Ooops...

What was that noise...?

If you want an audience...

... start a fight

The pig-stay behind the curtain

I've written before about the sad state of Italy. From yesterday's Corriere della Sera now comes a really good article by journalist and commentator Beppe Severgnini on Italy's recent corruption scandals that have hit the broadcasting world and the son of Italy's last king (my translation):

"I never thought I could simultaneously agree with Flavio Briatore (managing director of the Renault Formula One team, ed.) and Piero Ostellino (journalist for the Corriere della Sera, ed.): but this is exactly what happened. Both point to the cruelty of splashing on the front page of newspapers the transcripts of phone-tappings, which publicly display - together with alleged mis-doings - the private lives of many people. I would also add the following: without phone-tapping, we'd still have Fazio running the Bank of Italy, the kids who didn't play fair would now have enough cash to buy a house in the centre of town, and the World Cup would be followed by another competition, this time based on bribery and not tackling skills. And as for Mr Savoy (Victor Emmanuel, heir to the Italian throne, ed.): if his intent was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the June 1946 referendum, which turned Italy into a Republic, he needn't have bothered. Anyway, thanks: now we know what we avoided.

As I was saying, transcripts of tapped phone conversations published on the press are somewhat barbaric, and boundaries have to be set - distinguishing between real criminals and simple girls who are lewinskying behind the cameras. But they have served an important purpose: they have crushed our last illusions. We are great country, member of the G8, founder of the EU, yet we have learnt how to put up with Second World practices. Recent scandals would probably go unnoticed somewhere in the Caucasus. But Milan is a stone-throw from Madrid, Munich, Manchester and Marseilles. We have to work and live with the Spaniards, the Germans, the British, the French. They are our colleagues, our friends and our competitors. They have all the right to ask us: "Have you gone mad?". And we have a duty to give them an answer.

I have no idea what we could tell them. Except, that it's shocking: wherever you lift a curtain, you find a pig-stay. Politics, banking, cycling, football, television, telecoms, the health system, public bodies, local administrations. Give it a while and I bet you they'll uncover something dirty in the Revenue Offices, in a couple of highly-skilled professional categories and in the universities. Whoever is caught will squeal like a pig, while everyone else will shut up and keep a low profile, until things calm down and can carry on as they always have.

Let's take the television world, which these days is being made to pay for the voyerism we've been accustomed to. The most embarassing statement is not the one in which Salvatore Sottile, spokesman for the [former] Minister of Foreign Affairs (Gianfranco Fini, ed.), gave the honorary title of "beautiful sow" (to Maria Monsa', a TV showgirl, ed.), but the one in which he explained how to reward these young girls: "One on satellite programming, the other one on Uno Mattina Estate (an early morning programme on Italy's state television RAI, ed.)". I understand the bitterness of Sottile: he knows he's just the latest in a long series of politicians, spokesmen and assistants who've pronounced these words. But what I'd like to ask him is this: do you think it's normal? Do you think this is how things are done in the rest of Europe? Why doesn't your party - all political parties, in fact, up to Rifondazione (the neo-Communist party, ed.) - just leave RAI alone, once and for all? So there'd be no temptations.

I once wrote on this column that the state television is the "brothel of Italian politics". I meant this in an allegorical sense (I was thinking about how it pleased egos, how it provided a backdrop to the pleasures of political power), but now I realise I should have meant it in a literal sense. A former RAI board member told me he once asked - upon joining the broadcasting network - the reason for all those scantily-clad women on air after midnight, most of whom were illiterate and completely unknown. He was greeted by a riot. The old boys in charge of programming took arms in defence of the sluts: they described them as "fringe benefits".

This is where we're at, ladies and gentlemen: not just on television. We either change the way we think, or else we change the rules of the game. The latter is perhaps the easiest option. Why bother voting for the referendum on 25-26 June? Let's just scrap the whole Constitution, reinstate Victor Emmanuel on Italy's throne, and ask him to entertain us. I am sure he'd be good at it".

We're through!

But damn, did we suffer... and why does it always have to be like this!?!?

