urban djinn

South Asia Reading Challenge

2011-01-17T15:32:00.025Z

In the process of packing up my bags and home 2 weeks ago a tweet by @robcrilly caught my eye: read and review six books with a South Asian connection in 2011. This was right up my alley - now I have landed perhaps I should say gulli. I set to task, enthusiastically noting down titles for my shortlist that night. This brainstorm blizzard of 19 titles clearly left me far from 6! With bags to pack and key departure questions still outstanding, it was set to one side.

Since then I've made the plane - and flown from London, over (most notably) Afghanistan and Pakistan, which rewarded the most wow-ing views when I opened the window shutter mid-flight, to land on the banks of the Ganges in the holy city of Benaras (Varanasi).

When I opened the shutter in the flight... The view was breathtaking. It had been night until this point. The first pic is taken over Afghanistan, to the west-south-west of Kabul. In the second picture you can see the snowy mountains meeting their outwash plain and then the arrival of drier mountains (to the left), which would soon become west Pakistan.

And so it was this evening in Varanasi that I brought out my list and resolved to repack it more neatly. Sitting over a thali and chai along one of the many gullis that nudge against the famous ghats I came up with this:

1. The Immigrant, Manju Kapur (2010) - on the shortlist for the South Asian Literature Prize which will be announced at the Jaipur Literature Festival next week (21-15 Jan). Incidentally - my next destination!

2. Empires of the Indus, Alice Albinia (2009) - "Following the [Indus] River upstream and back in time... "

3. Maharanis, Lucy Moore (2004) - the lives of four influential women, each a princess of the royal courts of India, through the Raj era into independence.

4. The Wandering Faldon, Jamil Ahmad (2011) - Jamil Ahmad's short story in Granta 112: Pakistan ('The Sins of the Mother') was very powerful, and remarkable for its writing. It was here that I learned that at 77 he is about to publish his first work of fiction.

5. The Cloud Messanger, Aamer Hussain (2011) - Another Gulmohar Tree was a rare treat and I couldn't leave trying his next collection of short stories out of this.

6. Ghalib at Dusk, and other stories, Nighat M. Gandhi (2009) - the blurb says: "set in cities resonant with the subcontient's history - Karachi, Allahabad, Ahmedabad - Nighat Gandhi's stories are about alternative lives." The author was born in Bangladesh, lived in Pakistan in the 90s and is now settled in India, affording quite a rare perspective on the region.

On heading to the Jaipur Literature Festival this week I expect my reading shelf might get a little plumper! With full rights reserved to swap, add and junk titles, here we go....

First up is The Immigrant, which at 106 pages in I am loving.

Link: South Asia Reading Challenge

Snow in Shacklewell, E8 (1.47pm, 18/12/10)

2010-12-18T20:59:00.001Z

A moment in time on Shacklewell Green

2010-09-16T10:26:00.005+01:00

"Find the truth and then live by it"

Urban Retreat 2010 at the London Buddhist Centre, 11-19 September 2010

Art in the mohalla

2010-08-08T19:03:00.005+01:00

This is Shacklewell Lane.

On the corner of Shacklewell Lane, London E8, where Kingsland curves into Hackney this advertisement for Boyd Pianos has long remained. Peeling wallpaper from a time past. And then overnight this graffiti/art arrived. I believe it is Fidel Castro who made his first official appearance in four years yesterday, warning of the threat of nuclear war.

The very modern advertisment above is for the Pekünlü mini-market where I often shop.

'An Elegy for Easterly'

2010-08-08T16:02:00.019+01:00

Petina Gappah and her debut collection of short stories 'An Elegy for Easterly' deserve a follow-up (see last Sunday's post). It really is quite a wonderful collection. The 13 stories are set (with only one exception) in Zimbabwe - the Zimbabwe of the last two generations, the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe. This would not ordinarily draw me to a book; it was in fact the personal connection of having seen Petina speak with such liveliness at a festival that made her, and her book, remain in my mind. There is a lightness of touch, despite the tough, often brutal, tragic, world she shines her light on. The way she crafts these stories is so exquisite - like being kissed by the wind or unearthing woven gossamer. The stories are full of mysteries and secrets, and there is a mishieviousness in the writing as surprises are sprung on us, or on the characters, or as we fumble around in the prose to catch up with the world we have just creaked open the door onto.

