Dave's Outlandish Blog

Wednesday, 26 August 2015

Funkadelic in the rain

Its been raining hard here the last few days. Properly leathering it down, to use a leicester slang term. To compensate, I've been listening to this: When it gets wet, get funky! D

Monday, 24 August 2015

On folk songs

Last saturday I went to lewes with my new ladyfriend to a folk night in Lewes.

Lewes is just up the trainline from falmer and differs from Brighton in its rural situation and sleepy Royston-Vasey-esque vibe. It has its own currency, its own brand of beer and an annual bonfire parade, on the 5th of November, in which townpeople march through the street, dressed as red indians and pirates and wheeling effigies of the pope which are then blown up in various bonfires around the town. They also carry burning crosses, representing the protestant martyrs killed by Mary Tudor in the 16th century, which are thrown into the river in rememberance, and drop carry firecrackers which explode loudly in your face when you least expect it. I've been 3 times over the years and it is bacchanalian (lots of drunk brightonians make the pilgrimage every year despite pleas from the local council to stay away), incredibly weird and noisy and very politically incorrect, and also very exciting.

So its an odd place, but with a very rich local culture for those who like these sorts of things, and fine music scene. It being mid August much of the life of the place is in the various pub gardens scattered around the town, and if I had been thinking clearly I would have simply found a nice pub with a few friends and enjoyed it. But I had an itch, and it needed scratching.

I've been into british traditional music for a few years now - since the early 2000s, when as a nerdy undergraduate student at UEA in Norwich I would ransack the University CD library for new and appealing sounds. It was there discovered the masterly work of Martin Carthy and the Watersons, and subsequently began to weird out my flatmates by playing their bare, unvarnished, almost punkish a capella singing every chance I got.

Now the folk road is in many ways a lonely road. Its been said - I think by Joe Boyd, the producer who was at the heart of the folk-rock scene in Britain in the 60s and 70s - that the UK is noteable in the contempt in shows towards its traditional culture. Whats more, like all subcultures, the folk scene is, or can be, in my opinion, a bit of a claustrophobic place, with a hobbyist mentality that makes it a bit inward looking and precious. It is a bit mad, basically, and movies like Inside Llewyn Davis, and the stories about Bob Dylan being called 'Judas' for going in a pop direction are accurate in the basic observation that living in the past isn't really entirely healthy.

That being said, the music itself can still be remarkably beautiful. The songs, polished through centuries of collective use, often have emotional weight and a depth of poetic resonance that mean that sung with feeling, they hit home as accurately and exquisitely as any blues or soul song (And of course, the blue is folk music).

The night itself was nice, a trifle odd, with a range of performances from a mix of people, all committed amateurs. It was entirely egalitarian and so I did a couple of songs ('The sheepstealer' and 'Thorneymoor Woods' - both poaching songs) which went down well. More enjoyable was a long ballad called 'the two sisters', sung by a lady who also acted as compere for the evening, about a murder near a town in the scottish highlands. The way the story unfolds with brutal exactitude was as chilling as any Johnny cash song or gangster rap track, but this time recounted in a soft alto voice to a lilting scots melody by a lady who is someone's grandmother.

I am not sure whether the experience of last week means I'll be more involved in folk music. But I found it moving and enjoyable, and it reminded me of the power of a great song to tap ones emotions.

Thursday, 20 August 2015

Reading Burke and O'Connor

So, I have been working on a research project that is connected to my Phd project that finished last year. I must confess, however, that i am getting a bit tired of the academic life after what has been over 7 years of intellectual toil. I know that it is something that I'm good at, and indeed can make a contribution with, but I think basically it is not making me happy. So I'm going to keep on an meet my responsibilities while I try to figure out what I am going to do next.

In the meantime I've been trying to incorporate more creative stuff into my life. That has meant writing, but also reading. And I love reading. I have my parents to thank for this, who are both readers and writers (my Dad is a Professor of American History and my Mum a multi-talented speech and language therapist who has published on allotment gardening, diego rivera and the calumet copper strike of 1903). I think reading only academic work can leave one craving for the emotional reaction one gets from well written fiction.

My go-to writer for a satisfying read is the American crime and mystery novellist James Lee Burke. His Dave Robicheaux novels are consistently absorbing, moving and brilliant, and also very violent, but operate on a mythic plane that transform his characters - cops, mobsters, poor rural people from Louisiana and Montana and Texas - into heroic figures in a medieval romance. He's also not afraid of including supernatural elements, reflecting a deep and mordant spirituality rooted in Burke's own recovery from alcoholism and his Catholicism, traits shared by Robicheaux himself. The most recent book of his I read, 'Light of the World' takes this to new levels with its apocalyptic showdown between Robicheaux and his partner and best friend Clete Purcell, and the principal villain, the demonic serial killer Asa Surrette, in a Montana landscape haunted by the ghosts of the Nez Perce and the private spectres that many of the characters carry around inside their own heads.

