22 June 2010

It’s been a difficult week, in more ways than one. First there was my decision to stop smoking after more years than I can remember, and not for health reasons. My computer packed up after several years of being beaten to death by words and photos. It was time for me to go dual or even quad core but for that I needed money. I worked out how much I could save by stopping my habit - the figure both frightened and embarrassed me.

Decision made I invested in a truckload of chewing gum and hoped… It’s now over a week later, I’m still smoke-free but finding it very hard to concentrate on my site work (when my smoking reached fever-pitch!). I’m still not sure if the craving will ever subside, but I do know that in a couple more weeks that new computer is mine…

It kills me when I see dead animals in the road including badgers, foxes, rabbits and birds, hit by cars and lorries encroaching on what used to be open field habitats. Having concreted the landscape, we have now set about converting a watercolour to an oil painting, with the saddening and maddening sight of beautiful feathered creatures suffocated by black oil. A worse and more graphic death I cannot imagine. We vent our collective anger on BP and the guys from Korn enlist other bands to not use BP products in their gas-guzzling tour vehicles.

Bhopal Photo by Raghu Rai, 1984

We have a right to be angry but we also demand more fuel, more drilling, from oil companies unfettered by governments and politicians. But where were the rock musicians and politicians when thousands were killed and maimed in Bhopal by America’s Union Carbide, and Nigeria’s countryside became a oil-contaminated quagmire? And where were these same people when the USA and UK decided to invade Iraq, killing and maiming many more thousands?

BP, rock musicians and politicians will survive all of this but many who don’t have a voice won’t. Time to get real; time to be honest with ourselves; and time to realise that some things cannot be ‘cleaned up’ and compensated - they just die and conveniently disappear. 

5 June 2010

I hear the familiar strains of the opening soundtrack music of the movie and I’m taken back to my mother’s country, Italy. I am watching The Godfather for the umpteenth time and still marvel at its attention to detail and authenticity. I smile as I watch the superb opening wedding celebration scenes and remember fondly standing on my uncle’s apartment balcony as bride, groom, family and friends assembled in the car park of the Naples waterside restaurant below, waiting for the commandatore break to the bottle of champagne and wave guests in with gusto for the wedding meal. Happy days. I was a young boy then, prone to falling in love with dark-haired women (twice my age), and usually in tears as I got into the car for the return journey home to England. Great films, like great music, take me back graphically to both happy and sad times. Francis Ford Coppola created something unique and special with The Godfather back in the 70s and in my opinion the film has seldom, if ever, been equalled. The typically Italian personal gestures, love of family and importance of loyalty are true-to-life and beautifully portrayed. There was a time when we would go to Italy every year like clockwork, always by car; I wanted to leave Engalnd, never to return. When I did arrive back home it felt colder, smaller and totally foreign. I still feel that way…

When I watched the news story unfold of the recent multiple killings in Cumbria it didn’t quite register, in the same way that 9/11 seemed like a fictional rather than real event. Man’s inhumanity to man and beast seems to have no boundaries. I started to think about motivation, mental and emotional state, and wondered whether we are reaching a point of no return… The killing and torture of children, the daily loss of life in Iraq and Afghanistan, our relentless quest for instant satisfaction, criminality and greed, compulsion to text and socialise with imaginary friends on the Internet, self-perpetuated environmental disasters - all seem unreal but unstoppable.  It’s as though there’s an external planetary force at work, out to prove our weaknesses and capability for self-destruction. We need to slow things down, stop and think, and recognise the implications of our actions on ourselves and others.

Dear old VInce Cable has been handed, in my opinion, the most difficult job in government. To slash and burn only needs a pen and paper, but to inject the economy with fresh and sustainable impetus needs more, much more… For the past 13 years the State has spent like there’s no tomorrow in generating economic growth through massive public spending and borrowing, and the unfettered encouragement of the ’service sector.’ The private sector has milked the government cash-cow for all it’s worth, and prospered without the need to innovate and invest for the future. The sums of money and perks ‘earned’ by the top slice of business managers and has grown like topsy on the back of rising asset and share values, and ‘remuneration consultants’ eager to recommend substantial packages for higher fees. In summary, short-termism has become an almost uncurable desease in need of radical surgery. However,  there exists new opportunities in this environmental, technological and digital age that can both reduce costs and increase the level of sustainable business growth. Vince will first need to work from the ground up - a root and branch exploration - rather like the investigations Preident Kennedy carried out in the 60s to establish what makes business tick and succeed. For Vince, that investigation has to start on home territory, in the government departments relevant to private sector business operation. He needs to throw away the Civil Service rule book and create a new one which cuts red tape and materially encourages the small and innovative - to sew the seeds for a new future. It’s a massive challenge in a country that still tends to live in the past; that cannot draw its gaze away from the rear-view mirror.

For me, it’s rare to come across a musician that does indeed throw away the rule book. It happened last week when I picked up a modest looking, card-sleeved album by American Meshell Ndegeocello, several weeks after having received it. There were no accompanying information sheets so I did not know what to expect when placing it on the CD tray of my player. The full impact of its contents took a few plays to recognise but eventually it hit home just how adventurous, but accessible, Meshell’s music is. This is one lady that cannot be neatly tied into a single generic box (as the media loves to do - and if one doesn’t exist, invents it), and uniquely bestows equal recording status to instruments and voice to create astonishing music. In fact I found the music so interesting that I have now contacted her management in the hope that she can provide a spoken background to her music to which I will add to several of her songs for a Shake Revelations special radio show. Not since first hearing Laurie Anderson’s marathon UNITED STATES, and more recently Imogen Heap’s SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, have I been so impressed, engrossed and surprised. Meshelle is original, distinctive with a voice that reminds me of Sade, but emotional impact that goes far beyond…