anath/answer
{about}

gray green

blue gold

I am a confused American. I'm confused because we left the States when I was five years old, and being now twenty-one, I am very out of touch with my own culture. When people ask me where in the States I am from, I have no good answer. My mother's family is from West Virginia, but I've never lived there. My father was raised in Chicago and Philadelphia (I've never lived there either) but his family is orginally from Switzerland. I have Swiss citizenship, but do not speak any of the four official languages of Switzerland and never lived there. I do plan to remedy this however, as I have moved to Basel, Switzerland, to study at the Musik Akademie der Stadt Basel. I play piano, which I love, but I have no idea what I will do with a degree in classical music. This Remains To Be Seen.

I grew up in Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Central African Republic, China, and Hungary. This was due to my father's occupation as a diplomat. Of all the places I've lived, Hungary feels most like home to me. After my family's post of three years there ended, I stayed in Budapest while they moved on. I lived on my own there for another four years (from age seventeen to twenty-one) studying music. I decided rather late (seventeen is late for a pianist!) that I wanted to study music professionally, and being in no way prepared for conservatory auditions, I took private training in Hungary for those four years. The first two were immensely difficult and immensely lonely, and I am awfully glad they are behind me. The last two years were full of friends and a lot of musical progress. At the end of them I auditioned for the Akademie here in Basel and was accepted. So here I am, having finally moved again after seven years, which feels like a long time to a person of my globe-trotting upbringing.

My parents are now posted to Vienna, where they live with my youngest sister Naomi. My other younger sister is at Dartmouth College, and we are all very proud to have to produced an elitist Ivy League snob. Actually I am very proud of her: Sarah wants to study drama/theater, having worked at an English-speaking theater in Vienna last year, where I saw her perform in the demanding role of the maid in The Inspector Calls. My older brother Jesse has graduated from college (Notre Dame) and is working as a computer programmer ("software engineer" is the spiffier title) in Redlands, California. He will probably end up the richest of us, since Sarah will be a starving actress, I will be a starving musician, and Naomi's ambition is to have a job that requires a minimum ammount of work regardless of low pay.

This site is mostly a place to store my writing, most of which I don't think is very good, but there a few things here and there I always enjoy reading. The music recordings are up to prove that I Am A Musician, but most are quite old and I never listen to them if I can help it. Feel free to browse around and drop me a line if you are so inclined.