Anyway so I've been reading that. Also I've started looking into the work of the more famous southern novelist Flannery O'Connor, an acknowledged influence on Burke but also on the worldview of people like Nick Cave. She was an incredible gifted writer with a profound intellect who was also a Catholic, in a part of the world (South Carolina) where the majority of the population were Southern Baptists or other Protestant free church denominations. The book I read of hers, 'Wise Blood', is incredibly bizarre and powerful, a fable, basically, of a returned soldier from WW2 who goes back to his home state having lost his faith, and is so disgusted at the religious complacency and hypocrisy of his people that he founds a 'Church without christ', and starts preaching on the street. It ends in a shocking and bewildering fashion but is also very moving and isn't by any stretch of the imagination an atheist novel, rather showing the desperate, crazy attempts of ignorant people for some kind of meaningful transcendence in a culture that is suffocating in its narrowness of vision.

Why am I getting into Catholic writers? I don't necessarily think their catholicism defines them, as their writing is beautiful. However there is something about the worldview of catholicism, of the idea of 'the human comedy', of grace, redemption and the reality of good and evil, plus a certain skepticism toward the claims of modernity that can make for very compelling writing.

As for an assessment of my own spiritual worldview in my writing, I guess i better write something first...

Monday, 17 August 2015

This, that and 'the Other'. Or why its generally better to suit up and show up.

Yeah I know. How long has it been this time? A year plus? How embarrassing. Please accept my apologies and a free copy of my future bestseller, 'fifty shades of brown - english cookery through the ages' (pending its existence).

So the big news is I am finally starting to commit to this writing lark. A friend of mine, an opera singer, who seems to attract these situations, told me about an encounter he'd on the train. He was sharing a cab with an old lady, and they got talking. Apparently the woman who is now in her 80s and 'not crazy', was told as a child she was a 'dreamer'. To which portentous augury from the fates she responded by ignoring it, doing nothing with her talents of prophecy and falling into a unsatisfactory marriage. Several marriages later she is now alone. She is now 'a poetess' (my friend is french) and writer, who has recently published a book based on a recurring dream she had about the end of the world. 'Her life is now beginning' says my friend. As I don't want to have to become an elderly woman before that happens, I thought I'd jump the gun.

What I've been doing since is committing to an hour a day, just turning on the tap and seeing what comes out. I have a purple A5 ring binder (aka ' my papers'), and I am filling it up. Some of it is okay, some frankly is gobbledeygook, but then that is gobbledeygook that is deeply original and unique to me. The useful thing I am finding is 1) I am getting better already and 2) this feels necessary, not just an indulgence. So even if this is a load of cobblers, be warned, there is going to be a load more of it...

The other big news is of such bigness I am hesitant to relate it here, except to say it involves a person other than myself. In my anthropological training we talked a lot about 'the other' and its centrality to social research, but I never really understood the profound centrality to everything, perhaps because I'm a bit self absorbed. People are like doors, they can open you up to whole new vistas of experience, and allow for traffic in things and words and ideas that result in change. In my research fieldwork I learned that West African communities value relationships as much as material goods, because relationships increase the flows of people and wealth (and, in the body, fluids vital to life) while isolation cuts off these flows of exchange and negates life. The worst thing you can be in West Africa is anti-social. Wealth is people.
And love is being for and being open to the other (Forgive me if I state the obvious, but I'm a slow learner) resulting in a sense of being that is wider and deeper than that of a single individual.
So yeah. I guess the general point of these musings is its better for me to show up and write something less that stellar because you, dear reader, are more important than my lack of faith in my own abilities.

Avanti!
D

Saturday, 4 January 2014

Wild Nights and Football Chants

Greetings. Its been a little while since I took the time to write on these pages. I don't know if those fine souls who stumbled this way over the years and read my posts have been missing me, but if so, I apologise. What to say? Life. Downs and Ups. Maybe one day i'll tell you the tale of how I came to be a 30 year old social scientist living in North Moulescoombe. One day-but not today...

I suppose the big news is my thesis is submitted, after a last heroic lunge for the finish line back in August. And inevitably, things look different. During the slog itself, it was like pulling teeth: stress and much flailing around, doubts even to its value. After the deadline, and I'm thinking about doing some more. Weird. Just goes to show that ones perspective is often quite narrow.

