Un Cubano en Londres

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2012-01-29T10:00:00.001Z

In Cuba we used to call her "La Dama de Hierro" and not precisely because of a particular leaning towards watercress and its benefits. The English "th" sound of her surname was pronounced as a Spanish "t". Aged ten or eleven, I remember being given a badge that read "Las Malvinas son Argentinas". At the time I didn't know that Las Malvinas were a group of islands off the coast of Argentina, nor that the English translation was Falklands. And stories abounded - apocryphal, probably - that she urinated whilst standing.

It's hard to find a more polarising historical and political figure than Margaret Thatcher in recent times. The middle ground is usually vacated when previous cabinet members, union leaders and analysts sit down to talk about her legacy. The Marmite effect could well be applied to this grocer's daughter who rose through the ranks of the Conservative party to become Britain's first female Prime Minister. You either love her or hate her.

It would be hypocritical of me, however, to say that she awakens those same kinds of sentiments in me. I was eight when she came to power and nineteen when she resigned. Her name and role were as alien to me during my childhood and adolescence as freedom of speech was in 1980s Cuba. Fidel didn't like her for obvious reasons: Maggie was a close ally of Ronald Reagan, the actor-turned-president who, according to Gil Scott-Heron's song "B" Movie, 'acted like an actor...Hollyweird' and tightened the screws on the economic embargo against Cuba during his administration.

But now, The Iron Lady is back in fashion, courtesy of Meryl Streep, who gives a tour de force in a film based on Thatcher's twilight years, more specifically her battle with dementia.

To an outsider like me, this fixation with the former PM is both fascinating and frustrating. The former, because it's one of those rare moments when the famous British upper lip disappears, only to be replaced by a passion hard to match. The latter because, argumentative as I can be sometimes, I have hardly any grounds to debate her premiership or her legacy. All I'm left with is the immigrant's perennial companion: the "what ifs". So, today, this will be a "what if" column.

In my time in the UK, I have met people who have either praised Thatcher for the direct benefit her policies brought them, or slagged her off for the havoc she allegedly wreaked. The first group is usually made up of rightwing politicians, businesspeople who took advantage of Thatcher's deregulation of the economy in the 80s and landlords who started their lives as working-class, council house dwellers but who managed to buy their own property after Thatcher relaxed the rules on social housing. I sometimes wonder whether, had I been born in 1961 instead of '71, I would have reaped the same rewards for becoming one of Britain's many entrepeneurs at the time. This idea is often offset against what I've learned from people living at the time in what they describe as a very volatile atmosphere full of riots and strikes.

The second group, those who criticise Thatcher, is composed for the most part of union leaders, public sector workers, left-leaning intellectuals and feminists. Given my political views, it's the sector of British society with which I feel more attuned. Would I have found the same common ground with them back in the 80s? I don't know, possibly. But then, again, possibly not.

There is, however, a third group that could be seen as a spin-off from the second one to which I referred above. It consists mainly of women who are not afraid of using the "f" word to explain their philosophy and creed : feminism. To them, Mrs T represented the ultimate betrayal of the principles of feminism.

Several questions arise from this attitude, though: are there any grounds for considering Margaret Thatcher a feminist? Did she ever ask to be addressed as one? Could she, perhaps, have been an unintentional one? If no to the previous three questions, why the fixation with Mrs T's lack of feminist credentials when she didn't run (and this, I know for sure) on a feminist ticket during the 1979 general election (or any election thereafter)?

The answers don't come easily. Yet, even the most hardcore Thatcher critic must acknowledge that by breaking through the political, gender and class glass ceiling she, unwittingly, paved the way for other women to, if not join the political arena, at least try to see female success in politics as an achievable goal.

On the economy, one of Thatcher's most contentious areas, she even clashed with her own party over certain policies whose aim was supposedly to level the playing field for the less well-off. I mentioned council tenants before. By being allowed to buy their own property they were also creating wealth. This had two effects: one was the emergence of a new middle-class and the other the privatisation of accommodation that had hitherto been government-run. The former didn't please the politicians occupying the upper echelons of the Conservative Party, especially the old fogeys who wanted to keep the status quo the way it had always been and who were not interested in consorting with people who until then had been seen as nothing more than plebs. The latter element widened the gap between rich and poor and had a knock-on effect on the UK property market in years to come. Still, I imagine that if I'd been a council tenant in the early 80s with enough cash to buy my own house, I would have probably taken a dim view of the criticism heaped on the person making my purchase possible.

This is one of the reasons why I think it's mistaken to lambast Maggie for her lack of feminist credentials. I don't think she ever set out to have any. It's a similar situation to what we've seen with Obama and issues affecting African-Americans. Narrow down your policies to just address problems within your own gender or ethnic group and you won't make it past the primaries.

There's been, however, an ironic twist of fate of late. Currently a group of female Tory MPs are trying to adopt the "f" word as part of their political raison d'être. All of a sudden what drives Louise Mensch, Theresa May et al is the need to tackle gender inequality. A laudable position indeed, until you scratch the surface and realise that their agenda is led by a firm belief that the free market is and will always be the great economic leveller. And yet, it was the unchallenged power of the free market that's took us down the path of financial crisis in 2008. Which culminated with Labour out of office, a coalition moving into Number 10 and the worst cuts ever to sweep through the public, statutory and voluntary sectors in living memory. And the most affected section of society? Women.

There is, I'm sure, much to complain about Margaret Thatcher's time in office. There was, as I understand, a lot of unemployment and social unrest throughout most of her premiership. Her Friedmanite approach to the economy, pioneered by her goverment in the 80s and supported by New Labour in the 90s and noughties, have left the UK dependent on investment banks and hedge-fund managers who hold everyone, including Westminster, to ramson. Not a lot is manufactured in the UK nowadays and the country has gone from being a major producer to being a major consumer.

Still, everytime I see a red bus with Meryl Streep's mug beaming down on me I can't stop thinking about the "what ifs" scenarios.Enough to make me feel frustrated, I can assure you.

©2012

Next Post: “Killer Opening Songs”, to be published on Wednesday 1st February at 11:59m (GMT)

Photo taken from The Iron Lady movie blog.

Urban Diary

2012-01-25T23:59:00.002Z

I got to the high street and looked both ways. The newsagents was still there. The Jamaican takeaway was open for business. The pound shop was busy as usual. And the new bus depot kept swallowing buses up at one end and throwing them up at the other. Yet, there was a detail missing from this urban landscape.

I should have known. The death knell had been tolling for some time and after several painful months the long, slow-moving red monster let out its last gasp. I already miss it. And so will thousands of Londoners, who, like me, came to appreciate its functional and practical design.

The bendy buses, introduced by the previous Mayor, Ken Livingstone, in 2001, made the lives of many people in the British capital easier. Shoppers dragging heavy trollies loved the fact that they could go in through any of its three doors. Wheelchair-users found them disabled-friendly, not a word you can use about transport in London very often. I frequently carried my own daughter's pram when she was little. in one of them. They could fit more people than a double-decker.

There were downsides, too. The easy access was manna from heaven for fare-dodgers. The way bendy buses slithered around corners posed a threat to cyclists who risked the possibility of being crushed to death by one of these metallic beasts.

But in their own, unique London way, bendy buses were beautiful. Seeing passengers boarding the three doors was like witnessing little brooks joining a snaking, long river. The zigzagging movement reminded me of a gigantic, red Chinese dragon parading through the capital's streets.

There's another reason for this trip down memory lane (on a bendy bus, naturally). When my mum first came to visit me in 2003, we both boarded one and immediately she uttered the words I knew she would: "It's like the acordiones in Cuba! Remember?" Of course, mum, I do remember. Route 222 to La Lisa, route 76 to Santiago de las Vegas. We had our own bendy buses, too, our acordiones (literally, "accordion", after the musical instrument).

But this strange synchronicity between the city where I was born and the one where I now live will never be relived again. I mourn the passing of the bendy buses and with it, the disappearance of a practical, beautiful and polarising landmark of London life.

Photo taken from the BBC

© 2012

Next post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on SuTnday 29th January at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2012-01-22T10:00:00.001Z

It's been a strange few weeks for race, and all matters to do with it, in the UK. We've gone from the very ugly to the very absurd. An example of the former was the horrible murder of the Indian student Anuj Bidve in Salford on Boxing Day. We've also seen justice partially done at last in the Stephen Lawrence case, the black teenager killed in 1993 by a bunch of white thugs. At the other end of the racial spectrum, we've had the odd spectacle of Liverpool Football Club players wearing T-shirts with the image of the Uruguayan striker Luis Suárez on the front in support of their teammate, who was accused of racially abusing Manchester Uniterd defender Patrice Evra. It was a scene so absurd that I thought I was watching a movie by Luis Buñuel instead.

Underlying these events there are two questions on many people's lips: Is Britan still racist? And if so, how racist? Sometimes the latter is the only question that is asked, as if assuming ipso facto that the UK is still a hostile place to newcomers, especially if their skins are dark.

From my experience as a black immigrant in GB, I tend to answer with a yes and no to the first question. Is Britain still racist? Well, no. But also, yes.

The negative response is based on what doesn't happen on a regular basis. Racist attacks like the one that ultimately took Stephen Lawrence's life are a rarity. Racist language against black or Asian people is not the norm. Likewise, we tend to celebrate our diversity nowadays, rather than slag it off. When I speak to people who were either born here or who have lived for a considerable amount of time in this country, they tell me scary stories of times gone by that would have probably planted doubts in my mind about relocating to London from Havana. These are tales about deeply prejudiced police officers bent on making black people's lives as difficult as possible for no reason. They recount stories about discrimination in the job market in the past. Yet, I think that we've moved a long way away from those kinds of attitudes.

So, then, if this panacea is commonplace in the UK why the "yes" to the question of whether Britain is racist or not?

Because the racial intolerance I have seen and felt is not of the jackbooted type but of the kind I call "polite racism" (©, ™). It's not the racism that leads a group of xenophobes to firebomb a house just because black immigrants live in it. It's the type that is delicately expressed in civilised circles. And it respects no political allegiances or geography. From the right we get condemnation, from the left patronising. This happens in London and Miami. In Hong Kong and Havana. The result is the same. We have been allocated a place in society and we'd better not forget it. You can raise your head high and proud as much as you like, but be careful, dear, you might bang it against the glass ceiling right above you. And if you dare to protest against this type of subtle, racial bigotry, you'll be labelled an "angry black woman". Or man. There are various ways in which "polite racism" manifests itself.

One is to overlook black people because of a - false - assumption that we're not capable of performing certain tasks, especially if the job at hand demands the use of one's brain. You see, we're sporty and physical by nature, but brainy? Nah, we'll leave that to those who know, usually of a lighter shade of pale.

Even in the sports arena where we're supposed to shine, stereotypes are plentiful. If I go back to football for a moment, we see how Chelsea's black Ivorian striker Didier Drogba is often referred to in terms of his muscular prowess and his bull-like strength, whereas an equally talented centre-forward like Arsenal's Dutchman Robin van Persie (a white player), is spoken of in terms of his clever technique. However, anyone who follows the English Premier League knows that Drogba's knack for outplaying defenders is rooted in his technical abilites as well as his physical ones. As for van Persie and the way he outmuscles centre-backs, any Chelsea fan, like me, experienced, sadly, a fine display of top-rate brawny power recently when the Gunners beat the Blues 5-3 at Stamford Bridge. The Dutchman scored a hat-trick and used every single fibre in his body to achieve his feat.

The other way in which "polite racism" shows its ugly, but ever so subtle, face is by denying us opportunities. I remember applying for a job in Havana as a tour guide. I not only spoke English, one of the main prerequisites, but also French and German. My interview took place whilst doing a mock tour with one of the guides. The one who normally dealt with French-speaking tourists and by the end of my dress rehearsal she said to me: "I cannot see you not getting this job!" Well, I didn't. Instead the vacancy was filled up by a blue-eyed, blond lady who, according to the same tour guide who had praised me during my trial, could hardly put two words in English together.

Whilst racist violence is more lethal, in the long term polite racism hurts deeper and its effects are longer-lasting. It erodes our confidence, it creates an unreal image of black and Asian people and it triggers off conflicts between generations.

However, I cannot and do not want to play the victim card. Because for polite racism to exist, there has to be very often a collusion between the executer and the executed. This sometimes takes the form of "impostor syndrome" with the tacit approval of the person on whom the label is foisted. There seems to be almost a universal understanding amongst black people of what a black person is, or should be. Or the type of music to which he/she should listen. Or the kind of literature he/she should read (that is, supposing that they're allowed to read). Sorry, peeps, I never got the memo.

For instance, I remember going to see the Azerbi pianist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh a couple of years ago at the Cadogan Hall. I've championed her music on this blog several times. That night the theatre, though not packed, was certainly almost full. At the end of the concert as my wife and I were getting ready to go out, I caught sight of a black woman in the audience. Until then it hadn't occurred to me that there were any other black people in the theatre. That was because I wasn't thinking of myself of anything other than a human being enjoying one of the most beautiful sounds to ever come out of a piano. For a fleeting second the woman and I stared at each other and in that brief instant a multitude of questions ping-ponged between us. Did you see anyone else like us? You mean who looked like us? Yes. As in black? Yes. No, and you? No, me neither. What did you think of the concert? It was marvellous. Why do you think we were the only... You mean the only black people? Well, she's Azerbi, isn't she? So, she caters to that group. And maybe to Georgians and Armenians, too. So, what about you? What's your story? Why, if you're not Azerbi, are you here? And what about them?

Them. "Them" was the ubiquitous chattering classes, the "alternative" middle-class for whom there are no colour, gender, nationality or any other kind of barriers. They were also in attendance that night, and why shouldn't they have been? You might think that my conclusion at the time was to blame this forward-thinking group for the absence of other minorities in the auditorium. You're wrong. I didn't blame them at all. I blamed us. You see, in more than fourteen years in the UK, I've never seen a sign reading: "No blacks", or "No Asians". Were I to see one, I would contest it straight away. And I would use the law if I had to. In the same way that the - usually - well-off, metropolitan, middle-class doesn't deny themselves any pleasures because they don't think in terms of colour, gender, or nationality, neither should we. Culture is universal.

This attitude, which I call "racial self-mutilation" is prevalent in black, Asian and other minority communities in contemporary western societies. It ignores the radical changes that have occurred in the last couple of decades. The danger is that whilst the top echelons of our political, economic and social hierarchy continue to be occupied by the well-heeled, middle-/upper-class, middle-aged and often male members of our nation, we're locked, meanwhile, into a self-hatred cycle from which it's very difficult to break. I think that the first course of action should be to look at ourselves in the mirror and say: "You're going in the wrong direction! Stop saying, gimme, gimme, gimme, and start taking instead and believing that you're entitled to what you're taking, without telling a soul". By the way, that was a metaphore, not a call to looting. Just in case.

When I first heard of Stephen Lawrence's murder, one element caught my attention. He wanted to be an architect. Neither a rapper, nor a footballer, but a person who designed buildings, who injected life into inanimate objects. He wanted to be part of London, or by default, the UK's burgeoning, creative industries. Not that there's anything wrong with being a rapper or footballer, but when every other black child tells you that that's what they want to do when they grow up, you start wondering about horizons, mind, expansion, aspirations, stereotypes and predictability. And you can't blame racism for that. Or at least not directly. Of course, there's a history behind it and colonialism and slavery are still fresh in the mind. But where's our individual power? Where are our future Stephen Lawrences?

Cases like Stephen and Anuj Bidve are clear-cut as to how the public react to them. I would dare to say, or would like to believe, rather, that 99.9% of the population in the UK condemned the actions that took the lives of these two young men and they will condemn similar actions were they to happen again. That's one reason to feel optimistic. It's also the main reason why, come the summer, we'll be welcoming visitors from all over the globe during the Olympic Games. However, when it comes to polite racism, there's much more to be done and at times it feels like a Sisyphean task for those of us who have the responsibility of educating younger minds. And it's not just down to one side. Because at the end of the day, the problem is not just external, but also intermal. And that, my peeps, it's a harder truth to swallow.

© 2012

Next Post: “Urban Diary”, to be published on Wednesday 25th January at 11:59pm (GMT)

Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts

2012-01-18T23:59:00.003Z

"The traffic grew worse by the day. There seemed to more cars every evening. As the jams grew worse, so did Pinky Madam's temper. One evening, when we were just crawling down M.G. Road into Gurgaon, she lost it completely. She began screaming.

'Why can't we go back, Ashoky? Look at this fucking traffic jam. It's like this every other day now.'

'Please, don't begin that again. Please. ''Why not? You promised me, Ashoky, we'll be in Delhi just three months and get some paperwork and go back. But I'm starting to think that... that bastard today who overtook me... Jesus, I can't believe the way some people drive! At first I thought "All right, all right, he's got a kid in the back, maybe he's running late for school, you know, the usual, I can sympathise, I also do the school run, but the way he cut in in front of me... Man, I would have skinned the little bugger if I'd laid my hands on him!

The mind wanders sometimes. My mind, I mean. It's a funny process how my eyes wander off the page and my subsconscious takes over. I imagine my brain as a hunter, sitting down, waiting patiently, stalking and waiting some more. Until the precise moment when my guard is down and it can send all kinds of unrelated thoughts and images into my head. Usually, when I'm reading a book.

I'm not one of those readers who get distracted easily. Having been born and raised in Cuba, I'm almost totally inured to external influences. Try preparing for a dissertations whilst waiting for route 98, destination La Lisa, or reading Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest on board of an M1 (that's a camel, by the way, not a real one, c'mon, Cuba, tropical island, you know, but a bus that resembles one). Pressed against someone else's armpit or smelling someone's foul breath after they've just had a cigarette, that was me, book in hand, and the other hand in my pocket. Wallets and purses had a habit of going walkies in those days. I could tell you stories that would make you laugh... or cry.

But, no, I don't get distracted easily. Why, then, does my mind occasionally wander off the page, leaving me with images and words that are completely unrelated to the text I'm reading? It's not that the picture in my head and the subsequent narrative are non-sequiturs; they're indeed a follow-through to the previous idea. But still, they're neither part of the plot, nor conducive to the enactment of a situation belonging to the book in which I'm immersed.

An explanation beckons, of course, and I think that there are a few elements to consider. First of all, this phenomenon doesn't occur with just any book, but with special ones. The fragment with which I opened this post belongs to The White Tiger, a novel that had me under its spell from the word go. Aravind Adiga's story about Balram Halwai and his unorthodox approach to business is raw. His voice is original and his vision unique. The plot is strong and well-constructed and the characters believable. Therefore my short mental "excursions" were not caused by tedium but by the rich narrative to which I unconsciously added my own intricate stream of quotidianness. Which leads me to the second factor. By linking, unintentionally, recent or past experiences of my existence to passages in books, that text (whether it be a novel, poem or short story) is contributing to my own personal development. This is probably the sine qua non of literature: not just a pastime, but also, a pathway down which we commence our very own journey in life. A journey that will take us through a landscape of emotional peaks and troughs. And along the way, this literary see-saw helps us form our own identity. My mental escapades are part of that process and may they continue.

© 2012

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 22nd January at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2012-01-15T10:00:00.002Z

A syllogism is an argument in which the conclusion is supported by two premises, of which one (major premise) contains the term (major term) that is the predicate of the conclusion, and the other (minor premise) contains the term (minor term) that is the subject of the conclusion; common to both premises is a term (middle term) that is excluded from the conclusion. A typical example is “All A is C; all B is A; therefore all B is C.”

Could someone, please, explain the above formula to Barclays bank's new boss, Bob Diamond?

After having the cheek to tell MPs last year that the "period of remorse and apology for banks … needs to be over" the head honcho came out recently all guns blazing against some of his own staff because they showed off too much of their wealth. Apparently some bankers thought it a good idea to splash out more than forty thousand quid on wine. Bob wasn't a happy bunny about it and he let his feelings be known.

But Mr Diamond, don't you get it? If the bankers have that much money to begin with, they'll use it. It's their dosh. The better solution would be not to allow them to have that much cash, thus, avoiding that kind of crass display. As Mr Penguin tells you below (even if it makes a hash of it), the 1% is too rich, there's a market for that one percent, so it's totally logical that that 1% willl gravitate towards that market. And stitch up the remaining 99% in the process.

You might think that my first column this year is an idealistic, albeit very reality-based, rant against the banking system. Well, yes, it is somewhat. But it's also a reaction towards so much hipocrisy and bare-faced mendacity. On the one hand we have the Prime Minister David Cameron telling us to tighten our belts in 2012 because the ride ahead is about to get rougher, whilst on the other hand he wants to press on with the reform of public services, i.e., cut as many as he can. I don't think he has understood that if he doesn't fix C, he will have to contend with a malfunctioning B because all B is C, too. For a good example, look at the summer riots. Q.E.D.

In the meantime, the likes of Bob Diamond keep giving mixed messages. One minute, they say, bankers are untouchable, they have the Midas touch without which the economy will stop and we won't even be able to buy loo paper. The next minute, they are as disposable as a pack of "use'n'chuck" Gillette razor blades. Has Bob got any children? Who teaches them in school? Has he ever fallen ill? Who looked after him then? Maybe he went private. After all he's Barclay's chief executive so he can afford it. But still, that doctor had to go to a school to learn his or her trade. And as far as I know the average teacher or doctor doesn't splash out forty grand on a bottle of bubbly.

I strongly dislike scaremongering, I leave that to The Daily Hate, otherwise known as The Daily Mail, but 2012 doesn't augur well. No, if the likes of Bob Diamond, Cameron and co. don't get it into their heads that one of the keys to fixing the economy without causing too much damage in the process is to learn your A, B, C.

© 2012

Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts”, to be posted on Wednesday 18th January at 11:59pm (GMT)

From Here, There and Everywhere...

2012-01-08T10:00:00.000Z

If you're a regular of this blog, then you know how important music is to me. The essay below, first published in The New Statesman, throws new light into the relationship between music and science. Great, entertaining and though-provoking holiday read. I hope you enjoy it. I'm back from my cy-bernation and will resume blogging duties next week. I hope you all had a nice, restful time off.

"Birds whistle, man alone sings, and one cannot hear either a song or an instrumental piece without immediately saying to oneself: another sensitive being is present." The author of this sentence, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, remains best known for his political and moral philosophy that later inspired a revolution. But his thoughts on music were just as prescient of an aesthetic revolution that would lead to music being raised from the lowly place it occupied during his lifetime - that of poetry's "handmaiden" - to the position it took during the 19th century, as the highest, most noble, most humane of the fine arts.

Rousseau was preoccupied with the encroaching materialism of his age, which sought, as he saw it, to diminish human beings to the status of slavish automatons. He wanted to show that music could not be reduced to a mere play of the senses, but rather that its power derived from the way it could answer and reflect the unbounded desire which measures man's difference from his animal ancestors. But his great adversary, the composer and theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau, had already demonstrated that our innate attraction was a simple matter of physics. Hailed as the "Newton of music", Rameau managed to bypass millennia of Pythagorean number-crunching with proof that the rudiments of the western harmonic system could be found resonating as upper partials - harmonic overtones - in a vibrating body. The power of music, argued Rameau, comes from the resonance between the instruments we hear and the naturally formed "instruments" of our bodies.

Modern science, unsurprisingly, comes down squarely on Rameau's side, finding that our seemingly innate sense of musical harmony - as well as our awareness of pulse and rhythm - provides an important reason why we find pleasure in the apparently purposeless activity of playing and listening to music.

This was one of the findings from a recent collaboration between the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Music in Human and Social Development and the Nash Ensemble, a London-based chamber group. In a programme planned as a residency during which musicians and scientists could exchange and deepen ideas, delegates were treated to a series of concerts and lectures under the rubric "Great music and why we love it".

The Nash Ensemble is among the world's great chamber groups, capable of giving its core repertoire the level of grace and insight one more usually associates with excellent string quartets such as the Amadeus or the Budapest. With the ensemble given a chance to play Beethoven's Septet and Schumann's Piano Quintet, among others, to an intimate group of attentive aficionados, there was little risk of disappointment.

So much for the great music, but what about why we love it? Do recent advances in cognitive neuroscience really allow us, as the organisers claim, to give a satisfactory explanation for music's mysterious charms?

Many of the recent findings of research into the neuroscience of music are extremely compelling. It has become clear, for example, that musical experience provides a crucial and not necessarily replaceable stimulus to our cognitive development, and forges links between the different areas of our brain responsible for hearing and movement.

Much fuss was made some years ago about the so-called "Mozart effect", and the idea that listening to Mozart's music could lead to lasting improvements in our memory and other cognitive powers. While this remains unproven, and numerous doubts have been cast over the validity of the original experiments, evidence does suggest that attending to music can result in temporary improvements to our short-term memory.

More importantly, the ways we process larger-scale musical events - such as phrase repetition and developments, modulations and unexpected turns - all rely on activity in the same part of the brain we use for decoding syntax in ordinary language. It remains unclear what, if anything, is being communicated, but the old adage that music is a universal language is nonetheless shown to have some grounding in scientific fact.

On a deeper level, musical activity also affects the small area of the brain called the amygdala, which is primarily responsible for generating the danger signals that prompt us, in evolutionary terms, to take extraordinary measures to guarantee our survival. According to Stefan Koelsch of the University of Sussex, this suggests that the commonly assumed link between music and emotion is a matter of quantifiable fact. The key here may lie in the way that music, in both its small-scale and large-scale processes, typically involves movement between tension and resolution, dissonance and consonance - and that it is our awareness of the disharmony in our auditory environment which triggers our emotional responses to music.

Yet the observation that music moves us, central to the accounts of the art in both Plato and Aristotle and more or less continuously ever since, hardly seems groundbreaking. Koelsch readily admits that if there is an advance in knowledge here - which clearly there is - then the progress relates to neuroscience more than to music. To the layman, the idea of neuroscience conjures up an almost mythical understanding of the brain, in which all its perceptions, emotions and thoughts can be accounted for in terms of minute, lightning-fast electrical signals between synapses, cortexes and mysteriously named regions such as the nucleus accumbens and the corpus callosum.

In reality, despite the advanced technological wizardry of the equipment this area of research uses to measure and analyse brain activity, the state of cognitive neuroscience is still at a basic level. Think of those satellite images of Planet Earth that show human distribution and activity through the levels of artificial light generated. You can do a great deal with such a map in the way of geo-economic analysis. But when it comes to discovering what is being read, eaten and thought under those lights, you will most likely find the satellite map a somewhat rudimentary tool.

This is not to say that neuroscience has no uses in explaining music and the value we attach to it. On the contrary, the link between the way we experience musical structure and the way our ears were originally conditioned to monitor our environment for danger and desire should certainly have an important role to play in our understanding of how and why the musical practices we now encounter (in the form of sound waves, radio waves and hexadecimal numerical systems) originally evolved.

