It would have felt wrong to me had everyone at Nightlight been rapt. The casual energy -- nearly indifference -- struck me as the appropriate mood. There seemed no reason for anyone to get exercised or even very enthusiastic that a Japanese Shinto priest was performing folky Western minimalism, on a computer, in Carrboro, North Carolina, on a Wednesday night in June 2003. As the attention of the vintage-clad hipster crowd (Carrboro is often called the Left Bank of the Triangle) winked on and off, I felt the world's borders collapsing on themselves. The concatenation of distant people, places, and styles seemed so natural, despite the very improbable circumstances -- not to mention the technological conspiracy of jumbojets, digital music, and the internet that brought Norihide, Carrboro's bohemians and their dogs, and my sister and me, to Nightlight. This is the world we live in now. I'm not complaining about this narrowing of continents; it's inevitable -- it's the continuum -- and perhaps it does little more than demand I do better at manufacturing my own amazement. I'm at liberty now to get it from Japan or my own computer; via Shinto or the garden in the backyard. Better still, I should voyage in the people I know and love, or in those I could learn to.

Near the end of his set, Norihide accompanied his PowerBook on acoustic guitar (which is why I think that's the one analog sound on his record); then he surprised me by moving the microphone to his mouth and singing. His voice, like the rest of his music, was quiet and plain but arresting. He sang in Japanese until an extended coda in which he brought out that old folk refrain, "Sha-la-la-la ... sha-la-la-la ...." Except that, because of his Asian tongue, Norihide actually sang "Sha-ra-ra-ra." My sister and I exchanged a look -- we are known to involuntarily and wordlessly egg each other into hysterical laughing fits, in public, over just such a trifle -- but that was all. No one in Nightlight giggled. Norihide's mispronunciation seemed precisely the collision point of our cultures. Perhaps there was relief that a partition, however slender, still remained. Otherwise we were sliding into a slurry of art, of humanity, of nations. Otherwise we might gobble each other up in our mutual imperialist maws.

*****

On my way to the Netherlands, I spent two days in New York City, where, speaking of imperialist maws, I got a foretaste of my destination. My American History seventh-graders studied the European colonization of the New World this semester, and their textbook reminded me of the large role of the Dutch in that operation. You may have heard the one about Peter Minuit, who bought Manhattan for some beads and baubles worth 'twenty-four dollars'. (By what adjustment for inflation? And where do these ludicrous myths come from anyway?) But the Dutch were all over the northeastern seaboard, staked claims in the Caribbean and South America (not to mention Asia and Africa), and probably wielded as much power as any nation on earth during the XVII Century. Not bad for a country slightly larger than Vermont.

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This is deceiving: Holland is one of the most crowded countries in the world. Its population roughly equals that of Florida -- which isn't exactly a spacious frontier itself -- but occupies about one quarter the land area. Perhaps the Dutch are so pleasant partly because they have to be.