More on blogging

I am reading Extreme Democracy, both a book and a "discussion forum for networked activists". Browsing through the preface I found a really good report taken from the Guardian Unlimited technology section, and written by Rebecca Blood, an old hack of the weblogging world. Although dating from December 2003 (ok, she got there before me, so what?! I am sure she can't cook as well as I do!!), it still gives a really interesting perspective on this phenomenon we all seem to be even more hooked on 3 years later:

"A weblog is something fundamentally new. Something no one can quite put their finger on, not yet. And those who try to define the phenomenon in terms of current institutions are completely missing the point.

Consider the average weblog. Maintained by an unpaid enthusiast, this site will be updated perhaps a dozen times a day with links to interesting news stories and entries on other weblogs, accompanied by a few lines - or paragraphs - of commentary. A blogger interested in current events may include links to several accounts of one event, noting differences in tone or detail, another may post the occasional recipe or pictures from a recent trip. A blogger may have a thousand readers, but more likely a few hundred or a couple of dozen, some of whom will offer comments of their own, right on the site. The weblog is at once a scrapbook, news filter, chapbook, newsletter, and community.

This is not passive news consumption. Neither is it broadcasting. The average blogger has time to surf the web, but no resources to report stories. Some bloggers will follow a news story to the end, some may lose interest after a few days. Commentary will range from the fully-formed to the random blurt and can freely mix the public and the personal.

All this represents something new: participatory media. And it matters. Not because of its resemblance to familiar institutions, but because of its differences from them.

Weblogs are just too varied, too idiosyncratic, to fit into an existing box. Industry analysts might call this disruptive technology because weblogs have changed personal publishing so profoundly that the old rules no longer apply. We are at the beginning of a new age of online publishing - and I predict that this generation of online pamphleteers is just the first wave".

Trance case-study

Trance - tells us Wikipedia - is a style of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s. Trance music is generally characterized by a tempo of between 130 and 160 bpm, featuring repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and down throughout a track, often crescendoing or featuring a breakdown. Sometimes vocals are also utilised. The style is arguably derived from a combination of largely techno and house. 'Trance' received its name from the repetitious morphing beats, and the throbbing melodies which would presumably put the listener into a trance-like state.

This is what the Brixton Academy might have looked like last night hosting one of the most important trance DJs in the world, Tiësto (arguably the most important one, but not everyone would agree on this point):


And this is what 2 clubbers might have looked like after spending a considerable amount of time bouncing up and down to the above-mentioned melodic synthesizer phrases:


Finally, this is a picture of what a clubber might have seen on his way back home at 4 am from the cab window, as he tried to hold conversation with a random taxi driver about the importance of sound in understanding the nuances of life:


Any reference to real people or events is purely coincidental.

Sheep

How many sheep did I spot on a sunny afternoon, following the trail of pink baloons that guided me through London's Architecture Biennale? You count...

Someone's daughter at someone's concert...

From Thom's Blog - Sat 17 June 2006:

this'll make you laugh.

i was told yesterday that one of the daughters of the president came to NY show 2.
we were playing THe Tourist at the end of the show.. and yyes we did wander what the shuffling manhandling fighting was in the distance of the audience.
turns out it was her 6 bodyguards clearing the way for the first daughters exit. and some pour soul objected at being manhandled by the secret service. i think i would have to.

infact if i had known all this my objections would have been more forthright and extensive...if you know what i mean. which is perhaps why our lot chose not to tell me who was in the building before we went on. probably a good idea.


hmm
i dont know if we should be

A. honoured
B. amused
C. bemused
D. ask if she had a valid ticket
E. object belatedly on moral grounds
F. ask again if she had a ticket and question whether this really what our gigs are about
G. dont blame the daughter for the father
H. shutup and smile

answers on a postcard

bonaroo today woo hoo

My personal answer: D.

Light

Alone

You gave me
Cold glass love
You've got teeth for biting and you've bore a hole in me

You and me
Hot and cold
You have crossed all safely while i teeter on my rope

Better than me
And i know
You are calm and symmetry and i'm an empty hole

My envy
Of all you own
I want to be a possession you dust and won't let go

Gentlest touch
And sweetest sound
Something you'll run back in for when the house burns down

Alone
Alone doesn't feel so cold
Alone
Alone doesn't feel so cold

'Cause your arms
Your arms they don't feel so warm
So come
Come love and take me home

What i am
And what you are
Some things just don't hold the way the night has trapped a star

Alone
Alone doesn't feel so cold
Alone
Alone doesn't feel so cold

'Cause your arms
Your arms they don't feel so warm
So come
Come love and take me home.