Christmas came and went. I took the coach up to my mum's place in leicestershire, along with 20-or-so other last minuters, on Christmas Eve. It was a good few days, of being-with and not-doing, of roving out across muddy fields, playing silly games. This time of year has power, despite the wheelbarrowloads of commerce and distraction we've put on it. A time for families, and therefore these days of migration, of returning home, to find the 'safe harbour' as always suddenly slightly different. This time it was the street lights. The council has taken to switching them off (or at least some) to save energy. I didn't notice it at first, until I nearly ran into a bollard during a late night stroll. 'Bollards!' I cried. Anyway, the drop in light pollution gave the starlight a brightness I only remember seeing last in West Africa, as I sat on the bench outside the old house looking up on Christmas Eve, feeling a bit like one of the Wise Men in the story, sans frankincense or indeed, an excess of wisdom.

Now I'm here in Brighton again, back at the grind, but with a clearer picture of my next move. The weather has been wild and soggy. While we were away, the skylight in my office space blew off, dumping a load of sawdust and rainwater onto one of the vacant desks, nearly obliterating one of my friends' work. It has since been fixed. Recently, during another late evening typing session, we could hear the Albion fans over at the stadium, their voices carried across campus by the wind. I'm at home right now, nice to be indoors on another wild night...

A thousand miles south

A thousand miles south its still one o'clock

Its just hotter

As I sit on a plastic stool in the dust

Watching a woman chopping greens into

a plastic bowl

While a pot of oil steams on coals and branches

Red with foam

and a chicken avoids my gaze

I've been here before

Further south

on a fading spit of rock and sand

fishing boats all around

that man sat in chains;

who did the same and worse

and got

what he didn't deserve

Fishing boats all around

'Do you remember me?

Your friend, where have you been?'

Too late

We flee again

to cows cars

traffic

kids in the streets.

Sunday, 5 May 2013

Reduced to clear

It occurred to him, dully, while he was vainly trying to remember what he needed to buy, that perhaps the fruit and vegetable section had been designed to resemble an actual market, with wicker-work baskets of baking potatoes and onions and courgettes stacked in rows of controlled disarray, as if deposited by busy stevedore at the docks. And in the absence of docks, some interior design kid working at the head office had thought to provide them in facsimile, as if the fulfil some subtle need people had for bustle and abundant disorder.

Maybe.

He let out a sigh. Onions. Did he need then or not? While he stood there blinking a maroon-shirted employee – a girl, brown hair tied back behind a white paper hat - rolled past a towering stack of cellophane wrapped aubergines.

It was about five-thirty. He’d just got off work and he’d remembered that Nina was supposed to be coming over later, and he’d promised to cook. She was probably still in the car but he knew he’d better get himself together before she got back.

It was one of the things he both appreciated and vaguely resented about Nina. She wouldn’t let him off the hook. Before they’d met he’d happily let himself slip into a routine of slowly spreading disorganisation, which seemed to have been his default state for years, since he’d been at Uni and the early dutiful enthusiasm drilled into him by his mother had been overwhelmed by the temptations of 9 hour weeks, and the dawning knowledge that he could write an essay pretty much blindfolded. With Nina, it wasn’t what she said, it was how she looked. It was a look that, when they’d come home to his flat on their 4th date 3 years ago and seen the chaos of his front room, told him that he’d better shape up. It was a look that said ‘I didn’t know people still lived like this’, a look reserved for social workers and government officials inspecting condemned factories.

He picked up a couple of onions and dropped them into the basket, a plan forming in the back of his mind. It involved kidney beans, he decided, and headed over to where he dimly remembered they were found. The place was busy with post-work shoppers, student couples in narrow cut jeans and big jumpers, hipster mums and dads, mostly. The queues at the checkout snaked back in anxious antipation, the ambient sound of squeaking trolley wheels and murmured conversation punctuated by the beep of the tills and the self issue machines.

It was its own society, its own cultural world, this place, Nick thought as he mooched along the aisles. He caught sight of himself in the reflection of the glass in the vegetarian foods section, his black overcoat and too-long sideparted haircut, his face still youngish even with the beard that Nina had started to comment on again. He thought, on days when he was being charitable to himself, he could still pass as a latter day Freidrich Engels, or one of those fin de siècle intellectuals who wrote about industrial society and would have been sorrowful atheists, despite their abiding belief in the commonality of mankind. When he’d mentioned this, Nina had raised her exquisite eyebrows and remarked that she liked her fin de siècle intellectuals more when they’d has a shave. Then, seeing his hangdog expression she’d given him a kiss.

She was good for him. He knew this. His friends told him, repeatedly, and occasionally he believed them.
He arrived at the canned foods section, and scanned the shelves intently. A little old lady was gingerly checking something in her purse, her trolley parked a little way up the aisle. An older gentleman, who Nick took to be her husband, was waiting earnestly further up the aisle, a slight tremor animating his bald head as he stared back at her. Nick waited patiently for the lady to finish what she was doing, and then reached down and grabbed a can of kidney beans and dropped them in his basket. Suddenly his phone rang. He fumbled in his pocket and pressed the call button. It was Nina.