There is a profusion of sex and death, the stuff of life. A politician's widow watches on as her husband's coffin is buried empty; a maid is found drowned after being cast pregnant from the house she has served for 2 years, the best nurse-maid they ever had; on the cracked, pink lips of Rosie's bridegroom Aids is all too evident for all the wedding party to see, and it is in those lips Rosie's own fate is sealed. The people of these pages are in many ways like any other; they love and laugh, and they have as much capacity to endure suffering as inflict it. But they find themselves living in an extraordinary world, where a loaf of bread costs half a million dollars and the news is always good news, no matter what. Here we find humour and irony, as well as tragedy.

It was in these characters and in the beauty of the crafting of their stories that I found hope. There is anguish here, yes, but in pages of such fineness of touch and vision and in the characters that lift gracefully from them, I couldn't find myself fully or perpetually crushed. There must be hope, I thought.

2010-08-08T15:14:00.007+01:00

"For people who read all the time, reading has a quest to it"

Candia McWilliam - writer & reader, who found herself suddenly struck blind in 2006 whilst judging the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Optimism

2010-08-01T09:42:00.022+01:00

This week I have experienced the reignition of my love - nay passion - for books, literature, the word. My desire is to socialise in the worlds I find in pages, with the characters and ideas that dance across them. I am currently with Petina Gappah in 'An Elegy for Easterly', a collection of short stories set in contemporary Zimbabwe. The first two were delicious. I encountered Petina for the first time at the Free the Word Festival at The Globe theatre in March 2009. (At this year's festival I saw Nawal el Sadaawi who I have also been thinking about again - the word "resistance" in the poem below instantly brought her to mind). Petina was one of four upcoming writers at the session titled "International Futures". 'Easterly' as she often refers to it on her blog - and which is a good place to encounter her sparkling personality - was on the eve of being published that week. Six months later it won the Guardian First Book award.

Well so far I am impressed and it is the sort of book that makes me want to write - and read. The cover is beautiful, so I leave you with that; and also the epigraph to the novel. This is a poem called 'Optimism' by American poet Jane Hirshfield. I loved these words. Petina sets them before her unravelling world of resilience against Robert Mugabe's regime. But they are words that speak to us all, and of the world itself since the beginning of Time.

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the
. . . . . . sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked
. . . . . . on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs - all this resinous, unretractable
. . . . . . earth.

Jane Hirshfield, 'Optimism'

more Practical Wonders ...

2010-07-14T13:36:00.014+01:00

...tweehouses for birds

(this community lives at Colebrooke Row, London N1 8AA)

A pale half-moon hangs still in the daylit sky

2010-06-04T17:24:00.008+01:00

A pale half-moon hanging in the sky, winking down on Hackney Downs near my home.

Solstice

2010-06-04T10:48:00.027+01:00

I will be on home turf in Yorkshire tomorrow for some Yorkshire nuptuals! The summer is blooming out all over (including as a fever of hay in my nose), and it really is a wonderful English Summer's Day in all its glory!

By coincidence the wedding takes place in a small hamlet in West Yorkshire where, as a child, my extended family had tradition of gathering annually on/around the Winter Solstice to meet pre-Noel and congratulate my Uncle John on his birthday. I will be back again tomorrow in splendid Burley-in-Whafedale, just as we climb to the approach of the Summer Solstice, to attend my friend Lucy's own turning of a landmark in personal time.

I am reminded of the last wedding I attended. Not least by once again looking to the skies, as I did on my bicycle this morning and seeing a pale half-moon hanging up there in sun-lit morning sky - an image of this captivating but not uncommon phenomena inspired the opening image for the poem I wrote for that (last) wedding. The wedding was in Taiwan - a wonderful country, which I should also share of through writing one day - and was the wedding of my very good friend Yu-wei Chang to Yu-Shian.

