taliesin's log (voices of women)

lundi 27 juin 2005

Pieces of g8? Let's have some real gold Heli's got it. Up north of me, with a fan switched on at Heaven and Hell Radio, she asks: "Isn't it time the G8 summit did something to global warming?" To it? Even if they could, the thought of some of those G8 leaders doing anything more than they have chills my heart. But her link, to an article in 'The Independent', is worth checking out in full, since I've not seen anybody state so clearly before in the mainstream press, as John Houghton comments: "Scientists now agree that the central European heatwave of 2003, which led to the death of over 20,000 people, was largely due to an increase in greenhouse gases, for which humans are responsible." Scores, some say hundreds, of them in France, remember? Those black crosses I mentioned appearing in the entrance halls of buildings around this part of town and elsewhere in Paris? We're still only June, the temperature in the street at 8:30 pm tonight was +32° C in the shade ... what will they be saying about 2005? As people started complaining, that minister, whoever he was, I forget, eventually rushing back from his holiday and saying: "Oh, I'm ever so sorry. Didn't we have a plan for all this?" I should lay off the cynicism. Being at the Factory that can be difficult, but once someone's singing some sense into me it gets increasingly hard to stay bitter... The truth remains I'm glad that Heli and a few others blog on, indefatigably and in her case usually briefly, reminding us how hard those stupid, thoughtless and often short-sighted bastards need kicking. The G8 ideas I was kicking around during my "political" hours of the day were more about music and who, in Africa, gets to write what in the next few days about the major musical projects for that weekend, especially what the Africans make of it all. During one preparatory chat with Helen, who's in Nairobi right now and knows so much about some very hot spots in eastern central Africa, she works -- as people can -- for both us and the BBC. "I wonder many people in Rwanda," she mused for a moment, "have even heard of Bob Geldof." "Good question," I said. "So do I." So we'll find out a few things like that... Doubtless, you'll be getting more here apart from one or two points I've already made. Perhaps not when it happens. We'll all be up to the eyeballs in G8 and Africa, flavour of the year, but the Desk chief has asked me to firm up my vacation dates. As usual, they're last minute. As usual, they're not as planned, but you have to fit in with world leaders and where their plans put your work mates. As usual I want to be free & around town in August, already agreed for the first three weeks of that month this year, and now a last chunk of July looks good for the rest. If it's not too hot, you might get a few inspired thoughts less coloured, once more, by the heat of the day's endless flow of nonsense. Frank speaking: there's hot ... and there's Ani Ani diFranco, to be precise. You get nothing new when I tell you today's VoW album is 'Evolve', since Ani did that more than two years ago. This particular picture -- you've had quite enough of their inevitably fine bodies for a while -- I stole for the fun value from 'asteroid-b612' (aka 'The Cygnus Loop'.) Ani can be a lot of fun. She makes being serious about life fun and she can even do it with anger. Maybe this blog should be a kind of "wiki", I think, knowing some entries should stay open for more perceptions while albums grow on me. People who say this particular album was aptly named are right: it's a big change on the "old Ani". "i speak without reservation from what i know and who i am. i do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voice to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance, the worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated not condemned. should any part of my music offend you, please do not close your ears to it. just take what you can use and go on." She said that years ago when people called her the "l'il folksinger", and there's another open letter at a site Margie Gillespie left behind in '99, but like all of the women whose music I write about she's carved her own path and like many she's done her best to be a spanner in the wheels of the industry. She's poetic and very outspoken, now has an Ani diFranco space on the Net and guess what? The New York connection is almost becoming a nuisance, I'm not doing it on purpose. When I return down her road, it'll be once I've remedied recent ... excesses and have something to say about 'Knuckle Down' (her latest). But if hers is not a familiar name, 'Evolve' is a very good place to start. If she was a familiar name, but hasn't been for several years ... "Evolve' is a very good place to start. For why? Because yes you do get Ani the angry, the witty, the lover, the political sniper and the folksinger, a woman who knows what to do with guitars. But you also get what I guess she herself would consider her first wholly seamless bid to build on her foundations and move into, for instance, jazz. Not just traditional jazz either. Somebody who's already written about this so well that I'll simply link and quote is Ari Levenfeld (PopMatters). To each their own ears; mine don't have the problem's Ari's did that day when they found Ani a little too taken by her new experiments in style to give her soul-searching and her lyrics the place he'd have liked. For me, the mix works. But for this, he gets the last word on Ani: "'Serpentine' represents the promise of what combination of well thought out, Wynton Marselis-inspired arrangements can be, when coupled with Difranco's lyrical stabs. It's a long, meandering piece of work that takes some time to build. To evolve, maybe. It includes the best of her break-beat acoustic guitar picking and a jazzy bass line that takes just long enough to kick in. If this is a glimpse of what Difranco is attempting to evolve into, she might just make Charles Darwin proud." I don't know what Darwin would make of the G8, but he was a practical kind of fellow. The Americans will doubtless arrive with a big box of spanners, but if Bush and some of his pals fancy doing anything practical themselves before everybody comes out with some "joint declaration" so watered down they'd do better to save the water for the places that need it, they could try dropping by Ani's hairdresser on their way over. 11:16:56 PM    your views? []