Drinking and smoking...

From inner poise...


... to outright frapness!

The new member of the community

Why do we blog?

It has been brought to my attention by two (one and two) recent entries of two equally fabulous individuals who inhabit my cybernetic and real life that the reason why we blog has not been entirely clarified to the public. Hence I shall attempt to answer the all-too-frequent question: why do we blog, and open up our lives and thoughts to random strangers? Why, given that we never wanted anybody to read our teenagers' diaries, and least of all to get a glimpse into what was going on in our brains? Why, given we spent so much time choosing with meticulous care our friends, and avoiding unnecessary contact with the rest of the people, who inhabit this world and all too often seem only capable of daily arrogance and stupidity? Why indeed, when we could read a book instead, watch a good movie, get out of the house and stop staring at a computer screen which is making us blind?

There is no straight answer to this question, and clearly each person blogs for different reasons, just like each person wears clothes for different purposes. But apart from commercial blogs and those with clearly stated purposes, most of which are to me completely alien (e.g. they highlight the benefits of self-raising flour or discuss the ultimate garden-trimming gadget: people, get a life!!!), I tend to divide bloggers into 3 broad categories, responding to 3 equally broad reasons for bloggging: the Recording bloggers, the Performing bloggers and the Secret bloggers.

The first category has an accounting purpose, just like when we need to write down numbers to remember them. Although it appears to be the natural development of traditional mail, and even bears huge resemblance to Victorian correspondence in style and appearance, it's often as self-referential as it comes. Whether they like keeping their friends informed during their travels across South East Asia, or keeping grandma up-to-date on their pet/child's latest fart, what they are actually doing is recording their lives so they can then remember it when they are old and ravaged by Parkinson's disease. As they are for the most part talking to their old selves in the future, rather than to other people in the present, these bloggers are generally the dullest ones you might come across. And yet, I love them to bits, they fascinate me and mesmerize me, the way kaleidoscopes do. Through them, we get a glimpse at those individuals we hear so much about, but have never really encountered in the flesh, and which allegedly make up the majority of the world: the suburban armies of living-dead that are besieging us.

Then there is the second category, the Performing bloggers, made up of those who have finally found a way to communicate and express what they have inside: blogging for them is a beautiful stage, enhanced by the fact that only their minds and writing skills have to be on display. The pressures of the physical world can be cast aside. Here they are all equal: no one is too fat, too tall, too rich, too ugly, too short, too ginger, too bald, too hairy, too poor or too bony to blog. The only thing that matters is the connection speed. This gives an exceptional freedom to many, who would be usually sitting at the back of the classroom, too shy to speak their minds and raise their voices. Blogging is the revenge of the nerds, it's a beautiful democracy of units - one blog, one vote. It's not about searching, it's about finally having an opportunity to speak out, without having to worry about people liking them, listening to them, judging them. From my perspective (the reader, but also the blogger), accustomed as I am to professional performers - on paper as on stage/screen - who talk, write, move, even look alike, I am craving the diversity and honesty offered by many blogs. Here I am not forced to listen to what some marketing idiot thinks I should like. I am making my decisions, finding with my brain, eyes and a little luck what makes me laugh, cry, giggle, gasp.

For a few of us, blogging is a message in a bottle. These are what I call the Secret bloggers. They don't write for themselves, like the Recording bloggers, nor for the public - at times made up of friends, at times of strangers - like the Performing bloggers. They write for that stranger who might pick up that bottle. I remember the first time I came across one of these bloggers. It was late at night, like now. I was flicking through Blogger lazily reading entries, when I came across a blog by an Italian girl. Her English was ok, but she clearly struggled, and I wondered why she’d choose to use a language which wasn’t her first one. There were not many entries, maybe 4 or 5, so I went through all of them. I discovered that she had returned to Italy after a time living in the US, a time which must have been the happiest in her life, judging by the picture in her profile, where she sat in a diner hugging a handsome blond man. He had the look of an American college boy. She had the look of an Italian girl abroad. There was so much sadness in that blog, so many regrets, so much failure. The emotional pain she felt was almost contagious. Even the use of the English language was her attempt to drag herself out of the ditch in which she had fallen. She hated herself, what she had allowed herself to become, physically and mentally, yet she strived to find a way out, to feel the way she did when she sat at that diner with that American boy. I dropped her a note, said something ludicrously clichéd about overcoming difficulties, never got a reply.