Here is the poem I wrote for Yu-wei's wedding on 13 December 2009 - just, of course, as the Winter Solstice was in keen approach.

Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;

- Jonathan Coe, 'Somniloquy'

A pale half-moon hangs still in the daylit sky
Graceful, beautiful, ephemeral,
Celebratory of all that is Yes.
Its pale possession, the joy in the essence: we're
alive, and love, and can.

I have stood with you among the Art, at the River also,
Against the stand-grained sky
Swoop and sail birds, pepper-sprinkled, and kites.
A kite somersaults in deadly straits above the Ganga calm.

This, is the great river
The source, the journey, our ultimate.
Children cry, running helter-skelter at its side
Holding hands, grasping, clasping at kites.
We are them; and they are us.

And so they watched on
With pride, and with molten hearts
Tears-occasional prickling
As the two breathed
Spoke, and breath again. Together
And made promises of love
And honour and truth and beauty.
And promised. To cherish from this day forward
Tapestry-bound for the fabric of their lives.
Yet, when you love and are loved
You remain to extent immortal.

Come. Do not let go my hand.

broadcast from the Purple Revolution*

2010-05-19T22:26:00.005+01:00

.
* work in progress

YOUTUBE VIDEO - Take Back Parliament, London Rally, 15 May 2010

And if you haven't heard music from James in a while, now is the time!

James: a band born in the '80s in Manchester.

The most Romantic and supremely memorable job I had at uni was working in a nightclub cloakroom. The only night from the regular repertoire I remember was the Madchester night, and I used to love it. I sat with my books, pretending to work my way through some work of Eng Lit, meanwhile the sounds of Morrissey, The Smiths, James, New Order (etc) really kept me entertained.

Madchester: a music scene born in the late 80s/early 90s in Manchester;
mixing indie rock, psychedelic rock & dance music

Madchester: The music scene that came out of this very particular northern town, in a very particular space in time.

A Purple Revolution please. PR will do.

2010-05-15T08:59:00.016+01:00

Last Saturday I demonstrated for change in the voting (& political) system. And I will be out again today. 2pm - Parliament Square. Be there.

More than a thousand people demonstrated for their belief in the need for real political change (watch BBC video). It was Saturday afternoon, and just the day before Parliament had been declared to be very beautifully hung. So beautifully so in fact, that the mathematics of it held the nation (& the politicians - yes, they are different;) in suspense for several days. I had a recurring image of a ballet dancer's toe in pirouette -the balance so poised, when and where would it turn? Nick Clegg and the LibDem team were holed up in Transport House, wondering that to do with the crucial balance of power their 57 seats held. On Election Day, the electorate had spoken - but no one knew quite what they had said. So it was up to the great elected to work it out.

FYI: No Entry General Public

To heckling for "Fair Votes Now", "don't sell out" and "we want to see Nick", Nick emerged...
"I never thought in my wildest imagination that central London would have a thousand protesters protesting for proportional representation. It's a topic which traditionally only concerned a small number of academics and constitutional experts, but the fact that you are here, out on the streets [...] is absolutely wonderful... " (What Nick said: BBC video) Suddenly, PR was looking cool.

It's about fair votes, and everyone's vote counting Equally. It's about bringing our voting system out of the 19th & 20th Centuries where voting was largely along block Blue/Red lines and into the 21st century where Britain and the identities of people living here are more plural. Let me say it - it is not about doing away with these political stripes. It is not about party lines at all (quite the opposite!). It is about putting fairness, and the people, at the heart of the system.

A quick number crunch:
Lab: 33k votes/seat; Con: 35k/seat;
LibDem 120k/seat; Green: 285k/seat

Safe seats cover the country, and as such many of the constituency elections are a foregone conclusion. Sometimes governments even tweek the boundaries - just to make sure. The real balance of power is held in a small number of key marginals, and as the election approaches, the tribes are mobilised and politics becomes about getting past the post, gaining the seat, ascending to parliament and to power. That is the aim, and the manifestos and campaigns work towards that end.

