Slowly but surely the Agora filled up with an audience at the beginning of Tuesday’s lunchbreak. Once the seats were reasonably filled, Hiska Bakker from Studium Generale opened this Week of Inspiration. This week will be leading up to the anniversary of the UT coming Friday and is organised by Studium Generale in collaboration with the Honours Program and Study Association Ockham.
After this introduction, Hordijk entered the stage with a big backpack on. He started his story in front of his childhood home, before for his pilgrim journey to Finisterre, Spain. He went there to ask the current inhabitants an unorthodox question: ‘Could I take a stone from your backyard?’.
‘Weight off my shoulders’
Hordijk’s father was a preacher at the church across the street. This gave him a lot of pressure of ‘having to do good’. When his father fell of a ladder, resulting in brain injury that changed his personality, his mother decided they should move away from the place he grew up in and away from his father. This stone was supposed to represent this experience, so he could leave it behind on his journey and let the experience go.
After this personal story, Hordijk stepped to the piano to play a piece resonating with the feelings his story brought up. He continued to describe his journey, through several countries, rain and hail, while making new friends and saying goodbye to them again. Each piece of the story was accompanied by a suitable piece of music he performed on his piano. In the middle of his journey, he accidentally left his stone at the house of the mayor of a town they visited, and he described it as ‘a literal weight of my shoulders’.
Crescendo
After a long journey and several inspiring stories and piano pieces, he arrived at the metaphorical end of the world. Here, his friends from back home would bring his piano, so he could play it on the edge of a cliff, a spot he had chosen out before leaving. However, this spot turned out to be difficult and dangerous to reach with the heavy piano. After doubting for a long time, they decided to try to carry it up there anyway. ‘If this is the place, we’ll make it happen.’
They succeeded, ending the story on a crescendo, and with it a piano piece synced up to a video of him playing it on location. Hordijk concluded that during his journey many things didn’t go according to plan, but: ‘If you plan everything out before you leave, you’ll never leave.’
And with this message he left the audience encouraged to sometimes not think, just go.
The Week of Inspiration will continue this week with several talks from Hans Schnitzler, André Kuipers and others.