‘Hey babe’

‘Hi Nick… are you free to talk?’
‘Um, yes…’ why wouldn’t I be?, he thought. Her voice sounded awkward, formal. And immediately his heart gave a lurch.
‘Listen, um, this isn’t easy for me to say, but… okay, so I’m not coming over to yours tonight. The thing is…’

He didn’t remember the rest of the conversation, although it had been mostly horrible and obvious and inevitable, and afterwards, he’d recall how he stood there dumbly as she’d laid it out for him, his shopping basket at his feet, the old couple shuffling up the aisle. He could have sworn that the old man had turned and looked at him for a second, as if he somehow sensed what was happening, with that look that all coupled men give in situations like this, an expression of pity and relief, that he himself had made it through.
After she’d hung up, Nick looked at his shopping, at the red onion and the can of kidney beans, then stared around. The old couple were disappearing around the corner to the next aisle. A voice was talking over the tannoy asking if John could proceed to the checkout. The noise of the supermarket continued unabated, as people queued and paid and bagged up and chattered to each other about nothing much and their trolleys sqeaked along the disinfected lino floor. Out of ideas, he picked up his shopping basket, and walked down the aisle.

Monday, 14 January 2013

Thoughts on the pier

Okay, right. So its been a while. A long while, and a long way. and I'm back. Here at least, although other things have moved on and changed. Such is life, I suppose. In Brighton last night, on the pier. Shut down for the night, staff mopping and cashing up inside their little plywood booths, a few daytrippers enjoying the gaudy panoroma of the seafront all lit up. Bouncy castles deflated, funfair rides lying dormant. And I thought - this could be a chemical plant, or an oil refinery, or an offshore launchpad; it might as well be. All this kit, and underneath a weary victorian frame, and underneath that, the tide coming in like a black silken sheet and shimmering in the electric street lighting. Over there's where Pinky killed that man in Brighton Rock. We have a big wheel now, as if to confirm those London on sea jibes. Its a nice size, about seven pounds. Ambiguity there. Last month/Last year, the burning of the clocks, and we all followed the bobbing paper lanterns and hammering samba drums and all the people to the beach by concorde 2 and thralled to the sight of the bonfire. Drums and winding throught the streets of town in a big bopping mass. More drums please. Work is good. Or its okay. It demands much. But I do like the sparks flying when I get a good idea. Those wild European philosophers painting mad pictures with words, like they've caught a loose thread and pulled it to see the great carpet unravel in their hands. Best leave it there. Peace

Monday, 26 July 2010

First Movement: Awakening of pleasant feelings upon arriving in the country

Back at my parents' house in Leicestershire. I seem to have reached a point where I'm having to look seriously at my life. I won't go into details, but after a couple years now of questioning and confusion I realise I'm going to have to work on myself before I can reach out to someone else.

Hmmf. Its okay, really. In fact its good, because to look at myself, I must also look after myself, I need to connect with others, to work on my health, to undertake healthy pursuits, take rest; to practice being 'happy', which is really more tricky than it sounds, but profoundly necessary. So yeah, if the tone of this here blog becomes a bit more circumspect and less 'jaunty', its only because the emotional depths of its author are being sounded for perhaps the first time.

Walking yesterday across fields along the footpath that leads from my house to the village churchyard, a route I've taken innumerable times from back since I was at primary school and used it as a shortcut home. Memory-saturated. The village itself is small enough that I pretty much know all of it, from the time I did a paper round and was made to lug enormous bags of Leicester Mercurys for the local newsagent, for which I got the princely sum of £4 a month and all the Yorkie bars I could eat. Obviously, every time I come back something has changed, new houses appearing where there used to be green space, posher cars in driveways, new faces behind the co-op counter. And I notice things differently, too. Like how silent the place is in the evenings, as residents vacuum seal themselves inside double-glazed bungalows. And how small the place is. I'm different, too.

The Geographer Doreen Massey writes of places not just as 'meaningful spaces', but as collected assemblages of trajectories, of the lives of their inhabitants as they interact with the wider world. Returning home, then, especially after a long time away, is always unsettling; the familiar is rendered poignant by the presence of the new, forcing one to measure the progress of our own lives in the changes.

Anyway, in terms of changing landscapes, my own is about to open up a bit more: I've got my mum to insure me to use her car. My first solo drive is therefore imminent. Wish me luck.

Wednesday, 14 July 2010

Aklo Letters

'... I am going to write here many of the old secrets and some new ones;
but there are some I shall not put down at all. I must not write down
the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor
the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great
beautiful Circles, nor the Mao games, nor the chief songs. I may write
something about all these things but not the way to do them, for peculiar
reasons.'