This tribal political landscape sure does make election night is colourful though. We - the great electorate (those that haven't given up entirely at least) - approach election night in a spirit akin to the World Cup Final or Eurovision Song Contest. But the ritual sit-in with snacks, fizz and friends is the only thing I will miss when reform finally comes (and it will). I will not miss my mood sinking into the Kettle Chips and Rioja at 4am as again and again one Tribe triumphs and all others are thrown into dark abyss for another 5 years ("nil point").

I want to see more plural parliament, where individual politicians don't have to button their mouths and personal values/politics to follow the party line. Where more views can be represented, and where there is less corruption. And I want my vote to have the power of 1, not 0.067 (try it - Power Voter Index).

I voted in 3-striped pyjamas this time. I surprised even myself on this count. One colour for national; another for Hackney Mayor; and yet another for the local council. And yet this weighted voting cannot be expressed in a parliamentary election. We cannot vote intelligently, with how we really feel and think.

A tiny reading list:

Will Hutton: Fair Voting/Fair Capitalism

Caroline Lucas: 'We could have had a new politics. This isn't it'

Stephen Fry on 'Stalemate: PR and PR, Ice cream, Bananas and Fudge

YOUTUBE video - London Rally, 15th May 2010

4.52pm, Cowley Street

2010-05-08T19:47:00.018+01:00

4.52pm, Saturday 8th May 2010
Balletic: Britain has a hung parliament for the first time since 1974. The balance of power teeters, like that in the tip of a ballet dancer's toe.
Which way will the LibDems turn?

The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg is all set for her teatime broadcast outside 4 Cowley Street (LibDem HQ):

http://twitter.com/BBCLauraK

6 May 2010

2010-05-06T23:39:00.003+01:00

A multi-coloured elephant. I'd like parliament to look a bit more like this!

These pictures were taken on election day, 6 May 2010, on New Bond Street in central London. It was 6pm in the evening, and I was cycling from work to my friend Kitty's for our election night party. For cider and wine, wasabi and guacamole; and to watch unfold how the nation had spoken - and, conversely, how this would translate into the new nature of the beast that is parliament.

Nawal el Saadawi

2010-04-15T23:11:00.055+01:00

"my mother's name - Zainab - disappeared in history; disappeared"

Nawal el Saadawi @Southbank, London - 15 April 2010

These words sum up much about our patriarchal world. Aspects too that I have thought about myself - and felt at times alone and almost mad in these tumbling reflections. There was a time that I changed my own name upon the turn of them. Yes, I have not always been Caroline Watson! For some that know this fact about me, it is an amusing anecdote - and for me I too laughed (and continue to) at the linguistic, cultural, societal conundrum that I was trying to weave my way through (the process is ongoing... and not resolved... ). That story is for another day - for today belongs to Nawal el Saadawi: born in Egypt (1931); Feminist; Writer; Activist; Physician; former Presidential candidate; former Prisoner; Woman.

Tonight, Nawal el Saadawi raised a standing ovation. Sprung by her force, her smile, her positive composure, her clarity, her bravery, her resiliance, her politics and wisdom, we had absorbed something of her formidable spirit.

Her achievements, and her radicalism and stridency, are extra-ordinary. She spent 50 years campaigning in Egypt against female genital mutilation - for which she was punished. In 2008, the practice was finally outlawed. Most remarkable in this, is her breaking through language - for language is a matrix in which we are all held. Imagine taking words used to name and describe sex organs and sexuality at a time and in an atmosphere where they were unspoken, and for which almost everyone would spit on you for doing so - and writing about them. Publicly.

She has suffered recrimmination for her writing, for her ideas, and - ironically and powerfully (since we are talking about his-story and her-story) - for what her daughter has written. In 2007, her daughter Mona became the target of contraversy when she wrote an article on Mother's Day, and undersigned it absorbing her mother's name "Nawal" into her own. She was making a point of gratitude, connection, respect - visibility - to her mother (and also a legal point). Two years of prosecution for heresy ensued. The case led to a new law for the rights of the child, giving children born outside marriage in Egypt the right to carry the name of the mother.