Oddly, Rousseau was one of the first to posit the idea that music plays a critical role in our evolutionary development, arguing that music and language arose as affective signifiers in response to our awareness of and desire for other individuals. Far more than a meaningless play of the senses, the significance of musical sound derives from the representation of that most elusive of all structures: the human subject itself.

Ultimately, a mixture of evolutionary and cognitive science will be able to explain the entire range of human striving in terms of sublimation of our need to sustain and reproduce ourselves. The important thing, however, is not that our lives permit reduction into such terms so much as that our values, desires and subjective identities take the qualitative forms they do. Part of the advantages of an aesthetic account of music such as Rousseau's is that the value of music can be related not to our animal nature, but to the entire history of subjectivity. Music affects us so strongly, in other words, because it quite literally lends form to our lived experience, answering to our desires in their most sublimated, socialised state, while seeking out our most visceral, primordial responses.

When we hear music, we hear that another sensitive being is present. The proof of this is, in the best tradition, strictly empirical: people have been discerning this in the music they love for centuries. Whether we will eventually be able to see this process happening on a magnetic resonance imaging scan, however, is another question entirely.

Photo taken from The Nash Ensemble website.

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 15^th January at 10am (GMT)

My Highlights of 2011

2011-12-31T23:59:00.010Z

As another year comes to an end, I would like to bring to the attention of my readers and fellow bloggers the books, films, music and dance pieces that made me go "Wow!" in the last twelve months. Difficult task it is, though, as I was exposed to so much quality in 2011. I hope you enjoy my selections. Happy New Year everybody!

Books:

Andrea Levy's The Long Song is one of those novels that manages to be both entertaining and clever, rooting the story it tells on so many facts that at times it feels like a documentary. Whether as part of your (expanding) bookshelf, or as a gift for your literature-loving friends, this is a must-read.

Virgilio Piñera's Complete Plays took me down memory lane to a place where I came across my adolescent self face to face once again. What made me fall at that young age for this (supposedly) snobbish, no-nonsense, Cuban intellectual who did not suffer fools gladly, and yet always had a kind word for up-and-coming authors? I don't know but, his love for language, his fearlessness when writing, his endless creativity and the fact that he exuded Cubanness whenever he put pen to paper, are elements that must have contributed to that.

A lot has been said about James Joyce's Ulysses. It's the novel that everyone talks about but whose plot people rarely discuss. That's because there's no plot per se. The book centres on one day in the life of both Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. Above all, for me Ulysses is a very sensorial novel. We not only watch the main characters eating, brawling and (in Bloom's case) engaging in sexual acts, but we feel them, too. In a previous post I questioned Joyce's pole-high position as the pinnacle of modernism. At the time I had not read Ulysses, but now that I have I can tell you all that the hype is justified.

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is the type of book I wish it'd been fiction. But no, it's a very real piece of non-fiction. Which makes it the scariest piece I've read for a long time. Naomi carries out a thorough analysis of the economic ideas sponsored by the Chicago School under Milton Friedman's tutelage and traces their links with oppressive regimes across the globe.

Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness was the second book of short stories I bought by the Canadian writer and it like Open Secrets, it didn't disappoint me. She has a way of making the quotidian lives of citizens in and around Ontario extraordinary. But be careful, her fiction is brutal and takes no prisoners.

Music:

This was the year when I managed to have a proper taste of Anoushka Shankar's music. And what a treat it was! The two albums I bought, Breathing Under Water and Traveller have been playing on a loop at home, in the car and on my mp3. Breathing Under Water, where the star sitar-player teams up with percussionist Karsh Kale, is highly lyrical and rooted in Indian classical heritage.

Traveller brings the flamenco tradition back home (it has been widely acknowledged that flamenco has its origins in India) in an organic and fluent way.

The 1956 collaboration between the saxophonist Ben Webster and the piano prodigy Art Tatum, supported by Red Callender on bass and Bill Douglass on drums, was called simply The Legendary: the Album. Such a grandstanding title might attract accusations of hubris, yet each and every single note on the record is pitch perfect. If you like jazz, you must buy this album.

Three records later I consider myself a Concha Buika fan. Her voice should carry a health warning: "Quality on board! Consume carefully". This time around was "La Niña de Fuego" that got me. Concha possesses the type of vocal range that can soar or soothe, depending on its owner's will. Fabulous.

Calima Flamenca was my little surprise this year. They were the wild card about whom I knew very little, mainly through last.fm, and who ended up providing me with two of my favourite tunes of the year from their album Al Calor de la Noche.

Films:

I first saw Missing many years ago and watched it again recently with my wife, courtesy of Lovefilm. Against the backdrop of what's happened in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last ten years with British citizens being arrested and tortured abroad, the movie has a prescient feel. Jack Lemmon is mesmerising as the American, law-abiding, conservative father whose son is "disappeared" in an unnamed country in South America (but we all know it's Chile) and who is forced to acknowledge (with a little help from his daughter-in-law Sissy Spacek) the ugly truth about the US involvement in the dictatorships that sprung up in the 60s, 70s and 80s in the region.

There's not much beauty in Biutiful, by the acclaimed Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu. What there is, though, is a hell of a powerful script and a terrific performance by Javier Bardem as the heartless criminal who at the same time is concerned about the wellbeing of the illegal Chinese immigrants he himself exploits. Impartial and raw.

I had some misgivings about watching The King's Speech because of the buzz surrounding it. Plus, 2011 was the year when the monarchy got its mojo back. I, for one, neither Republican nor pro-Crown, didn't want to be a part of it. But The King's Speech is cinema at its best. No gimmicks, or CGI, just a plain, simple story, beautifully acted by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush (Helena Bonham Carter gets a look-in, but hers is a minor role) and capable of awakening feelings of mirth and commiseration.

The Secret in Their Eyes was the type of movie that reminded me of how good Argentinian cinema was. Ricardo Darín plays Benjamín Esposito, a retired legal counsellor, who wants to write a novel in an attempt to close a chapter of his life that remains unsolved. Throw in a psychopath, a dictatorship, a corrupt government official and an unfinished love affair and you have one of the better Latin American movies in recent times.

London River tells the story of Elisabeth (played by Brenda Blethyn) and Ousmane (played by Sotigui Kouyaté) whose offspring are killed in the terrorist attack on 7th July, 2005 in London. What starts as hatred, ignorance and racism is eventually transformed into understanding and sympathy. A movie I would watch again.

Dance:

If with Into the Hoods, Katie Prince and ZooNation conquered the West End of London, with Some Like It Hip Hop she has elevated the urban dance form to new levels. Based loosely on Some Like Hot and Shakespeare's Twelth Night, Some Like It Hip Hop deals with mistaken identity, lost daughters and rulers in crisis. The acting is good, the story believable but the dancing, oh, my, oh, my! The dancing is out of this world. Enough to become my dance highlight of 2011.

What will 2012 have in store for me artistically speaking? I don't know but what I can assure is that the quality will be the same or higher. See you next year!

© 2011

Next Post: “From Here, There and Everywhere…”, to be published on 8th January at 10am (GMT)

From Here, There and Everywhere...

2011-12-25T10:00:00.006Z

This week I'm posting another article with which I fell in love the minute I read it. One of my favourite sections in The New Yorker is the "Shouts and Murmus" column. I love the quirky and warped humour in it. And I still have a hard copy of the text below which I reproduce here in its entirety. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Merry Christmas everybody!

God’s Blog-by Paul Simms

UPDATE: Pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with in just six days. Going to take tomorrow off. Feel free to check out what I’ve done so far. Suggestions and criticism (constructive, please!) more than welcome. God out.

COMMENTS (24)

Not sure who this is for. Seems like a fix for a problem that didn’t exist. Liked it better when the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.

Going carbon-based for the life-forms seems a tad obvious, no?

The creeping things that creepeth over the earth are gross.

Not enough action. Needs more conflict. Maybe put in a whole bunch more people, limit the resources, and see if we can get some fights going. Give them different skin colors so they can tell each other apart.

Disagree with the haters out there who have a problem with man having dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle of the earth, and so on. However, I do think it’s worth considering giving the fowl of the air dominion over the cattle of the earth, because it would be really funny to see, like, a wildebeest or whatever getting bossed around by a baby duck.

The “herb yielding seed” is a hella fresh move. 4:20!

Why are the creatures more or less symmetrical on a vertical axis but completely asymmetrical on a horizontal axis? It’s almost like You had a great idea but You didn’t have the balls to go all the way with it.

The dodo should just have a sign on him that says, “Please kill me.” Ridiculous.

Amoebas are too small to see. They should be at least the size of a plum.

Beta version was better. I thought the Adam-Steve dynamic was much more compelling than the Adam-Eve work-around You finally settled on.

I liked the old commenting format better, when you could get automatic alerts when someone replied to your comment. This new way, you have to click through three or four pages to see new comments, and they’re not even organized by threads. Until this is fixed, I’m afraid I won’t be checking in on Your creation.

***SPOILER***

One of them is going to eat something off that tree You told them not to touch.

Adam was obviously created somewhere else and then just put here. So, until I see some paperwork proving otherwise, I question the legitimacy of his dominion over any of this.

Why do they have to poop? Seems like there could have been a more elegant/family-friendly solution to the food-waste-disposal problem.

The lemon tree: very pretty. The lemon flower: sweet. But the fruit of the poor lemon? Impossible to eat. Is this a bug or a feature?

Unfocussed. Seems like a mishmash at best. You’ve got creatures that can speak but aren’t smart (parrots). Then, You’ve got creatures that are smart but can’t speak (dolphins, dogs, houseflies). Then, You’ve got man, who is smart and can speak but who can’t fly, breathe underwater, or unhinge his jaws to swallow large prey in one gulp. If it’s supposed to be chaos, then mission accomplished. But it seems more like laziness and bad planning.

If it’s not too late to make changes, in version 2.0 You should make water reflective, so the creatures have a way of seeing what they look like.

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Penguins are retarded. Their wings don’t work and their legs are too short. I guess they’re supposed to be cute in a “I liek to eat teh fishes” way, but it’s such obvious pandering to the lowest common denominator.

There’s imitation, and then there’s homage, and then there’s straight-up idea theft, which is what Your thing appears to be. Anyone who wants to check out the original should go to www.VishnuAndBrahma.com. (And check it out soon, because I think they’re about to go behind a paywall.)

Putting boobs on the woman is sexist.

Wow. Just wow. I don’t even know where to start. So the man and his buddy the rib-thing have dominion over everything. They’re going to get pretty unbearable really fast. What You need to do is make them think that there were other, bigger, scarier creatures around a long time before them. I suggest dinosaurs. No need to actually create dinosaurs—just create some weird-ass dinosaur bones and skeletons and bury them in random locations. Man will dig them up eventually and think, What the f?

Epic fail.

Meh.

Next Post: "My Highlights of 2011", to be published on Saturday 31st December at 11:59pm (GMT)

From Here, There and Everywhere...

2011-12-18T10:00:00.010Z

As you know I'm having a well-deserved break but didn't fancy leaving the blog idle. Time off needn't necessarily translate as switched-off brain. This essay by the acclaimed Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, came out a couple of months ago and I knew then I had to share it with you all. Especially as I've somewhat gone off science fiction myself. Very interesting read. I look forward to your comments.

Recently I set out to explore my lifelong relationship with science fiction, both as reader and as writer. I say "lifelong", for among the first things I wrote as a child might well merit the initials SF. Like a great many children before and since, I was an inventor of other worlds. Mine were rudimentary, as such worlds are when you're six or seven or eight, but they were emphatically not of this here-and-now Earth, which seems to be one of the salient features of SF. I wasn't much interested in Dick and Jane: the creepily ultra-normal characters did not convince me. Saturn was more my speed, and other realms even more outlandish. Our earliest loves, like revenants, have a way of coming back in other forms; or, to paraphrase Wordsworth, the child is mother to the woman. To date, I have written three full-length fictions that nobody would ever class as sociological realism: The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. Are these books "science fiction", I am often asked. Though sometimes I am not asked, but told: I am a silly nit or a snob or a genre traitor for dodging the term because these books are as much "science fiction" as Nineteen Eighty-Four is, whatever I might say. But is Nineteen Eighty-Four as much "science fiction" as The Martian Chronicles? I might reply. I would answer not, and therein lies the distinction.

My desire to explore my relationship with the SF world, or worlds, has a proximate cause. In 2009, I published The Year of the Flood, the second work of fiction in a series exploring another kind of "other world" – our own planet in a future. The Year of the Flood was reviewed, along with its sibling, Oryx and Crake, by one of the reigning monarchs of the SF and fantasy forms, Ursula K Le Guin. Her 2009 review in this paper began with a paragraph that has caused a certain amount of uproar in the skin-tight clothing and other-planetary communities – so much so that scarcely a Q&A session goes by at my public readings without someone asking, usually in injured tones, why I have forsworn the term science fiction. Here are Le Guin's uproar-causing sentences:

To my mind, The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake and now The Year of the Flood all exemplify one of the things science fiction does, which is to extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near-future that's half prediction, half satire. But Margaret Atwood doesn't want any of her books to be called science fiction. In her recent, brilliant essay collection, Moving Targets, she says that everything that happens in her novels is possible and may even have already happened, so they can't be science fiction, which is "fiction in which things happen that are not possible today". This arbitrarily restrictive definition seems designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders. She doesn't want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.

The motive imputed to me is not in fact my actual motive for requesting separate names. What I mean by "science fiction" is those books that descend from HG Wells's The War of the Worlds, which treats of an invasion by tentacled Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters – things that could not possibly happen – whereas, for me, "speculative fiction" means plots that descend from Jules Verne's books about submarines and balloon travel and such – things that really could happen but just hadn't completely happened when the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this second category: no Martians. Not because I don't like Martians, I hasten to add; they just don't fall within my skill set. Any seriously intended Martian by me would be a very clumsy Martian indeed.

In a public discussion with Le Guin in the fall of 2010, however, I found that what she means by "science fiction" is speculative fiction about things that really could happen, whereas things that really could not happen she classifies under "fantasy". Thus, for her – as for me – dragons would belong in fantasy, as would, I suppose, the film Star Wars and most of the TV series Star Trek. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein might squeeze into Le Guin's "science fiction" because its author had grounds for believing that electricity actually might be able to reanimate dead flesh. And The War of the Worlds? Since people thought at the time that intelligent beings might live on Mars, and since space travel was believed to be possible in the imaginable future, this book might have to be filed under Le Guin's "science fiction". Or parts of it might. In short, what Le Guin means by "science fiction" is what I mean by "speculative fiction", and what she means by "fantasy" would include some of what I mean by "science fiction". So that clears it all up, more or less. When it comes to genres, the borders are increasingly undefended, and things slip back and forth across them with insouciance.

Bendiness of terminology, literary gene-swapping, and inter-genre visiting has been going on in the SF world – loosely defined – for some time. For instance, in a 1989 essay called "Slipstream," the veteran SF author Bruce Sterling deplored the then-current state of science fiction and ticked off its writers and publishers for having turned it into a mere "category" – a "self-perpetuating commercial power-structure, which happens to be in possession of a traditional national territory: a portion of bookstore rack space"A "category", says Sterling, is distinct from a "genre", which is "a spectrum of work united by an inner identity, a coherent aesthetic, a set of conceptual guidelines, an ideology if you will".

Sterling defines his term slipstream – so named, I suppose, because it is seen as making use of the air currents created by science fiction proper – in this way: "I want to describe what seems to me to be a new, emergent 'genre', which has not yet become a 'category' … It is a contemporary kind of writing which has set its face against consensus reality. It is fantastic, surreal sometimes, speculative on occasion, but not rigorously so. It does not aim to provoke a 'sense of wonder' or to systematically extrapolate in the manner of classic science fiction. Instead, this is a kind of writing which simply makes you feel very strange; the way that living in the late 20th century makes you feel, if you are a person of a certain sensibility."

His proposed list of slipstream fictions covers an astonishing amount of ground, with works by a wide assortment of people, many of them considered to be "serious" authors – from Kathy Acker and Martin Amis to Salman Rushdie, José Saramago and Kurt Vonnegut. What they have in common is that the kinds of events they recount are unlikely to have actually taken place. In an earlier era, these "slipstream" books might all have been filed under the heading of "traveller's yarn" – Herodotus's accounts of monopods, for example, or medieval legends about unicorns, dragons and mermaids. Later they might have turned up in collections of the marvellous and uncanny, such as Des Knaben Wunderhorn, or – even later – the kind of you-won't-believe-this hair-raiser to be found in assortments by MR James or H P Lovecraft or, occasionally, RL Stevenson.

But surely all draw from the same deep well: those imagined other worlds located somewhere apart from our everyday one: in another time, in another dimension, through a doorway into the spirit world, or on the other side of the threshold that divides the known from the unknown. Science fiction, speculative fiction, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and slipstream fiction: all of them might be placed under the same large "wonder tale" umbrella.

Ustopia is a world I made up by combining utopia and dystopia – the imagined perfect society and its opposite – because, in my view, each contains a latent version of the other. In addition to being, almost always, a mapped location, Ustopia is also a state of mind, as is every place in literature of whatever kind. As Mephistophilis tells us in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Hell is not only a physical space. "Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it," he says. "Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib'd / In one self place; but where we are is hell, / And where hell is, there must we ever be." Or, to cite a more positive version, from Milton's Paradise Lost: "then wilt thou not be loth / To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess / A Paradise within thee, happier far." In literature, every landscape is a state of mind, but every state of mind can also be portrayed by a landscape. And so it is with Ustopia.

How did I come to create my own Ustopias – these not-exactly places, which are anywhere but nowhere, and which are both mappable locations and states of mind? Why did I jump the tracks, as it were, from realistic novels to dystopias? Was I slumming, as some "literary" writers are accused of doing when they write science fiction or detective stories? The human heart is inscrutable, but let me try to remember what I thought I was up to at the time.

First, The Handmaid's Tale. What put it into my head to write such a book? I had never done anything like it before: my previous fiction had been realistic. Tackling a Ustopia was a risk. But it was also a challenge and a temptation, because if you've studied a form and read extensively in it, you often have a secret hankering to try it yourself. I began the book – after a few dry runs – in Berlin in the spring of 1984. I had a fellowship, in a programme run by West Berlin to encourage foreign artists to visit, as the city was at that time encircled by the Berlin Wall and its inhabitants felt understandably claustrophobic. During our stay we also visited East Berlin, as well as Poland and Czechoslovakia, and I thus had several first-hand experiences of the flavour of life in a totalitarian – but supposedly utopian – regime. I wrote more of the book once I was back in Toronto, and completed it in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in the spring of 1985. Tuscaloosa provided another kind of flavour – that of a democracy, but one with quite a few constraining social customs and attitudes. ("Don't ride a bicycle," I was told. "They'll think you're a communist and run you off the road.")

The writing of The Handmaid's Tale gave me a strange feeling, like sliding on river ice – exhilarating but unbalancing. How thin is this ice? How far can I go? How much trouble am I in? What's down there if I fall? These were writerly questions, having to do with structure and execution and that biggest question of all, the one every writer asks him- or herself with every completed chapter: is anyone going to believe this? (I don't mean literal belief: fictions admit that they are invented, right on the cover. I mean, "find the story compelling and plausible enough to go along for the ride".)

These writerly questions were reflections of other, more general questions. How thin is the ice on which supposedly "liberated" modern western women stand? How far can they go? How much trouble are they in? What's down there if they fall? And further: if you were attempting a totalitarian takeover of the United States, how would you do it? What form would such a government assume, and what flag would it fly? How much social instability would it take before people renounced their hard-won civil liberties in a trade-off for "safety"? And, since most totalitarianisms we know about have attempted to control reproduction in one way or another – limiting births, demanding births, specifying who can marry whom and who owns the kids – how would that play out for women?

And what about the outfits? Ustopias are always interested in clothing – either less of it compared to what we wear now, or more of it. The clothing concerns usually centre on women: societies are always uncovering parts of women's bodies and then covering them up again. My rules for The Handmaid's Tale were simple: I would not put into this book anything that humankind had not already done, somewhere, sometime, or for which it did not already have the tools. Even the group hangings had precedents: there were group hangings in earlier England, and there are still group stonings in some countries. Looking further back, the Maenads, during their Dionysian celebrations, were said to go into frenzies during which they dismembered people with their hands. (If everyone participates, no one individual is responsible.) For a literary precedent, one need search no further than Emile Zola's Germinal, which contains an episode in which the town's coal-mining women, who have been sexually exploited by the shopkeeper, tear him apart and parade his genitalia through town on a pole. A less raw but still shocking precedent is Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" (which I read as a teenager, shortly after it came out, and which made a chilling impression on me).

The coverups worn by the women in The Handmaid's Tale have been variously interpreted as Catholic (as in nuns) or Muslim (as in burqas). The truth is that these outfits are not aimed at any one religion. Their actual design was inspired by the figure on the Old Dutch Cleanser boxes of my childhood, but they are also simply old. Mid-Victorians, with their concealing bonnets and veils to keep strange men from leering at their faces, would not have found them so unusual.

I prefaced the novel with three quotations. The first is from the Bible, Genesis 30, the passage in which the two wives of Jacob use their female slaves as baby-producers for themselves. This ought to warn the reader against the dangers inherent in applying every word in that extremely varied document literally. The second is from Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal": it alerts us to the fact that a straightfaced but satirical account – such as Swift's suggestion that the grinding Irish poverty of his times could be alleviated by selling and eating Irish babies – is not a recipe. The third – "In the desert there is no sign that says, 'thou shalt not eat stones'" – is a Sufi proverb stating a simple human truth: we don't prohibit things that nobody would ever want to do anyway, since all prohibitions are founded upon a denial of our desires.

The Handmaid's Tale was published in Canada in the fall of 1985, and in the US and the UK in the spring of 1986. In the UK, its first reviewers treated it as a yarn rather than a warning: Britain had already been through Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan republic and there seemed to be no fear of re-enacting that scenario. In Canada, people asked, in anxious Canadian fashion: "could it happen here?" In the US, Mary McCarthy, writing in the New York Times, gave the book a largely negative review on the grounds that it lacked imagination, and anyway it was unlikely ever to take place, at least not in the secular society she perceived as the American reality. But on the west coast, so attuned to earthquake tremors, switchboards on talk shows lit up like Las Vegas, and someone graffitied on the Venice Beach seawall: "The Handmaid's Tale is already here!"

It wasn't already here, not quite, not then. I thought for a while in the 1990s that maybe it never would be. But now I'm wondering again. In recent years, American society has moved much closer to the conditions necessary for a takeover of its own power structures by an anti-democratic and repressive government. Approximately five years after The Handmaid's Tale was published, the Soviet Union disintegrated, the west slapped itself on the back and went shopping, and pundits proclaimed the end of history. It looked as if, in the race between Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World – control by terror versus control through conditioning and consumption – the latter had won, and the world of The Handmaid's Tale appeared to recede. But now we see a United States weakened by two draining wars and a financial meltdown, and America appears to be losing faith in the basic premises of liberal democracy. After 9/11, the Patriot Act passed with barely a cough, and in Britain citizens have accepted a degree of state supervision that would once have been unthinkable.

It's a truism that enemy states tend to mirror one another in organisation and methods. When colonies were the coming thing, everyone wanted one. Atom bombs in the United States created the desire for some in the USSR. The Soviet Union was a large, bureaucratic, centralised state, and so was the America of those times. What form will the United States assume now that it's opposed by unrelenting religious fanaticisms? Will it soon produce rule by the same kind of religious fanaticism, only of a different sect? Will the more repressive elements within it triumph, returning it to its origins as a Puritan theocracy and giving us The Handmaid's Tale in everything but the outfits?

I've said earlier that dystopia contains within itself a little utopia, and vice versa. What, then, is the little utopia concealed in the dystopic world of The Handmaid's Tale? There are two: one is in the past (the past that is our own present). The second is placed in a future beyond the main story by the afterword at the end of the book, which describes a future in which Gilead – the tyrannical republic of The Handmaid's Tale – has ended and has thus become a subject for conferences and academic papers. I suppose that's what happens to ustopian societies when they die: they don't go to Heaven, they become thesis topics.

After The Handmaid's Tale there was a period of approximately 18 years during which I did not write ustopian novels, but then came Oryx and Crake in 2003. Oryx and Crake is dystopic in that almost the entire human race is annihilated, before which it has split into two parts: a technocracy and an anarchy. And, true to form, there is a little attempt at utopia in it as well: a group of quasi-humans who have been genetically engineered so that they will never suffer from the ills that plague Homo sapiens sapiens. They are designer people. But anyone who engages in such design – as we are now doing – has to ask: how far can humans go in the alteration department before those altered cease to be human? Which of our features are at the core of our being? What a piece of work is man, and now that we ourselves can be the workmen, what pieces of this work shall we chop off?

The designer people have some accessories I wouldn't mind having myself: built-in insect repellant, automatic sunblock, and the ability, like rabbits, to digest leaves. They also have several traits that would indeed be improvements of a sort, though many of us wouldn't like them. For instance, mating is seasonal: in season, certain parts of the body turn blue, as with baboons, so there is no more romantic rejection or date rape. And they can't read, so a lot of harmful ideologies will never trouble them.

There are other genetically engineered creatures in the book as well: chickie nobs, for instance, which are chicken objects modified so they grow multiple legs, wings and breasts. They have no heads, just a nutriment orifice at the top, thus solving a problem for animal rights workers: as their creators say, "no Brain, no Pain". (Since Oryx and Crake was published, the chickie nob solution has made giant strides: lab-grown meat is now a reality, though it is probably not in your sausages yet.)

A sibling book, The Year of the Flood, was published in 2009. Its original title was God's Gardeners, but although this was perfectly acceptable to the British publisher, the American publisher and the Canadian publisher objected to it on the grounds that people would think the book was a far-right extremist tract, which goes to show how thoroughly the word "God" has been hijacked. Many other titles were proposed, including "Serpent Wisdom", which the Canadian publisher liked but the US felt suggested a new age cult, and "Edencliff," which the British thought sounded like "a retirement home in Bournemouth". Book titles are either immediately obvious, like The Edible Woman, or very hard to decide on, and The Year of the Flood was the second kind.

The Year of the Flood explores the world of Oryx and Crake from a different perspective. Jimmy/ Snowman, the protagonist of Oryx and Crake, has grown up within a privileged though barricaded enclave, but The Year of the Flood takes place in the space outside such enclaves, at the very bottom of the social heap. Its pre-disaster plot unfolds in neighbourhoods that the security forces – now melded with corporations – don't even bother to patrol, leaving them to criminal gangs and anarchic violence.