jeudi 16 juin 2005

Our very different friends Today's the Day of the African Child. "The main celebration this year is taking place in the Gambian capital of Banjul. The theme of this year’s Day – orphans and vulnerable children – recalls the challenges faced by children who have lost one or both parents and by children who are disabled. In The Gambia alone, 55,000 children have lost one or both parents. Of these, an estimated 7,000 are orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS." So said the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), but nobody seemed to have told the Gambians, unless officials in that small west African country, stretched along a river through Senegal, mislaid that "main" event. Good Factory hands across the continent filed their stories, some moving but fittingly unsentimental, like the sad, amusing story of how "lost and found kids" advertisements are a daily spot on television in Equatorial Guinea, whose rich and wretched rulers wash their hands with oil. To find it funny, like I did, perhaps you have to be a little African and leave a guilty, bleeding heart behind. Lauren's working day ended with an agreement some late, indeed non-existent, wedding invite cards were her priority, mine when someone reminded me I'm invited to a party I'd forgotten was so soon and said a firm "yes" when I enquired after the nature of some of the other guests. It's too late, Stephen, it's tonight I want sex! I have done since well before ten to 6 in the morning -- "Yes, Jessel, the big hand's on the etc." -- when the quiet, tender departure of the new musician neighbour's lover caught my ear while I was having quite other reveries. The opportunity arose when a woman who spends her days with flowers had the same idea, her mind still taken by a most impertinent suggestion that came to mine of late, best voiced with a winning smile. Sigh... We had other immediate things to do. Now I daren't again arrive at work cheerfully sleepless since I'm on my own tomorrow as circus master, air traffic controller or whatever it is I do with those stories... What a foul world this would be if we only loved people like us. People like those "mediaburners" don't just pick up the women, happily, agreeing that this place is here for the lot. It occurs to me that Joe might be up to it again, those pictures I mean. He's found another "nightmare": 'The Most Depressing Product of the Day' (Book of Joe). zzz Networking, a hot topic of the week? "Recent reports of the demise of Social Networking Applications (SNAs), voted 'technology of the year' by Business 2.0 just two years ago, are increasing." Maybe so, Dave Pollard sees, citing a moan or five. Then he points out that SNAs remind him of "Chamber of Commerce meetings, with consultants and agents outnumbering 'real' businesspeople, five sellers for every buyer. I belong to several SNAs but use them rarely, since my blog provides me with a more robust network than any SNA could ever hope to do." Consultants, agents -- such job descriptions are among the few that automatically still bring the word "parasite" to mind. I've rarely met a consultant capable of giving me a comprehensible definition of what they do (perhaps I should go to more parties). Dave's 'Rescuing Social Networks' (Saving the World) uses a term I've not heard before but sometimes think I am: a Simple Virtual Presence. zzz Ellie admitted she was shaking in her boots when I asked after her welfare. She knows about things like business, but to be called in as a pundit on the French economy -- it was a trap, luv, by that US Congress somebody! -- and find yourself on a panel with a former minister of it isn't my idea of fun. If I was, it wouldn't be that of other people, I dread to think what I'd say, it wouldn't be wise. The woman has style. She didn't seem shaky on explaining she was only just out of this grilling. My dilemma, I said, was naked women. I've had firm warnings and said myself the chances are I'll post no more ... for now. Only to find today that people lift these entries, whole. Even the words. This has been going on for more than a year, it seems, as proven by people who seem to think I'm part of the "digital media" at 'The Mediaburn Radio Weblog'. They've been doing it since at least October 2003. There are others. "You should 'sell' your blog," said Eleanor, bless her! "It is, after all, your work." I wouldn't say that too loudly around the Factory, not when I'm in it. O the mercenary beast, the capitalist! True, she's a freelance. But I said such an idea was against my principles and told her what I thought of the New York Times and why I've stopped linking to that paper. How can you be an ex-muse, frequently logged under a Creative Commons licence, then say, "You should sell me"? I must ask her and perhaps tell you what she says. How much would you pay for a Ellie-gram? Or a pound of Ellie? The auction starts here. 10:26:55 PM    your views? []