Nawal el Saadawi had much to say:

"writing is like breathing;
it is very natural,
it is like talking.
We are all born writers"

"What is feminism?> Feminism means that you become angry when they treat you unjustly"

"I became a feminist when I was a child"

"veiling and nakedness [ref. women] are two sides of the same coin"

"when you become creative, you become dissident"

"when/if you challenge, you win;
if you are afraid, you lose"

"we live in a world that separates everything;
but everything is connected"

(all quotes are from tonight's event at London's Southbank, where I had a front-row seat and Nawal spoke directly into my eyes)

where Three Dreams cross

2010-04-13T21:36:00.098+01:00

Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

(@Whitechapel Gallery, London, E1)

Self-assured and celebratory: this exhibition brings together the works of 82 photographers spanning 150 years, 3 nations and many more (sub-)communities besides. It is quite a remarkable collection, with many of the images being displayed together for the first time.

The exhibition takes as its starting point the "the crucial moment when the power to hold a camera, frame and take pictures was no longer exclusively the preserve of colonial or European photographers". These images of "self-representation" and "self-determination" are presented thematically in five broad groups - The Portrait, The Family, The Performance, The Street, and The Body Politic. The curators have opened themselves up to inevitable critique by presenting in this way, as naturally there is overlap between the categories - but it works. More conventional categorisation would have supressed connections that are there to be made in the eye of the viewer. I enjoyed hearing the echoes whispered between sections, and between time and place.

Unabashedly, it is the content that is strong in this exhibition.

D. Nusserwanji - Studio Portrait, Bombay, c.1940s
Arif Mahmood - Hanuman Temple at Soldier Bazaar, Karachi, 2008

Both above images are black and white prints - the studio portrait having been touched with glitter and paint. Arif Mahmood's three works from Karachi were striking - including this one of the Hanuman Temple at Soldier Bazaar. Painted over beautifully by Shaukat Mahmood (no relation) who died of cancer shortly after completion of the project in March 2009, the images revisit the dying art of the painted photograph as well as bring into play the very contemporary contention over post-production.

A collection of images from the exhibition is nicely presented here. And here are some more:

Above:
1. Anay Mann, About Neetika, 2005
2. Dileep Prakash, Christine Fernandes, Khurda Road, 2005
3. T.S. Satyan, Boys Cooling off on a Summer Day in Bombay, 1970
4. Umrao Singh Sher-Gill, After a Bath: Self-Portrait, 1904
5. Munem Wasif, Illegal Immigrants from Myanmar, 2007

Top:
Gauri Gill, Balika Mela, Lunkaransar, 2003

I heart Stokey @16C!

2010-04-10T13:20:00.058+01:00

The mood of London and the temperament of its citizens change with the weather.

Today: it's the sunniest Saturday of the year so far, and the people are out! 11am down Ridley Road market, and a young pecked-up stall holder has his shirt off and is getting the sun-protection cream on. Optimism is in the air! To the sound of steel drums, Stoke Newington Church Street was re-opened (having been closed to traffic over the winter for improvement works), and the local political parties were out - taking the first official breaths in their pre-election marketeering. "I *heart* Stokey" balloons garlanded Church Street, and some floated into the stratosphere to the rolling notes of the Nostalgic Steel Band.

The Green Party had a very positive and impressive stand. The ruling Labour Party (on behalf of Diane Abbott MP) were looking confident. The red balloons celebrating the new tarmac sung in their favour. I was disappointed to find only a girl in a blue dress handing out smiley stickers on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Other LibDem representatives were also lingering, but on request - no literature. The Green Party seemed much more organised and on the ball. Subject to close-reading of their literature, for the first time perhaps they have my local vote.

I will celebrate my first election in solo autonomous living with my colours in the window. (LOL: My mum would say I should clean the windows first!) - I will go for two colours!(green & yellow) - But please Hackney LibDems, raise your game.

Stokey really was a-buzz; it felt like everyone was out. A craft fair in Abney Hall, a produce market with tasties if you could grab them, ripe blossom, red balloons buoyant and the red ribbon being cut. Church Street is open again, and the summer (and the election) is ON!