So why do we blog? Well, I can't speak for the Community, least of all for the world wide web, but in truth, I probably blog for a mixture of the three above reasons, in different quantities which change by the day. I like to think I am mostly a Performer for my friends, in the (perhaps vain) hope they might understand me better. It certainly worked the other way round, and I got a few glimpses of friends' personality traits which never knew were there. Such as this one. Ugly... I do however perform for a wider audience too, which is why I try to avoid too many inside jokes and personal references. On the other hand, I unfortunately do find myself recording events, pictures, adventures, facts, phrases... I know one day I'll read them on my hospital bed and scream "OHMYGOD! Did I really do THAT!?!?" before grabbing another life-saving pill. Sad, but true. However, deep inside, I treat each posting like a little message in a bottle, which might get picked up across the world by someone who will become a new friend. This has happened already once, so why not again? Because, really, you can never have enough good friends...

Sicily's bash

Some pics to keep you entertained, not as many as those on her blog, but a good little sample. The bruises on Heidi's arms are not the result of wife-bashing, but paintballing. You should see my back. Despite facing the enemy at all times, they still seemed to hit me in the most embarassing of all body parts for a true soldier. Which led me to believe it was my own team that kept on shooting me. Oh the fun we had...

First, Canary Wharf in a glorious sunny afternoon...


Then, a few of us sipping a well deserved pint after the battle. Notice the clear signs of PTSD on Molly's face...









And of course, the birthday girl herself, here blushing a few days earlier as she was unwrapping a rather embarassing set of lingerie given to her by the two naughty girls at Oddone High...

How to buy your way to heaven

Juggling work, friends, living in London and blogging is pretty hard, sometimes impossible. If you're also trying to be a good, ethical person, socially and environmentally responsible, your life might become a nightmare. I have been trying for a while now, and I don't even have a proper job!

So far I have:

switched to an ethical bank, closing down my previous account with an evil, arms trading, child smuggling financial institution that I had inherited from my deeply corrupt family (er... mum, if you're reading, I am joking, capisc?);

established a highly-sophisticated recycling system in my home, ensuring cans, plastic, glass, paper and kittens all get piled up in a corner until they become a security threat and get taken to the appropriate bins down the road;

had my water supplier send me one of those funny plastic bags that you instal into your toilet flush to save water, and generally followed every step to reduce water consumption in the house;

cut down my supermarket visits and increased my visits to London markets and small suppliers;

taken up cycling (er... ok, this was 6 years ago, but it still counts!)

cleaned my terrace and bought some bamboo (ok, this might not be ethical per se, but it looks nicer now, and we can have barbecues outside when summer... er... arrives.

Yet, when I think of it, there are still hundreds of things I should be doing, from switching to environmentally-friendly energy providers, to insulating my house properly, to changing all light-bulbs to energy-efficient ones... At the end of the spectrum, I could be installing solar panels, becoming 100% sustainable in my energy consumption. And I could be mentoring young kids from my 'hood (damn, do they need it!). And these are just the first things that spring to mind. At the end of the day, if I were to change my entire existence to become really socially and environmentally responsible, I'd need a 48-hour day. Or I should get rid of all my friends and live in solitary confinement in my ecological paradise.

Yes, because each and every of these little changes take forever. Motivation, planning, organisation, motivation, more planning, execution, motivation, further execution... until it becomes routine. Apart from the financial costs - not always irrelevant - the amount of time and energy one spends trying to change the course of the cruise-liner is immense. I find myself at the end of the day simply exhausted at the idea of further changes. The idea of reading another eco-warring website makes me weep, a mixed feeling of guilt for what I have not accomplished yet and terror for what I still have to do.

Is it just me, or is becoming a good 21st century urban hippy a real nightmare?

I have become convinced that there are hundreds, thousands of people out there who, given the chance, would embrace this lifestyle, but simply don't have the time and motivation to get it done. These ethical/environmental choices don't fall into your lap. You need to hunt them down, understand them, embrace them. It's a physical and mental effort this society has not trained us for. Yes of course this perspective will piss off the ultra-purists, the evangelical do-gooders who are up at 8 am on Sundays and get all things done. But I like to drink. And smoke. And get up late. And I still have a conscience. Am I a freak? No. I think I am closer to the majority of the world. Which is why the world is so fucked up.

