Donkeyshott & Xuitlacoche

Gary was gay and in those days we were all part gay, weren't we? According to Gary one-in-four men were gay, and so I thought well, be friends, don't be prejudiced. He took me round Madrid. "Cibeles", he said, is a gay pick up point." "The Retiro ," he said: "is a gay pick up point." "Plaza Espanya," he said is a gay pick up point (in fact it is the symbolic centre of fascism in Spain) ....until my whole map of Madrid became Gary's gay map. "How would you describe your sexuality" , he asked me: "Well, to some extent, I suppose I am polymorphously perverse." - I was taking the Mickey. "Aha!" He said. "That means you are gay. The only place they mention that word is in the gay literature." "Well actually" , I said, (my pretentiousness still gongs back to me over the years) "I read it in a book by Freud and not the gay literature." But what shocked me was this overlay...

We went to lake Naivasha occasionally, The Elzaki's had a Peugeot 404 and we had white Volkswagen Beetle (number plates: KGB 778). There are smooth straight stretches of road on the way to Naivasha and the Elzakis were in front. Dad decided we would race them: As he accelerated the VW engine clatter got louder and we went past blowing raspberries at the Elzaki children, who looked shocked and piqued. We shouted in triumph. But then the Elzakis entered the game and after a few minutes a dangerously rocking Peugeot 404 overtook us in turn, with the Elzaki children staring back at us in our upstart Beetle. In those days Peugeots were wonderful cars. The toughest rally in the world was the East African Safari rally . It was an important occasion for Kenyans. We used to drive out into the countryside and choose a promising corner with a hump and a high bank and sit and watch the rally cars as they approached. T he cars geared down, flew up, spun round and accelerated away in one s...

The Dangers of Remote Controlled Education Essentially, Labour's education policies amounted to a de-skilling of teachers by forcing every school to follow a National Curriculum in the questionable pursuit of standardisation. This National Curriculum was supposed to be an example of "best practice". This was a term borrowed from quality management. The National Curriculum reads as if it was thought up by one particularly conformist pedagogue in the bath. Why should every teacher follow the lead of a "paragon' s" ? It doesn't work in theory or practice. Some of the best teachers are incredibly eccentric. The vital thing you have to understand about teaching, and I speak as a teacher trainer who started training in 1988, is that every teacher needs to be aware of their own teaching style when they teach. Different teaching styles derive from different personalities and outlooks on teaching. Where does conforming to the ideas and thoughts of one personali...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Rijeka-view-2.jpg J'Attendrai 1 , JAttendrai 2 Dover 1939, on the ferry to France Mahler Symphony No 1 Hove, the smell of night flowers Natty Dread Rijeka crossing into Trieste 1976 Every grain of sand Play that at my funeral, Chicks Blue Brighton 1977 Sisters of Mercy Nairobi 1974 Ring of Fire Nice Mexican lilt to this Hurt 2008 February, London Where e're you walk At mom's funeral in Nelspruit, the song sung by John Moondance I977 Boulevard of Broken Dreams My children's music Pissing in a River Lowest Low No. 2 1978 Super Ape Brighton 1979 The Wind India and Tolworth Fire 2009 Heartbeats Tolworth 2007 Don't tell me Uruapan with Tere and family Christmas 2000 La Negra Tomasa with Teserita in 1989 Wish you were here India 1975 Buckets of Rain New Delhi 1975 If you want me, honey baby I'll be there. Willie the Pimp In India, preparing for O'Level examinations, 1976 Song for Sharon , Black Crow Brighton 1978 ...

These composers blow me away. Olivier Messiaen Juan Gutierrez de Padilla - a 16th century Mexican composer Morton Feldman Alfred Schnittke Fazil Say Gyorgy Ligeti Zoltan Kodaly Lou Harrison Iannis Xenakis Pierre Boulez Giacinto Scelsi Johannes Brahms John Cage János Bartók Edgard Varèse Mauricio Kagel John Adams Terry Riley Steve Reich Alvin Lucier Morton Subotnik Luciano Berio Thanks to Alpay and Last.fm

It should go without saying... ....that we condemn the scummy prat who called Liskula Cohen : "a psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank" But I disagree with Kate Harding , (in my view a pseudo blogger), posting her blog in the Guardian attacking bloggers. It's a case of set a thief to catch a thief. The mainstream media is irritated by bloggers because they steal its thunder and so they comission people like Kate Harding , people with nothing to say for themselves, apparently, other than that they are feminists, to attack bloggers. I'm black. So I can legitimately attack "angry white old men". I'm a feminist, so I have carte blanche to call all anonymous bloggers "prats." Because yes, that is her erudite response to bloggers. No I don't say that the blogging medium can't be used to attack progressives in whatever context. Of course it can. But to applaud the censorship of a blogger by a billion dollar corporate like Google, and moreov...

Picture by Aranxata I fell in love with a Purepecha of Tzintzunzan. I have a picture of her clearly in my mind - sitting on top of the largest round Yacata, overlooking the lake; there is a hoop of silver in her ear; she is an expectant, confident young queen dressed in an embroidered white cotton shirt. Across from us on our left we can see a weathered cathedral and monastry, it's sweet yellow stone is visible through the trees. The breeze blows off the lake, combs into the pines and then washes back - bringing the scent of winumo.