lundi 13 juin 2005

Time for work ... and the rest The holiday's over. I enjoyed most of it without seeing everybody I'd hoped to fit in. My title links are still bust, my accounts undone, some mail still unanswered. Never mind. I'll make time for it all. There's still no seraphim, no "dark angel" in the orchard. That's done as well, but a well-packed sunny day wasn't long enough for time travel. Not after 'Nexus' and what came before. I won't rush Sarah Fimm any more than another VoW. To tell you this clears up a mystery if anybody still wondered. To keep anyone going who may care, here's what George Graham made of 'Nexus': "Most people associate singer-songwiters with acoustic guitars, invoking the classic image of the folkie. There are a few of the breed to play piano, and some who play in rock bands. On the other hand, practitioners of electronic music are hardly known for their thoughtful lyrics, if there are lyrics at all. "This week [May 1 that was], we have an interesting combination of the two, a singer-songwriter who is accompanied by an ethereal electronic setting that at times borders on what could be called New Age music, though generally with a lot more substance than typical New Age. Her name (...) itself has definite New Age connotations..." (Graham's review). To each their own. When I gave 'Nexus' a write-up in April, I took a different line and am glad Graham doesn't go too hard on the "New Age" one. Now I've heard much more of Sarah and am unsure which of us has done the oddest things, I wouldn't say she's so dark. She's told me lots of stories, out there for anyone who likes. I like them so much that when I post it, everyone can make what they will of 'Sarah Fimm: the bright side of darkness'. Such brightness needs pictures! They're ready. So's my story, but I've got to put them together, along with more links and code. Ordinary code, nothing secret but wretchedly time-consuming. Sarah keeps few secrets from anyone. She shares a great deal. I respect that a lot and she talks just my language. It took time to sink in, when it did she knocked me out. That's not quite how I plan to get back to her, though I enjoyed it, still do. The "big L", thank heavens, is nowhere in sight and my feet are safely on the ground, as they should be. Others make a mystery of her, quite why escapes me. The woman, whose music seems -- almost -- unobtainable this side of the water, unless you think she's Charles Aznavour, like the FNAC store did, dropped a few little stones into my own pond. When it comes to the ripples, I'm taking the time I need. Until she joins other people in the orchard, I'll say this for her. As shock absorbers go, she's good, but maybe she occasionally loses people. The ones who like categories. 1:45:13 AM    your views? []

lundi 6 juin 2005

An 'agreeable itch' ... if you have to keep it to yourself Here's a "sordid promise" unforgotten, before we get back to the VoWs. Everyone knows how my sexual fantasies, routinely considered appalling and shameful by my peers and teachers in my early years, were changed by women. My school dictionary, an Oxford one, gave such a helpful definition of masturbation: "physical self-abuse." That's all there was, those were the '60s. Ask teachers what it meant, they went red. Ask most parents, they changed the subject. As usual, you found out in the playground. Yesterday, the Kid wanted to watch one of the serial killer movies I like for plot structure, deep characterisation and mastery of suspense. One of the best, in fact, David Fincher's 'Seven'. Seeing it again myself, I fully appreciated the magnificent photography and editing throughout, other fine detail of the "unsaid" in movies, but Manou had an ear for the words: "Is Brad Pitt going to swear so much all the way through?" "Yes, luv, he swears a lot. Why?" "It'll be good for my vocabulary then, I might learn some new words." My own parents wouldn't have been amused. What the Kid may be practising in the playground this week was taboo. Times have changed so much it's almost surprising 'Les Inrocks' is the only French weekly mix for right-minded "lefties" of music, cinema, the arts and even politics that could recently devote six pages to female masturbation. You'd think the subject long since wide open, well covered, but the article was unexpectedly interesting, providing a historical perspective and excerpts from a vast and funny vocabulary of terms for the practice from 'déplorable habitude', 'main homicide' (murderous hand) and 'infernale épidemie' to 'one-man show', 'plaisir philosophique' and 'panacée sexuelle'. It would seem an "expert" is an American historian who thinks inhibitions about masturbation are still Voltaire's fault with a reasoning I found a bit hard to fathom. For an expert, he came out with some bizarre notions. If you're curious enough, DazeReader said in March 2003: "Berkeley history professor Thomas Laqueur recently published Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Sharon Lintz interviews Laqueur ... at Nerve. (First question: 'So you wrote a big book about jacking off.')