However, this book, too, has a utopia embedded within a dystopia; it's represented by the God's Gardeners, a small environmental religious cult dedicated to the sacred element in all creation. Its members grow vegetables on slum rooftops, sing sacred-nature hymns, and avoid hi-tech communications devices such as cellphones and computers on the grounds that they can be used to spy on you – which is entirely true.

Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood cover the same time period, and thus are not sequels or prequels; they are more like chapters of the same book. They have sometimes been described as "apocalyptic", but in a true apocalypse everything on Earth is destroyed, whereas in these two books the only element that's annihilated is the human race, or most of it. What survives after the cataclysmic event is not a "dystopia", because many more people would be required for that – enough to comprise a society. The surviving stragglers do, however, have mythic precedents: a number of myths tell of an annihilating flood survived by one man (Deucalion in Greek myth, Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic) or a small group, such as Noah and his family. Do the surviving human beings in Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood represent a dystopic threat to the tiny utopia of genetically modified, peaceful and sexually harmonious new humans that is set to replace them?

People have asked, many times, about the "inspiration" for these two books and their world. Of course there are proximate causes for all novels – a family story, a newspaper clipping, an event in one's personal history – and for Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood there are such causes as well. Worries about the effects of climate change can be found as far back as 1972, when the Club of Rome accurately predicted what now appears to be happening, so those worries had long been with me, though they were not front-page stories in the spring of 2001 when I began Oryx and Crake. As with The Handmaid's Tale, I accumulated many file folders of research; and although in both there are some of what Huckleberry Finn would call "stretchers", there is nothing that's entirely without foundation.

So I could point to this or that scientific paper, this or that newspaper story, this or that actual event, but those kinds of things are not really what drive the storytelling impulse. I'm more inclined to think that it's unfinished business, of the kind represented by the questions people are increasingly asking themselves: how badly have we messed up the planet? Can we dig ourselves out? what would a species-wide self-rescue effort look like if played out in actuality? And also: where has utopian thinking gone? Because it never totally disappears: we're too hopeful a species for that. "Good", for us, may always have a "Bad" twin, but its other twin is "Better".
It's interesting to me that I situated the utopia-facilitating element in Oryx and Crake not in a new kind of social organisation or a mass brainwashing or soul-engineering programme but inside the human body. The Crakers are well behaved from the inside out not because of their legal system or their government or some form of intimidation but because they have been designed to be so. They can't choose otherwise. And this seems to be where Ustopia is moving in real life as well: through genetic engineering, we will be able to rid ourselves of inherited diseases, and ugliness, and mental illness, and ageing, and … who knows? The sky's the limit. Or so we are being told. What is the little dystopia concealed within such utopian visions of the perfected human body – and mind? Time will tell.

Historically, Ustopia has not been a happy story. High hopes have been dashed, time and time again. The best intentions have indeed paved many roads to Hell. Does that mean we should never try to rectify our mistakes, reverse our disaster-bent courses, clean up our cesspools or ameliorate the many miseries of many lives? Surely not: if we don't do maintenance work and minor improvements on whatever we actually have, things will go downhill very fast. So of course we should try to make things better, insofar as it lies within our power. But we should probably not try to make things perfect, especially not ourselves, for that path leads to mass graves.
We're stuck with us, imperfect as we are; but we should make the most of us. Which is about as far as I myself am prepared to go, in real life, along the road to Ustopia.

Next Post: "From Here, There and Everywhere...", to be published on Christmas Day, Sunday 25th December at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-12-11T10:00:00.038Z

Recently I was watching a repeat of an Actors Studio episode on which Michelle Pfeiffer was being interviewed by the warm but enigmatic host James Lipton. When the time came for the Academy-nominated actress to take questions from the audience a young chap shot up his arm immediately in order to have his turn. However, he could barely get the words out of his mouth, so nervous and touched he was by the occasion. He looked embarrassed and so did Michelle. I was left wondering if it'd been easier for him to write his question to Ms Pfeiffer and get the show's host to read it. It also made me think about the relationship that some people establish with their favourite artists, whether they be authors, photographers, actors or directors.

Do fans idolise their objects of affection too much sometimes? And if so, where to draw the line?

The answer to the two questions above goes beyond this blog's virtual borders. At present there's an investigation going on into alleged illegal activities carried out by the tabloid press in the UK. What the Leveson inquiry has unearthed so far is business practices that owe more to the modus operandi of drugs cartels than to the fair and impartial behaviour we expect of our media.

And yet, whom are these hacks servicing? On whose behalf do they risk being found in a bin digging up the dirt (literally) of their "celebrity" targets? Response: readers. If everyone was as innocent as that young man on Actors Studio, whose only crime was to go all wobbly when he had the opportunity to interview his (probably) favourite actress, then the world wouldn't need vultures such as The Daily Mail, The Mail On Sunday, The Sun, The Daily Star and The Mirror with their never-ending thirst for tittle-tattle. Although the latter still manages to retain a modicum of decency. At least it was one of the few British papers that protested vehemently against the invasion of Iraq. But ultimately those who consume trash are also to blame for what the likes of JK Rowling and the McCanns have gone through. As the saying goes: "Eat s**t! A billion flies can't be wrong". And the more they eat, the more addicted they get to it.

Since the newspaper industry is, sadly, declining steadily, a lot of this dirty-laundry-in-the-open service is found online, where the playing field between public and celebrities has been levelled consistently in recent years. The internet, with its various platforms for personal expression such as blogs, social networking sites and web-based publications, has done a lot to knock down that wall of impenetrability that used to exist between "famous people" and the rest of us, mere mortals. Although, taking into account that anyone can gain notoriety these days with minimum effort, fame is no longer that hard to achieve. What stands out more, however, is that opening a magazine nowadays and being presented with a photo gallery of celebrities looking the worse for wear is no longer a rarity, but the yardstick by which modern journalistic standards are judged.

This change in attitudes is chiefly based, in my opinion, on the false assumption that some people have and whereby they believe that they own their favourite actors, poets or musicians. And given that all they need now is a click of the mouse nowadays to express their discontent if their objects of their affection fail to produce work worth of their appreciation, the verbal abuse to which they can potentially be subjected is more immediate. This act of appropriation is intimately linked to a sense of identification with the lives of those who're found almost permanently hogging the limelight. One extreme leads to stalking, whilst the other could well plunge a normal, law-abiding citizen into an unexpected depression, should he or she find out that their "star(s)" is/are in distress. Imaginary identification, plus ownership.

In my case, I remember how this sense of ownership manifested itself on one occasion. I'd read in a weekend magazine that one of my literary heroines, Maya Angelou, had just collaborated with Hallmark on a series of cards bearing her inspiring poetry. I recall feeling betrayed and even if I didn't go online to pour bile on the "people's poet" and her alleged "treason", inside me there was a little voice shouting out: "Sellout! Sellout!" But sell out to whom? Maya is Maya is Maya is Maya. The poems she contributed to Hallmark's regular middle-of-the-road output might not have had, in my humble opinion, the same quality of her masterpieces "Still I Rise" or "Phenomenal Woman" but they were still better than the usual crop Hallmark produces. That was, as I mentioned before, many years ago. The other day I read an interview with her in the paper where she was telling a journalist that she had just written a cookery book. She then went on to explain how some people thought it strange that she had decided to venture down a road that was so far from her main occupation, that is, to write poems. Presumably, and this is pure speculation, these people - amongst them, critics - considered cooking a less worthy activity than poetry. However, I remember thinking after I finished reading her interview that if there was one person in the world for whom the word "cooking" was created, that person was Maya Angelou.

Do some people idealise artists too much? I think they do, although not all the time. And in doing so, they're treading a fine line between being in awe of their favourite artisans and plundering their private lives in search for the minutest details in order to satiate their curiosity or to identify with them. Fortunately, somewhere in the middle of that equation there's a young chap, too touched by the grand occasion of seeing his favourite actress sitting on stage so close to him, who can't even manage to remain calm whilst asking his question. The good news is that, he at least represents the positive side of fandom.

And this is "see you later" from me until January. As I usually do at this time of the year, I go into hibernation for about three or four weeks. However, Sundays will not be empty. I have a little pressie for you, my dear readers and fellow bloggers because after all 'tis the season to be jolly. I will be posting each Sunday some of my favourite articles and essays from the last few years or so. These are pieces that have inspired me a great deal, mainly by journalists, specialists and writers whom I worship. Please, bear in mind that I haven't sought permission to publish these articles, so, if a newspaper or magazine editor asks me kindly to take them down, I will comply straight away. In the meantime, I wish you a merry and relaxing festive period and a Happy New Year!

© 2011

Next Post: “From Here, There and Everywhere”, to be published on Sunday 18th December at 10am (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World (The One About the Festival of New Words)

2011-12-07T23:59:00.034Z

If I was to choose my favourite word of the year that's about to finish it would be neither a neologism nor a slang term, but a quaint, short beauty I came across whilst reading The Road: "bivouac". It means "a military encampment made with tents or improvised shelters, usually without shelter or protection from enemy fire" and it encapsulates in its brief but complex spelling the tribulations that the two main characters in the book have to face on a regular basis.

However, having a "word of the year" is not an activity in which I normally indulge. I usually have a record or book that becomes my highlight of the previous twelve months, but very rarely does my attention centre on a word that stands out amongst the myriad vocables I come across every day whether they are just a sequence of sounds or considered as a unit of meaning. Sometimes, though, I put on the mantle of eccentricity when it comes to linguistics. Especially when it's about sticking two fingers up to the establishment.

In France they have a similar attitude. Since 2002 in the Gallic nation, a festival has been held in both Paris and Le Havre in the third week in November to choose a new word and sound. As reported in The Guardian recently the latest winner at the Festival XYZ was attachiant(e), a term whose literal translation could be something like captivating or attractive nuisance. Or Marmite in good old British English. You either love it or hate it. Speaking of the famous yeast extract which usually ends up spread on so many of our sandwiches ( I love it), it had something of a PR disaster recently when a lorry carrying more than 20 tonnes of the stuff got overturned on a busy motorway. Cue endless jokes about the driver "being yeast extracted from the wreckage" or people wondering if the accident had affected the "yeastbound carriageway". And that's the key to language and its uses sometimes: humour. Which is an element usually found wanting in the puritanical bodies tasked with looking over our languages, for instance, L'Académie Française and La Real Academia Española for French and Spanish respectively.

Unlike these rather austere meddlers, the organisers of the Festival XYZ, by their own admission, seek to highlight the contributions that keep French live and kicking. Whilst having a jolly good time. As they put it succinctly and clearly on their Facebook page, " ce festival d'hiver apporte sa contribution en musique et en textes à une langue vivante et sonnante... Le Français. En y associant un son nouveau, elle va plus loin encore dans le déchiffrement du mot Mot (mo), n.m. (lat. vulg. mottum, mot et grognement, du v. muttire, grogner, murmurer). Son articulé, composé d’une ou plusieurs syllabes réunies." You have to love the etymological component in their mission statement.

Some of the terms included in the newspaper's article made think of English equivalents. Thus, the new French word "aigriculteur", a farmer upset with the hand life's dealt him/her, could easily become "angryculturist" or "angrycultor". This would describe a farmer from a developing nation really vexed with the huge subsidies enjoyed by members of the European Union.

Likewise, the Gallic "bête seller", the type of novel that hasn't got much going for it from a literary and artistic point of view, but sells in its thousands (no names mentioned, but there's a certain author who writes political thrillers that comes to mind), could easily morph into "beast-seller". In Cuban Spanish we've come very close to a literal translation. When a movie or a book is really good, especially from a commercial point of view, we sometimes tend to say: "¡Qué monstruo de película/libro!"

We need more events like the Festival XYZ to remind ourselves that a language is a living body of words and it cannot be confined solely to a canon of syntactic and grammatical rules. I'm all for the correct use of our linguistic norms including syntax and grammar, however these standards do not operate in an abstract world but in a very practical one. Even if we sometimes, unfortunately, we have to deal with "phonards".

© 2011

Photo taken from the Festival XYZ Facebook page.

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflection and Music”, to be published on Sunday 11th December at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-12-04T10:00:00.039Z

We're in a transition period. Slowly autumn's auburn skin peels away and reveals the ominous and stern London winter. The one that flicks open its sharp razor every year and, with its white foam, shaves the remaining leaves off the branches, thus, finishing off autmn's job. It's that time of the year when the early twilight tempts us to a cup of steaming hot chocolate or coffee. Or maybe a tall Mocha, to balance things up. The weekend paper lies on our lap. Looking through the door on to the back garden I see the fading sun rays spilling on to the shrinking undergrowth. I bend down to grab my mug and what's left of my coffee and when I look back up it's gone. The light's gone. The neighbouring houses are sinking rapidly into a monochromatic landscape of dark greys and blacks, like 2D figures in a shadow animation.

I've never been a big fan of the London winter except for its mornings and nights. The former brings rich lashes of mist layering themselves on top of each other, sandwiched between a never-ending humidity on the ground and a crisp, howling northeasterly wind whipping my face and a label that announces "Best served chilled". In those early hours the sky is yet to acquire its Arctic-blue complexion, usually attained at midday. That's why sunrise presents us with a combination of hues that travel from a pale rosé to a fierce claret. For a moment you forget about the hot (but not boiling) water you have to pour regularly on the car's windshield and windows to get rid of the ice and the manoeuvres you have to perform every day to warm the car up before setting off on your journey in case the engine switches itself off because of the cold.

Winter nights appear as downward spirals whose motion remind me of curtains closing on a memorable performance. You're left with the indelible memory of a bright - or, as in London, most of the time grey - day and a cold snap. Summer is all about the moment, the here and then. Heat is conducive to lapsus mentis. Winter likes to lie back in its seat and enjoy the show. The sky darkening at around three in the afternoon. The morning mist, temporarily dissipated during the day, surfacing again on the urban horizon at tea time. Our shapes being swallowed by the early evening blur. This is winter playing hide'n'seek as usual.

It's not the thermometre clocking in at -5C that disconcerts me. It's the lack of snow. Without a white carpet laid out on my doorstep it's hard to take in the bare landscape. It's as if someone's written an essay and left all the verbs out. With no active or passive voice, how am I to make sense of the big, yellowish-orange arch fast plunging into the total darkness?

And yet, when it arrives this absence of light is welcomed. As my surroundings become dimmer, I position my reading lamp by my side and sit cross-legged either on the couch or at the kitchen table with a mug of a hot, steaming concoction of chamomile, mint and green tea in my hand. Winter is here, I might not like it, but I'm ready to let it in.

© 2011

Next Post: “Living in a Bilingual World”, to be published on Wednesday 7th December at 11:59pm (GMT)

Photo taken from the Town and Travel website.

Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts

2011-11-30T23:59:00.046Z

My late grandmother on my mother's side used to invoke the Divine Providence whenever something went her way. She would raise her eyes to the heavens, beam out that broad smile to which we had all grown accustomed by then and forth her gratitude would pour to whom she believed to be her Maker for his alleged guardianship. Hers was one of those phrases which, no matter where you found yourself on the religious spectrum, had a certain comfort to it. Like the butternut squash and sweet potato soup my wife makes in winter time.

Recently I had cause to also thank a similar Divine Providence, although this one was of the earthling variety and likes writing in the kind of language I call colourful and others label pretentious. The reason for my delight was Will Self's recent essay "The symphony and the novel – a harmonious couple?" (The Guardian Review, Saturday 8th October). In it, good ol' Will explores the reasons why both art forms, although having developed almost at the same time, in the 19th century, have supposedly moved in different directions; whilst one (music) has retained its risk-taking approach, the other (literature) has pressed its finger firmly on the "safe mode" button.

At first sight Mr Self's article smacks of snobbery. He reprises the usual line about novelists not living up to and failing to capitalise on their innovative and modernist moment in the first decades of the 20th century, namely, James Joyce's Ulysses, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Virgina Woolf's Mrs Dalloway. Had it carried on in the same vein, Will's article would have ended up in the recycling bin. But his outing contains so many gems, that not discussing them with you, my dear readers and fellow bloggers, is tantamount to treason.

For a start his insight into composing a score and how it compares to writing a novel is thought-provoking. Earlier this year, I mused in this very space over the influence of music on the process of writing. On that occasion, however, I was focused more on the effect certain melodies have on authors, journalists or bloggers and less on the similarities that might exist between the score and the written word. Yet, Will goes one better. For him the symphonist and novelist share key artistic objectives: "The search for motifs, or themes, the creation of an alternative world in words, the struggle for authenticity of narrative voice, the counterpointing of different protagonists' views".

One of the aspects that differentiates us, rational animals from non-rational ones is the way we come up with pictures in our heads of people and situations we haven't seen yet but which fit neatly into the alternative world we want to create. We're capable of widening up the scope of our objective and material world in ways that defy categorisation. In that sense, the writers mentioned by Will did deserve to be included in his list as pioneers. My only grievance is that in his essay he stopped half way through the previous century. But more on that later. The musician works in a similar way to the writer. In my opinion, the composer has an image, a picture in his or her mind that represents the notes that will make up the score. That this language sounds and is more abstract than the written one should not deter us from the fact that it still contains a narrative and characters.

A typical symphony will be structured in different movements. Some will be slower, others faster. But the intention is the same: to induce a state of mind, to manipulate, or tap into the listener's own emotions and feelings. Writers usually work towards a similar goal through a variety of "movements": introduction, development and conclusion. That some authors play around with this formula, tweaking it here and there, doesn't mean that the conflict they present to the reader hasn't got a solution by the end of the story. It just means that the emphasis is on the "how" and not the "what".

On writing about the composer's "sonic cosmos", Will Self addresses the perennial questions with which artists (whether writers, painters or film-makers) are faced: how much do I reveal about my unique inner world? And will this chime with the reader/viewer/listener? The answer is: you reveal as much as you like, or as much as your manager/publisher/agent allows you to; and you might or might not care one jot about what your future audience thinks of you work. Which, some of us might say, is almost career suicide.

And yet without the bolder approach question two demands, we wouldn't have had the likes of Astor Piazzolla and Jorge Luis Borges.

Borges' inclusion was not accidental. Mr Self only gives examples of novels, mainly from a distant era. It's as if Kundera and Rushdie had never happened. As chance would have it I've just read two books (plus a third one, being digested as I write) that could well serve as an example of Will's thesis despite the fact he refuses to acknowledge contemporary fiction. The Road is a sparse and laconic novel which takes place in an apocalyptic future. The language used is redolent of literary thriftiness, bereft of tropes and as bare as the grim and cold environment the book depicts. We could probably compare it to a piece by Phillip Glass. The Road was followed by Interpreter of Maladies, a fantastic collection of short stories that functioned better as a well-written exercise in voyeurism than as straightforward literature. It reminded me Mozart's Symphony No. 25 in G Minor (or Little G Minor Symphony). The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime, the novel I'm reading now, falls within Will's remit of "struggle for authenticity of narrative voice" and "the counterpointing of different protagonists' views". The main character suffers from Asperger's syndrome and everything we experience in the novel is perceived from his point of view. It's challenging for the reader, I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for the writer. The musical equivalent? One of piano prodigy Art Tatum's short compositions.

And therein lies the rub, too. Will mentions jazz briefly at the beginning of his essay (John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk) and you can see why. Jazz, especially in the States, became one of the most revolutionary art forms after the Second World War. Against the safe, rhythmic patterns of a Gershwin or an Armstrong, you suddenly had the likes of Charlie Parker blazing the trail with the hard sound of his bebop. But in literature there was also a shift. The Beat generation, just to give one example, possessed that "self-enclosed expressiveness", which Mr Self attributes to Monk and Coltrane. Their writing might have not had the same degree of experimentation Joyce and Woolf displayed, but there was inventive craftmanship aplenty.

On the whole Will's article is a beautiful elegy to two art forms that have brought pleasure and joy to millions and whose essence remains (despite the current Ikea approach to fiction- and song-writing. Your work is already boxed in; all you have to do is assemble it) the creation of alternative scenarios in which the human experience can be seen in all its glory. Whether guardianship of a Divine Providence is included or not, it doesn't matter. It's still welcomed all the same.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 4th December at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-11-27T10:00:00.066Z

Imagine a world in 2D. Picture an Earth in which everything is monochromatic and where objects that are usually inanimate constantly move towards us - eternal static beings - and not the other way around. Think of a situation in which randomness is the rule: we breathe every now and then and not in regular intervals, there's not such thing as patterns and shapes lack geometrical sense.

In the same way a world like the one described above is impossible to envision, so is the annual Christmas charade utterly predictable. And every year it seems to arrive earlier. Back in August I saw a display of mince pies on a shop window.

It is more than fourteen years since I first came across the yuletide season. To me it felt as if all my life I'd been travelling through a desert only to find myself all of a sudden in the middle of a never-ending oasis. In the post-Castro Christianityphobic Cuba of my childhood the only (clandestine) celebration around the 25th December was our very own "Nochebuena", Christmas Eve. This was for most Cubans, a very family affair with the usual accoutrements: a hog roast with rice'n'peas, fried plantains, yucca and salad. Occasionally as the clock struck twelve and the 24th of December morphed into the 25th someone (in my house, it was my late grandmother) would produce an image of Jesus Christ, kiss it and say a prayer. But that's as far as we dared to go.

Over here it's the other way around. There's no way to escape the tinsel and baubles as soon as we move the clocks back and November arrives. My first exposure to Crimbo was Oxford Street's dazzling Christmas lights display. They're usually switched on by a celebrity, a singer, perhaps, who will probably perform a couple of songs after the official opening ceremony's over. After all these years I still remember the overhead beaming arch formed by the lights and decorations, and the way they seemed to invite me to lock arms with passersby whilst singing "Al ánimo, al ánimo, la fuente se rompió...", a game I used to play as a child.

Christmas then became for me, a Johnny-come-lately in London all those years ago, less about its religious significance and more about time off to be enjoyed and spent with my newly-created family. To my surprise I found out that I was not alone.

We know that we don't inhabit a 2D world and that in order to live we need to breathe at regular intervals. Likewise, we're fully aware that if ever a bearded geezer came down our chimney in the middle of the night holding a sack and saying "Ho ho ho!" we ought to get on the blower straight away and call the police. So, why does Christmas still hold us in thrall? My response is that it's got more to do with our psyche and less with the actual holiday.

As products of an ongoing evolutionary process, we, humans, have developed a whole range of conflicting emotions and unpredictable behaviour. We work long hours for weeks or months on end, but then try to get rid of our stress over a weekend. We destroy ourselves little by little through various vices, unconsciously most of the time, but then come up with perfect excuses as to why our course of action is right. In short, we lie to ourselves to make us feel better. Christmas, from that point of view, is a big lie.

Not a Big Lie, as in capital "B" and "L", but rather self-deception in a small scale. The perception we have of reality from the moment we're born is as accurate as our senses allow us to have, unless there's some kind of pathology involved. This means that in order to navigate through the outside world, we use the information we absorb. However, when it comes to responding to different stimuli, we make conscious decisions based on our prejudices and prejudgements. I have employed these two last terms in the most neutral way possible. For instance, we might be prone to boosting our self-esteem through a variety of actions: working or studying hard, raising our children in a particular way or challenging ourselves physically. If we were to come across someone who sits on the opposite end of the spectrum in regards to these activities, we might make a mental note of his/her traits as shortcomings.

This phenomenon is not new and neither is it consequence-free. We (that's the journalistic "we", by the way, as in most of us, not every single person on the planet) practice self-deception at some point in our lives because it makes us feel good. The downside is that it also makes us vulnerable to predators, i.e., industries whose main remit is to tap into and exploit those half-truths we tell to ourselves. Marketing is the first example that comes to mind. And marketing within the Christmas period is ideal cannon fodder to ramble on about the negative effects self-deception has on us.

At present there's an ad on telly in the UK that has stood out from the word go for its mix of simplicity, innocence and sweetness. If you reside on these isles, by now you're probably aware that I'm referring to the "Please, please, please" John Lewis commercial. This just-under-two-minutes clip is about a boy who can't wait for the morning of the 25th December to roll in. So far, so predictable. He counts down the days, the hours, the minutes, the seconds. Until the big day arrives and he gets up, whizzes past his own presents, rummages in his wardrobe, produces a red box with a nicely done ribbon, runs down the corridor to his parents' room, wakes them up and with a beautiful smile on his face holds out his Christmas present to his folks. The tagline? "For gifts you can't wait to give".

The advert works. A few commentators have already written about welling up by the end of it. It's been lauded by marketing specialists and its soundtrack has been singled out as a masterstroke by John Lewis, since it is a cover version of The Smiths' "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want". Not that Messrs Morrissey and Marr will be complaining too much about selling out when they check the balance in their bank accounts at the end of the month. Above all, the ad taps into our self-deception.

Amidst the greed displayed by the members of parliament involved in the expenses scandal and the recklessness of the bankers, the message of a boy wanting to give a present to his parents resonates with many of us, eternal optimists who think a better world is possible. Coupled with a soundtrack (performed by sweet-voiced Slow Moving Millie) that will remind people of a certain age of their rebellious youth will be an addendum. Throw in the mix the Occupy protest movement at St Paul's Cathedral with their socio-economic, political reform agenda and you couldn't have a more perfect backdrop.

And yet, it is self-deception, although of a higher quality. We don't know what the boy is carrying in the box. It could be a voucher for Alton Towers for which his parents will have to fork out half the money because you know, it's an adult half price and the other one full whack and as usual, terms and conditions apply. All right, all right, the box is big. Maybe it's a small voucher wrapped in old copies of The Daily Telegraph. But if that's the case, it's hardly a selfless act. We're also aware that the ad, The Smiths' blessing notwithstanding, is by and about John Lewis, a retailer which, despite the best of intentions, is only interested in the Kerching! sound at the till. To me the key element, though, is the word "give". It's the clincher at the end of the short clip. The child can't wait to give. Whilst the other chains can't wait to take your money and insist that you shop until you drop, John Lewis wants you to give... them money so that you can bring happiness to other people.

If "give" is the key element in the ad, money is the ghost in the room. We feel its presence and yet we're too spooked to mention it. We're led to think that he only reason why the child is doing that countdown till Crimbo is because he can't wait to open up his presents. Which probably left his mum and dad remortgaging their house. Money is the euphemism we daren't address. Self-deception is built on a "creative" and liberal use of our everyday language and that vocabulary includes dosh, too. We like to "indulge", to have some "me" time, to "chill out". But when asked to discuss how much these pleasures cost, we beat around the bush. In the UK, I've noticed a funny relationship between people and questions around money. A lot of us don't like talking about our earnings, our expenses or our lifestyle. However, "Money makes the world go around/The world go around/The world go around/Money makes the world go around/It makes the world go 'round" as Liza Minnelly and Joel Gray both averred in Cabaret. Maybe our reluctance to discuss the choppy seas of finances is more to do with the reputation money has, therefore self-delusion is the more appealing solution. We want to be as far away as possible from the message Pink Floyd gives in its eponymous song: "Money, get away, you get a good job with good pay and you're okay/Money, it's a gas, grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.

