The cultural schizophrenia caused by the dual identities, dual passports, dual
worldviews has resulted in far too many frequent flyer points. It means to
be frozen to the marrow as you hunch over the handlebars punching a path into
the driving sleet one day and the next to swelter in the heat where the sweat
in your eyes is the only fluid available to the insistent flies. When you understand
both cricket and keatsen, when the language in which you dream fits the bed
in which you lie, then you belong to both places.
Academic, writer and musician, Andrys Onsman
is based primarily in Melbourne, Australia, but returns regularly to Leeuwarden
in the far north of The Netherlands.
He has completed two doctorates—one in Educational Psychology, the other
on Aboriginal people in the media—published a book on Frisian identity,
numerous plays, musical scores, songs, poems and stories, articles for the
popular press*
as well as numerous scholarly papers.
He still plays football (soccer) enthusiastically
if somewhat circumspectly with the All-Stars. He wrote a novel for his teenage
daughter of which only
one copy (hers) exists. The last rock-band he was in—The Strawboys—imploded
in screeching howl of feedback, after which hair loss encouraged an on-going
interest in jazz and blues. His greatest claim to fame is to having been
thrown out of Art School, which took some doing—or rather far too little
doing.
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