Slavoj Zizeck, in a rhetorical splurge in 2004 quotes: "Step on the throat of your muse." Because, as I understand him, the personal and the expressive is now the reactionary, it is what isolates us in consumerism. Get out there engage and if necessary use ethical violence to change an ethical stasis, an exploitable stagnation. So this blog is reactionary - according to Zizeck. There was an article in a philosophy magazine about the vanity of grief. Apparently the reason why people get taken up in grief is because they are actually confused about their own identity when they lose someone. So this blog is a manifestation of vanity. Blogging about things that you are not an expert in where you may not be read and may not get a response and blogging as if you had something of any significance to say has been called intellectual masterbation. So I suppose that this blog is an exercise, sometimes, in intellectual masturbation. Well what should I respond to that?

Else Steinhardt (seated) and Paula Neumann (standing) The first time we met Auntie Paula was at the Munich Olympics . Grandpa had decided to work for Bernard Moteur in Munich, where Heini lived, and so when we went to stay with them we could visit them all. . Granny and Grandpa's flat was decorated in exactly the same way as their Meudon flat - with the same clocks and paintings that are now spread over four houses. . It was an overly ordered environment, and then Paula arrived and put it right. The oppression lifted and the fun started. Paula's hair was white and piled up high. Her feelings showed on her face. She was about 60 but in fact she was really the same age as us. Granny would get irritated by the noise and scold us, and her harsh words would include Paula - which made Paula laugh. . We played a memory game together cities of the world and as we played she would exclaim joyfully, every time she matched a pair of cards. But she was especially happy to see Montev...

A Bloody Curse fall on Nationwide and it's favourite son From 9th September 1969 to 5th August 1983; that's 14 terrible years, the British population and British children were subjected to the accursed programme Nationwide . It was a blurry magazine format plastered into prime time. Nationwide marked the end of creative children's programming and the beginning of a Tsunami of slop. Nationwide , with Bough at its wheel for much of the time, was a machine for turning meaningful life and reality into mere sound and pictures. Nationwide was the televisual equivalent of the sound in the Malabar caves that drove Mrs Moore slightly mad - it was like a bulimic vampire worm moving through the ether sucking and chucking at the same time: boff ssss buff ssss boff ssss. Nationwide rehashed the trite received wisdom of the day and spat it back at you lukewarm for 50 putrid minutes. It was the essence of alienation. S kinhead culture had it's day an...

 The Halls and the Msimangs in New Delhi We are living at Riverside Drive in Nairobi. I bicycle home from school on my olive green Raleigh bike, cooling in the wind, taking the curves, with a quick twist heading down the slope of the shared driveway. Turning left, I cross the gravel, brake, dismount and then lean the bike against the wall. In the kitchen, Mom and Dad are waiting; Andy and Chris too. My parents are both excited. " We've got something important to ask you. Something knells inside. It is mom who asks. Boys, would you like to go to India?" This is the first time they have ever ask us for our permission to uproot. We are all content in Nairobi - happy, even. India? I think of the pastel blue and pink exteriors of Gujarati-Kenyan houses. My Gujarati - Kenyan (1) friends are are all called Patel; they are neatly dressed and their heads smell of rosewater; Patel mothers make Patel boys soft. That's what I know. But then our Indian-Keny...

Come out, come out let me tell you about it. I understand love of the forest of the "Buidubitsi" * and of the misplaced grand gestes of Dacian bravery. Come out, come out, let me tell you about it. I understand (I think) the birth of Teknic in Samos and Miletus and the journey from Crete to the shrine in Delos and the fading of mythos; Apollonian and Dionysian; the divine view from Patmos, and the intoxicating air of a resinous Black Forest. . Come out, come out, let me tell you about it I understand Heidegger's baptism at the source of the Danube its flows, down to the black sea; and Arendt's defencelessness. . Come out, come out Let me tell you about it I understand you better now because I understand your being this time. (*) Ukrainian river gods. The legend goes that when the Kievian Princes threw the river idols into the water one of them turned his bearded gold face to the surface in the strong current and the people shouted, "Come out, come out" Heide...

Gloria - reprise sloes are sour and dark your sloe-dark eyes absorb more light I often wish it weren't true then life would be easy and pleasurable and not so sour and intense And you? are you still that gentle dreamer is that the scent of Narcissus? - take no offense You see I have never stopped I am happy that we talked and that you say you never stopped * * * Missa Luba

. . . . . "Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d." William Shakespeare. We went to see 12th night in the open air at Ham House last Sunday and I have a few pictures I will post.

South East Anatolia Playlist of traditional Southern Anatolian - including Zaza - music. Kurdish dance music : şemmamme

If your so prescient, then dance on this beach! For most of the journey I was slap up against a secretary from Mexico City . She phoned me later from a hotel room. “Hello, remember me?” “Yeah, I remember you.” It was a cramped 36 hour drive. We walked, and slowly unfolding, headed towards the cheap hotel in the dark. It was 2 am. We could hear the leaves rustle, but couldn't see trees. There was a taco shop on the way. Three wide-awake people inside. They prepared our tacos, Merida style with Cochinita pibil. http://www.flickr.com/photos/rickpoon/2628699757/ Cochinita Pibil First, fatty pork is marinated in achiote and dissolved in orange juice. Achiote is a red ochre paste made from a type of berry native to the Yucatan . The pork is then baked slowly in banana leaves . The wrap is placed in a clay pot in the oven or in a pressure cooker. It’s ready in an hour and a half or so. When the pork is cool, practiced fingers shred the meat into its fibres...