For a lot of people, I think, it's hard to admit that Christmas is less to do with the birth of the most important figure in Christianity and more to do with feeling good about spending an enormous amount of money on presents, both on other people and on themselves. That's why sales from Boxing Day to New Year's Day always bring out the crowds. And by then Christmas is over. We're fully conscious that this attitude takes the sheen off the season of goodwill and brackets us as money-minded creatures or penny-pinchers, in the case of sales. Hence, a healthy dose of self-deception. Which is, come to think of it, akin to thinking that the world is monochromatic and bi-dimensional.

© 2011

Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts”, to be published on Wednesday 30th November at 11:59pm( GMT)

Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

2011-11-20T10:00:00.009Z

You’re never quite sure how it starts. This pilgrimage, this rite of passage. One day - or night -, you switch the radio off, look outside your bedroom window and there it is: that vast concrete serpent, stretching for miles on end. The wall that separates the oily blue and the potholed road; that divides the hopeful dreams and the daily grind; that splits the daytime hustlers and the night-time revellers.

On one side we hear the sound of the hiccupping waves slapping against the rocks. On the other, the din of the polluting traffic: cars, lorries, and buses shaped as even-toed two-humped Bactrians. Malecón, we don't come to you, you beckon us over. On your hard, historic wall we take flights of fancy, sing at the top of our voices until we go hoarse, bid friends goodbye and drink ourselves to oblivion.

5th Avenue tunnel at one end. The gaping ecphonesis that spits out the first perpendicular street numbers: O, Calle 18! O Calle 16 (and the famous beauty parlour)! O Calles 14 and 12 (and the pool at the Echevarría Social Club where Beny and I used to splash the lady with the striped bathing suit when diving)! Should I mention you Calle 10 with El Kastillito on the corner, fountain of unforgettable terpsichorean memories?

Malecón, Spanish opening exclamation mark that preambles lines bursting out with vim and salitter. You are the canvas in which we all inhabit. The living, moving 3D Cuban version of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. But instead of a dozen apostles surrounding the “Chosen One” from Galilee, there are hundreds taking turns at being Bartholomew, Thomas or Jude Thaddeus. Or Jesús. Jesús, like The Newly Arrived Emigrante, back from Amsterdam, blond, blue-eyed wife perched up by his side. The guy who made it. The bloke who runs a small electric goods business in the city of bicycles, tulips and cannabis coffeshops. And who has stories to tell, eyes to open, minds to unwind (or wind up). He is the remedy to your old, malfunctioning clock that is in need of quick repair because it can no longer tell if it’s going too fast or too slow. He is the snappy fix that finds you with the midmorning sun warming the hard stone that presses painfully against your buttocks. But discomfort matters not. Here’s your mate, your pal, your yunta, who left for Holland three years ago and now has got a group of followers gathered around him, like in days of yore when people sat around a fire to tell each other stories. Like Peter leaning over to John, ready to let him in on that “little business” to do with Jesús. It’s like the perfect scene for a photo. The photo that will survive all attempts to loosen the hold it will have on us. The al fresco image that no matter how torn and damaged it becomes, will still mesmerise us in years to come.

Snap! Your friend will start talking about the Van Gogh Museum (where you’ll lose your ear if you’re not careful, he quips), the Canal District and the open-air concerts by artists from the Dutch Antilles and Suriname. In the shadow of the Riviera Hotel (where your mate is staying with his silent but smiling wife, and where he woke up about six hours ago and couldn’t get back to sleep. Damn jetlag!), he attempts to pronounce a few words in Dutch and they all come out with a harsh, guttural Caribbean rasp. You’re hanging onto his every word until he decides to go all BB King on you, Havana and Malecón because for him “the thrill is gone/The thrill is gone away/The thrill is gone baby/The thrill is gone away/You know you done me wrong baby/And you'll be sorry someday (…) You know I'm free, free now baby/I'm free from your spell/I'm free, free now/I'm free from your spell/And now that it's over/All I can do is wish you well…” and you think, “free?”, free from what? You can see his point, though. He has just arrived from the city in which lawns are manicured to perfection; where autumn is real autumn, no chin-chin drizzle; where spring blossoms every year in an orgiastic explosion of colour. You watch him and in his eyes you see his scorn at the post-earthquake craters that decorate this hard, long wall. Later on, he will jeer at the long queue at La Piragua pizza parlour where the "siete pesos" will mingle with the "Camilitos", students from medical school and the regular gang from the Faculty of Economics in La Colina. You will all end up at the Maine monument with its mix of colonial history and sexual double-entendre every time you bend over. And all because it was blown up. And your friend, El Emigrante wants to be free of this. Do you ever want to be free of it, of El Malecón? El Malecón, where people strut, stroll, perambulate, but never ever walk? Where at ten o’ clock now, mid-morning, your mate, his (silent, but smiling) wife, your other friends and you are almost throwing a party? No, bro, the thrill ain’t gone, it never will be. But then, again, a few years hence, you yourself will land in Gatwick airport, London.

Snap! The Jose Martí sports centre and the famous track that is nothing but a mountain of rubble and yet runners still insist on doing laps around it. Plus jumping over the hurdles. She’s facing the ocean, the vast open sea; he’s facing inland, the Ladas, Fiats and Volgas going at sixty per hour down Malecón Avenue. She wants out. Like Da Vinci’s creation, sitting in the middle of her own tableau, she fears betrayal. He’s trying to find a philosophical, Marxist and Leninist solution. Her denial, plus his of hers, isn’t that the source of development, of the moving forward, of the next stage, the panacea, en brèf, communism? No, she retorts, the “no” is rotund, round and solid. It’s a “no” with intention. It’s the “no” to machismo, to backwardness, to empty rhetoric and false hopes. Besides… besides? He asks. Besides… she doesn’t answer. The immense blue swallows up her response.

Snap! Afternoon. We’re celebrating. End of college. Year 12 is but a distant memory, never mind the fact that it’s only a few weeks behind us. A couple of hours before, Calle 25 across from the Mariana Grajales monument. The wait. The long wait. Then, the teachers pinning sheet after sheet on the glass with the results of the university entry exams. Who got what? Did you manage to get into medical school? Will you be doing engineering? The names of the faculties ring out endlessly in the suffocating, summer heat: Economía, Periodismo, ISRI, Biología, Derecho, ISPLE. No more Saúl Delgado. From September onwards, it will be only ISPLE. And we, the temporary Chosen Ones (both leading and supporting roles), march down to El Malecón. Calle D all the way, without stopping. There’s hardly any breeze and humidity is in the 90s. We sweat profusely but we fail to notice it. We’re what? Seventeen, eighteen. We steamroller to Malecón. We buy some beer on the way there and sit on the wall, the one to which you made that first pilgrimage all those years ago. The one which, through the hard rocky surface, understands you more than your parents. In silence you confess your problems to it. You hold a conversation with it regardless of the fact that you've both pressed the "mute" button. No need for words. Telepathy is the game. We lie back or sit against the wall on that uneven surface, talk gibberish and see the sun slowly come down.

Snap! You and your girlfriend. In a world of your own. Recently hooked up, seldom separated. There’re not enough hours in the day for you two to be together. You read her poems, she reciprocates. You don’t realise that you’ve gone past Calle K, no, you’re still in your own little world. Mi china, this, papito, that. Let me tickle you here, I will tickle you there. From a passing car, a window is rolled down and a voice calls out: "Suéltala, desgracia'o!", to which your reply is the usual one: "Tu abuela, sapo!". Why involve grandmothers and toads when someone tells you to let go of your girlfriend? Now, you’re caught in the twilight, both the day’s and politics’. You have stopped (innocent, little lambs!), a few hundred yards past Calle L. You don’t hear the voice: iracund, unintelligible, loud, booming towards you. You don’t hear the voice, and you also fail to hear the steps, thundering across the pavement, onto the road, the hand motioning the traffic to stop. The voice (¡Compañero, Compañero, COMPAÑERO!), the heavy boots screaming: Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of transgressors!. By the time the uniformed guard touches your shoulder, turns you around, asks you for your ID card and questions you on your motives to halt your march right there, you have suddenly come to life, or at least, returned to this world. And all the time he’s talking, you’re looking past him at the ominous building, the tall edifice across from which you have stood so many times to protest against the embargo. You have even joined in the shouts of “¡El que no salte es yanqui, el que no salte es yanqui!” jumping like a child high on fizzy drinks. Unbeknownst to you, in the near future some of your closer friends will be queuing up outside this building, down Calzada St. from the small, wee hours in the morning, in search of a dream ninety miles to the north. Now the light of the late afternoon sun bounces off the glass of the offices in the tall building and spreads a silver carpet over the blue sea. You mumble a few words, your girlfriend looks embarrassed and the guard keeps jabbing his finger at you. Leonardo would have loved to paint this scene.

Snap! It’s night. New York never sleeps, they say. El Malecón is always awake, I could retort. Here’s the musician who did his civil engineering degree in Berlin and washed up again in my city because the going got tough after the Wall was knocked down and the “skinheads” didn’t like dark-skinned foreigners. The economics graduate student who works in nearby Cohíba Hotel as a receptionist. The secondary school English teacher who doubles up as a Spanish tutor in her free time. Five dollars per hour is her going rate and she never lacks willing students. The comuñanga who just finished carrying twenty-two buckets of water up to his flat on the seventh floor of the building he shares with his mother, father, sister, sister’s husband, nephew and niece (his sister’s children) in Alamar. There are more, more than ten, certainly more than twelve. For we haven’t congregated here to find out about betrayal. We’ve been betrayed somehow all these years. By a superlative, gigantic political psoriasis that has blighted the skin of an entire nation. And it is here on this avenue against the backdrop of a chamaleonic sea that the scaly patches are more visible. The clandestine pizza vendors who put melted condoms instead of cheese in their products, thus ensuring that their pockets bulk up whilst the local A&E ward is kept busy. The impromptu trio-turned-quartet-turned-quintet-turned-sextet... ad infinitum, that delights tourists with their various versions of La Guantanamera. The "5th Avenue Flowers" (© Silvio Rodriguez Dominguez) who have extended their garden - and their constant pursuit of foreign fairy godfathers (and some mothers) - beyond the tunnel to the west, 23rd Avenue to the south and La Catedral to the east. The "pingueros" and "culeros" (tops and bottoms), part of Havana's underground gay culture, who crawl out at night, forming an almost straight line from the Yara cinema down La Rampa to Malecón. The "bisnero" (hustler) whose voice lowers to a whisper as he approaches your group and offers you "cinco por uno" (in '87), "ciento veinte por uno" (in '94). He is our FTSE, our Stock Exchange, he regulates the valuation of peso vs dollar. This canvas is less like Renaissance and more like Surrealism. No, we don't gather here to learn about deception but because this is our headquarters, our DNA, our hajj, our fifth pillar. We don’t just do it once in our life. We do it regularly. We come to be mesmerised by these waves, which, during hurricane season, resemble giant cobras raising the front of their bodies, ready to strike. We’re Pepe, Yusimí, Antonio, Clara, Mirtica, Sandra, Pedro and many more. Malecón is one step beyond Simon and Garfunkel’s Feeling Groovy; it’s a full-on assault of “Suave, nena, suave, suavecito, nena, eh, eh, eh…”. Malecón, Havana’s own throat coughing up black gold the closer you get to El Morro Castle. We gulp down the homemade rum, chispa’e tren, the cheap booze that someone got from Felipito’s house on Gervasio St. Gervasio, one third of the famous patronymic made famous on the sketch show Alegrías de Sobremesa: Gervasio Escobar y Campanario. But tonight, at around midnight you’re only interested in the Gervasio bit. Someone’s brought a guitar. Silvio, of course, and then, Pablo, the bottle does the rounds, the voices rise, more people join in. A feeble sea breeze offers some succour in this July heat. The guitar changes hands and now we’re going back in time. In the midnight hour we go soft and cheesy, we’re all about José José, Roberto Carlos and Emanuel. We go through the entire songbook they sell for one peso, twenty cents at the Abel Santamaria book shop, on Calle 25. All of a sudden, the melodic sound of the acoustic guitar mixes with the heavy drumming wafting out of one of the houses on the corner of Galiano and Malecón, near the Deauville Hotel. The ritual order of the oru, oru del igbodu and oru del eya aranla keeps the crowd on its feet. Only with the latter is the audience allowed to dance freely. The party spills over onto the pavement, a pavement whose cracks resemble a country road, whose lines crave to be read and to be interpreted. Who knows what life’s got in store for you? At four in the morning, the party across the road is still in full swing, the guitar’s changed hands several times: DJavan, Donato, Mercedes, Santiaguito… The apostles become orishas. No more Judas and Simon, but Oshún and Obbatalá. And behind us, the eternal blue of Yemayá.

Snap! Red eyes, croaky voices, bodies leaning on each other, old relationships reaffirming their love, new relationships breaking new ground, the lonely… still lonely. Slowly, a weak, early morning sun breaks through the flaking, damaged canvas and travels down Malecón east to west, from the Plaza de San Francisco (and the convent), El Templete, the Real Fuerza Castle to Prado Avenue. Early-rising fishermen dot the coastline like pick-up sticks released by a giant hand. It won’t be long before the hard stone is warmed by the generous sun and the revellers go back home and crash on the couch in the lounge after yet another pilgrimage, another journey to the majestic wall, the vast concrete serpent: Malecón.

Fiat lux!

© 2011

Next Post: "Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music", to be published on Sunday 27th November at 10am (GMT)

Birthday Q&A and Other Pearls of Wisdom

2011-11-13T10:00:00.049Z

Since it's my birthday in three days (16th November) and since I'll be turning forty (cue drumroll and fireworks) I feel in the mood to do pretty much what takes my fancy these days. That's why recently I put my Zorro mask on, adjusted my cape, pulled my boots on and with a Z on my chest glowing in the dark night, I carried out a small heist near King's Cross train station. I broke into the offices of The Guardian and The Observer newspapers and nicked their Q&A and "This much I know" sections. These are insights into celebrities' lives and obligatory reading for me whilst having my breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays. For a sample of the sort of guests they have, click here and here.

Anyway, I thought, what better way of celebrating the arrival of my fifth decade (did I get that right, I'm rubbish at Maths. Let's see; 0-10; 10-20; 20-30; 30-40; 40-50. Yes, I think I got it right) than by sharing some snippets of my life with you, my dear readers and fellow bloggers? 31 questions (and answers) and 9 statetements to be more accurate. Hence, my daring attempt to steal the Q&A and "This much I know" in the middle of the night. When I called the newspapers, both editors-in-chief, were reluctant to let me use it. I had no other recourse that to play the Cuban Antonio Banderas and the result appears below for you to read. Hurry up, though, for I can hear sirens wailing and the slammer beckoning. Oh, well! One doesn't turn forty everyday. I hope the judge will understand my predicament.

Q&A

1-When were you happiest?
Today (whenever that today is).

2-What is your greatest fear?
Losing my mind, behaving in a way that is completely unlike me and being unable to do anything about it.

3-What is your earliest memory?
In hospital, aged five, and my mother teaching me patiently how to read and write. I was in and out of hospitals when I was a child due to a stomach condition. My mother wasted no time and went from reading me children's stories to teaching me how to read them myself. By the time I started Year 1 in primary school I was able to read and write much better than the other children. I believe that my love for literature comes from those early years.

(left) A younger version of me, forty years ago

4-What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Not listening to other people enough. I sometimes rush through things too quickly without taking into consideration the other person's opinion. I can also go from one extreme to the other very swiftly. Then, again, I'm a Scorpio, what did you expect?

5-What is the trait you most deplore in others?
To answer this question I need to quote Whoopi Goldberg. In an interview on the programme "Inside the Actors Studio" some years ago she mentioned two types of ignorance she'd come across: voluntary and involuntary. I suffered from the former in Cuba due to the regime's censorship on books, music and films. But I hate the latter and it's the one that I encounter more often here in the UK. People who have access to a wealth of culture and information and prefer to remain dumb. Not only that, but also they feel entitled to express their uneducated opinions even when they have no basis to do so. I'm still involuntarily ignorant, and who isn't? Knowledge is infinite but our capacity to acquire isn't. However, I still remain as inquisitive and curious as ever.

6-What was your most embarrassing moment?
There have been so many. But one has stuck in my mind for many years. It's a long story, so in order to cut it short, I'll go back in time and place myself on the corner of 23rd Avenue and L St, bang in the heart of the borough of Vedado, Havana, in the mid 90s ('94 or '95). It's early December and therefore the Latin American Film Festival is in full swing. I've just finished watching my fourth flick that day and I'm trying to hitch a ride from the Yara movie theatre to the Charles Chaplin cinémathèque. It's early evening and a Cubanacán taxi stops at the traffic lights. I know it's very unlikely the driver will allow me in, but then I notice that on the front seat is Danny Glover. Danny Glover! Sitting comfortably on the front seat of a Cuban taxi (albeit for foreigners). His family is in the back, the lights are about to change, I need to get to the Chaplin pronto, I'm still gobsmacked and out comes the fateful phrase: "Danny, man, I love you!" Yes, me, cinephile, long-time admirer of one half of the "Lethal Weapon" franchise, makes a fool of myself right there on the corner of 23rd Avenue and L St. I mean to say, obviously: "Danny, man, I love your movies", but the famous US actor just smiles, the taxi driver revs up the engine and as soon as light changes to green, he disappears, leaving a twenty-something-year-old man wondering whether Danny Glover thought for a moment that I was coming on to him.

7-What is your most treasured possession?
Now, most interviewees in the actual section reply very often that their children and/or their spouses are their most prized possession(s). I always find those responses disconcerting because family is not property. So I will break the rule and say that my most treasured possessions are the bookcases and CD racks in my house.

8-What would your super power be?
It's not a superpower at all. I would like to be able to play the piano again. I miss playing it but I daren't sit at it. I never learnt how to read music, nor was I ever interested in doing so. Ear was what led me to the blacks and whites and I hope one day to recover that super power again and be guided to the piano by my ear.

9-What makes you unhappy?
Rudeness, bad manners, gratuitous swearing, dog owners not cleaning up after their pets, walking through the woods and finding litter all over the place, bigotry and ignorance.

10-What do you most dislike about your appearance?
At almost forty? Nothing. I used to dislike my ears and my forehead. My ears stuck out when I was twelve or thirteen and my forehead was too broad. With the passing of time I found out that the reason my ears stuck out was because of my ability to appreciate good music and my forehead was ample because I thought problems through.

11-If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?
Old, ancient languages that evolved into our current lingoes. I'm not just referring to Latin, but also to obscure dialects, like for instance, the Basque language, whose origin remains uncertain. I hasten to add that Basque is not dead, contrariwise, it's alive and kicking and as mysterious as ever.

12-Who would play you in the film of your life?
In an ideal world, I would get an actor to access a portal in my brain and I would play myself looking through that portal, like John Malkovich in the movie based on him, or his head, as he remarked to John Cusack whilst smacking it repeatedly.

13-What is your favourite word?
In Spanish, English, French or German? You know what, I'll go for Portuguese, one of my favourite words (there are plenty) is "saudade". Click here to find out why.

14-What would you wear to a fancy dress party?
I would go as the newborn baby on the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind". Minus the one-dollar note.

15-Is it better to give or to receive?
Are we talking in life in general or...? Oh, forget it. To give, of course, to give.

16-Which living person do you most despise?
It's been such a long time that I don't think it's worth despising her anymore.

17-Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Another question that is difficult to answer. If I leave anyone out, I'm sure that I'll cause offense. So, here's the shortlist (living and dead combined) of what would be a veeeeeeeeeeeeery longlist: first of all, I would invite my family (including in-laws, of course) and friends. Then, Virgilio Piñera, Alberto Pedro, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Chico Buarque, Elis Regina, Mario Benedetti, Mercedes Sosa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Beny Moré, Lázaro Ros, Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Santiaguito Feliú, Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz, Nicolás Guillén, Gigi (the Ethiopian singer), Susheela Raman, Lila Downs, Nelson Mandela, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Rachelle Ferrell, Fiona Apple, Ben Webster, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Freddie Mercury, Beverley Knight, a few fellow bloggers who are regular of this parish, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, Malcolm X... the list goes on. That would be a hell of a party, I can assure you.

18-Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
In Spanish, "¿(me) entiendes?", in English, "you wiv me?" (a lil' bit of London accent there), in French (whenever I get to speak it, very rare these days), "ah, c'est vrai", which comes out as a cross between a question and a statement; and in German (even less frequent than French), "nicht wahr?".

19-What is your favourite smell?
White musk.

20-What is your guiltiest pleasure?
God, I haven't had any since I used to listen to Twisted Sister and the rest of the poodle rock brigade (Poison, Mötley Crüe) back in the 80s. I don't have any guilty pleasures because I don't have any guilty feelings.

21-What song would you like played at your funeral?
Songs. Let me make that clear. Sábanas Blancas by Gerardo Alfonso, Havana's unofficial anthem; To Be Continued by the Azerbi pianist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, because death doesn't signal end but transformation. And I just love the energy in the piece. Because by The Beatles, a song that has some of the better harmonies the Fab Four ever came up with and whose lyrics are some of the saddest ever written. Águas de Março by Tom Jobim and sung by Elis Regina (the live performance on youtube, though, not the studio version) because it showcases Elis's talents brilliantly. And last but not least, we come full circle back to Cuba. La Comparsa is one of those melodies that you will never forget after hearing it for the first time, especially when executed by two of the best pianists my beloved island has ever produced, Chucho Valdéz and his father, Bebo.

22-What has been your biggest disappointment?
That I'm not a good swimmer. I try to make up for it with my running, but it's not the same. Water is my element.

23-If you could go back in time, where would you go?
Tricky question because I have to take into account my skin colour. In some of the places I would like to travel back in time to I would be chased out of town or shackled into submission. So, in order not to spoil my own birthday post, I will choose the moment when Chopin composed his Étude Op. 10, No. 12 in C minor, known as the Revolutionary Étude because it was written against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of his native Poland in 1831. I would like to be in the same room as him, see his face and attempt to decipher what was going through his mind as he magicked the score onto paper.

24-What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I'm married to a woman I love dearly and we have the two most beautiful, sweetest and polite children on earth. That's good enough achievement in my book.

25-Tell us a secret.
When I'm out running with my mp3 player on I sometimes imagine that I'm playing the piece I'm listening to on the piano and all the notes are coming out the way they should. It helps me jog faster but I've had a few scares and close encounters with cars. Occasionally, I add a harmonica to my daydream.

26-How do you relax?
Reading, listening to music, doing the ironing whilst watching (these days) interesting programmes on Sky Arts 1 or 2 (I know they're Murdoch-run, but they're really good) and running.

27-What is the closest you've come to death?
When I was thirteen I dived into a natural pool by a rocky beach in western Havana without finding out first how deep it was. I couldn't swim at the time and I almost drowned. I was saved by two of my mates; incidentally I almost drowned one of them, too.

28-How would you like to be remembered?
As a bloke who lived life to the full and who always had a smile on his face.

29-What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
In the grand scheme of things we're this insignificant particle in the firmament. Yet, each of us has a unique personality that allows to achieve feats that, though not great in that grand scheme of things, contribute to our and each other's well-being. Just saying hello with a smile to someone else on the street could make that difference. We're all born with two languages: our mother tongue and a smile; the latter needs no translation.

30-Where would you most like to be right now?
Where I am as I write this. At home.

31-Tell us a joke.
(The Chancellor of the Exchequer) George Osborne knows exactly what to do with the economy.

This much I know about myself

I fell in love with rock aged thirteen and never looked back. The groove, the energy, the rebellious attitude, they were all part of the same package that seemed to stick two fingers up to the establishement in 80s Cuba.

The only time I've ever smoked in my life was a couple of joints on two occasions in the same house. This Swedish? Danish? Norwegian? actor went to Cuba and he and I struck up a good, short, but solid friendship. He threw two parties in a row and every single person there was someone I trusted. Still, the weed did nothing to me, so I haven't touched it since.

I like to think that I've managed to get the better out of both my parents, personalitywise. From my mum, I've developed a strong parental instinct, a bit overwhelming sometimes, I know (ask my children), but based on unconditional love and an indomitable character. From my dad, I've probably acquired a more analytical, cynical and pragmatic view of life.

Talking about marijuana, I've only broken the law a few times in my life. And on every single occasion I've been fined for petty transgressions. Once, when I still used to commute to West Hampstead I sat in the first class carriage on the overground, although I had a standard economy travel card. At the next stop an inspector got on and asked me to show him my ticket. I thought of pretending not to understand English, but I had a copy of The Guardian (the old version) sprawled on my lap.

I have had to learn how to manage my temper over the years. Time was when I would fly off the handle at people over anything. But my wife taught me to trust human nature more. She definitely is patient, I must admit.

The most alluring and mysterious part of the human body for me is the brain. I'm fascinated by it. Not in a scientific way, although I do do my fair share of reading from a layperson's point of view. I'm more attracted to the idea that we still don't know how capable and developed our brains are and it's very unlikely we ever will.

I'm an atheist but a very peculiar one. Other than organised religion, you won't hear me raising my voice against believers just for the sake of it. Each to their own. I think that religion as a cultural phenomenon is an interesting subject matter.

Deep inside I'm a softie. But you have to work through the layers. Recently I went out for a jog very early on a Sunday morning. I was working my way up a steep hill when the sun began to rise and all of a sudden Bach's "Air" came on my mp3 player. By the time I came down the hill on the other side my eyes were watered.

I would love to travel more with my family. I would love us to go to west Canada and ride on horses (I wouldn't know how to, though, for I've never done it), backpack our way through South and Central America, especially since we all speak Spanish and I have a fair grasp of Portuguese. I would like us to cycle through Europe (my wife would take some convincing, though, and even I would have to train hard for it as I haven't cycled since my bike got nicked back in the summer). I would love us to drive from coast to coast in the States, visit Africa (the whole continent, actually. I'm very keen to get to know Africa as a solid entity made up of different nations and not just a generic name). I would like to spend more time than we usually do in Malaysia and pop by the neighbouring countries. I would like to explore more my Chinese ancestry by staying in Canton. Australia is a destination that's always fascinated me. It's that whole expanse of land that captivates me. Oh, yes, I would like us to travel more indeed. In the meantime, I'm just breezin' through life, ploughing on the best I can.

