollars bought at Tel Aviv and Rome when other currencies were more difficult to negotiate. Dollars bought refreshment on the Volga before we organised our Deutschmarks. The currency on board is calculated in Deutschmarks, Dollars and Schillings. Boys in Budapest enquired for Geltwechsel. They wanted Deutschmarks. The special tourist shops wanted foreign currency. We changed twenty english pounds. Rather more than six hundred hungarian florints. At the moment of renegotiation - with the ship about to sail and the Ibusz office apparently closed – the clerk told us our exchange receipts advised us that only half our received sums of hungarian money could be renegotiated. Between us we had spent hardly a pound. There just were not the articles we wanted to buy. So I came away with sixteen american dollars and some florints which I hope will turn into something else by the end of the week. We bought nothing in Jugoslavia for lack of local currency. Ditto Bulgaria. Now we’ll see what Czechoslovakia holds.

film

I searched high and low in Budapest for Ektachrome. None. The special Tourist shops had ciné film but only one had 35 mm and that was 25 ASA. Too slow for my intentions. And too expensive at a quoted price of USA $9.90 for twenty transparency frames. One fotoshop in Vasi had Agfachrome S. But it was 120. Not my size. There was some Orwo. To me this was unfamiliar and slow. I thanked my stars that the bulk loader back home in Kirkwood Street had had enough Tri X to fill all my empty cassettes and decided to shoot in black and white until I can buy more colour in Wien.

0920

we are berthing at Bratislava.

the trees on the promenade – horse chestnuts, conkers – are turning brown.

AUTUMN

My Autumn. The Autumn of Our World.

As I envisaged when I dreamt in Sydney.