." The 'Nerve' story's fun, it's a good read and Laqueur's no fool. Yet still he managed to provoke the one "ping-pong" (letter from readers) the next 'Inrocks' published, worth translating: "Dear Thomas Laqueur, You said, in n° 494 of Les Inrocks that in a way '...women are typical masturbators because they produce nothing but desire and an excess of imagination -- there is no ejaculation.' Going by the state of my thighs and my sheets after succumbing to an agreeable itch, I can assure you I produce far more than desire and an excess of imagination. A woman." Good heavens! I went back to look and indeed she was right. Laqueur did indeed say that. Unless misrepresented, where on earth has he been? Has he been on earth or lived on as many other planets as I have, though I never met him? My first lessons in women and "agreeable itches" came in that long hot summer of 1980 when I arrived in France on account of a letter in French I'd failed fully to understand, which changed my destiny. The woman hadn't meant me to pack in my whole life the other side of the Channel on her account. I'm glad I did, since on turning up at her front door, I walked through it into an early episode of the Quiet Revolution with her and her lovely Spanish flatmate, another idealistic student who seemed scarcely to know what clothes were except when she had to go out. Now I remember those days and all that preceded and followed them, the details are part of my screenplay. To say they were the best years of my life is rubbish and today there's no point in regretting how a mind as open and astonished as the one I had then went into "shutdown mode" again for years afterwards. That part of my story is over. The worst times have become a source of some amusement, especially with the woman I went on to marry. One can speculate idly. Had Catherine and me then known as much about each other as we do now, and had I realised what a "randy bitch" she was -- a term I use with much affection -- things might have been different. We both had hang-ups then. Obviously I won't write about hers. Confronting my own was a part of this log for too long to go on about it any more. I'd planned to leave all that out, pursuing instead the projects I've said I'll sort out during these few days off work. However, I've been asked to reconsider. For 'Les Inrocks', Laqueur found an highly academic way of saying even our blogs, books,films and music, etc. are merely scratching "agreeable itches". He makes such a strong case that it's a relief, in his Nerve interview, to find the man's less "disembodied" and more down to earth than I'd feared. He might want to take a closer look at the sheets sometimes if he was serious when he said women can't have itches as messy as men's. As an American, he should also know that when it comes to shared sex, many women in his own country were among the first in the last century to open up about being on top of things and anything but submissive. When I left Britain, it was otherwise. The thing on top was called Thatcher, she'd only just started and already a political party largely comprised of men who'd had an expensive schooling like mine was yelling: "Yes, yes, beat me more! Humiliate me again!" OK, I shall reconsider. The request is that you get more of this; not less. One came from a friend when I told her how the Kid had a real tsunami a few minutes into 'Seven' when I knocked over a glass of something messy while I was shifting one of the loudspeakers for her benefit. "I'll clear it up properly later," I told her, dabbing hopelessly. "Can't we just watch the film?" But no. Marianne thought otherwise. I suppose I should be grateful, because a lesson in housework from her is a rare experience. Normally, she's like the cat. Where she finds order, she leaves chaos in her wake. A bit like her father, except that hers is more physical. To be fair, she has promised to help me with a real clean-up. But I've found biscuit packets, even bits of biscuit or cheese, in places that make Zoe's blog look like 'House and Garden' magazine. Still, Zoe proves my friend's point: "Over the past weeks I've done a lot of thinking which has worn my brain out to the point of exhaustion. I've basically been tracing my steps to try and find out what triggered my funk and although I have a rather good idea I'm not quite sure as to when it started. Sometime late December is when I realised that my eggs were no longer sunny-side up but I tried to hide it for as long as I could until things got to the point where an appointment with my doctor was my best option before either I killed someone or someone killed me. And that's all I have to say about it. I'm depressed, but I aim to get better" ('My Boyfriend is a Twat,'). Over the past weeks, I too have done a lot of thinking which has worn my brain out to the point of exhaustion. And it's shown But it's best shared, because there's nothing like knowing you're not alone. I hardly think Laqueur has got any answers for Zoe. Far from it. But some of my VoWs do. What they show me, often saying what I take ages to write in the space of a couple of lines, is how much it matters to share the hard times as well as the good ones, to such an extent that ... well, again, you'll see. Earlier, Zoe was blogging about age. Not the usual stuff my friends worry about, when they're women all around a certain age and think it's the end of the world when I know better. Something else said before that I'll say again is, for all the nubile 20-somethings I bung here occasionally, women tend to get very sexy around then, but lucky's the man who realises that for the wiser ones, that's just the beginning. True love's all very well. But there's a whole lot more to life and its surprises once you get your head sorted out about sex. Already I'm beginning to think a week's not enough! On "African time", me? Today, my body didn't even wake up and get me out of bed until around 4:00 pm. Unthinkable! Well, let's have a bit more of the unthinkable. (To be continued...) 10:47:55 PM    your views? []

dimanche 5 juin 2005