©2011

Next Post: “Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana”, to be published on Sunday 20th November at 10am (GMT)

While my MP3 Gently Plays

2011-11-09T23:59:00.015Z

This is one of my favourite sections on my blog, the one where I get to play DJ every now and then and share my favourite melodies with you, dear readers and fellow bloggers. Not that I need much encouragement to upload the music I like listening to on my mp3 player.

To kick tonight's post off, we have one half of one of the most famous musical partnerships in the history of Spanish pop. Both on and off stage. On this occasion, though, Ana Belén's left her regular partner, Victor Manuel back home and has teamed up instead with the poet-cum-singer or singer-cum-poet (whichever way it goes, he's simply a great lyricist) Joaquín Sabina to regale us one of those songs that lingers on in the mind long after it's finished. A la Sombra de un León is about a (mad)man who falls for a statue, the famous Roman goddess Cibeles (the "Lion" in the song title refers to one of the felines that accompanies Ceres), and to which he proposes one night after running away from the asylum where he is interned. Touching story, isn't it?

From Spanish Ana to her Brazilian namesake. Ana Carolina is also part of a famous duo, in this case with her on/off stage partner Seu Jorge. Not only is she a superb songwriter, but also a terrific guitarist. Garganta is full of passion and desire from the opening lines: Minha garganta estranha/Quando não te vejo/Me vem um desejo/Doido de gritar. What's with the video, though? I love it, but can't make sense of it. Still, great tune.

I always make sure that I have one of the "oldies" on my mp3 player. It helps me overcome a steep hill, for instance, if I'm out jogging. Blondie's Heart Of Glass fulfills this function perfectly.

I like my music groovy and funky but I also love heavy melodies. Whether it's The Zep, Nirvana or Iron Maiden, hard rock has a place secured on my little gadget. That's why I always welcome Deep Purple's Highway Star when it comes on. This is one track that will send your pulse racing.

Ever since I came across his music on Radio Paradise I've become a fan of K-os' creative output. His is the brand of hip hop that I love: non-confrontational, without the macho stand and focused on the melody and lyrics.B boy Stance is no exception.

© 2011

Next Post: “Birthday Q&A and Other Pearls of Wisdom”, to be published on Sunday 13th November at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-11-06T10:00:00.059Z

One of the more enduring memories from my childhood is how painful writing was. Not physically, though. And think not, either, that I'm referring to the process of forming letters, words and characters on a sheet of paper in order to convey a message, but rather to the act of making said message legible and clear. My handwriting was awful. It was so dire that I was perennially punished by my teacher with countless exercises on how to improve it.

That's why I've always been amazed at how elegant and beautiful my children's handwriting is. In that respect, I'm sad - but relieved - to say, they didn't take after me. Probably after their mother, whose own efforts are a hundred times better than mine. The labyrinth of lines and shapes I produced at my primary school caused my teacher once to quip: "What's that prescription you're making out to me for?". At the time I failed to understand the joke until eventually I came across doctors' hieroglyphical handwriting and so I was able to appreciate her humour better.

Yet this skill, which, to most of us is instinctive, is bound to go the same way as the bank cheque: into partial extinction. According to a recent article in the Times Education Supplement ("Not so might any more", TES, 14th October) plans are afoot to eventually phase out the teaching of handwriting in primary schools in the UK. A quiet revolution is in the making and this time the victim is one of the oldest crafts in history.

At the beginning of this column I mentioned the pain inflicted on me by handwriting when I was little, but what I forgot to add was that in time leaving (un)uniform scratches on the paper's surface became a pleasure in and of its own. I still remember the straight lines in my notebook, the pencil nestled between my thumb and forefinger and the letters appearing, as if by magic, on the blank piece of paper in the wake left behind by the graphite. It's remarkable how much we underestimate our efforts when we write. There's a whole combination of physical and mental factors at play: body posture, shoulders-arms-forearms-hands synchronisation and our ever attentive gaze on the ensuing words. Thoughts materialise and are brought forth on the empty sheet, woven together by the wizardry of our skilled hands. And that's just the beginning.

Are you in the same league of the Hunchback of Notre Dame when you write or do you model yourself perhaps on a straight-backed Sylvie Guillem instead? Handwriting is more than the mere formation of words, it's part of our personality and self-expression. Letters leaning backwards or forwards, joined-up or separate, they all tell a story of who we are.

And now this art, this craft is under serious threat. From the mighty keyboard. In the TES article, Year 6 teacher Andrew Beswick, from Greave primary school in Stockport, is quoted as saying that “The world is changing very, very quickly. Less and less, I’m thinking that you need to teach children to write by hand beautifully. More and more, they need to master the keyboard and the skills they will need there.” As if the blitzkrieg unleashed on us by smartphones, iPads and Blackberrys wasn't enough. The QWERTY Generation march on unchallenged.

It's true that the original idea arrived in these shores from the US where keyboard proficiency has taken over from handwriting in the curriculum. It's also realistic to expect the younger generation to be more fascinated by a shiny, interactive iPad screen than by a blank sheet of paper. However, even the staunchiest technophile will come to rue the demise of the once mighty pen. Already we've seen the decline of the seaside resort saucy postcard (usually sent a day into one's holiday and handwritten). Why bother with witty, sexual innuendoes when you can send a picture of yourself larking about with your mates from your iPhone? Now it's the turn of the once conspicuous Biro. The worst case scenario will give us generations of children devoid of traditional skills for whom the only knowledge required to cope in the world will be that of tapping, copying and pasting. Originality and creativity will give way to impersonality and inanity.

Cursive also has a life outside the world of penmanship. In music for instance, who can forget the handwritten lyrics that appear on Pink Floyd's The Wall? I was never able to decipher the writing and yet that was part of its allure.

Mind you, all is not lost. According to a superb article in the Nov/Dec issue of Intelligent Life ( "Handwriting: an Elegy", I strongly recommend you read it), sales of fountain pens in Britain have increased by 70%, and those of quality writing paper by 79%. A desire for a luxury item? A last-minute Christmas purchase? Or a well-thought present for someone you really care about? You decide. I still have a fountain pen given to me by my ex-colleagues from the travel agency when I left. I only take it out occasionally but it's so precious that I don't want to use it. Recently when I holidayed in Cornwall with my family I bought a beautiful pen with a Celtic encryption. It's the one with which I jot down my thoughts and ideas for columns like this one.

No matter how fast we type on a keyboard, the sense of intimacy, which we develop through our personal writing, is lost. If, like mine, your scrawls on paper look like labyrinthine, endless corridors (minus the Minotaur), then you'll be grateful that blogposts are typed rather than handwritten. Otherwise I wouldn't have any readers or cyber-friends. Except those professionals who took a Hippocratic Oath at the beginning of their working careers. Still, though, whether the letters loop backwards or forwards, or whether we hunch down over our notebooks or merely sit upright, handwriting remains one of those forgotten but essential arts that has added an extra dimension to our human experience. Enough reason to preserve it, ideally whilst using a Parker.

© 2011

Next Post: “While My MP3 Gently Plays”, to be published on Wednesday 9th November at 11:59pm (GMT)

The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Review)

2011-11-02T23:59:00.026Z

It's only fitting that one of the most playful contemporary authors gets to write a novel about two rock'n'roll stars and a no less rock'n'roll photographer. The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which originally came out in 1999, finds Salman Rushdie in a mirthful, but still pensive mood.

Spanning forty years, the novel focuses on the relationship between rock star Ormus Cama, the surviving half of twins, music phenomenon Vina Aspara, half-Indian, half American and the "invisible" Rai whose real name is Umeed Merchant.

Through these three main characters and a wild array of supporting ones, Rushdie weaves a tale about love, myths, religion and humankind. There's even time and space for paranormal activity, as exemplified by Ormus's communication with his dead twin brother. Both Ormus and Rai fall for Vina on the same day in 1950s Bombay, whilst on a day out with their families. By then, the teenage girl had had her own share of grief, including a bloodbath in her previous house in the US. Of the three leading characters, Vina's is probably the richest and most interesting. Hers is a mix of iconography - rooted in the ancient Abrahamic traditions -, feminism and femininity. The latter two turn her into a symbol of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, magnitude.

In such a long novel (my copy boasts more than five-hundred and seventy pages), Rushdie cleverly brings real people from the world of rock'n'roll to orbit around his characters. Thus, we get cameos from the likes of Elvis, Dylan and U2. In fact, the Irish band went the extra mile and recorded the song that, in the book, serves as the nexus between Ormus and Vina. The clip appears below at the end of this review. In addition, Salman also scatters these three stars (Rai turns out to be one of the better photographers of his generation) all around the globe, rooting them firmly especially in Bombay, London and New York.

There are parallels between the author's life and the story he tells, although he would probably scoff at notions suggesting that The Ground Beneath Her Feet is autobiographical. However, anyone familiar with Rushdie's social interactions might come to the conclusion that Ormus and Vina's shoulder-rubbing with the rich and famous might be a bit too similar to Salman's love of glamour and glitz. And they wouldn't be completely wrong.

Where to me the two strongest poinst of the novel lie is in its exploration of myths and its meditation on belief. The former reeks heavily of Princess Diana's death and the cult it inspired with the thousands of wreaths adorning the gates and fences of Buckingham Palace and the very public outcry it unleashed. This, in a land famed for its stiff upper lip. It's a similar situation with Vina Aspara when she's swallowed up by an earthquake in Mexico (fret not, I'm not giving the plot away; in fact, that's how the novel starts). The outpouring of grief at her death is so much that a whole industry based on her life and work does not take long to spring up and cash in. In regards to beliefs, Rushdie's always been very vocal against organised religion, especially in the wake of the fatwa issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini. However, in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman is far from a staunch, dyed-in-the-wool, Richard-Dawkins-style atheist. He is more interested in musing over the relationship between gods and humans, including those artists whom some people worship as semigods. Lennon comes to mind. He uses the imagery of ground-cracking or ground-shifting to show progress, evolution and also backwardness and procrastination, not from a biological or historical point of view, but rather from an artistic and human one. Above all, it's the way he plays (and I use the word in the sense of "toying") with reality and a "parallel world". One that we can only access through Ormus's double vision.

Although The Ground Beneath Our Feet came out twelve years ago, its message of love and humanism is as relevant as ever. Another great read by master Salman which I totally recommend.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 6th November at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-10-30T10:00:00.030Z

A few weeks ago I was behind the wheel, as I'm normally these days that I'm in charge of the school run, going about my business as usual. The speed at which I was driving oscillated between twenty and thirty miles per hour, the car window was rolled down whilst a cool morning breeze caressed my face. On the radio John Humphrys was grilling yet another politician. Then, all of a sudden, as I tried to overtake a bus that was stationary, I realised what I was doing and what I was about to do, too. Unwittingly, I'd fallen into a pattern, following the car in front of me without actually thinking of my actions. Had I overtaken the bus on my left, I would have collided with another car coming in the opposite direction. Luckily I managed to brake in time. But not before seriously telling myself off for being so stupid.

It was not the first time that I'd made the same mistake. I once trod on cow dung on a walk through the countryside when I was in uni doing my work experience despite the fact that every single person in front of me had already done it. And moaned about it! At the time I was the head of a brigade working on orange trees and we'd decided to skip work (as we often did) in order to explore the area. No matter that the dozen or so members of my unit sank their wellies and Russian boots in fresh bovine faeces. I was also following the herd, albeit of a different kind.

I sometimes wonder how "hardwired" we are, human beings, to copy other people's actions, the impact this trait has on us and the benefits (if any) they might bring to us.

A case in point is smoking. This is the same example I use when I try to demonstrate to people, like my children for instance, the perils of lighting up. If you smoke, or have smoked at some point in your life, try to go back to that moment when you first held that cigarette in your hand and took the first puff. How did it feel? Nauseating, I think. You probably coughed like mad as well. But you did carry on. Why? Didn't that initial "experiment" put you off? Well, of course not, because all around you your mates were doing the same. Regardless of the discomfort, the teary eyes and the raspiness in their throats, they kept puffing at their roll-ups. To me this is typical of the social networking enviroment in which human beings thrive, but also it illustrates how it can lead to failure. Twenty or thirty years from that first cigarette some of your friends will be paying a visit to their GP to find out about that "dark cloud" in their lungs. Maybe you'll join them.

We build networks through our lives. It's part of man's (generically speaking)gregarious nature. Some of these connections start in school and last well until our twilight years. Others are more ephemeral. But each leaves a mark, no matter how indelible it can be at times.

I've always been interested in human interaction and this was intensified last year when I joined Facebook. Until then I was one of those refuseniks who saw Mark Zuckerberg's creation as an attempt to shorten out attention span even more (as if that was humanly possible) through a combination of LOLs, smileys, emoticons and snaps taken by a shaky hand on a mobile phone. However, I was able to re-connect with old classmates from my uni years and form an online community in which we do a lot of reminiscing. At the centre of this virtual reunion are patterns that are embedded in our genes. It's the reason why one of the members of this online group posted a photo of his wedding the other day and despite the fact that I didn't know him that well, I had a lump in my throat nonetheless. It was the black-and-white-yellow-around-the-edges colour of the photo that did it for me.

These social networks we create when we are younger have upsides like the one described before. They also help us find love and employment. Since we seem to be connected ad infitum, our future partner should ideally be three persons away according to the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game whilst our dream job should just be around the corner. But that's not real life. We know better than to make these assumptions.

The negative impact of copycat behaviour brought about by close human connectedness can be, on the other hand, often fatal: alcoholism, the aforementioned smoking problems and drugs addiction. It usually starts innocently enough and in such a subtle way that before you know it you're in it up to your chest. A spliff is passed around. A drink is shared. A needle is produced. We, humans, are certainly interesting, and so are the networks we beget.

Companies cash in on these interactions, whether they be along the lines of the mistake to which I referred at the beginning of my post (following a pattern set by others), or the individual who stands out in a crowd and defies the "herd mentality" to which he or she is being subjected. Or if you like, it's the clash between T-mobile's carefully choreographed "flash mobs" (groups of people dancing in joyful mood in Liverpool Street Station, east London, for instance) or VO5 and its status quo-approved rebellious stance.

It's amazing that human relations can determine sometimes what we eat, how we vote and how we educate our children. Such a statement, said or written so coldly, would probably provoke a stern response from those of us who believe we have the mental and physical capacity to make decisions about our diet, our political choices and our offspring. But scratch the surface and look closer and you'll occasionally find a complicated microcosm of self-doubts and nagging self-interrogation. Influenced in no small measure by the "herd mentality". Which is one of the reasons why we're fallible and make mistakes. And why some of those gaffes end up on Facebook twenty years later. And yet, there's still a certain beauty in it.

© 2011

Next Post: “The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Review)”, to be published on Wednesday 2nd November at 11:59pm (GMT)

Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts

2011-10-26T23:59:00.062+01:00

I don't know how many times I walked, cycled or ran past No. 375 on N St., Vedado, Havana, Cuba. Two of my best mates lived around the corner. I used to play baseball in a - then - disused car park nearby. My cousin got married right across the building, in the same mansion-cum-notary where I used to play hide'n'seek week in, week out.

And yet, it never occurred to me that at No. 375, N St., Flat 7, the landscape of Cuban literature was being changed. For the better.

It was at this abode that Virgilio Piñera, one of Cuba's foremost authors (poet, essayist, journalist, playwright and short-story writer) resided for many years after he moved from Guanabo, a borough in the outskirts of Havana. It was here that he penned plays like Dos Viejos Pánicos, a superb meditation on old age.

Considering that I became infatuated with Piñera's literary output in my teens, I would have probably attempted to turn his erstwhile apartment into a shrine if given half the chance. Or who knows, maybe, one day, when I'm filthily rich (there's still hope, not about the "filthy" bit, though) I'll buy the flat and turn it into a museum. I might even be supported in this enterprise by a group of fellow Piñerians.

And all of us, Virgilio enthusiasts, would be in great company. We would join a select group in which we'll find avid Harry Potter fans venerating the home in which JK Rowling lived for many years, blue-plaque stalkers on the lookout for a new sign bearing names of a Conan Doyle or Keats pedigree and Roald Dahl fans contributing some hard cash towards the half million pounds needed to move the shed, in which he wrote many of his best-selling stories, from Buckinghamshire to the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre.

Sorry, what's that you're saying? Do you want me to run that last item by you again? Don't worry, dear, I shall oblige.

Roald Dahl, he of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox fame, used a little cabin, built in the 1950s, as his writing retreat to pen his world-renowned children's books. The structure was never intended to last, yet, lasted it has and now it's in danger of collapsing. The Dahl family, along with trusts and foundations, are looking to raise around one million pounds for the renovation but the initial press release triggered a public outcry. Most people were of the opinion that the likes of Sophie Dahl and the rest of her clan should be the ones stumping up the full whack, especially when one takes into account how well the author's books still do and the revenue generated by film adaptations like James and the Giant Peach.

The news, however, did make me wonder how far we, as fans (I'm not referring just to Dahl now, though, for his books were never amongst my favourites), are willing to go to achieve the ultimate literary experience and what it really means. I think that nowadays we've gone beyond venerating places of residence and original drafts, the two usual objects of worship, and moved onto the places where the writing supposedly took place, or where some of the author's fictitious characters hung out.

For example the James Joyce Centre includes a walk entitled "In the Footsteps of Leopold Bloom". On its website the blurb states that "This tour explores the background to Joyce’s Ulysses and to Bloom’s thoughts as he crosses the city in search of something to eat in the ‘Lestrygonians’ episode". This is a positive case study as, in my view, this excursion would complement such a sensorial novel. I hope one day to join the jaunt.

However, I think that there might be also an ulterior - and unconscious - motive behind fans' attempt to get a closer look at their favourite writers' digs. I would call it "literary talent by proxy". The person who bought JK Rowling's flat might not just have wanted to breathe in the same air that inspired Rowling to write her Harry Potter series, but also to exhale, in the process, a character in the same mould as Dumbledore. I'm entering the realm of wild speculation here, but he might have thought that living within the same four walls that housed the author might help him produce a novel focusing on a wizard boy whose life is in danger. He might even attempt to write such tale inside a cupboard. Implausible? Yes. But... Well, when it comes to literature, all bets are off.

This situation of readers worshipping - and occasionally buying - the places where their favourite books were written, brings to mind the only time I ever visited Hemingway's old home, La Finca Vigía in Havana. At the time I was in my teens and had yet to read any of his novels. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the light and space in his former residence. This was, after all, the place where Papa Hemingway (who also left his mark in other spots in Havana such as the Ambos Mundos Hotel and the Floridita restaurant) had lived. Fortunately, I didn't feel the urgency to go out and start battling it out with a marlin.

But I still dream of turning Flat 7 at No. 375 on N St. into a museum or exhibition centre where the works by one of Cuba's literary geniuses can finally be acknowledged. Especially as the centenary of his birth (4th August 2012) is fast approaching. So, expect more columns about this key figure of Cuban letters. His name is Virgilio. Virgilio Piñera.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 30th October at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-10-23T10:00:00.071+01:00

Are you a little, very or not satisfied at all with your life? Fret not, for I'm not about to flog you a drug so that you can achieve that state that some people call "nirvana" and others "communism". We all know what happened after the Summer of Love in '68. Flowers-In-Your-Hair Inc. was created. And let's not even go into the whole Berlin Wall shebang. Stasi anyone?

No, the reason, or rather, reasons, why I'm asking you how satistified you are with your live is because recently l'Insee (Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques) asked French people the same question. In a scale of 0 to 10 where the nought represented zero satisfaction and the 10 "very satisfied" (or if you like, a survey where people could go from The Rolling Stones to Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat in no time) the Gallic nation settled for an acceptable 7. And that's even without including the French team's recent success in the rugby world cup at the expense of both England and Wales.

The results do not throw up big surprises. Money still features highly in a person's bien-être, but so does health. Which is welcome news for me as that's one of the ways in which we measure happiness in Cuba. We always wish relatives, friends and work colleagues or classmates "good health". The equivalent of "God bless you!" when someone sneezes is in Cuban Spanish "Salud que haya, que belleza sobra" (May there be health for there's already beauty aplenty). So, it's comforting to know that in the developed world not everything is about bling-bling.

More surprising was to find out that our contentment levels diminish between the ages of 45 and 49. In fact from our early thirties to our late forties one of the graphs in the article shows a steady decline in our sense of well-being. What I would like to know is if this is a modern phenomenon, maybe related to our fast-paced lifestyle, or if it was always thus. From our 50s until our early 70s the curve peaks again which might have something to do with feeling more settled and at ease with our lives.

I wonder if I was to conduct the same study worldwide what the score would be. To go back to my original question: do you belong to the Jagger brigade and "can't get no satisfaction", or have you already purred your way through life to relative bliss like our friend the Cheshire Cat? And if the latter, what are the elements that have contributed to it?

Place of residence, job - or lack of it thereof -, relationship status and children. These are all aspects of a person's life at some point or other and therefore are components that can and do alter patterns, thus bringing about changes in our wellbeing. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and the recent austerity measures introduced by the coalition government in Britain, there's been a spate of commentaries that centre on what we, human beings, should really be focusing on. Our priorities, if you like. And money, not surprisingly, has been given a supporting role. A good example is the section "Thought for the Day", on Radio 4's Today programme. This is a five-minute slot where representatives of different religious faiths (no secular speakers are allowed yet) theorise on contemporary issues. For the last year or so I've noticed a shift in the subjects discussed; from God-related items to more earthly ones such as: empathy, justice and thriftiness. Of course, the Abrahamic faiths have always preached against human flaws like greed, even if the organisations that represent them have occasionally been found guilty of the same sin. But it is not too far-fetched to think that, faced with a money-minded society and the consequences of this mantra, people are beginning to take a long, hard look at the world around them and not just at their bank account.

There was a similar exercise to the French survey a year ago by Britain's equivalent of l'Insee, the Office of National Statistics, when the Prime Minister, David Cameron, asked the organisation to gauge general well-being. It was somewhat marred by the background of protests and discontent that accompanied the press release. Plus, the PM missed an important detail: happiness or satisfaction is a subjective phenomenon. You can speculate on it with graphs and numbers, but in the end some people are chuffed about autumnal days whereas others are frustrated about the fact that their hard-earned qualifications cannot get them the job they believe they deserve (as the French study showed). To try to come up with a happiness index based on the standard GDP model is like attempting to teach ballet to a hippo, Fantasia notwithstanding.

Above all, it comes down to whether you feel less satisfied because "a man comes on the radio/he's tellin' me more and more/about some useless information/supposed to fire my imagination", or if the permanent grin on your face is based more on the abundance of milk and cream around you. Grumpy, aging rocker or cheeky-chappie feline? The choice is yours.

© 2011

Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts”, to be published on Wednesday 26th October at 11:59pm (GMT)

Photo taken by the blog author.

Living in a Bilingual World (The One About Endangered Languages)

2011-10-19T23:59:00.060+01:00

According to Genesis, the Tower of Babel was supposed to be human beings' way to "reach unto heaven". I think we're all acquainted with what happened in the end: God grew jealous and punished the puny transgressors by confounding their language. No one could understand the other person's speech anymore. And so, that's how New York came into being.

Sorry, did I confuse you, too? Well, just.

Recently I came across an article in The Economist magazine that dealt with one of my favourite topics and this column's raison d'être: languages. In this case the feature focused on the disappearance of a number of unusual tongues, which have found a home in the US metropolis. In order to address this situation a group of academic linguists got together to collect, record and codify grammar, pronunciation, syntax and in some cases traditional songs and stories from a dozen languages. The results are spellbinding: samples range from Mexico to Indonesia. And they're all under the same (metaphorical) roof.

Some people might scoff at the attempt to "rescue" these languages. After all, how many of them, in the history of humankind, have run their course and become extinguished? Surely there must be reasons for that. Disuse, complexity, geopolitics, to name a few. Furthermore, once we welcomed the arrival of a lingua franca, i.e., English, we helped, unintentionally, dig up the grave into which we condemned all these other "esoteric" languages.

But, I can't be the only person who greets news of a research into endangered languages with open arms. For one, the study gets the better of my inner linguistic Snoopy. For instance, in Mahongwe, a language from Gabon, the word manono, translates as “I like” when spoken in soft and flat tones, but “I don’t like” when the first syllable is a tad sharper. No information is given about what happens when you're down with a cold. Then, there's the cultural side of it where we get to learn about oral traditions that, in many cases, are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.

I'm not surprised that it's New York where this research is taking place. Although it could have equally happened in London. After all, there's a lot more linguistic diversity in the British capital than in the US metropolis. But with its skycrapers attempting to "reach unto heaven", this modern Babel is the closest we'll get to its biblical counterpart. And you know what? By confounding those hubristic humans, maybe the Lord gave us the best gift of all: a cultural mix that has enriched our human experience.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 23rd October at 10am (GMT)

Image of Ibimeni (Garifuna traditional music from Guatemala), taken from Black Star Liners blog.

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections, Music and Dance

2011-10-16T10:00:00.133+01:00

When news first reached me of the death of Apple's trail-blazing wizard, Steven Jobs, a few days ago, I had just completed the first two-hundred pages of Naomi Klein's brilliant and eye-opening book "The Shock Doctrine". Somehow Steven's image as a quasi-messianic entrepeneur blended with the same God-like appeal that Milton Friedman, chief architect of the "laissez-faire" free-market approach, had for decades. I'm not implying they're directly linked. Jobs and Friedman were as similar to each other as a fish and a football are. One was an economist with a strong dislike for central government, the other one was a creative visionary and aesthete. But there were certain parallels between them in that they were both products of the same socioeconomic system which enabled them to pursue analogous goals, albeit in different ways.

For instance, my first brush with one Job's creations, the Apple Mac, came fortuitously eight years ago when I began to work in the arts. There were just a couple of PCs in the office and they were in constant use. That meant that the only machine available was a Mac that belonged to the Chief Executive.

As an uninitiated to one of Jobs' babies I found the computer hard to operate and it frustrated me no end, if truth be told. However, even I had to admit that the Mac's soft, smooth, curved, white box design was a wonder at which to marvel. Besides, since I was neither a visual artist, nor a musician, the machine was not primarily made for me. The myriad menus that allowed composers to mix and re-mix their pieces and photographers to muck around with images were some of the reasons why people parted with their hard-earned cash for this piece of sophisticated machinery.

The other reasons had to do with Jobs' vision. One where the consumer was supposed to reign unchallenged. Also, it was a world where the "i" in his products (iPod, iPhone, iPad), in my view, symbolised the individual, the "I can do" attitude, a sentiment that was vindicated by the many hundreds who always flocked to the unveiling of a new Apple product. Never mind the fact that Steve's company was not what you could consider as niche; having an iPod set you apart from the herd.