Arthur Machen, The White People

Sitting on the sofa at my friend's house on Southover Street, enjoying the luxury of a free morning. All is quiet - I suspect the others have all gone to their various workplaces (two, Jude and Vicky, are carers, the third, Nick, works at the Uni in IT services). Occasional traffic noise from the street outside, a passing chatter of voices. Silence. This is England.

Awoke early before my alarm. After lying in bed a few moments I remembered that the Zen group were having their early morning sit around 8ish - if I went NOW I could make it. I continued to stare at the ceiling for a few moments anyway; my mind still partly in another dimension. Then, something clicked on - up, on with clothes, down stairs, face wash, banana, bike, bag with cushion, cycle cycle cycle... I arrive at ship street gardens, the wee alleyway where lies the Meditation centre, to find the door locked, and me a half-hour late.

Such is life sometimes. Came back and spent the rest of the morning reading 'the White People' by Arthur Machen. I came across Arthur Machen referenced in a collection of stories by HP Lovecraft, the American Horror writer. Machen is one of his primary influences, and is similarly interested in hidden spheres and realms beyond the everyday that sometimes impinge on our consciousness; the uncanny, the darkly suggestive, the subtly, insidiously creepy. 'The White People' is about the diary of a little girl living in the Welsh hills who is taught mysterious secrets by her nurse, which may or may not be connected to Witchcraft. (OK, they are connected to Witchcraft).

The best thing is the way which she relates in unselfconscious, childish language things which she is only partly permitted to describe. The way she suggests things without going in to detail really sparks the readers imagination, as in the above quotation. I love this kind of playing-with-the-reader deliberate coyness. If I ever write a novel, thats how it'll be. Mischievous.

Anyway, so I'm having a wee breaky. Spoke to my supervisor yesterday who basically encouraged me to do the same. So I'm gonna hang out, read, talk to my friends and enjoy Brighton a bit while I have the chance.

Monday, 1 February 2010

New Blog for Sierra Leone

http://daveinsierraleone.blogspot.com/

xx

Saturday, 23 January 2010

Roving

Went for another urban ramble today. While this feels like a new development - the sudden impulse to just go outside, pick a direction and just walk, and see what's out there - it's also something that I remember doing, when the mood strikes me, quite often over the years.

For example, last Sunday, it was a nice day, mild, the snow had finally cleared and the sun was out. I thought, 'why not find out just exactly what that mysterious building, up there on the hill on the far side of the railway line, that looms down between the branches of the tree outside my bedroom window, actually is?' So I pulled on my favorite exploring shoes (DMs, obviously) and went for a looksee. Lo and behold, a residential home. And a lovely view.

At this point, the freshness of the day had sort of leaked into me, so I went a bit further, across Dyke road and into the suburban badlands behind Hove. Nothing much, just life going on quietly behind privet hedges.

Then, down the Drive, where I stumble upon a brilliant, ludicrous antiques and garden sculpture shop that was like a stone menagerie complete with goats, giraffes, frogs, gnomes, Buddhas, and piles of rusting wrought iron furniture.

Then, Hove high street, and, inevitably, the beach. Where I bumped into Keith and Rob, who I know from my parents' village in Leicestershire, from where they've recently relocated. What a coincidence. Back along the Seafront, taking in the air, kids and dogs and families and couples crowding the promenade, hearing a clip-clop, clip-clop sound behind, then being suddenly, hilariously overtaken by two unicyclists one of whom was banging two coconut halves together, a la Monty Python.

And then, gradually, by way of that New Agey shop in the North Laine that frankly reeks of incense and I normally avoid but they have a good Buddhist books section, home. OK, I had stuff I should have been doing and it frankly knackered me out for the rest of the day, but I thought, 'That was quite fun...'

So this time I went North, up Preston Drove. Again nothing and everything was happening. A gang of skateboarders, shuffling around for somewhere to air their skills. A cement mixer chewing over in front of a half completed house decked in scaffold. Cars backing out, florists, corner shops. Someone I vaguely know, out for a jog. The subtle changes in perspective as the road arcs up and round, suddenly staring down a road to have all of Brighton laid out beneath you, the sea a shimmer in the distance. A park, and a group of teenagers holding dark conversations ('why'd you beat up that guy?'). A tennis match. A feeling that I've been here before, at night, lost on my bike over a year ago. A book shop, and books. Uh-oh...

Actually it was that 'History of Walking' book, mentioned in a previous post, that's been egging me on in these weekend expeditions (perfect choice of word that). Although I would say its more a sort of 'chiming in with' an existing impulse to have a wander that I've got more time to indulge at the moment. Going out, just for its own sake, allowing oneself to be open to the world and participating in its changes, feeling the landscape cradling your feet, feels good.

Saturday, 16 January 2010

Rough Notes on a Rainy Day

Ahey.