Between the lines, boredom guaranteed Requested warning: workplace unfriendly entry. You may be surrounded by people who object to an almost naked woman trying to get the rest off though stuck by the most impractical shoes. Cameron's reinstatement may be an end to such forays, no promises. I'm on "Africa time". Yesterday I was catching up with friends again, because this is a wonderful free week. A foreign lass asked me: "Hey, when I was Paris that time and flashing tips around, was I wearing a pink bra or a light blue one?" "How do I know? Why anyway?" A misunderstanding, that was, since we'd been comparing the differences between the cost of living in Paris and London and eating out. "Ohh," I said, remembering a remarkable striptease, once blogged. "Your tits. I thought you said tips as the restaurants. Darling, you weren't wearing a bra at all. You've got very nice tits." A recall of "the Excalibur episode" may not please the woman who dropped in from London, but almost anything goes. This is quite a long-awaited week off. Martin didn't sound altogether cheerful when a note from Lauren arrived just before he quit himself on Friday. "Oh," said MB, who'll be running the Africa news coverage at the Factory in my stead most days, "I didn't know Lauren was going to be off as well." She's headed north to cross a border and spend a few days finding out what's really happening in Mauritania, a Muslim desert country where Islamists (Wikipedia for a good definition), who aren't extremists determined to see women well hidden in black from head to foot, are still at odds with a regime prone to locking them up. Me, I don't have to look at clocks and worry about deadlines. I've got so much to do and started by failing to go to bed again on Friday night. One of my first jobs is to try again to reassure people who've found this log hard to read of late, less because of weariness, pressure for time and the big change in my life that has flummoxed people. During those catching up 'phone calls, the Wildcat put her finger right on what's "wrong" not for some of my friends and readers, but for three who've come out with it and said they find it hard now to see what I'm on about sometimes. I know I'm long-winded and shouldn't blog when I'm too knackered, but she found the right words, so I know what to think while Cameron gets back her day. She won't be high for long. "You're got the banter going again fine and one feels there's a message sometimes but you're elliptical," the Wildcat said. "It's as if there's something you'll never quite say." She's right, absolutely right. There is something I'll never quite say since the current "really, luv?" phase of the log has a sub-plot. The Wildcat was also quick to note that aversion to explanations I've mentioned of late. In writing about the music and arts, sometimes the job, plenty of people and the sub-plot until last November -- getting myself sorted out with the help of the Shrinkess-Shaman and of friends including Ellie, despite my lunatic notion she was the woman of my life -- I like being very open about it. The limits are telling stories about others who don't want them told and one of the biggest lessons of setting my mind back to rights: there are no explanations for much of what happened and all I've understood since. I can make statements. I know myself, finally, and live with it happily. I'm very good at helping others with problems in relationships and if I know where they are should they get stuck and miserable in their own process of "growing up", "spiritual development", whatever it's labelled. I'm learning to develop psychic powers I've always had, rather than repress them. Most people know my credo already. I don't believe in god but am sure people's lives have purpose and meaning: none of the most important encounters we make in our lives merely happen by "accident" or chance. We all have free will should we want to use it. Since I now have real freedom, I've decided what I'm going to do with it. The Wildcat is one of the very analytical people I know, while Eleanor is one of the least. My life has been a constant search for explanations, but when I find them, mainly in science, one thing here has changed. The science of the paranormal, in particular, is difficult: you have to know what's going down notably in particle physics, neurobiology, a whole bunch of heavy stuff. I have a very high I.Q. and can get my head round it all. If you don't follow such sciences, the "supernatural" is anecdotal. But -- and I won't spell this out again -- I'm no longer out to explain everything I know. There may be "messages" sometimes but I'm no evanglist. Nobody needs that. Things happen to all of us that can't be explained. A while ago, I had some more "paranormal" insights so extraordinary and unexpected I've left it until this week to pursue them. I've "met" someone without knowing her, done a little bit more travelling inside the head of somebody else, asked for and got a partial explanation of what happens in such cases from a retired clinical psychologist in the States. I'd tell you his name if he's not happier being retired. I reached him via on online friend, he understood my "need to know", why it matters sometimes when I do this, told me all he could. He was so nice he even paid for the 'phone bill! That's all. Occasionally I'll make very weird assertions that need backing up, but this is a blog, not the Factory. I've been only too good at pushing people with what I feel and what I know, and that'sbad news for all concerned. It didn't help them, it sometimes hurt them, I confused them. I've told you before how good it is to have friends who have stuck around despite so much shit, even when I was a real mess. That's heavy, tough going. I don't want to do it any more. People who want the science, for instance, if I'm on about the Quiet Revolution and other things I'm interested in can ask me. If I've time, I'll tell you what I know, where to find