So here comes my idea. If you can't be arsed to turn your capitalist existence into an shrine to environmentalism and ethical living, why not pay someone to do it for you?

Think of it. You basically pay someone a fixed sum - say £150 - so that they can come to your house, pick up the phone and get the basics done for you: switch suppliers, buy recycling bins, fit energy-efficient bulbs, call the insulating company to fix the windows and so on. You could even have different packages, with the Gold one at the top: at the end of 2 weeks you have solar panels on your roof, organic food suppliers visiting you every week at a time that suits you, ethical investment funds for your savings' account and you can even get a priest to bless the house (ok, I got carried away, forget the priest...).

Maybe you won't buy your way to heaven straight away, but it's a start. Most importantly, it's really about helping you jump that first hurdle. Once the ice is broken, it's a downhill ride. And in a city like London, so socially and environmentally irresponsible when compared to other European cities, but so clued up on how to use marketing techniques to promote social change, isn't paying someone so that you can have a clean conscience the idea that's just waiting to be invented?

Then we decided to clim the oak tree

Okso, we looked at it from afar, this glorious tree, as the setting sun caressed its ancient trunk...


... and some of us even thought it was well worth a little nap under its safe branches, surrounded by freshly cut hay...


... then up went the Baking Queen, Catherine the Great, looking afar as her mind wondered to happy memories of tree climbing in the Lake District...


... and next was her, Heidi from Switzerland, taking advantage of that narrow space between the Queen's legs...


... thankfully, nature remained unperturbed. The sun waved good bye with a smile...


... while others were too busy and important to take notice of such mountaineering efforts. Calls had to be made to LA and Hollywood!


Oh... how we love our little Tuscan heaven...!

NGO

Carved on the pavement opposite Amnesty's headquarters. Where they trying to spell R.I.P. before being abducted and killed by a group of senior managers?

The music of men

Bill Callahan, the man behind Smog, pioneered the lo-fi genre of underground rock, with homemade tape-albums recorded on four track tape recorders. His music is said to draw on the guitar-wracking blues funk of classic americana and variously combines sampled noise, scratchy strings, moe-tucker-drumming (country-style) and beautiful piano arrangements. He's been around for a while, almost 20 years in fact, but is still growing from strength to strength. He recently performed in Reyjkavik alongside Joanna Newsom, an indication of his interesting take on life and music. Away from the limelight, he tells us about fragile emotions, loss, search and resilience, like in this video called Rock Bottom Riser.

Smog's record label, Drag City, is also behind a number of other interesting artists, but none as imposing as Will Oldham, aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Palace, Palace Music and Palace Brothers. Despite the confused personality and the austere busker's looks, he's considered the finest songwriter to come out of America in the past decade, and has worked - amongst others - with Johnny Cash, PJ Harvey, Björk and Matthew Barney. Yes F, Johnny Cash, who recorded one of Oldham's best and darkest songs, I See A Darkness, not so long ago. I tried to find some of his music on the world wide web, but his personal elusiveness extends to his songs too. Only a video, and not one of his best songs either. But it's a start.

Finally, in this tribute to male songwriters, I wanted to point out to you Mission of Burma, widely acknowledged as "one of the first groups to achieve the potential of modern alternative/independent rock, fusing punk and experimental music into some of the most influential music to come out of the American punk/no wave scene". First active in the late '70s, they re-grouped in 2002 and are now experiencing something of a second birth under Matador, the label of Belle and Sebastian and formerly of Boards of Canada. In honour of my friend PDF, or maybe not, they have just created their own wiki with stuff from their latest album - the Obliterati - slowly being released on the net. Avanguard, I say. And damn good music too. They're playing at Koko here in London tomorrow night. I might leave my Mac for the occasion...!

street spirit

rows of houses all bearing down on me
i can feel their blue hands touching me
all these things into position
all these things are one to swallow whole
and fade out again and fade out

this machine will will not communicate these thoughts
and the strain i am under
be a world child form a circle before we all go under
and fade out again and fade out again

cracked eggs dead birds
scream as they fight for life
i can feel death can see it's beady eyes
all these things into position
all these things are one to swallow whole
and fade out again and fade out again.

麻痺