2010-04-04T14:57:00.005+01:00

"At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities."

- Jean Houston (b. 10 May 1937, New York City)

Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

2010-03-21T21:48:00.073Z

I did not for one moment take for granted that performing before me - full-belt, alive and present; giving his heart, his craft, his music - was Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Glorious was the word, and really there are not many words that can begin to capture it. This blog post will be short.

I smiled throughout, felt expanded and became one step closer to my own dreams and destinies.

Kitty&Kitty loved the evening - and what a fabulous and apt way to spend the turning of the spring equinox. The equinox arrived at 5.30pm and by 7pm we were in our seats. As the evening gathered pace, and the songs layer on layer worked to their ecstacy (as happens also within many of the individual songs) we were in raptures and enraptured.

Rahat did not interrupt his music with chat. He didn't need to. A quiet air of ease on his plump red and gold cushion, and a voice that belted to the Gods. It is hard to believe he is just 35 years old.

The evening was a mix of Bollywood and Qawwali. Last autumn he was in London for his Remembering Nusrat tour. That seemed a project in establishing himself as heir-apparent to the Nusrat legacy, and this year he is back to establish brand Rahat.

His version of Akhiyan Udeek Diyan was the one that really lifted the roof. It injected new energy, and was the turning point of the performance and evening. From the Bollywoods, I loved O Re Piya. After the roof-lifting, Dam Mast Qalandar (Ali! Ali!) and Afreen Afreen were just terrific too.

Afreen was the encore, which delighted me a lot as this is a song I have discovered through repeated listenings. I have a Nusrat MP3 bought for 45Rs (about 60p) in an Indian bazaar (actually I have several!) - it contains 20hours of tracks and on the digital display all are unnamed... it really is Nusrat by number! I have learned over time that if I go to track #3 in the section after the one totalling 17 songs, I get uplifted with Afreen Afreen. This is one of a number of tracks that I locate in this way. And so I heard it again at the spring equinox and Nusrat by number is fleshed out a little more.

(Rahat Fateh Ali Khan @ Royal Festival Hall, London - 20 March 2010)

back from Wonderland!

2010-03-14T22:31:00.026Z

(Alice in Wonderland @ The IMAX)

Behind the giant 3D glasses my fidget nature was set free! It's a bit like going to a masque ball perhaps: you become something different.

Everyone encased in their own goggled worlds, I was set free from convention of sitting still and behaving well (I wriggled, rustled my sweets and my head roved in giant wonder at the screen). And as Alice ran from the party - from the dreadful marriage proposal and the crowd - I thought again about Ben Okri's uncomplicated yet powerful message. >Every day is a challenge in navigating and overcoming the fears and limitations placed on us, and which ultimately we place on ourselves.

I felt too a glimmer of what it might've been like attending the first Talkies or when black&white film shifted into techniclour. "It talks!" ... "It's in colour! - like the real world, like us!"... And now: "It has dimension!"

After Alice had returned from Wonderland and set out for the far East, this army of bugs took off their glasses and left the auditorium. The IMAX exit, as it is - is a level below the street and in the middle of a roundabout, with various tunnels leading up to the surface. You can see the street high above and sense the traffic moving in orbital. My friends said our goodbyes. "Which way are you going Caroline?" I pointed abstractly upwards, towards the street. "My bike... my bike is up there somewhere... on the railings... I just have to get to the surface and I will see." I felt like Alice, trying to exit through a rabbit hole!

Change your view, and the world transmutes too!

2010-03-05T10:46:00.070Z

This morning I found myself on a "Rail-Replacement Bus". Yes, ardent cyclist djinn Kitty left her bike at home in respect of heading off for an evening of merriment after work.

Already running a bit late, she was in a dash and then tripped up (momentarily) when she found the local train station has been closed for some days now, and would not reopen until - June! It was an ultra-sunny morning, and she was soon atop the double-decker bus. What a different perspective! The bus travelled through an area of very smart Georgian housing just near to her beloved neighbourhood (never-a-dull-moment Dalston broadway). She reflected if she was ever in the market for real estate and home 'ownership' (i.e. the type involving title deeds) this would be an excellent place to begin her search. A new area! But it wasn't - corners from her cycle route angled into vision; it just looked different.