it and who else to ask. But just as I've largely swept politics off the log, I don't like writing this kind of thing and would rather keep people entertained and amused, simply telling stories. You'll also get links I find fascinating. There's no point in remaining someone here I no longer feel I am in the rest of the world, it bores me and probably bores you. That doesn't mean I won't say when I'm in a black mood or cross enough about something to vent, as I've done about the mess of the modern media. There's so much funny and absurd stuff, as well as heaps of good music, to write about, as well as what I'm thinking about what to do with the film. Some of the people around me have become so precious I don't link to the bloggers I like nearly as often as I did. I thought that would be a passing phenomenon while I assimilated all that has happened to me. It isn't, but I still keep up with most people in the blogroll. I enjoy feedback and I think encouraging people is very important, like acknowledging your own achievements. But you're you, I'm me, and many of you are a long way away. I can't do it all. I'm into music so much again -- and about time too, since it was nearly my career -- that I'd prefer to promote VoWs and get on with my other project. I've got the message about where I'm difficult to follow. There's a likelihood I've got networking so right that I've also got a big risk in mind! It's time to put my part in the Quiet Revolution to a test. In the meantime, thank you, Cameron, for livening up these dry words. The subplot to this log an optional extra, but sexual fancies and especially practices are part of the LP. It seems to me that QR people know what to do with their fantasies. I have a tongue sometimes so deep in my cheek it's making a hole, but obviously not everyone knows irony when they see it. I keep much related material in "the orchard" (or "secret heartbeats" pages). Cameron's here to remind me and show you how bad it can get when you typecast people. EB's truer to herself than to "type". Now her picture's somewhere on the log, like my other friends. What we got wrong is behind us. When she said she thought I was "addicted" to the past, I told her where to shove addiction and other such notions. She did. With trepidation, I give you a link to a "cast", portrayed back in August last year when I first asked 'May I tell you about this wonderful dream I had have...?' That part of the orchard is largely a museum to folly, but I keep it. After all, that entry was probably the silliest. As such, it merits a new title giving a useful hint to men: 'How to scare the wits out of woman!' Next in line, folks, will be some words about a subject sometimes now a source of entertainment with women. Being ever curious, I can't help but ask the ones I know about what they do when they're short of a man. The replies have been ... odd. 3:26:52 PM    your views? []

mercredi 1 juin 2005

Notes towards a 'revolutionary' referendum This entry, subbed in the evening, has been shorn of several elements. On Sunday and Tuesday a fire and some appalling people made sleep impossible for most of the night. I've learned from experience that trying to catch a little before work only makes me feel worse. On Saturday, though, I'll be taking a much-needed break and am looking forward immensely to using that week well to pursue my projects and some ideas I'd spun around in a more leisurely way! Matignon: the magic roundabout How little time the Wikipedia needs to work nowadays. Those people had France's new prime minister, Dominique de Villepin (Wikipedia) on their front page almost before the news agencies got it all out. Finding out how they manage it is something I could add to a list of next week's "to dos". There are many of those waiting for a week's rest. How I look forward to it. No comment on President Jacques Chirac's talent for getting himself off the hook. Of the new man in Matignon, as Frogs call the official residence, all I note is that in the days when this log began, partly as a safety-valve for some steam, he was one of few politicians -- then foreign minister -- to give an intelligent and reasoned pre-war speech at the United Nations before that so-called "coalition" launched its "war on terror" in Iraq; that permanent war today proving itself the inevitable catch-all for anything that gets up noses in Washington and other insanely righteous circles. Maybe I should write a little more -- and perhaps more seriously -- about that French No and its fall-out, but when I said a while back you'll get little more politics here, I meant it. I'm so sick of the hypocrisy, the tedium, the predictability. What I feel I can do about it is more constructive than adding my voice to a cacaphony. Did Edison invent iPods? BJ visits Arts and Letters Daily assiduously (and, in passing, he's now a big Opera fan: the browser, not his luck last week in getting to chat to Cecilia Bartoli during a quick trip to London and a performance he enjoyed of some Rossini [ROH, Covent Garden] staged with a light & comic touch.) Barry's a fan of the latest Opera browser because it's good with increasingly indispensable newsfeeds and a fan of Bartoli "because, Nick, she's a very fine actress too." A nice woman. It hadn't occurred to me to include Cecilia's famous voice and her "classical" contemporaries among the VoWs ... maybe I should (the picture -- hate the sickbay-wall green, do like her gear -- comes from Gabi Estrellita's website, in German, where she manages an interview with God, note that, Nat!)