A sleepy-eyed blogger am I this afternoon, after staying up late to watch 'Searching for the wrong eyed Jesus' with at my friend Jenny's house. A fine film, a deliberately strange, dreamlike exploration of the American South from the perspective of one Jim White, an alt-country type who left the south and then came back, 'to get closer to God'. We meet prisoners, preachers, gun-toting bikers, miners, cops, born-again burger-bar proprietors and a host of other wild, weird, worrying characters who together attempt to explain why this region has produced art and music of such authority and power. The answer isn't stated so much as evoked. Poverty, intense, almost manichean religious belief, dark history and geographical isolation are all factors. White puts it more simply - 'its in the Blood'.

Anyway, that, a snatched 6 1/2 hours sleep and a morning spent squashing a cushion with the Zen Group mean I'm a tired hombre. The snow has gone, replaced by a gloomy drizzle that has kept me indoors. I've been trying to make the most of things and check out storage depot prices so I can begin to sort out a place to stow my junk while I'm away. Looking at my bookshelves and cd racks, I can probably do with getting rid of much of it, but sentimentality makes this a tricky exercise. Like the character in Hi-Fidelity who organises his records autobiographically, stuff tells me who I am.

Going to see 'the Songs of Nick Drake' at the Dome next week. Its an all-star tribute to the guy, curated by Joe Boyd, so it promises to be good. Looking forward to basking in gorgeous Robert Kirby string arrangements and get a nice solid hit of autumnal Englishness before I leave. Also planning to go to the Museum of London at Docklands, mostly for the London, Sugar and Slavery exhibition, but also to get a bit more historical context about London in its role as an Imperial centre.

Got a look at the Peace Corps' Krio language manual the other day, which made me look forward to getting stuck in to learning it. Apparently Krio is NOT a pidgin, but a lingua franca, and it contains words from over 20 African and European Languages. Cool. Also, decided NOT to take my guitar with me after all, basically because it would be too difficult to stow on the plane and I'd only worry about losing it. Also it would probably be an unnecessary distraction. So, rather than strumming chords I shall while away my spare hours writing words...

Wednesday, 6 January 2010

Happy New Ear

Aloha and hello, my beautiful followers and fellow travellers,

A happy new year to you all. I hope you spent it wisely... New Years being one of those over-hyped holidays one walks a fine line between trying too hard (ramming into an overpriced club to get cruelly drunk) and not trying at all (me, most years).
Its come as something of a shock that people are actually reading this, so I'm endeavoring to effuse a bit more. To be more effusive. More talking.

I'm back in Brighton, again, for the final preparatory furlong before heading to sunnier (& sweatier) climes. And as if to speed me on my way, old man winter has gone to town with ridiculous amounts of snow and some properly cold weather to boot. My flat here in Preston Park being a drafty old tree-house at the best of times, I've had to resort to wrapping myself in towels for my evening meditation. Yes, moan moan bloody moan... its all fine really. Had a rather nice walk (read: hobble) around the park today, including a wee commune with the trees at the far side. I should have taken a photo really, it would have made more sense and I'd have avoided you lot thinking me mad. Madder. Whatever. Anyway, buses cancelled, nowt to do but busy oneself indoors. I've a stack of delicious looking books that I've accumulated over the christmas-hols, including a cracker entitled 'A history of Walking', which I'm in two minds to save for Freetown.

Casting out to my various SL-contacts (actually fewer than I'd thought) for possible connections when I get there. Don't particularly want to be mooching around on my lonesome, at least not all the time. No doubt I'll attract plenty of attention. The real question is: Do I take my guitar with me?

Reviewing a book for the house Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 'The Invisible Empire'. Catchy, and not bad either. The author is a former sussex PhD in Anthropology. It's a sort of mix of discourse analysis (how do texts represent the world?) and Ethnography (here is the world, as I saw it), about the debates around immigration and place in the East End of London during the early to mid-90s and early-to mid 00s. The Invisible Empire of the title is basically a reference to how public discourses about Britishness gloss over the violent history of the British Empire, and instead focus on things like the abolition of the slave trade, liberal reform, tolerance, trade etc, and in so doing, exclude ethnic minority histories and claims to belonging. Sort of thing. Anyway its right up my street, using lots of postcolonial theory and Gramsci and Foucault, although it could do with some pictures. The one on the cover is cool, a photo of the old gateway to the East India Docks taken in the late 19thy century. Must remember to include pictures when I write my book. Someone remind me, please?