In that sense, Friedman's focus on the individual was not a lot different, even if his modus operandi was. According to Naomi Klein, Milton's political and economic trademark was "privatization, government deregulation and deep cuts to social spending". In order to achieve these goals he prescribed the same universal medicine to attentive audiences the world over: shock therapy.

The effects of his ideas are everywhere to see, from Chile to Iraq. Countries with massive debts, people living below the poverty line and corrupt governments. Ultimately the clearest example of Friedman's philosophy was the role of the individual in society. And by individual, read corporations. Unlike Steve Jobs, though, who tapped into a person's individuality, Milton plumped for a more rapacious individualism.

Individuality vs individualism. The former is innate, the latter is nurtured. Capitalism at its best knows how to take full advantage of a person's individual power. It creates a platform where this person can thrive. The challenge is to make this person conscious of the collective/society in which he or she lives and therefore the duties and responsibilities that come with investing capital and making a profit.

By the way, this is not an ode to capitalism or private property, but an acknowledgement to the spirit of adventure and enterprise that Steve Jobs represented. The late Apple founder didn't just create computers and software, he made them sexy. Before him, sitting in front of a computer (a PC, more likely) was a task to be endured. That is, until the arrival of the internet and youtube. All those clips of cats falling over helped us while the hours away on a rainy Saturday afternoon at work.

By contrast, Friedman's entrepreneurial credentials left an indelible mark in countries such as Russia and Argentina, to mention but two. Although his hands didn't get stained with the blood of the victims who were on the wrong side of his ideas, he aggressively pursued a "slash and burn" agenda which in the end gave us Tiannamen Square.

This is not to say that Steve Jobs was a saint whilst Milton was an evil person. They both set out to make money, as much and as quick as possible. In Friedman's case you could even say that there was an altruistic and internationalist streak as he went beyond the geographical borders of his native USA to try to export his ideas to the rest of the world. That his thesis was based on an almost total annihilation of the state was his ruthless and selfish "Mr Hyde" persona lurking in the background. As for Jobs, there have long been accusations of poor working conditions in some of his overseas factories, with one in China being dubbed "i-Nightmare".

However, it is the dilemma of export/import of ideas that first made reflect on both men and the influence they cast and continue to cast on our contemporary society. More specifically, it's the type of capitalism spoused by Friedman that made me think of Cuba.

At the moment my beloved island finds itself on a crossroads. One side points at more government control with the sad, possible outcome of insurgency in the long-term, the other path indicates openness and laxity. The problem with the latter is at what price? If history is anything to judge by, Russia, China and Poland are living testimonies of what happens when former totalitarian states want to experiment with the free market and Friedman's economic electroshock. The result is less democracy and more individualism. My option would be more openness and more opportunities for the many "Steve Jobs" we have in Cuba. This was the man, lest we forget, who made corporations respectable at a time when Nike, McDonald's, Shell and many others were taking a knock from the anti-globalisation and anti-poverty movement. Yet, whilst people railed against sweatshops, they kept texting away on their brand-new iPhones.

Markets cannot be left alone to run our economy any more than we can expect a child not to make a mess if we leave them alone with a set of watercolours and brushes. Milton Friedman and his Chicago School gang were wrong in that respect, in my opinion. What we can actively do with our economy is encourage individuals to grow more daring, to unlock their creative potential and to challenge themselves in a way that will bring some kind of benefit to society; whether their motives are still profit-making or not. Even if you still get renegades like yours truly who's never owned an Apple product in his life.

© 2011

Next Post: “Living in a Bilingual World (The One About Endangered Languages”, to be published on Wednesday 19th October at 11:59pm (GMT)

Bamako (Review)

2011-10-12T23:59:00.004+01:00

I still remember the first and only time I watched the movie Waiting for Happiness, Abderrahmane Sissako's meditation on migration. It was at an African film festival I had curated and managed and the feature was amongst a number of obscure submissions over whose reception I was fretting somewhat. Yet, I, and the rest of the audience were blown away by the director's subtle images of sand and sea, juxtaposed with a feeling of otherness and a state of limbo.

Whereas in Waiting for Happiness the setting is all whitewashed buildings and almost total tranquillity, Bamako is the opposite. The movie centres on a court case in the Malian capital where the plaintiff seems to be Africa itself and the accused are the World Bank, the IMF and other corporations. Beyond the premises there's the hustle-bustle that characterises an African city. However, to say that the court case is at the centre of the film is somewhat misleading because there are other subplots that are as interesting as, if not more interesting than, the main one. There're the marriage problems between a nightclub singer and her unemployed husband. There's also a photographer, who works part-time for the police, and who records marriages and funerals, choosing the latter over the former because they're 'more real'. There's even an out-of-this-world (and some might think totally unrelated) scene where people are watching a spaghetti western called Death in Timbuktu, starring Danny Glover and the Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman.

Sissako's achievement is in presenting an Africa that speaks with its own voice and in its own language. His intention is to celebrate the dignity of those who have very little but without displaying any kind of self-pity. At the same time he avoids the usual pitfalls of laying all the blame at the doors of those who are better off. During the court proceedings we hear stories from both sides. Some of the witnesses are very articulate and others aren't. The magic of the film lies in the combination of an off-the-cuff approach (Sissako has a reputation for hiring non-actors) and a calculated and sophisticated one, especially when it comes to the photography and setting.

The result is a stunning film where the viewer is challenged to come up with his or her own answers and where the protagonist, Africa, gets one of those rare chances to speak its mind. Another one not to miss.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections, Music and Dance”, to be posted on Sunday 16th October at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-10-09T10:00:00.173+01:00

There's a very funny, short scene in The King's Speech that had me, in a manner of speaking, rolling on the floor and howling with laughter. It's one of the conversations between stage-actor-cum-speech-therapist, Lionel Logue and monarch-in-waiting Albert Frederick Arthur George, or Bertie as he was known to his family. The specialist is goading the future king to think of and say as many swear words as he can, though the latter is reluctant to bite his bait. Finally, the therapist asks George if he knows the "f" word, to which the stammering royal responds:

"Ffff... fornication?"

What follows thereafter is an explosion of expletives, tumbling out of George's mouth like hundreds of bats flying out of a cave all of a sudden. The scene works because of the self-restraint displayed at first by the soon-to-be last emperor of India, only for him to cave in at the last minute under pressure from his therapist. The distant and cool demeanour crumbles to the ground, revealing a human being who has suffered humiliation and bullying for most of his life. George might not have been expected to occupy the throne (that honour went to his elder brother Edward, who abdicated in the end) but a stiff upper lip was still de rigueur.

It's the same stiff upper lip that still fascinates people all over the world. Was I surprised by the success of The King's Speech? Not a bit.

I've come to see the relationship between the monarchy (and the upper classes by default) and the rest of the British people, not as a love-hate liaison, but as a love-"I couldn't give two hoots" one. Unless you come across a staunch republican, most people feel nonchalant about Lizzie and her son and possible successor, Charlie. You might find people who were reluctant to tune in to Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding last April, but they were the same ones who didn't have any second thoughts about paying for a cinema ticket to go to see The Queen. This poses the following question: Isn't there a contradiction between the modern Cool Britannia picture that was plastered on the cover of newspapers and magazines everywhere in the late nineties and early noughties, and the obsession with all things royal and upper class right now?

The King's Speech is not the only successful product in recent years to have had a strong regal and toff flavour. Upstairs, Downstairs was a drama series originally aired on ITV in the 70s and adapted by the BBC in 2010. The title was a reference to the lives of the masters "upstairs" and the servants "downstairs". It was a ratings winner for the corporation last year. Downtown Abbey, another ITV programme, swept the boards at the Emmys last month. It seems that when it comes to producing a surefire cinema or television winner these days, Blue Blood trumps the British "It" factor any time.

I've no problem with the upper classes, including the monarchy; as an outsider I see them as yet another element of British life. Obviously, I'd sooner they paid more taxes and were responsible for their own upkeep rather than getting us, hoi polloi, to foot the bill. My curiosity is, however, piqued by the apparent contradiction between a country that is growing more and more racially, socially and culturally mixed per day (and this week the BBC marked the tenth anniversary of "mixed race" as an ethnic category on the UK census with the first installment of a three-part series on the subject) and a fascination with the past. Especially with the colonial, imperial one.

From a commercial point of view, this approach is understandable. The Crown sells, toffs in jodhpurs hunting deer in autumnal weather, rake in profits at the box office and, as I write, the dress worn by the Duchess of Cambridge on her wedding day this year has attracted so far approximately 600,000 visitors to Buckingham Palace. The bottom line is that once again Queen PLC+media exposure=Kerching!, above all, from overseas visitors. This transaction has also been helped by a government which is made up of many of those who belong to the "upstairs" class and where, for example, the Chancellor of the Exchequer comes from a privileged background (dad is the 17th holder of a hereditary baronetcy).

One of the downsides, and there are many, is that this newfound love for the type of establishment that Prince Williams represents, belies the true nature of contemporary Britain, especially in urban areas. For instance, the film Notting Hill, with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in the leading roles, took its name after the area where William Thacker's (played by Grant) bookshop was. However, any person acquainted with the neighbourhood would have been shocked to see that black people had been airbrushed out of the movie. On top of that the most famous carnival (and a very multicultural, too) in Europe is called... Notting Hill. But Richard Curtis, the screenwriter, was more interested in creating the illusion of a London that could sell (a London full of eccentrics like Spike, played by Rhys Ifans, greeting the press in his underwear, or toffs like Grant, stammering his way through the film) than the real London in which many of us live.

Another drawback is that romanticising the upper class too much stops us from conducting a critical analysis of their influence on contemporary British society and more importantly on our economy. Right now our cabinet is made up of people who, I'm pretty sure, have never signed on in their lives. Yet, they're the ones introducing austerity measures. That the majority are toffs with trust funds intent on destroying our welfare system, is scant consolation for the supposed success that movies and books based on their lives brings.

It is true that this fixation with the monarchy and the upper classes (and more specifically with notions of Englishness) appeals more to the occasional tourist to the UK, or to the person living abroad, for whom time stopped circa 1920, than to the resident of Blighty. But I've also noticed a growing interest amongst the younger British generation in trends and styles that better suit the Windsors and their ilk. Even some rappers, or as they're called nowdays, "urban artists", draw inspiration from Prince Charles' wardrobe for their clothes designs. Travelling in the opposite direction and probably returning the favour, we have Prince Harry's love for hip-hop and his attempts at MC-ing. I'd be willing to see this exchange as nothing more than a passing fad, but when you have the looming threat of Boris Johnson, mayor of London and another aristocrat, apparently plotting to succeed David Cameron as the next leader of the Tories and possibly eventually becoming Prime Minister, I fret, I seriously do. Because one thing is to amuse oneself with a scene where a future monarch attempts to loosen up his stiff upper lip. And a different one is when that stiff upper lip is the one pronouncing on your future.

© 2011

Next Post: “Bamako (Review)”, to be published on Wednesday 12th October at 11:59pm (GMT)

Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts

2011-10-05T23:59:00.127+01:00

Recently I finally managed to watch director Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland. More than anything else, what I really wanted to know was what the fuss was about and whether the praise heaped on the movie was fairly deserved. What stood out from the word go was that if I hadn't seen the original 1951 film, my feelings towards this recent reworking of Lewis Carroll's classic would have been somewhat ambivalent. Whereas Disney's take on the tale was based on Alice's innocence and curiosity (prevalent in the book), Burton's approach was more adult-minded. As expected, both Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp stole the show with characters who were not that dissimilar from previous wacky and clownish incarnations, especially in the latter's case.

Lately there's been a slew of movies looking to provide a modern take on previous - and occasionally - well-established films. Sometimes the director pulls it off, as in the case of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (though not one belonging to a genre of my preference). There are also instances when the end result fails to satisfy. Above all, when the movie bombs, people often ask themselves why on earth someone would go to the trouble or re-working a classic if they lack the wherewithal to succeed.

However, despite the pros and cons of re-making films, this is part and parcel of the world of celluloid, along with profitable franchises and a frequent formulaic approach to storytelling. But is there any other creative industry where a similar style would be just as easily accepted?

More specifically, would/could we ever conceive of an author re-writing a classic? Including keeping the original title?

With visual arts, for example, the response is swift and simple: plagiarism. But what about literature? Could someone pen a new version of Ulysses, one where the wandering Leopold Bloom, going about his business on that one day, is not just a mere figment in Joyce's imagination, but also a red hot-blooded Jack-Bauer-like figure in charge of an anti-terrorist unit in early 20th century Ireland? With the same Latinised version of the Greek name as its title, of course.

Naturally, we could argue that literature is underpinned by the type of architecture that could well serve as a template for would-be writers. For Alice..., read similar books such as Peter Pan, The Secret Garden and The Jungle Book. Talking animals already made up the bulk of stories in ancient times, with even a moral thrown in at the end for good measure. Woods have rarely shed their image as the ominous sign where "things happened" (sometimes bad ones, ask Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, for instance). In fact you could even say that literature is governed by narrative patterns that attempt to pin down our infinite human experience into the equivalent of ready-made meals, therefore creating a limited variety of plots. The city that is in danger and needs a hero to rescue it (The Pied Piper of Hamelin), the woman who is in love with a man her parents disapprove of (Romeo and Juliet) But a verbatim replica like The Italian Job (the original, a 1969 cinematic vehicle with Michael Caine and Noel Coward, the "modern" version from 2003 with Mark Wahlberg and Donald Sutherland, transported to L.A. and minus Caine's iconic "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!")? No.

Why is that, then? I would say that one of the reasons is that writers, like visual artists (photographers, painters and sculptors, for instance) have a more individual and self-centred approach to their oeuvre. Film-makers, who depend more on a collective, think nothing of re-doing a classic. This could be as a tribute to the original director, or because they think that they can improve on his/her magnum opus. Or simply because there's more money on the table. Which is why we can have Bride and Prejudice, the Bollywood movie, but no Pride and Prejudice, the new version by Danielle Steel. I don't think that I'm alone in thinking that a painter re-painting the Mona Lisa would probably take umbrage at him/herself. Same with a writer penning a second Moby Dick.

Or it might be that literature doesn't need dodgy Doppelgängers because it's self-sufficient. In an excellent essay in The Guardian a couple of years ago the playwright David Edgar referred to Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth. Combine them at your leisure and you needn't look at For Whom the Bell Tolls or The Color Purple as works to reproduce word by word. There's plenty of fish for everyone in the sea of fiction if you can use your imagination effectively enough.

What does happen, as Robert McCrum stated recently, is that certain authors - some of them already famous in their own right - piggyback on the classics and adapt them to their own genre. One of McCrum's example is Lynn Shepherd's Murder at Mansfield Park, which turns the idyllic estate into a crime scene. It's, in my view, literature's own way of doing what cinema did with Psycho (the original, a superb film from 1960 with Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh; its totally unnecessary carbon copy, a disaster made in 1998 with Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche in the leading roles), although with better results. And an excellent way, I would aver, of keeping us, literature lovers, curiouser and curiouser.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 9th October at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-10-02T10:00:00.083+01:00

Certain seasons arrive all of a sudden: in later years winter (especially the Christmas period) has been summoned earlier than usual by mince pies that go on display at the end of August; spring showers turn up unexpectedly and summer is like a Houdini act: now you see it, now you don't. Or rather, now you're wearing four layers of clothes, now you're wearing almost nothing.

Autumn, however, floats about, hovers and finally comes down in a choir of rustling leaves. I first notice its appearance when the air takes on a crispy, metallic feel. Not cold, but cool, comforting and translucent. I, then, look around to see the changes. The victorius heather that reigns supreme in summer with its pinkish-purple flowers, sees its territory decimated. The hustle and bustle of June, July and August give way to a slower pace, the better to savour the stillness around you.

This year, September started strangely. Then, again, the weather has been most unusual of late. As I write, temperatures in London are predicted to rise to 27-28 degrees (Celsius). Earlier this month, the remnants of a hurricane that had swept through the eastern coast of the US reached the UK and gave us gales that wouldn't have been out of place on a tropical island in the Caribbean in the middle of October. But still, autumn is here.

Whereas for me winter's monochromatic landscape resembles a painting by Jackson Pollock on LSD, autumn seems to be the product of the soft brush stroke of a Degas or Monet. In the case of the former, an exhibition has just opened at the Royal Academy under the name "Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement".

The pieces on display prove my point about autumn resembling an impressionistic painting. Degas captured hundreds of positions from various angles. Autumn works in shades. Hundreds of them. A leaf is not just either orange or yellow, but auburn and chestnut at the same time. Rumour has it that when asked why he was so interested in ballet dancers, Degas answered that it was because the dance form was all we had left of the combined movement of the Greeks. Autumn is Mummy Nature's last annual plea for life before it is plunged into the darkness of winter. That's why after a slow start, autumn suddenly explodes into a multitude of colours. It's nature's way of saying "I'm still here, still, alive and this is what I have to offer". The same happens in a ballet show when the soloist (man or woman) pirouettes endlessly in the middle of the stage. It's their own way to stand out.

There's a third element. Degas's paintings don't normally depict performances but rehearsals. The effect is a frank, revelatory, behind-the-scenes exposé of the workings of a dance company. To someone, like me, who's been involved in the performing arts for a number of years, Degas's ballet pieces convey a feeling of Nostalgie. Likewise, autumn is synonymous with melancholy and memories. This leads to a contrast between the gold carpet laid out in front of our eyes and the cyan pigment that adorns our insides. Blue might not be the ruling colour in the surrounding landscape (unless you include the sky), but when it comes to soaking up the fresh, morning breeze stirring the coppery leaves above, enjoying the spectacle of nuts-munching squirrels and watching enviously the acorn-collecting children, you're damn right I've got the blues.

© 2011

Next Post: “Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts”, to be published on Wednesday 5th October at 11:59pm (GMT)

Photos taken by the blog author.

Let's Talk About...

2011-09-28T23:59:00.089+01:00

... car boot sales. Those typically British outdoor markets - especially during spring and summer - where all kind of paraphernalia are put up for sale.

The main objective of a car boot sale ("trunk" in the States) is to get rid of unwanted items, whether they be bric-à-brac or gardening equipment. There's however another unintentional motive.

Car boot sales are the perfect introduction for children to the workings of modern capitalism.

Professional traders selling their cheaply-produced wares at cut-off prices, domestic surplus on display and never-ending haggling; all these elements are the sine qua non of modern capitalism. And children, especially younger ones, lap it up in the same way some people dream of becoming the next Bill Gates.

In preparation for our first car boot sale, my children and my wife divided and labelled the various items that would be put up for sale and worked out how much to charge per unit. There were a few heart-rending moments as toys that had, not so long ago, filled up my children's playtime, were put in the pile. But this was no time for cheesy, Kate Winslet "gather, gather" sentimental moments. There was a trip to Cornwall looming ahead and if my son and daughter wanted to have money to spend, then, they would have to sacrifice some of their precious childhood keepsakes.

As soon as we arrived at the pitch (twelve quid for sale and parking space, not bad, really), we all threw ourselves into action. The merchandise was strategically placed. A bicyle that had seen better days was one of the two items that we were desperate to get rid of. The other one was a tent that had been blown over the fence into our garden and had not been claimed by anyone. In between them both we scattered dinosaurs, small cars, prams, dolls and books. We were ready. Are you watching Greece? This is how you run a business. Default was never a part of our vocabulary that day.

Yet, one issue with which you have to contend at a car boot sale is that everyone has the same idea. After all, we're all there, not just to sell, but also to return home with fewer items than we left. And if we have to start yelling at the top of our lungs, like traders in the City and Wall Street, to attract attention, we'll do it.

Out of my two children, I now know who will be the hedge fund manager. My daughter went from a passive, almost angelic state of on-the-spot salesperson to a hands-on CEO using sophisticated market strategies to generate returns higher than traditional stock and bond investments. She left our pitch and wandered around the cordoned-off field bartering goods, cajoling customers and driving hard bargains. My son, in the meantime, got fed up after a while and sneaked into our car to read his book. He will be the chairman. And when the going gets tough he will probably blame the minions who work on the sales floor.

In my case, I took a closer look at what people were selling. It's not too far-fetched to suggest that a car boot sale is almost a peek into someone's front room. Volumes by Dean Koontz, Danielle Steel and Lynda La Plante were ubiquitous. CDs by the likes of Macy Gray (On How Life Is), Michael Buble, the Spice Girls, Westlife and Will Young convinced me once more that in the UK a lot of people live their lives in the middle of the road, with no fear of ever getting run over. Occasionally a stall would stand out, either by displaying left-of-field music by bands such as Placebo or Garage (I bought their debut album) or books by Ian Mc Ewan and Mark Haddon. But on the whole I was witnessing mass consumerism in a large scale. The result of spur-of-the-moment purchases, which later end up in the scrapheap. Or in a car boot sale. This is what capitalism is about. Buying what you neither need nor - sometimes - really want, yet makes you feel better, because the act of buying - and having - is stronger than the act of saying, no, I don't need it.

However, a car boot sale is a great way of fostering a spirit of enterprise and adventure in the younger generation. After all, if they're careful enough with the merchandise they're selling, including pricing, they're more likely to think in real money terms as opposed to inflated notions of investment. And after what happened three years ago (Lehman, RBS and Northern Rock, I'm talking to you), that can only be a good lesson to learn.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 2nd October at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-09-25T10:00:00.053+01:00

Back in the day when I was a child in Cuba, there used to be a television programme called San Nicolás del Peladero. The eponymous town at the centre of the sketch show was the fictional setting for the run-ins and tiffs between politicians from – at the time, probably late 1940s, early 50s – Cuba’s two main parties: the Conservatives and the Liberals. In addition to the government legislators, there were also characters deeply rooted in Cuba’s rich theatrical tradition: the mulatto woman, “el gallego” (literally, Galician, as that was the appellation given to most Spaniards who arrived in Cuba at the turn of the 20th century), the bent copper, the tough guy (accompanied by his inseparable knife) and the fashionable aristocrat. The programme launched the career of many actors and actress, whilst it developed the skills and craft of others.

Although the aim was to entertain, San Nicolás del Peladero always had an ulterior motive, and it made no secret of it: deep down inside, the message was, Conservatives and Liberals were the same. The two parties that dominated Cuban politics for half a century until the arrival of Fidel and his band of merry, bearded men in Havana, could hardly been told apart. Thus, I grew up with the idea that being a Liberal wasn’t so dissimilar to being a toff.

Yet, there was always a niggling feeling inside me that grew louder after I moved to the UK. I could, and in the end, did accept the “liberal” tag, but “Conservative”, even with a small “c”? No. That would have been a tad bit too much.

And yet…

They say that as you get older you start developing a more traditional and old-fashioned view of the world. Whereas before your vocabulary was peppered with words such as: evolution (and revolution!), progress and reform, now you feel more comfortable in the realm of terms such as preservation and restoration.

To which I say, where’s the harm in that? After my first decade in London I eventually realised that I was growing a conservative streak, albeit not one of a political nature.

No, my conservatism was rooted more on the original meaning of the Latin word "conservare" (to preserve). It was more related to the maintenance of some traditional attitudes than to an outright support for the status quo.

For instance, I’ve always believed that manners matter in society. How you treat others is just as important as, or, occasionally, more important than the clothes you wear or the car you drive. Opening doors for women, giving your seat up on public transport for someone who needs it more than you do, saying “good morning/afternoon/evening” or “hello” when you run into someone; these were the norms with which I was brought up. It brings out the curmudgeon in me when people try to make a causal link between boorish behaviour nowadays and the attention span deficit brought about by modern technology.

If exposure to bad manners makes me sound like a "Mr Disgruntled from Tunbridge Wells" on the pages of The Daily Telegraph, reckless government decisions lay bare my inner Eustace Tilley, The New Yorker’s long-standing front cover dandy. Take for example the plans earlier this year to sell off England's public forests. The sale would have expected to raise in excess of £150m over a ten-year period. The problem was that the leases being considered for tender were under what's known as "heritage sites" or "heritage forests", in short, woodland that has a very high conservation and recreation value. The government proposals were so ill-thought that opposition against them brought together groups that wouldn't normally be found consorting together like for instance, the Countryside Alliance (pro-hunting) and the Stop the War movement (self-explanatory, really). When it comes to defending the right to walk at one's leisure through one of the many wonderful woods that this nation can proudly boast about, especially on an autumn day, it seems that there's no left or right, but just "conservare".

Another issue where tradition gets the better of me is shopping centres and supermarkets. When I speak to people born and bred in the UK, they can't believe how fast the retail landscape has changed in the last twenty-odd years. The little cornershop, the local fishmonger's, grocer's and butcher's with their misplaced apostrophes. They have all given way to the Tescos, Sainsbury's and Asdas. They have been wiped out to make space for Westfield-style shopping centres in our brand-new, outside-the-box-thinking, cool Britannia. Never mind that with this new architectural approach (some would call it "onslaught") the soul of local communities has been gouged and hundreds, if not thousands, years of history erased. No, what's important is that hideous buildings like the Shard become the vision of the future in this country. Me, I'm happy with the two-up, two-down, red-tiled, standard British house and all its varieties. Keep London and Britain, by default, low-rise. We don't need Manhattan-style skyscrapers, m'lud.

As a forward-thinking and progressive person, I welcome the changes that have resulted in a social and racial melting pot in the UK. I belong to it. I have contributed to it. But I also love this nation's rich heritage. I enjoy walking through its forests, learning about its traditions and visiting its old estates. And no, that doesn't make me a Tory-supporting, wannabe-fox-hunter. It makes me an advocate for the values and morals that underpin our culture and history. I'm sure that even Plutarco, the maire in San Nicolás del Peladero, would agree with that.

© 2011

Next Post: “Let’s Talk About…”, to be published on Wednesday 28th September at 11:59pm (GMT)

Tiempo Libre's "Secret Radio" (Review)

2011-09-21T23:59:00.008+01:00

Like catching the last train home after a night out on the town. That’s how you’re left feeling after listening to three-time Grammy-nominated Cuban music combo Tiempo Libre’s latest album “Secret Radio”. A warm and pleasant sensation, as if you’ve just had the best ball ever.

Coming hot on the heels of their experimental and ground-breaking “Bach in Havana”, a series of compositions by the late German musician given a Latin makeover, Tiempo Libre returns to their familiar timba sound. Theirs is a powerful mix of foot-tapping Afro-Cuban rhythms with layers of intense and sophisticated jazz. The album’s leitmotif is memory as the band members reminisce upon their adolescent years in ‘special period’ Cuba when US radio stations were still frowned upon by the Cuban government. In its eleven tracks “My Secret Radio” tells the immigrant’s story – from the homemade aluminium aerials with which youngsters tried to catch bits and pieces of music from Miami-based radio stations to the shock of starting life in a new country.