... What BJ wanted me to know about, via A & L Daily, was "The Record Effect: How technology has transformed the sound of music,' a New Yorker article by Alex Ross, who: "discovered much of my favorite music through LPs and CDs, and I am not about to join the party of Luddite lament. Modern urban environments are often so chaotic, soulless, or ugly that I'm grateful for the humanizing touch of electronics. But I want to be aware of technology's effects, positive and negative. For music to remain vital, recordings have to exist in balance with live performance, and, these days, live performance is by far the smaller part of the equation. Perhaps we tell ourselves that we listen to CDs in order to get to know the music better, or to supplement what we get from concerts and shows. But, honestly, a lot of us don't go to hear live music that often." Barry does. He performs it too, a clarinettist and fan of the basset horn, an orchestral musician whose perspective and outlook is very different from mine, now making music has to be a thing of my past. Still, many of our tastes overlap, I tell BJ about today's tech, and he recommends Ross for the same reason I pass on the reference. It's worth looking 99 years back into the past as that "critic at large" does, since Ross's article is an entertaining reminder of how profoundly technology began to affect music and musicians almost from the outset with Edison. It's a keeper for the Kid the next time she plugs in her iPod, taking for granted some of the very strange noises and voices she gets out of it. Thanks, mate. Sensual sounds and brainstorms I'm returning to the only politics I've expressed much interest in for months. Sexual ones, of course, and a reminder to self to try to dig out a copy of an already old book in French my first Paris girlfriend gave me about sex and music: the sex that goes into music, often where you'd least expect it! I forget now who wrote it and must ask the woman, because it was offbeat but right on the pulse, downright weird sometimes, didn't have very much to do with the sublimation of sexual desire and passion into creativity -- there's plenty of that kind of writing around -- and full of fascinating insights. 'Ring-a-ring o' roses ... you must love me' Cue an article I spotted myself on a newsreader and I'll tell you what I was beginning to say last night. Never forgetting, when I do, "...it's all in your head!" If a "team led by a neuroscientist, an anthropologist and a social psychologist" are right, so it is, always was and I always knew it. "You just can't tell where you might find love these days," says a learned scientific study made easier to follow on EurekAlert! Oh dear, I'm a right-brainer. Very right-brained, very left-handed. Sometimes gauche enough to blog a naked woman, or even two like I did last night, with a teaser in mind. Well, let's forget the "female prairie vole" and those "peacock's fancy tail feathers" -- so what again? We know about the "myriad physiological ornaments" of attraction and those ties some men wear though the Squip says she'll never think of ties quite the same way since I logged what they say: follow that arrow right on down, girls. I'm not known for my own physiological accessories and get on with women who don't give a damn about my holes, saying they're truly more interested in the person they see through them, while he's often vividly imagining how he'll to say "Hey!" once they've absolutely no ornaments left of their own. I didn't know, however, that "romance is on the right, 'attractiveness' to the left" when it comes to the halves of our cranial walnuts. So says Lucy L. Brown, who found herself a "surprised" scientist. Nor am I jumping to any hasty conclusions. The picture of my thinking apparatus (borrowed from a site that doesn't credit the artist) has already been cut along the dotted line rather too often. The very name of a study called 'Reward, motivation and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love,' to appear in the July issue of the 'Journal of Neurophysiology', published by the American Physiological Society (APS), might be almost enough to put people right off sex for life. At least a day or two. I can almost hear Eleanor telling me: "Nick, what's all this analysis?" More masochistic people -- or those who enjoy messing around with ideas like these -- could go to the trouble of following up EurekAlert! to its source, where the piece is called "Love Really Is 'All In Your Head,' Though Intense Romantic Love Looks More Like The Brass Ring Than A Bouquet Of Roses" (APS). Apparently, you may download the full study, but I imagine it costs. Get happy! This stuff "has 'links seen to stalking, suicide, clinical depression, even autism." What more could anybody want? It's "love at first sight"? You're just fast-track mammals, folks, headed for bondage more rapidly than most. It's about survival, the species, you've heard it before. Romeo and Juliet just got unlucky. But gracious! "Our results support what people have always assumed – that romantic love is one of the most powerful of all human experiences," [says fellow researcher Helen Fisher]. "It is definitely more powerful than the sex drive." There's little new under the sun, though Brown's excited since "we are beginning to track what happens in the brain as a love relationship matures." Circuit failure I'm not going over old ground, there's been enough of that and far worse never written in the log while it happened. These people make sense. But -- this is a big but -- they've been looking at coupled human samples of romantic love in what I think is one kind of society we've known for centuries, which has begun to end, very slowly; but surely enough. I'm more interested in what doesn't make sense as evolution any more -- traditional, long-established "mating patterns" -- and what people get up