She admired the flat rooves and flat frontages of these graceful terraces; saw a gnome sunning himself on a window sill; handsome vintage lamp-posts; a grown woman gliding along on a child's scooter; another woman in sari hanging washing on her balcony. Then there was a lady walking up an avenue. Only her back was in view, her black coat, and she wondered at her unusual walk - her body was straight upright but inclined, with one shoulder and one foot ahead of the other, as though slicing a headwind - like she was trying to get through an invisible narrow door. One belonging to a gnome, perhaps.

What a delightful bus trip it was: unearthing already-planted tulips in the urban undergrowth. Change your view, or the point at which you are standing, and the world will transmute too!

2010-02-17T23:37:00.005Z

"Know, oh seeker, that every man knows his own coast best... but the sea is not peculiar to each region and when you are out of sight of the coasts, you have only your own knowledge of the stars and guides to rely on"

(Ahmad Ibn Majid - writing in the late 1400s)

Happy 300th Birthday Dr Thomas Arne!

2010-02-15T23:27:00.013Z

On pew, I sit. For the first time I am in St. Mary's Church, Stoke Newington (not far from my East London home) - a building most-glorious in its gothic illumination at night.

It is 6.30pm Sunday, and I am here for the 300th Birthday celebratory concert by Linden Baroque Orchestra.

Dr Thomas Arne, now 300, was the most successful song writer of his day, and produced a sound that today feels regal, gallant, and to many ears "typically English".

Electric connection with this music came for me in Steven Devine's solo in the Harpsichord Concerto (No.5 in G). The notes fell like crystal rain, and I imagined myself pushing aside curtains of beaded glass and entering a palace of fine diamante. Fine diamante?! - djinn kitty, kitty djinn (I inwardly balked) you cannot compare English baroque with that most pedalled ingredient of democratised jewellery!

Yet, I could. In the mid-eighteenth century, Dr Thomas Arne was a most popular and commercially successful feature at London's pleasure gardens - unmissable hubs of cultural entertainment where all of London irrespective of class gathered. At the famous pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Marylebone (and others), Londoners delighted in varied and eclectic programmes of song, glee, chorus, sometimes opera, alternating with overtures, symphonies, and concertos. The old mixed with the new, and there was much pastiche. Thomas Arne was central to this pastiche - he prepresented the new, the shiny. His songs often plumped out programmes and drew in the crowds (yet represented a most popular choice of "taste" - that great C18 value). Pleasure-garden gatherers might've enjoyed a solo song by Arne (like 'The Lover's Rencantation' we heard this eve) followed by a symphony. In Thomas Arne we can find a fine, glistening, democratised crystal, that sparkles and sings, and mixes with the party atmosphere and brings pleasure to many. Diamante!

This great and interesting historical music was brought alive by Linden Baroque Orchestra, who specialise in performing Baroque music on period instruments (find them on facebook). The music was accompanied by a programme written with wit and dexterity - the care in fine writing and precision of information added a grace to the proceedings and warmed this damp-cold January evening with a sense that you were somewhere most interesting and special.

UK premiere of 'Kashf' / Q&A with Director Ayesha Khan

2010-02-09T22:47:00.018Z

(@ the UK's first Himalaya Film Festival, currently on in London)

Kashf - The Lifting of the Veil is a fascinating exploration of questions of destiny, and takes us into the worlds of Sufism (the mystical heart of Islam) and Lollywood dreams.

I especially liked the style of it - it felt very fresh, raw, and all the more so for hearing from director Ayesha Khan of the "guerilla-style" film-making process. Shot in 28 days on a very low budget, the result was a genre-bending fusion of camcorder documentary, Lollywood cinema, and 'conventional' film crew work (although the crew later appear on screen as cinema audience!).

A young man returns to Lahore, the city of his birth, and begins to uncover mystical circumstances around his conception and the promise his mother made to a Sufi Pir, that in adulthood he would take the Sufi path. Meanwhile, his cousin is also being drawn into another established tradition in Lahore's culture as he pursues his calling to be an actor.