There are a few distinguished guests in the record, too. This proves Tiempo Libre’s mass appeal. The band has appeared at prestigious venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, Jazz at Lincoln Centre, the Ravinia Festival and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. No wonder the likes of Albita Rodriguez and Rachelle Fleming had no second thoughts about collaborating with the seven musicians. The former turns up on “Como Hace Años” (Just Like Years Ago), a mellow, soft little number which is a departure from the band’s emblematic, hard-hitting timba. Rachelle guests on “After the Love is Gone”, a cha-cha-cha version of the chart-topper by Earth, Wind & Fire.

Another outstanding song is the instrumental “Aceite” (Oil). This is a tribute to Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie, two of the key figures in the development of Latin jazz. Like its predecessors, “Arroz con Mango”, “Lo Que Esperabas” and the aforementioned “Bach in Havana”, “Secret Radio” boasts excellent arrangements, solid musicianship and great artistic direction. Enough to leave you with that tingling sensation you get when you come back from a concert late at night and you can’t stop humming the closing number.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 25th September at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-09-18T10:00:00.016+01:00

Attempting to understand an act is not the same as condoning it. Whilst one can and does oppose the riots that swept through England in August, we ought to, at the same time, try to make sense of the causes behind them.

I happen to live in one of the areas affected by the lootings. I’m as dumbfounded as everyone else. Why were these vandals destroying our community?

The reasons, when you try to bring logic into the argument, are manifold and inconclusive: growing inequality, loss of parental control, a yawning gap in opportunities in the employment and education markets between the haves and have-nots and a collapse in trust in our politicians, police and media. I could include many more, but you get the gist of it. The younger generation is receiving a message which is the opposite of a L’Oreal advert: they’re not worth it. Their opinions count for nought and when projects and initiatives are kick-started on their behalf, sometimes they stop all of a sudden without a plausible explanation.

A case in point was a local scheme that used to take place near my house. During the half-term and school holidays a team of professional workers led various physical activities for children and adolescents. The sessions were well attended and welcomed by the local community. Both my kids used to go regularly. They made friends there and more importantly they, like the rest of the participants, felt respected and valued. Last autumn the project was scrapped as a result of the cuts introduced by the coalition government without as much as an explanation. This is the key to understanding why young people feel disenfranchised. It’s the lack of ownership and the dearth of opportunities in which they can voice their ideas, suggestions and solutions. When someone’s contribution to society is not being acknowledged, he or she becomes invisible. And in the current situation in the UK it would be a good idea to read the opening page of Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel, “Invisible Man” where the protagonist explains what it feels like to “not be seen” and how he reacts to those who suffer from “poor vision”: “It’s when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you’re a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it’s seldom successful.”

It's worth noticing, too, how the political, economic and social landscape has been radically altered in Britain since Cameron became Ventriloquist In Chief with Nick Clegg as his wooden dummy in May 2010. We're in a situation where the public and voluntary sector has had to withstand a forced scaling down of its workforce, a pay freeze and an increase in the retirement age. Along with this, public services have been put out to tender to a pack of hyena-like private investors circling around our precious assets and waiting for the right moment to strike. Moreover, the state's role is dwindling. The gradual erosion of local government's decision-making, combined with David Cameron's "Big Society" experiment has resulted in the partial or total closure of local libraries, youth clubs, community centres and sports facilities.

It is against this background that the London riots ought to be analysed. And no, I don't believe for a second that the vandals who smashed shops and burned businesses had a political agenda in mind. But that their actions were the result of a volatile social, economic and political situation, there should be no doubt about that.

If a generation ago people were told that "there is no such thing as society", why are we surprised that their offspring is behaving so destructively? The moral values that make up our social scaffolding are no longer based on love towards one's own neighbourhood and neighbours but towards the glamour spilling out of programmes on MTV. And if the Prime Minister is allowed to hire a crook who got sacked from a top-selling newspaper, as his director of communications, then, why should it be any different for the opportunist who makes off with a pair of shoes that don't belong to him and which he picked up from a looted shop? These are some of the questions being asked right now here in Britain. But they fall on dear ears.

One of the salient elements of the riots is how many of those who carried out acts of violence did so without covering their faces. In my opinion, they were declaring their visibility, albeit in the wrong way. The problem is that unless we start seeing the young as active contributors to our society, they will continue to choose unorthodox methods to shake their invisibility off. And as Ralph Ellison wrote, that is seldom successful.

© 2011
Next Post: “Tiempo Libre (Review)”, to be posted on Wednesday 21st September at 11:59pm (GMT)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music... Ad Infinitum

2011-09-14T23:59:00.018+01:00

September is the twilight month when summer slowly evolves into autumn. Temperatures still hover in the early 20s (Celsius) but already the morning air carries a nippy, crisp and metallic feel. Perfect time, then, for another Nigel Slater's recipe:

ROAST TOMATOES WITH CRUMBS AND THYME

tomatoes (large, but not beefsteak) 6
thyme a few bushy sprigs
olive oil
garlic 2 cloves
fresh white breadcrumbs 80g
anchovy fillets 6

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Slice the tomatoes in half and lay them cut-side up in a shallow baking dish or roasting tin. Remove the thyme leaves from their stems and put them in a small mixing bowl with 80ml of olive oil. Peel and finely crush the garlic cloves and stir into the olive oil with a generous grinding of sea salt and black pepper.

Stir the breadcrumbs into the oil with the anchovy fillets, roughly chopped. Spoon over the tomatoes and bake for 40 minutes or until the tomatoes are tender and the crumbs lightly crisp.

Some of the melodies that could well accompany this dish also carry that nostalgic feel that autumn so naturally conveys.

Georgia Anne Muldrow's free-spirited approach to music is most welcome and on this track, "Roses", you can appreaciate her wide vocal range, going from a smoky, jazzy timbre to a more old-school R'n'B beat. Beautiful.

Yellow is the colour of the leaves falling from the trees in autumn (and orange, red and so on). Yellow is also the colour of Joni Mitchell's famous big taxi. The one that took her old man away and left her ruminating about how "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone". Timeless.

Jazz is famous for its intros. Brubeck's "Take Five", Davies' "So What" and Alice Coltrane's "Turiya & Ramakrishna" to name but three. But my top favourite (at least for the time being) has to be Oscar Peterson and Ben Webster's "Poutin". The timing is just perfect and the synergy between the four musicians is incredible. It's like the peeling, crushing and stirring involved in tonight's recipe. No matter what the vehicle is (nose, eyes and mouth for the food, ear for the music) the destination is the same: the soul.

© 2011

Next Post: "Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music", to be published on Sunday 18th September at 10am (GMT)

Photograph: Jonathan Lovekin for the Observer.

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-09-11T10:00:00.002+01:00

The furnace door was never opened. The blast of fire we were all expecting never arrived. The Indian summer we were promised back in the spring didn't materialise. It was probably refused entry at Heathrow, what with the new (even stricter) visa regulations. However, it didn't matter. Corwnall still turned out to be special with or without the sun.

We divided our trip in four stages: the first part was from London to Weston-Super Mare, a seaside town just after Bristol. That gave us enough time to rest before carrying on southwestwards. As stopovers go, I have no complaints about Weston-Super-Mare, especially as I managed to get a good and (really!) handy rucksack that was on sale at Millets'. We ate fish and chips sitting on the beachfront whilst watching the sun crawl into bed. There couldn't have been a better start to our holiday,

The next morning we set off early for Cornwall. After approximately an hour and a half the M5 eventually morphed into the A30, Launceston-bound. To our left the Dartmoor National Park gave us views to die for, its moorlands stretching for miles on end and reminding me of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Near Launceston, though, the traffic built up unexpectedly. There was no real reason for this jam. There was neither an accident nor were there any road repairs. It was just fellow holiday-makers with barracuda-shaped roofboxes like ours heading into the land of cream teas and pasties. The 50mph signs seemed to mock our slow snail-pace, a speed at which even the renowned Aesopian tortoise would have given us a run for our money. One of the more interesting aspects about a holiday is that at the beginning you can tolerate almost anything: your mind is focused on the destination, rather than on more mundane things such as traffic jams. So, we didn't really mind the addition of three quarters of an hour to our holiday schedule.

We came off the A30 and got on to the A39, and a short while later a sign reading "Padstow" hovered into view. We were there! Well, almost. The campsite where our caravan awaited us was still a few miles ahead.

Compared to the same type of accommodation we had last year in Wales, our new digs were better. The walls looked stronger and the layout was more practical. After putting our rucksacks and bags down we went for a meal out.

The days that followed were idyllical. A local saying proudly proclaimed that just within spitting distance there were "seven bays for seven days". The first one, Harlyn Beach, didn't disappoint, although the waves were gigantic. No wonder Cornwall is a godsend for surfers. My children got in the water straight away, but I refused point blank. It's on occasions like these when I miss the warm waters of my Caribbean Sea. However, despite not enjoying at first the hospitality of the Irish Sea, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a beautiful voice coming out of what looked like someone's backyard covering Bob Marley's "Redemption Song".

The calendar shed a few more pages and eventually we found ourselves in a beautiful consonance of birdsongs, sea breeze, the rustle of the tree leaves and the soft purr of our car engine. We even had a visitor. Our motor headlights caught a rabbit hopping on the road one night and after that we all sharpened our senses in order to spot it again. Then early one evening I stared out of my bedroom and there it was. Perfectly still as if soaking up the quietness of the late afternoon. In fact, it was watching another rabbit. Or not so much watching it as waiting for the right moment to scare it off. In the faux battle that ensued (the other rabbit ceded territory very quickly) our little, large-eared friend was the victor. I kept looking out for its Alice but there wasn't one in tow.

The weather was unpredictable although our itinerary wasn't. We wanted to make the most of our time in Cornwall. With that purpose in mind we made plans every morning depending on the forecast. Sunny or partially cloudy days gave us Treyarnon, Portcothan Bay and Booby's Bay (the best beach of all the ones we visited). Whilst on rainy ones we visited Port Isaac, Tintagel and Padstow itself. They were all little, picturesque towns with plenty of character. These outings also gave me the opportunity to drive down country lanes.

The narrowness of country roads made me think of cars flirting with each other. Side mirrors came so close that they almost kissed one another and you could almost imagine their offspring: a Forssan, a Honsubitshi or a Landaudi. On other occasions I fancied the limited space as a battleground where our wing mirrors represented the swords (carried on the right hand and the reason why people drive on the left in Britain) with which we fought over the right as to who would pass first.

Compared to that enjoyable but also almost claustrophobic scenario the openness of a wider road was very welcome. We escaped southwards a couple of times, first to Penryn and the second time to Falmouth. In the former we walked around a boatyard and in the latter we found a very lively place with plenty of galleries, cafes and shops. It was in Falmouth where I found out about Cornwall's hitherto (at least for me) unknown role in 20th century British impressionism. An exhibition at Falmouth Art Gallery gave me a powerful insight into impressionism's importance in Cornish art.

Driving back we stopped in Truro, Cornwall's only city. We had dinner at a pub called William IV. And let me tell you that if you're looking for good food at reasonable prices, this is the place to go. No wonder we came back the week after.

My only complaint would be that after leaving Truro, I, foolishly, took the wrong turn at a roundabout and we almost ended up in St Austell. Plus it was already nightime. It was probably one of the few times when I felt exposed and vulnerable.

Driving at night has a charm of its own. I like it. But I don't like it that much when I'm tired, I don't know my surroundings and to cap it all, I'm lost. Then, the headlights of the cars behind you ghost in and out, leaving you in a sea of darkness until you chance on the next vehicle coming in the opposite direction.

We changed tactic from then onwards and decided that if we were going to eat out we would have to come back earlier.

Pasties, the sea, art galleries, little shops full of "character" and plenty of Cornish hospitality. I don't think you would be surprised to know that our holiday plans already include a return to Kernow. And I for one can't wait.

© 2011

Next Post: “Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music… Ad Infinitum”, to be published on Wednesday 14th September at 11:59pm (GMT)

All photos taken by the blog author

While My MP3 Gently Plays

2011-09-04T10:00:00.013+01:00

I'm back in London but my blog's still on a sabbatical. In the meantime here's what my mp3 players has on offer for you today.

Alice Russell arrived by surprise. One night I was jumping from clip to clip on youtube (as you do!) and I suddenly stumbled upon 'Hurry on Now'. From there I went on amazon and got a couple of her albums. Haven't looked back. She deserves more recognition. Proper British soul.

You know you've arrived at that mid-point in your life, not when your kids grow up and leave the nest, or when you can't tie your shoelaces anymore because of the size of your belly, or when you think of Saturday night and the first image that pops into your head is a pair of slippers and a cup of hot chocolate. No, you know that you've hit middle age when you've come full circle and start appreciating and listening attentively to the music you grew up with and which you unconsciously "liked". You didn't really, it's just that it was there, in the background. That's what happened to me recently with the Brazilian singer Roberto Carlos, the soundtrack of many a Cuban of a certain age. I gave up on his music when I became a teenager, but a couple of years ago I found an album with his greatest hits and a trip down memory lane beckoned. What I discovered that night was that I'd never really gone off his music. Amazing voice and extraordinary arrangements, I began to see Roberto Carlos in a different light. Straight from my mp3 to you, "Qué Será de Ti".

This is one of the few pieces from the classical canon to which I can listen when I'm out jogging without pressing the "forward" button. To hear this melody coming on my mp3 player as the sun rises in London whilst I'm running up a hill is possibly one of the most sublime instances of pure synergy between human sensitivity and nature's delicacy. "Air on G-String" by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Sarah Chang on violin.

And we finish this section off,(at least for the time being) with one of the more eccentric frontmen rock's ever produced. There is a handful of singers whose dancing style leaves me clutching my sides, not just out of pure mirth, but also amusement. Prince, Mick Jagger and of course, R.E.M.'s very own Michael Stipe, to name but three. Together with Eddie Vedder's powerful growl, "Begin the Begin" goes up a couple of notches in the scale of musical grandiosity. And this was already a great tune. It just got better. I hope you enjoy it. I'll be back next Sunday. Have a great week!

Next Post: "Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music", to be published on Sunday 11th September at 10am (GMT)

While My MP3 Gently Plays

2011-08-28T10:00:00.017+01:00

Back from Cornwall today but still on holidays. The blog, though, carries on and the music shall never stop.

Kicking off our weekly rendezvous with our beautiful and practical mp3 player, we have Richie Ray & Bobby Cruz with a powerful Latin number, "Agúzate". Mind-blowing.

We continue in the same Latin vibe and now we have Telmary featuring both Kumar and William Vivanco from my homeland. I love the visuals in "Ves", taken from Telmary's debut "A Diario" and reviewed on this blog last year. Hip-hop with a Cuban attitude. Love it!

Like spiders scurrying away from a bag that's just been opened. That's the recurring image that always pops into my head whenever I see Aziza Mustafa Zadeh's fingers working the blacks and whites. She is a regular on this blog and may she continue to be. "Heartbeat" is part of my mp3's DNA and has already been uploaded a couple of times in this space. And it will continue to be. Energetic.

And last, but not least, Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit". Because occasionally some people forget, so we have to remind them.

Next Post: "While My MP3 Gently Plays", to be published on Sunday 4th September at 10am (GMT)

While My MP3 Gently Plays

2011-08-21T10:00:00.017+01:00

Still on holidays, but still clocking in on my blog. Even though my physical self is not here, enjoying these tunes together with you, my spiritual and musical one is.

If I'd been a piano when Thelonious Monk was around, I would have sued him. How can he treat such a highly respected member of the stringed family in that way? Then, again, a different part of my wooden structure would have felt equally honoured to have been given the opportunity of being caressed by the dextrous fingers of Mr "Blue Monk". Heartfelt.

There's a nice segue here in that Thelonious Monk was renowned for having a natural mystical aura about him. That's why Bob Marley's "Natural Mystic" is the ideal follow-up after the previous improvisation feast. Bob's groovy melody is a marvellous foot-tapper that has a "reserved" seat on my mp3 player. Rock on, Bob!

Paul Weller's version of "All Along The Watchtower" is one of the better ones I've ever heard, including Hendrix's. It's his voice, the arrangement and the delivery. Fabulous.

I have already written about Zee Avi in this space before. This time around I'm uploading another soulful and meaningful tune from her debut album "Zee Avi", "Honey Bee". Enjoy.

Next Post: "While My MP3 Gently Plays", to be published on Sunday 28th August at 10am (GMT)

While My MP3 Gently Plays

2011-08-14T10:00:00.014+01:00

Still on holidays. In the meantime, enjoy the music from my mp3 player.

Please, do not be fooled by the sultry and slow rhythm of Ayo's "And It's Supposed To Be Love". The theme is pretty grim as you can see from the clip below. But it's still a beautiful song by a very talented artist.

This song and performance always bring a tear to my eye. "Malagueña" by Lecuona is one of the songs my father used to play regularly when he still lived with my mother and me, (and my cousin, her mum and my granny, sorry, couldn't leave them out). The execution in this video is the closest you'll ever get to perfection, in my humble opinion.

And since we're talking perfection and execution, I just couldn't ignore Van Morrison's "Moondance". One of those tunes that, the minute they come on my mp3, makes me want to get up and dance. Timeless.

Crickets chirping, birds chirruping, overcast skies, downpours, little rivers mapping down their route on my kitchen window. Vivaldi's "Summer" section from his masterpiece "Four Seasons" contains the British weather in a nutshell. At 8:12 on the clip below I can perfectly visualise the scenario of which I was part a few weeks ago when my family and I went to a picnic. The snippets of conversation here and there, mixed with the sound of children playing badminton, people walking their dogs and trekkers gearing themselves up for a walk in the woods. Chaotic, but beautiful.

Next Post: "While My MP3 Gently Plays", to be published on Sunday 21st August at 10am (GMT)

While My MP3 Gently Plays

2011-08-07T10:00:00.011+01:00

I'm still on holidays but didn't fancy leaving the blog inactive. That's why I'll keep sharing with you the music I listen to on my mp3 regularly.

"Can I Kick It?" was not the first tune I heard by A Tribe Called Quest. That one was "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo". Still, when I feel like grooving, there's nothing like the good ol' Tribe to pump music into my ears. Nostalgic.

Stevie's written so many anthems that it's hard to choose which one to listen to on my diminutive Sony gadget. However, "Master Blaster (Jammin')" is always there at the top of my playlist. Truly amazing.

And if we're discussing anthems, then, we need to include Aerosmith's "Dream On". One of those eyes-closed, arms-aloft, lighters-up-above-our-heads melodies. What do you think Steven Tyler was telling the guitarist (0:40)? Answers on a postcard, please. Mesmerising.

We're finishing on a high today, with Africa's finest, Amadou and Mariam. Please, do not be fooled. The words to this song might appear simple at first sight, yet, they are deep. Perfect musical stimulation for those moments when you are physically exhausted (especially after doing some tiring housework during the holidays) and need something to bring you back from that "zombie zone" into which we all fall once in a while. The chorus of this groovy tune should suffice, then: chantez-chantez/jouez-jouez/dansez-dansez. Magical.

Next Post: "While My MP3 Gently Plays", to be published on Sunday 14th August at 10am (GMT)

While My MP3 Gently Plays

2011-07-31T10:00:00.022+01:00

It died but it has yet to be buried. My former Phillips mp3 player stopped dead in its tracks (oh, dear, have I just come up with a superb musical pun? Methinks so) a fortnight ago and had to be replaced straight away. To be honest I still don't know what's wrong with it. The music folder disappeared mysteriously and with it the two-hundred-plus songs I'd put on it. I rushed to the nearest shop and bought a new one, but, it was utter rubbish. Please, take this piece of advice. If you ever come across the brand Archos, in whichever form, run a mile away from it. It's the worst make I've ever encountered. The shop compensated me and gave me a brand new, black 4GB Sony NWZB163 mp3 player. 4 giga is fine with me. It holds approximately between five-hundred and six-hundred tunes and it's perfect for when I'm on the move or out jogging.

"Ich glaube, Janis starb an einer Überdosis Janis." This quote, by Eric 'The Animals' Burdon, was the phrase that set me off on the path to learning German. I wanted to find out why Janis had died of a Janis overdose and the book detailing her life was in German. In years to come someone will probably say "Ich glaube, Amy starb an einer Überdosis Amys."

The first time my wife and I heard Amy Winehouse was on Choice Fm. Straight away we were impressed by her vocal delivery and the lyrics. She had a beautiful Billy Hollidayish rasp, mixed with a more rooted, proper north London nasal twang. It's a pity that her booze'n'drugs lifestyle took its toll in the end. I'd rather remember her as she appeared on Jools Holland about the same time her debut album "Frank" came out. "Stronger than me" is a well-written pop song. I hope you enjoy it.

It's strange that this song is twenty-six years old and yet, it still sounds fresh. Suzanne Vega has such a distinctive timbre and in "Knight Moves" you can see why. She is one of the few singers who knows what to do with her voice. Beautiful.

Raw, dirty, blues-infused, no-holds-barred, nihilistic, take-no-prisoners. There are many more words I could use to describe the music of The Black Keys but if, like me, you're into real, heartfelt music and not the Justin Bieber drivel that gets put out by the corporate machine, then, watch the next clip, "Just Got To Be". Rocking.

In June, for Father's Day, I gave myself a present, or rather, several presents. I bought four CDs which had long been on my endless "Saved Items" queue on amazon.co.uk. Of the four, Anoushka Shankar and Karsh Kale's record "Breathing Under Water" is the one that gets played the most. And "PD7" is one of my favourite numbers. I hope it becomes yours, too. By the way, if you want to listen to another highlight from the album, the magnificent 'Little Glass Folk', click here. It's mesmerising, to say the least. The only reason I didn't include it is that the clip is just an image of the CD cover. I'm quite fussy when it comes to uploading videos on my blog. Have a nice week!

Next Post: "While My MP3 Gently Plays", to be published on Sunday 7th August at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-07-24T10:00:00.057+01:00

So, it was morality that did it in the end. We can put up with celebrities being dragged over hot coals, ex-reality TV "stars" being photographed whilst lying in the gutter (literally) or politicians being subjected to the kind of treatment that would have former members of the Stasi up in arms over the infringement of human rights. But when a newspaper interferes with a police investigation into the disappearance of a schoolgirl, our conscience steps in and declares that enough's enough.

It's been a strange fortnight here in GB. You can almost feel the smell of rotten apples wafting up your nostrils. First bad apple: The News of the World newspaper. Closed. Second bad apple: Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International. Sacked (or "resigned" as the official version has it). Third bad appple: the police. Two high-ranked officers stepped down, including the chief of the Metropolitan police. Fourth bad apple: Mr Rupert Murdoch. The powerful media mogul faced a panel of MPs last Tuesday 19th July. And had some shaving foam thrown at him. Not that men's toiletries will save the crop this year. This apple orchard is going down, down, down. The stench of it is enough to make you choke at the throat.

The phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed the UK press over the last two weeks has uncovered a whole world of deceit, bribery and corruption, elements usually found in banana republics. The collusion of politicians, media magnates, newspaper editors and the police in what is now acknowledged to be a serious fault in the wheels that keep British democracy rolling is mind-boggling.

Let's sum up, shall we? The crisis unravelled when it came to light that Milly Dowler, the schoolgirl who went missing in 2002, had had her mobile phone hacked. The News of the World paid a full-time investigator to intercept all her messages and at some point gained access to her voicemail. When the space for new messages ran out, the publication coldbloodedly deleted older ones, thus, giving the parents of an abducted teenage girl false hopes. They thought that it could only be their daughter who was getting rid of unnecessary messages.

Milly's case was followed quickly by allegations that the same newspaper had hacked into the voicemails of the relatives of the London 7/7 bombings as well as the telephones of next-of-kin of soldiers who had been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The waft from the rotten apples could not be disguised anymore. From British ex-prime minister Gordon Brown to family members of the victims of 9/11, the accusations that News International, the company that ran (the now defunct) The News of the World, functioned like an international drugs cartel, kept piling up.

At the heart of this crisis lie two questions: How free should the media be? And how do we deal with it when it goes beyond its remit, i.e., reporting and commenting on the news?

The answer to the first question is that the media and the press in particular should be as free as possible. A shackled media serves no purpose to anyone. The sheer variety of the British newspaper industry is what makes this country a beacon to other nations where journalism is regularly under threat and reporters beaten or murdered. Not that you would want to be caught doing much boasting about the British media these days. But crises do happen and to me, at least, it's not about having or not having them, but how you deal with them when they turn up on your doorstep.

So, how do you deal with the media when it starts thinking of itself as too important to be brought to heel? Regulation and education. No state regulation, mind, and no self-regulation either. But rather, independent regulation. It's unfortunate that the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is such a toothless body that it never foresaw the kind of scandal that has swept the UK for the last fortnight. But that's the price you pay when you kowtow to the tabloid press.

Education enters the frame when you think of the type of "news" that the redtops churn out day in, day out, or Sunday in, Sunday out as it was when The News of the World was still alive. Tittle-tattle takes the space of serious debate about climate change, oil supplies, the overseas sweatshops that supply us with cheap goods, military intervention in other countries and other important items. The difference between the tabloids and the broadsheets is not that the former are low-brow and the latter high-brow (The Mirror is a redtop and yet its coverage of the invasion to Iraq was exemplary) but that publications like The Guardian (which has led most news stories about the phone-hacking scandal since the beginning) and The Independent are socially minded and not money-grabbing like their screaming counterparts.

Maybe legislation could be brought in order to balance the craven-for gossip with more mature commentary on political, social, economic and ecological issues. This would enable the public to know more about the pressing challenges facing our society today and the type of action our government ought to take. Perhaps the legislation could enforce the creation of trusts – in that case press moguls such as Rupert Murdoch wouldn't have such a stronghold on UK public opinion and politics. Above all, the new law would demand that newspapers owners be resident UK citizens.

Yet, despite the scandal and the crisis, I feel proud to live in Britain in these moments. Without Nick Davies's intervention (the The Guardian journalist who spearheaded the investigation into The News of the World's illegal activities) parliament would be retiring now for the summer whilst Mr Murdoch would be gearing up for his takeover of BSkyB, thus extending his media empire even more. Andy Coulson, the disgraced former editor of The News of the World and under whose management most of the phone-hacking took place, would still be at the helm of government as prime minister David Cameron's spin doctor. Rebekah Brooks, Ruper Murdoch's flame-haired right hand, would still be performing her Pollice Verso pantomime on her chosen victims.