to instead. There's a line in the report summary that caught my eye because I've known it for a while now: "Sex and romantic love involve," says Arthur Aron, "quite different brain systems." Yes. They do. They involve quite different brain systems and the one, very literally, has sweet fuck all to do with the other. Moreover, other scientists are slowly gathering evidence that "old" mating patterns and practices are over. They were never the same everywhere anyway. Women, to take the obvious example, no longer need a man around the place to keep the species going successfully. Modern medicine has seen to that. This is where life -- including my own in the months since I was declared completely nuts, back in one piece and a resident of planet earth; in a word, "healed" -- gets very interesting indeed. In our "western" society, some still talk of the "institution of marriage", as if it actually was any such thing. An institution, a permanent fixture, with sexual fidelity a code of practice enshrined to ensure survival. The suffering entailed has been phenomenal for millennia. In Nigeria, according to a story I subbed and sent into the world yesterday it still is. Men have used strong-arm tactics for so long that if an Amnesty International report is close in accuracy to the figures given, at least half the of the millions of women in Lagos, a vast sprawl of a city, endure every kind of abuse. Some women who commit the mildest of perceived offences, an absent meal, for example, risk a pretty terminal sentence. Death. And nobody does anything about it, though senior police officers make noises about law enforcement. In our own society, many women still routinely expect to wear a nice dress just the once. Afterwards, it goes into the attic in a box. So do most of their fantasies; unless it's "Wow, that was some office party! What was his name?" I exaggerate, deliberately, but have a point to make. All the science mentioned adds a few alarming labels and wiring diagrams to some of the livelier personal adventures recounted on this log, not always much fun for me though I've sometimes been funny about it, so people say, even less amusing for my "victims". Why should this be? The findings might seem to indicate that romantic pursuit, "obsession", then fidelity are hardwired into our systems. They aren't; that's nonsense! Romantic love can lead to the upsides and the many downers reported by the team, and on to something else. But try to convince me that having sex has very much to do with loving fidelity to just one person and I'll reply: churches, lawyers, outdated "moral" values, received ideas. In a word, codswallop! Nobody would come here any more if I was incapable of seeing the absurd aspects of all this, the tragi-comedy people make of their lives when they become jealous, possessive or guilty. But if you're here today, then you probably know about the Quiet Revolution, the quiet revolutionaries I've met or rediscovered, as in another chat in the M last night. What the heck, why not? The passing acquaintance enjoyed it as well -- one of those chats made easy because of a phenomenon I've mentioned before in more detail, when people who are relaxed by iPods and other music players size others up and any element of threat disappears if they like and accept what they see. Far more broadly -- and gradually -- I reckon the partnerships of the future, the loving of the future, are going to be about something else: words like sharing, caring, wisdom ... and trust. The Métro woman was pretty. I tend to "negative discrimination". If you don't turn me on, you don't stand a hope. The same, of course, works the other way round. And once we were through, we both plugged the music back into our heads, after she said: "Happy listening!" "Same to you." It might have turned out differently, neither of us were hurried; both chose otherwise, with no nervousness, just ordinary confidence. She was a quiet revolutionary, that went without saying almost as soon as we started talking. The day I made up my mind about sex -- by doing the uncoupling scientists are now also studying between "sexual animals" and unpossessive human beings -- I knew that a tiny little "nothing" had given me a much bigger story to take a good look at and to tell. Freedom is the hardest choice I've changed my mind. That's what the Quiet Revolution is, isn't it? It's all about changing your mind. Doing that can be a very strange business. You can't do it for anybody else and if you've got any sense, you wouldn't dream of having a go. The chances are if you leave a quiet revolutionary alone, he or she will come to you. Then you say "Hello, I think I know you from somewhere. Haven't we met before?" They may not know it, that's the odd thing, but they do once you say it and the chances are then, all you'll get for an answer is a smile. Recognition. Proof of the pudding? On the sheeting. You know those yoghurts I get from the Factory canteen to eat at night? I told them how I was so tired I took them to bed with a book. When I woke up, there was yoghurt on the pillow, the sheet, my specs, the book and me, especially in my hair. It could have been a lemon one or an orange and peach one, I love those. But the "laws of nature" being what they are, the yoghurt was a wild red fruit one, the messiest possible to make the worst stains. Except on the cat. "Thanks for the story, Nick," said Michelle, fleeing down the stairs, back to a world she runs where sensible, ordinary things happen and her job is to worry about her department, French social life. Referendums? That's where we began. Have we got any further? 8:00:06 AM    your views? []

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