With dream sequences and hallucinations, magic realism is a strong element - reality is explored through apparent non-reality, and the physical and metaphysical merge. A most interesting aspect of this upturning and unveiling is Director turns Actor, as Ayesha Khan literally melds onto the screen and becomes a major presence in its landscape.

As the pull on our hero towards his spiritual destination becomes irresistibly and irreversibly stronger, he is told: "you have to acknowledge you're on the path." This film is about facing up to destiny, and meeting it, and is about the quest we each face to find out who we are and why we are here.

I enjoyed that this film took me to the streets and doors, and sometimes behind those doors, of Lahore (the green door is a strong motif in the film). Ayesha was just great too - I admired that she had made the film as an experiment: rather than go to film school, why not just try to make a film? And I admired her a m a z i n g l o n g hair!

"We can wake to the power of our voice"

2010-01-22T19:35:00.005Z

My meeting with writer Ben Okri this week has shaken me. And I suspect it will continue to for a long time to come. His message and his art is powerful, clear - perceptive to the core. This guy has gravitas, is tough and is inspiring. From my front-row seat I spent one and a half hours sitting 2metres from him, and I spoke briefly with him afterwards. But it was not this proximity that moved me so much: he had exceptional presence, personality and poise that could reach far to (and beyond) the back of the room.

He talked about freedom - freedom of the mind. "There is nothing we can do/If we don't begin to think anew." If we are not free in our minds, he said, we are not going to be free anywhere else. Every day is a challenge in navigating and overcoming the limitations and fears placed on us, and which ultimately we place on our ourselves. And this is true. We can let our fears govern us - or we can be governed by our dreams. He talked about self-realisation - about striving for and becoming the best possible version of ourselves that we can be. It sounds so simple, and in principle it is. But it could also be our greatest challenge. The power is within, but how many of us "wake to the [full] power of our own voice", and, in turn, what of our voices - the collective human voice? This voice, this shining, this gold - has to come from within, no one can do it for us. Ultimately, he said, "people have to wake themselves up, and shake the world, shake the world." Every word he delivered was of resounding value and thought. These words were delivered like the beat of a drum, connected to the earth's heartbeat itself. - Or, how the world's heart should and could be beating. Ben Okri is a human metronome for all of us.

Ben Okri is currently tweeting a poem, line by line - one line a day. I share some lines with you here, and urge you to follow it. (twitter/benokri.com) (you can also follow on his Facebook page)

We ought to use time

Like emporers of the mind:

Do magic things that the future,

Surprised, will find.

[...]

We can wake to the power of our voice

Change the world with the power of our choice.

But there is nothing we can do

If we don't begin to think anew.

We are not much more than what we think; in our minds we swim or sink.

If there is one secret I'd like to share It's what we are what we dream Or what we fear.

So dream a good dream today

And keep it going in every way.

Let each moment of our life [...]

Ben Okri was 'In Conversation' @ Richmix, Shoreditch/East London.

the urban_djinn's GUIDE TO CYCLING IN THE SNOW

2010-01-13T15:12:00.001Z

WEAR your woolly hat underneath your helmet. This will keep your ears warm and stop your hair getting in a catastrophic wet mess.
WEAR your best trekking boots, lest you get caught in a snow drift!
You are gonna have to compromise today and TAKE THE MAIN ROADS. Resist the usual snickets, cuts and routes that stop you having to talk to the big bad traffic. The snow will stick to the side roads and may conceal deadly black ice which will make you slip on your arse&wheels ... !
Since you will have to talk to the vehicular traffic today and work with its rhythm, sorry but you cannot wear your iPod today.
Use the red lights to your advantage - after careful checking take the chance here to get ahead of the traffic.
BE CHEERFUL!
DO NOT ride up anyone's rear end - your brakes will not be so nifty today due to the wet surfaces.
On arrival to the office, BREW fresh coffee and EAT Belgian chocolates! :-)
Good luck & enjoy!