Solo, Part 1: Introducing Ethan

The word doppelganger comes from German, and literally means “double-goer.” According to the handy-dandy Oxford American Dictionary built into my Mac dashboard, it means “an apparition, or double of a living person.” My now Alaskan, former Baltimorean friend Kyle once told me that if you ever meet your doppelganger, legends say that you could die instantly. I think that I have met as close to what comes as my doppelganger without having to forever depart this world, if only because he comes in the form of a six-foot, red-headed man from Alabama, named Ethan.

Ethan and I met in Tokyo, Japan on our way to Indonesia back in 2003, through the program USINDO, and I swear we have shared the same life ever since. We both entered graduate school, only becoming interested in Indonesian ethnomusicology after randomly joining the gamelan ensembles at our prospective universities. We both ended up studying Indonesian language and culture in Yogyakarta, where we became friends. Also, we’re both pretty bad at keeping in touch with old friends. That’s why I’m always half-surprised and yet half-expecting to see him whenever I do anything Indonesian-y related. For example, I’ll go to an ethnomusicology conference, and there is Ethan. Not so strange, right? I go to Yogyakarta in 2005, randomly meet a dude at the foot of the volcano, Mt. Merapi, only to be told that he had recently met another American ethnomusicologist in Sulawesi. This particular American had gotten a grant to study in Indonesia for the exact same amount of time that my grant lasted to be in the country. I call the number he gives me, and lo and behold am talking to Ethan. I decide to study advanced Indonesian language at the University of Wisconsin for the summer, and I walk through the door on the first day of icebreakers, and who do I meet, but Ethan! And after a bit of chatting, it turns out that we both received Fulbright grants for ten months to be in Indonesia during the same year. We both planned on leaving in September, but the visa process ended up holding us back a few months.

So, here we are, in Indonesia again, albeit he in Solo and I in Bandung. Luckily, for two people whose lives happen to run in parallel tracks, we get along great. A little too well, actually. As adults and colleagues, we recognize that it can’t last forever. To that end, we have already staged our professional rivalry that begins with a race to steal each other’s students, and results in him ending up as a crippled, embittered old man, and me an old woman, sentenced to life emprisonment, after having unsuccessfully tried to run him over with my car while he’s riding his bike home from work.