The situation as it stands is not pretty. But, unlike it happened with the bankers' crisis and the MPs expenses scandals, the action taken has been immediate, the response from the public has been less apathetic (straight after the news about the interception of Milly Dowler's messages came out, conscientious Twitterers and Facebookers contacted companies advertising in The News of the World and asked them to stop trading with the disgraced publication immediately) and Murdoch has been challenged, probably for the first time in his life. So, some of the rotten apples have been taken out and the very ripe ones are already looking over their shoulder. That, to me, is one of the solutions to the whole powerful-media-magnate-runs-the-country scenario. If we're to make a good apple pie, or apple crumble, let's stick to the healthy, edible fruit. And chuck out the bad ones.

This is all from me for the time being. I will be spending a couple of weeks in beautiful Cornwall, a place I've never been to (the farthest I've gone west is Devon) but with which, I've been assured, I'll fall in love. In the meantime my blog will not be idle. Every Sunday there'll be music courtesy of my mp3 player. Unfortunately my old one died all of a sudden and had to be replaced. I'm happy with my new one, though. So, a new mp3 player with plenty of tunes for your enjoyment. I hope you have a nice summer holiday and will be in touch when I come back. Chao!

© 2011

Next Post: “While My MP3 Gently Plays”, to be published on Sunday 31st July at 10am (GMT)

Bittersweet Symphony from Erik Koene on Vimeo.

Lilya 4-Ever (Review)

2011-07-20T23:59:00.045+01:00

Whenever immigration is discussed in the UK, the following words and/or phrases are wheeled out: illegal, scroungers, taking our jobs, many, too many, no space, burden on the NHS/education sector. Less attention is paid to what makes some people up sticks and move to another country, sometimes travelling in a boat on dangerous waters, or in the back of a lorry.

That was one of the reasons why I welcomed Lukas Moodysson's film "Lilya 4-Ever". Because he dares to go where few directors will. Moodysson's feature packs a mighty punch. Like a scientist, he dissects the living, breathing (post-socialist) contemporary Russian society and reveals its bleak reality.

Lilya (Oksana Akinshina) is a vivacious sixteen-year-old girl who lives with her mother in a poverty-stricken, derelict Russian town. Her mother meets a man through a dating agency and together they decide to emigrate to the States. At the beginning, Lilya is pretty much part of her mother's long-term plans but soon that changes and she is left behind. The situation takes a turn for the worse when Lilya's auntie asks her to move to another flat which is in a worse condition than the one in which she lives now. Lilya befriends a local eleven-year-old boy, Volodya (Artyom Bogucharsky), who has a crush on her and together they get up to all kinds of pranks. About the same time, she also falls in with the wrong crowd and ends up meeting a smooth-talking young guy in a club, who promises her that he can take her away to Sweden where she will have the opportunities that are denied to her in her native Russia. What Lilya doesn't suspect, nor has she the ability to, is that her "boyfriend" is a pimp who procures prostitutes for a vast network of clients in European countries. He doesn't even travel to Sweden with her.

Once in the Scandinavian nation Lilya is locked up in a flat on her own where she has to perform all kinds of unspeakably sexual acts. And it is here, in civilised, liberal Sweden where she meets her horrible fate.

Lilya 4-Ever is, above all, a film about betrayal. Lilya's mother betrays her daughter. Lilya, then, betrays Volodya when she meets Andrei (the pimp) and leaves her friend behind in an attempt to improve her life in Sweden. Lilya is consequently betrayed by Andrei, too. At the same time all characters in the movie are let down by society, both the Russian and Swedish, for their role in it amounts to no more than a mere cameo.

But the movie is also about the failure of the "big Soviet dream". One should never build a polity on utopias. One of the reasons why the socialist panacea failed - and continues to fail, in the few countries that are left - was that it created an illusion it couldn't deliver. The effect of this mirage was alienation amongst its younger members with the concomitant outcomes: drugs, alcohol and prostitution. For Lilya, read the youngsters jumping over the Berlin Wall in '89, or the Cuban rafters in '94, or the lone man facing the Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square. The squalor in which Lilya lives is not just the result of deficient post-Soviet economic policies, but also of erstwhile blind, centralised, political bureaucracy.

I admit that I rented the movie from Lovefilm without having an inkling about the director's work. It turns out that his two previous films have been comedies. Talk about career change!

Moodysson forces us to confront certain truths that are not at all comfortable. Who cleans the floors of the schools our children attend, before the little ones even get there? Who prepares the salads that wind up on the shelves of our local supermarkets? Who picks our fruit'n'veg? Who keeps the sex and porn industry afloat? And on top of that they have to put up with yet another sanctimonious Daily Mail headline demonising them.

There's no doubt that Lily-4-Ever is a tough movie to watch. But it is also riveting. It's cinematography at its best. The music is very good, ranging from hardcore metal to soft, harmonious melodies. The scenes where Lilya is repeatedly raped by different men are shot from her perspective, thus rendering her ordeal more palpable. The dreamlike sequence where Volodya's spirit appears to Lilya would have been thought kitsch in any other context. But coming on the back of yet more physical and mental pain for the protagonist, they are beautiful to watch. As well as painful. The photography reminded me a little of Ken Loach with its no-holds-barred documentary-like approach.

This is another must-see movie. And I, for one, will be now looking up Moodysson's comedies on Lovefilm. Just to balance a bit, you know.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 24th July at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-07-17T10:00:00.035+01:00

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I will be posting some of the columns I used to write for the now defunct newspaper 'Noticias', a monthly publication that catered mainly to the Spanish-speaking community in London. Chronologically speaking, today's article was the very first one I wrote. The inspiration for it came from a conversation I had with an old acquaintance of mine from my uni days shortly before I came to live in the UK. He and I had became dominoes partners during the years we were both higher education students, though we belonged to different faculties. We ran frequently into each other at the Havana University Students' Club and never missed a chance to sit down to a game of dominoes. And wipe the floor with our opponents' backsides. We were good. Correction. We were crackingly excellent. If our degrees had been in dominoes as opposed to biology in my acquaintance's case and languages in mine, we would have both, by now, achieved our PhDs.

However, after all those years of seeing each other almost every day, one day R (though I haven't seen him for close to fifteen years, I'll use only the initial of his name out of respect), disappeared. He never came to the Students' Club anymore and when I enquired after him to people we both knew they had no answer either. It was starting to look as if he'd also been part of the group of youngsters who'd left Cuba in the immediate aftermath of the balseros crisis of '94.

One day, all of a sudden he turned up at the club whilst I was having rehearsals with the Havana University Folkloric Ensemble. Physically speaking, he was still the same, but the look in his eyes was different. There was an emptiness in them as if someone had gouged the life from them and left the eyeballs intact. It was when he began to talk that it hit me. He said that he'd found the true path and that for those who, like me, had chosen the devil's way, the only option available was hell. He'd become a Christian, and not just any Christian, but a proselytising, hardcore one. R was black, like me. It occurred to me then and the same idea crossed my mind when I sat down to write the article below that he was rejecting his polytheistic African roots (and you don't have to be a non-believer to accept this cultural fact) for a monotheistic system imposed by the coloniser. It was ironic that our forebears had been whipped to within an inch of their lives and here he was now, extolling the virtues of the very God in whose name we were deemed less than animals.

I don't usually make my race a big deal, either here on my blog or in my normal, offline life. After all my skin colour is as much as result of genetics as it is an accident in and of itself. I could have been of a lighter or darker tone. But, what I look to the most above all is to be treated as a human being, first and foremost; that remains my main identiy. R was impinging on that identity. But also, in doing so, he was reneging on one of his identity markers, namely, his African ancestry. Unbeknownst to him (not that he would have cared anyway), my career as an Afro-Cuban performer was not just out of love for the dance but also respect for and desire to learn about the culture.

That's, then, how this column came about. Of course, R's name is not mentioned once and why should it? After all this short write-up was done mainly to honour those who left their sweat, blood and tears behind, in the sugar cane fields and in the mills and yet still managed to bequeath one of the richest cultural heritages ever to my fellow countrymen and women. R's loss was my gain.

My thanks, once again, to Lise McDermot Jones who translated the text into English. The Spanish original appears first and the English version below. The music today is related to the topic. It is a song by Sintesis, one of the first Cuban bands that mixed Afro-Cuban folklore and pop music. I hope you enjoy it.

Maferefún* nuestro folclor

"... yo soy descendiente de allá,
donde los negros calmaban su dolor al ritmo del tambor..."
Clave y Guaguancó

Cada vez que escucho esa rumba mi sange de negro cubano se hiela. Pensar que el grueso de mi folclor tiene sus raíces en el negocio más ignominioso, vergonzoso y humillante que haya existido en la historia de la humanidad hace que al mundo le salgan ojos aunque solo sea para llorar de rabia.

Entre 1666 y 1776, los ingleses, franceses y españoles eran los principales importadores de esclavos para sus colonias en América Latina alcanzando una cifra de tres millones. Un cuarto de ellos moría en los viajes.

En Cuba la cultura importada que mas influyó en lo que se convertiría en el folclor afrocubano fue la del pueblo yoruba. Yoruba era el término que identificaba a ciertas tribus que hablaban la misma lengua aunque no estuvieran unidas ni centralizadas políticamente. Su nivel de desarrollo urbano y artístico fue uno de los mas altos del África tropical. Tenían un panteón de dioses a quienes llamaban "orishas", cada uno con sus propios rasgos y atributos. Éstos son una fuerza pura, inmaterial que no puede hacerse perceptible a los seres humanos, sino "tomando posesión" de personas elegidas, denominadas "iyawó".

A fines del siglo XVII surge la "santería", sincretización de los diferentes cultos yorubas y la religion católica en un proceso natural y lógico, pues cada orisha tiene su equivalente en un santo católico. A esto le siguió el nacimiento de la Regla de Ocha, producto de la unión de Latuán, negra yoruba y un negro "babalosha" o sacerdote, Lorenzo Sama. A fines del siglo XIX Eulogio Gutiérrez instaura la Regla de Ifá, la sagrada orden de los sacerdotes "babalawos".

A pesar de haber contado siempre con muchos fieles seguidores (tanto abiertamente como en secreto) la cultura y religión africanas en general no han corrido la misma suerte que aquellas traídas de Europa. Esto se ha debido en mayor parte a la imagen inferior, primitiva, insofisticada que la cultura africana siempre ha tenido en Cuba. Sim embargo, un número significativo de los cubanos creyentes profesan un culto africano (o "profano", como tambien se les llama), o incluso practican este conjuntamente con la religión católica, dándose el caso de aquellos que se persignan y dicen "¡Ay, Dios mío!", pero terminan sacudiéndose los brazos y torso en señal de limpieza y exclamando "¡Siákara!" (una bendición de origen africano).

Es ahí que uno se da cuenta de que a pesar de los maltratos, de las largas horas de trabajo y del bocabajo sufridos por los esclavos, nuestra cultura y religión se sienten hoy más que nunca. Y esto se refleja en un dicharacho muy cubano señalando que todos tienen sangre de uno y otro pueblo africano: "Aquí el que no tiene de congo tiene de carabalí..."

Publicado originalmente en octubre de 1999.

* Palabra yoruba que significa "bendito sea" o "viva"

Long live our folklore

"I am a descendant of that place, where black people soothed their pain with the rhythm of the drums..."
Clave y Guaguancó

Every time I hear the sound of that rumba, my black, Cuban blood freezes. The thought that the main art of my folklore has its roots in the most ignominious, shameful and degrading trade that has existed in the history of humanity is enough to make the eyes of the world cry with rage.

Between 1666 and 1776 the English, French and Spanish were the main importers of slaves to their colonies in Latin Ameria, a trade which reached a figure of three million. A quarter of these died during the voyage.

In Cuba, the imported culture which was most influential in what would later become Afrocuban folklore came from the Yoruba people. Yoruba was the term identifying certain tribes that spoke the same language although they were not united or politically centralised. Their level of urban and artistic development was amongst the highest in tropical Africa. They had a pantheon of gods whom they called "orishas", each with their own characteristics and attributes. These constitute pure, intangible force which cannot be perceived by human beings, but rather "takes possession" of chosen people, called "iyawó".

At the end of the 18th century "santería" emerged, which was the syncretisation of the various Yoruba cultures and the Catholic religion in a logical and natural process, so that each orisha has an equvalent in a Catholic saint. Following this the Regla of Ocha was born, product of the union of Latuan, a black Yoruba woman and a black "babalosha", or priest, Lorenzo Sama. At the end of the 19th century Eugenio Gutiérrez established the Regla de Ifá, sacred order of "babalawos" or priests.

In spite of having always counted on many followers (both openly and in secret), African culture and religion in general have not had the same fortune as those brought from Europe. This has largely been owing to the image that African culture has always had in Cuba as inferior, primitive and unsophisticated. Nevertheless, a significant number of Cuban believers are followers of an African (or "profane", as they are also called) cult, or even practise this alongside Catholicism, a case in point being those who make the sign of the cross and say "My God!" but finish by brushing off their arms and torso as a sign of "cleansing", exclaiming "Siákara!" (an African blessing).

It is then that you realise that in spite of the mistreatment, of the long hours of work and the beatings suffered by the slaves, this culture is felt more than ever today. And this is reflected in a popular and very Cuban expression pointing out that everyone there has blood from one or other African tribe: "Here, whoever isn't part Congolese is part Carabali)

Published originally in October 1999.

©2011

Next Post: “Lilya 4-Ever (Review)”, to be published on Wednesday 20th July at 11:59pm (GMT)

Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana

2011-07-13T23:59:00.105+01:00

Queues. Whenever someone in the UK complains about queues, as if they were a species indigenous only to this sceptred isle, my reply is the same: You ain't seen nothing until you've seen a queue in Cuba.

Seen? Nah, how about felt? Been assailed by the various emotions that lines in Cuba awaken: aggression, calm, ennui and excitement. A Zen-like peace can easily be shattered into smithereens in no time. This is quickly followed by a violent desire to gun down the person in front of you in the queue, preferably wild west style. He who draws first... well, gets in first, too.

Queues. Dear reader, we Cubans learn about colas very early in our childhood. Maybe it's the first word we utter the minute we come out of mummy's belly: ¡Cola!. And our parents know that it's not the carbonated soft drink to which we're referring. Nein doch! What we really mean is the snaking, never-ending, Wall-of-China throng that is often euphemistically called a single file.

Queues rule our cultural and social life in Cuba. You learn the ropes very quickly. First off is the password, the phrase that cannot be translated into any other language. You see, over here people ask you "are you in the queue?". In my beloved island we get to what looks like the tail end of this gargantuan reptile and like a town crier in centuries gone by, intone in a mighty voice: ¿Quién es el último? (Who is the last one? But really, that translation doesn't do any justice to the Cuban expression). Once you find this person who is almost like the equivalent of the lighthouse - albeit a temporary one - in the queue, the enquiries begin: ¿Detrás de quién va usted? ¿Y él? ¿Y ella? Suddenly information concerning at least the next half dozen people lining up in front of the "last one" comes forth. And this is where the second element comes in: social interaction. You will be told that the "last one" is queuing up behind the "prieto con las gafas negras" (the dark-skinned man with the black shades), and he's right behind the "mujer entra'ita en carne con el vestido rojo y las puyas negras" (the plump woman with the red dress and the black high heels) and so on. For the next two or three hours (some queues last longer) you and your companions will be discussing the comfort or pain of high heels and the idiocy of wearing sunglasses when the sky's overcast. Lines are to the casual observer on social interplay what the Galápagos Islands were to Charlers Darwin.

Dear reader, picture this. Mid 1980s. Eleven(ish) o' clock at night and the party's over. Curfew looms on the horizon ("be back by 11:30"; "yes. mum!" Bang! Door is closed, freedom at last!). Coppelia ice cream parlor is the next and last stop. The various tribes are already congregated here. Ergo, there are lots of queues. There're the "pepillos" with their baggy trousers (bombachos) stretching all the way down to their moccasins, instead of stopping mid-point on their knees. Three pleats on either side of the fly signal the fashion that arrives (a bit too late) from the "bad guys from the North". A white shirt two sizes larger covers their still undeveloped bodies, whilst a tie (probably done up by grandpa in a rush whilst little Pedro splashes Moscú Rojo on his face and arms) hangs down their front moving to and fro like a pendulum, reaching out to adulthood but suddenly swinging back to childhood. A mullet adorns their barnet. The closing melody from the party is still reverbarating in their heads: "I'm never gonna dance again/guilty feet have got no rhythm/though it's easy to pretend/I know you're not a fool". Yes, before adventures in lavatories the cute one from Wham was the voice that brought parties from Vedado to Santiago de las Vegas to an end. Once the track finishes their guiltless feet shuffle rhythmically to Coppelia, the Mecca of ice-cream. To join the queue.

Down this end come the roqueros (rockers). Tight jeans, sometimes tucked inside their heavy Russian, pardon me, Soviet boots. This is still 1984-5, Gorbachev has yet to come up with his famous perestroika and change the Spanish vocabulary forever. The roqueros descend on Coppelia like allied forces bombers closing in on Dresden circa 1945. They've probably been stopped a few times by the police before venturing into the Cathedral of Ice Cream. And here they are, joining the queue.

Then there are the guapos. The tough guys who listen to salsa and dance casino. Their trousers are worn Michael Jackson style during his Billie Jean years. Their shoes are polished to an impossibly fashionable lustre. Their swagger boasts a no-nonsense attitude. On their arms are perched their girlfriends like knock-off bagatelle.

The last group seems to almost inhabit Coppelia. It's the proximity of both cinematheques, La Rampa and Chaplin, that makes los trovas an autochthonous species. A love for experimental theatre, classical movies and unheard-of books characterise this tribe. Their long jeans suffer from that perennial sartorial disease: hem drag. But they don't care, it's part of their cachet. And on this sweltering Saturday night, when the sweat-soaked shirts worn by los pepillos look as if they were made of gauze, they all end up doing the same at the same place: queuing at Coppelia.

Come with me now, dear reader, and I'll take you somewhere else. Let's go into a Cuban barber shop. The line is shorter but the waiting time is longer. Because Cuban barbers like nothing more than chewing the fat. And the fatter the fat the more they love masticating it. No wonder Billy Joel's famous doo woop hit number "The Longest Time" is said to have been inspired by a trip to a barber shop in his native New York. Where they don't so much chew the fat as sink into and swim in lard.

I can still picture my haircut routine at my local barber's. Situated on San Francisco Street, almost on the corner of Neptuno, the famous Neptuno: (Cha cha chá-un-dos-Cha cha chá) A Prado y Neptuno/(Cha cha chá-un-dos-Cha cha chá) iba una chiquita/(Cha cha cha-un-dos-Cha cha chá) que todos los hombres la tenían que mirar; this is the place where you come to have your "Carl Lewis" (short sides and back, squar[ish] top) or your machinbra'o (shaded sides four to one, or four to zero) done. The soundtrack is a mix of discussion about baseball (This is Industriales' year, you'll see, Ayón is the man!), local gossip and impromptu singing. Especially from the older generation, who want nothing fancy or too stylish: "Just a touch-up, son". I can still remember a gentleman - alas, I forget his name - who used to perform in one of the big bands from the 50s at the National and Habana Hilton (by then, Libre). He sometimes breaks into a song all of a sudden, especially when there's a lull in the chatter and the air is filled only by the metallic cutting sound of the scissors and the robotic drone of clippers mowing down hair: "Mujer, si puedes tu con Dios hablar, pregúntale si yo alguna vez te he dejado de adorar". When he finishes, we all look at one another and nod in agreement, even me, rock'n'roll obsessive. This cat's still got it. Unfortunately he won't live much longer to make it onto the Buena Vista Social album. His voice and his presence stay here, however, in these four walls, one of which is taken over by big mirrors. The queue in the barber shop is that time when everything around you stands still and your memory takes a Polaroid photo which, in years to come, no matter how yellow and faded it is, you take out and look at.

It is in queues where some people find (illegal) employment. Waking up at five or six in the morning, they will head for markets, cinemas, the aforementioned Coppelia or any other place where long lines are likely to form and take their turn several times. As soon as they spot a "customer" they approach them and tell them that they've got a place near the front and would they like to buy it. Listen, it's only five pesos, but if you have more people coming with you, then I can go down to three pesos per head. Just make sure that if people ask you any questions, you say you're my cousin. No, it doesn't matter that your hair is red, you have freckles and pale skin and I look like a totí. Genes, mamita, genes! Listen, I have more business to do, take it or leave it? And take it she does. If el colero was capable of exporting his business model abroad, neither Greece, nor Ireland, nor Portugal would be now mired in the financial crisis in which they find themselves. Believe me.

The queue in Cuba, and specifically, in my beloved city, Havana, is our music, our magic, our politics. It is the place where we philosophise, not just about the "big subjects", Aristotle-style, but also about the consistency of ice-cream and the advantage of foot brakes in Russian bikes (yes, we can call them "Russian" now) versus the hand version in the Chinese ones. The queue is the campfire around which we perform our daily routines: conversing, falling for and out with people and, quipping. It represents the Latin American Film Festival every December, the rationed meat one gets once in a blue moon, the bus that takes you to uni and the posada on which you depend for intimate encounters with your other half because, unfortunately, the housing situation is tight and you live with half a dozen other relatives at home. That is the queue and much more.

What we need in Cuba is a monument. A mammoth public statue, in proportion, obviously, to the average sized line, that will acknowledge the social and cultural contribution made by this very criollo phenomenon: the queue.

© 2011

Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 17th July at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

2011-07-10T10:00:00.073+01:00

In Terry Pratchett's recent documentary 'Choosing to Die' the author says at the very beginning: "Sometimes, particularly when I'm depressed, I dread what the future may hold. And it's occurred to me that in these modern times one shouldn't have to fear that sort of thing." Terry suffers from Alzheimer's, a condition characterised by memory lapses, confusion and emotional instability. The process is irreversible and the result is loss of one's mental abilities. In our 21st century, as Sir Pratchett avers, we should be able to deal with this kind of malaise. I'm not talking about the total elimination of it, though, that, I think, is still light-years ahead. After all, nature is the smooth operator steering the wheel and as we well know nothing can stop it, but at least let's ensure that sufferers have access to the best care possible. Including the most humane. Terry is of the mind that one of the available options should be assisted suicide. He wants to be able to decide when and where he should die, possibly aided by a loved one without any legal repercussions for him or her.

Terry's dread, however, is not just shared by those afffected by Alzheimer's. About the same time his documentary premiered on the BBC, the news delivered a couple of shockers. One concerned the alleged attack on a female resident at a care home by a male worker. The other one was about Southern Cross, Britain's biggest care homes operator and its struggle to stay afloat because of its inability to pay its rent.

All these items are related in the end: Terry's support for assisted suicide, the way some elderly people are treated in care homes, and the financial constraints under which many of these residences find themselves in our economically straitened times.

Would a person think of ending his or her life all of a sudden, if there was any hope of dying when "their time came" in a dignified way, surrounded by the people he or she cared about and who loved them in return? I don't think so. Would a person feel so despondent to the point where death would be a welcomed, soothing balm if we, as a society, showed him or her that we cared? I have my doubts about that. And yet, here we are on a crossroads: one arrow seems to point at a third age where, in order to be cared for properly, one will have to sell their own home; a second sign leads us to Dignitas, the famous Swiss assisted-dying group that helps those with severe physical and mental impediments die. And even that option is chiefly available to the well-heeled. The third prong of this fork forces us to confront an image before venturing down its path. It is the future to which some of us will be subjected: bad-tempered nurses and care workers leaving us in sodden beds for days on end, denying us food and water when we want them and abusing us physically and mentally when we dare to protest. Ironically the only company for whom 'Dignity' is paramount is the one trading in death when, really, the (still) living should be the ones accorded the respect and decorum they deserve.

I agree with Terry's stand on assisted suiced and, after having watched the programme, I came away thinking that should I fall prey to a terrible and terminal disease, I would like to have the right to end it all when and where I wished. If I was incapable of doing so myself, however, I would like my long-term partner to do it for me. What better leave-taking present than to die in the arms of the wife whom you so much loved and who returned the same affection in equal if not larger quantities?

But at the same time I can't stop thinking about what would (or will) happen if I ended up in a care home. In the same way that society - and that includes me, too - benefits from my contributions to it, be it through my taxes which help fund our cherished NHS and our schools, or through my cultural input as an immigrant, I would like that contribution to benefit me in my twilight years. Quid pro quo.

To be clear, not all care homes are like the Ash Court Centre, the scene of the alleged assault on the elderly female resident. Nor are our care workers 'Nurse Ratched' wannabes salivating at the prospect of inflicting pain on unsuspecting and vulnerable OAPs. The majority of them do a commendable job, sometimes under dire situations. Frequently for very little financial retribution. But when money comes before our human principles, then it shouldn't surprise anyone that scandals such as the one engulfing the Kentish Town-based institution break out. In order to maximise profit safeguards and checks are sometimes overlooked and staff hired with a cost-effective business plan in mind instead of a palliative one. Faced with this between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place situation even I would be on the Easyjet website trying to book a one-way ticket to Zurich.

As Terry says in the documentary there are plenty of people in the UK who are against assisted suicide. Some of them on moral grounds, and others on religious ones (ha, surprise, surprise!). I understand the motivation of the former. Helping someone die can become an excuse for unscrupulous relatives willing to take advantage of a frail person who is no longer capable of making decisions by themselves. But I, naive and gullible human being that I am, think that the immoral brigade will always be outnumbered by the principled one. Plus, not everyone has the dosh to top themselves off against the backdrop of the magnificent Swiss landscape.

In the end, it comes down to death per se and how we deal with it. In a totally unrelated article in the paper the other day the writer Karen Armstrong remarked on this very issue. According to Ms Armstrong 'we prefer to speak of somebody "passing away" and push the dying out of sight into hospices and nursing homes.' What's clear to me, too, is that we still can't make up our minds as to what to do with this - growing - elderly population. If they want to bring their lives to a halt, either themselves or aided by a loved one, that's to be frowned upon. If, on the other hand, they insist on living longer, then that's also wrong because who'll foot the bill for their care? No wonder Roger Daltrey was singing in 1965: "I hope I die before I get old". What I would like to happen in the next few years is that today's twenty-year-old, on coming across with the The Who's famous song, will be able to say confidently three decades henceforth: "That's a lot of old bollocks. I love being old." And when he/she dies that they do so with dignity.

Terry Pratchett's documentary can be seen in its entirey by clicking here. Please, be aware that it contains distressing images.

© 2011

Next Post: “Pieces of Me, Pieces of Havana”, to be published on Wednesday 13th July at 11:59pm (GMT)

The Who- My Generation 12-17-82 from Christopher Petrilli on Vimeo