D

Sunday, 27 December 2009

Its christmas time (no need to be afraid) p.1

**grinds invisible cigarette butt into floor whilst looking sheepish**

Well, um. What can say? So much for my 'intractable loquacity'... Sorry dear children, I promise I will not abandon you again without Good Reason. On this occasion, it was simply the infernal drudge machine that sucked me up into its grinding corrugated iron air vents. Term had started, in other words, and I had stuff to do, much of it related to sorting out my fieldwork clearance. Forms and forms and more forms. A many-headed hydra of bureaucracy. It took me the full twelve weeks before it was all sorted. It has now been sorted, please return to your stations.

So yes, Sierra Leone, impending, looming, approaching stealthily and without relent. 6 months is a looong time. What am I going to do? Apart from the learning of Krio, meeting of people, swallowing-down-without-chewing of fufu, popping of malaria pills, dodging of traffic, avoiding of being mugged, assorted friend-accompanied out-hanging and spontaneous note-taking... apart from all that I'll be keeping another blog, a new one, to keep myself sane and others informed and entertained. I'm leaving at the end of next month. Details will appear in the forthcoming weeks.

Monday, 28 September 2009

Tinnitus, Habits, International relations.

A slight persistent background whistle tells me I’m not invulnerable. Years spent happily rocking out in tiny clubs and gig venues, or blasting my bedroom walls with improbable sounds, have taken their toll. Whatever the aesthetic drawbacks of earplugs, I might have to acquiesce or end up a bit too Morrissey-esque for my own liking.

Habits. Habits at the breakfast table. Habits when I log online. An easy way to avoid the here and now, to let things slide a bit. Not that I’m beating myself up about them. That’s another habit you see. Better to give them the old knowing look of a disapproving but loving parent. I’ve got my eye on you…

Apparently I’m now in International Relations. Never in all my born days… I suppose it’s because of the new school reorganisation. SocCul has been broken up, and Anthro, IR and Geography, Development and Migration Studies have now been mushed together into a new ‘School of Global Studies’, casting us adrift from our kinfolk in Sociology and Gender Studies. I doesn’t really matter. But I was rather enjoying my Geographer Status. With its maps, networks, spaces and places, and without any of the romance of Anthropology or the hardnut theory-building of Sociology, Geography is sensitive geek chic par excellence. IR is all War, Order, Treaties, security – its Geography’s military-history obsessed slightly autistic cousin. It ain’t me babe.

Sunday, 27 September 2009

Rottingdean Bluegrass

Saturday afternoon. I had just cycled into town, and was pedalling nonchalantly up Trafalgar Street in the North Laine when what should I spy but a four-piece Bluegrass band, a-pickin' and a-strummin' and a-wailin' and a-clatterin', live there on the pavement. How very Brighton, I thought, as I parked my steed and wandered over to suss them out. To be honest I was half expecting them to be some well-meaning but a bit rubbish. Dang me if they weren’t smart as a whip. Competing with the rumble of delivery trucks they made a fine old noise, with some lovely high-lonesome harmony singing and some seriously mean Banjo. After their set that drew enthusiastic applause from the denizens of the Great Eastern pub, I enjoined to enquire after their name. They are Amy Harrison and the Second Hand String Band, and a nicer bunch of unassuming music-lovers you couldn’t hope to meet. Catch them live if you can. Later that evening I dragged some friends out to a pub in Seven Dials to see them again, where, with a proper PA and more intimate surroundings, they sounded even better.

I’m resting my bones after a quite delightful Sunday excursion to Rottingdean, East up the coast from Brighton. It’s an interesting place, home to Rudyard Kipling at the turn of the last century, where he wrote Kim and some of the Just so stories. I also know it as home of the Copper Family, a folk-singing lineage, whose CD ‘Come Write me Down’ I have owned and cherished for about two years. Anyway, I had only been once previously, on a misty Easter morning bike ride with one of my old housemates, so it felt good to check it out properly. We got the bus out to Roedean school (a posh looking private boarding school on a hill out by the Marina), and hiked over the Downs, taking in an archaeological dig on the outskirts of Ovingdean, a climb over Beacon hill, past the windmill, and a final saunter down into Rottingdean in time for some lunch. We then lazed around on the beach, I answered the ocean’s siren call and had a much-needed dip, before finally moseying back along the coast path to Brighton. Lovely.

Term starts tomorrow. I am ready. Are you?

Friday, 25 September 2009

Guilty Pleasures

A busy one, today. Driving lesson between 11:30 and 1:30. The driving seems to have reached some kind of plateau, in a manner of speaking. I’ve been away for a few weeks so I’m a bit out of practice, I suppose. There are moments behind the wheel now where t all seems to slot together in a nice relaxed fashion. Other times when Jim has to put me right or talk me through. He’s a good chap, my driving instructor. I’ve had a few in my time, so I know enough to compare. Very calm, Jim likes his music, has a dry, slightly lugubrious voice, and is a ready fount of information about the various celebrities who reside in and around Brighton and Hove. He’s been teaching me since October last year, on the recommendation of my previous instructor Clive, a fiery ex-serviceman from the west country who’d yell and swear at other vehicles if he felt they were crowding me, and be similarly forthright in telling me if I made any mistakes. Before that, back when I was in Norwich there was Coleman, something of a Master in the Zen Art of clutch control. And finally, the first guy whose name I forget, who only taught me a few times before I went away to Uni, and whose only lasting impression on me was his insistence that I refer to the gear stick as the gear lever because gear stick was ‘American’. All in all, a diverse array of practical, mechanically - minded, provincially accented, decent fellows who did their level best to teach me how not to stall at junctions. I stalled today, having left the car in 3rd. gear at a junction. Ho hum.

Afterward, I was dropped in town and decided to embark on a spot of clothes shopping. If I was as enthusiastic about clothes, and as ready with a digital camera as my buddy Mark (see Diffractedthinking.Blogspot.com) I could provide you with lots of pretty pictures of the various hep items now adorning my wardrobe. Sadly this isn’t the case, although some of the items are indeed pretty. My relationship with clothes is a bit confused. I consider myself to have a pretty good eye when it comes to these things, an aesthetic commonsense probably inherited from my ex-Art teacher grandmother. If I see a particularly well-considered sweater or dress on one of my friends, I have been known to comment on it. However, in the last few years I have been tending more towards sobriety in the clothes-buying stakes, more often than not feeling reluctant to replenish my wardrobe for quite long stretches of time. This is of a piece, I think, with a slow abandonment of the pursuit of ‘hipness’, that engaged me for much of my late teens and early twenties, and covered music and social habits as well. Call it growing up, if you like, but also I think I’ve always had a slight ascetic bent, a touch of guilt, that makes me a bit uncomfortable with the idea of spending lots of money on clothes. Where that comes from I don’t know. It’s there. Yet if you leave it long enough, as I did, what happens? You look at your wardrobe one day, and you feel grubby. Then, you go out and spend lots of money on clothes. As I did, today. Nice clothes, for the most part. Whats wrong with that? Nothing really.

I’m beginning to get the sense that I might have a lot of time on my hands this term. I received my provisional grade for my dissertation, and it’s better than I thought. Still needs tweaking, and I have quite a bit of Fieldwork prep to be getting on with. I’m hoping to go to Sierra Leone in January for language training, the paperwork for which takes a few months to get processed. But I’m still without a regular weekly schedule. I suppose I could get things kicked off on the London side of things. I’ve a clutch of facebook and email contacts that I ought to start cultivating properly. If I could sort out a regular job or placement that would embed me in the SL scene then that would be a healthy start. But apart from work, I’d quite like to get involved in something extra-curricula while I’m Brighton. Walking? Guitar? Volunteering? Many options…

Dx

Tuesday, 22 September 2009

There and Back again

Seemed like longer than a week. In a good way. I’ve been up to the Abbey three times now and on each occasion it feels like this, rather Narnia-esque. Must be all the meditation. Feeling both refreshed, and tired. The trip back down from Northumberland took two days and included a taxi, a train ride, a looooong journey on a coach, a lift from my precocious, recalcitrant brother Nat in his new car, a bus ride (stood up), another train ride, and another bus, with a far amount of pedestrian lugging mixed in too. All in all, pretty whacked. So why did I travel literally the length of England just to sit around with a bunch of Monks? Good question. Why did Bodhidharma cross the Himalayas? Don’t ask me, I just work here.

Now I’m back, holed up in my Brighton garret, a mug of tea cooling at my shoulder. Back to the everyday routine, which doesn’t feel quite so everyday anymore. Boxes of yet-to-be unpacked Stuff still filling my bedroom. Some rather unexpected issues with our ex-landlord. The old PhD thing. Ah, the old PhD thing, waiting for me patiently like a stinky old stray dog who won’t leave until I give him a bowl of Winalot. Problems, obstacles, things to be gotten on with.

Dx

Thursday, 10 September 2009

cheep

At home again, to the scuffling cheep of month-old chicks. My mum’s, they are currently - and constantly - having a confab in their specially heated run in the unused nook attached to the living room. Mum has recently branched out from egg production with the view to selling the full-grown birds to other would-be chicken enthusiasts, of which there are apparently an increasing number. An egg evangelist, if you will. So, if you’re interested in bijou poultry production, give her a call. Please, don't call me.

My friend Andrea sent me this quote by Rilke the other day. It relates to my current predicament, although I reckon its pretty good advice generally speaking. Suspiciously Buddhist-sounding too:

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."

(Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Letters to a Young Poet')

I shouldn't hang around, as I have to go into town and buy trousers. Leicester, my old stomping ground. What it lacks in glamour, it makes up for in... um... curry.

D x