myspacecide

OK, so I'm looking at my newsreader today.... anyway, another interesting piece from wired, on a nicely technophobic kick (and somewhat macabre). delving into the area of "legacy content" in ways which cast new light on the phrase. Interestingly enough though, the spoof Murdoch page seems to have disappeared as quickly as Wired drew attention to it (it's been "loading" for about 20 minutes now).

definitely time to chuck out the PC

Bang goes the last good reason to hang on to the old beast. Unless anyone can suggest any others (to a two-mac household)?

spring haze on Horniman Hill

Walked up around the back of the Horniman Museum with Emmanuel on Saturday. Little gardens budding timidly as we rose, high over London and feeling up a mountain, hidden and enclosed by the haze, cool in the whiteness. Among the many flowers (bright little red points of light against the white sky) whose names I don't know were the sticky buds of horse chestnut leaves sprouting, cherry blossom everywhere, sumac in fruit and a patch of baby banana plants like the ones I remember planting in Colombia. Houses being built in the gap-tooth spaces of the road (left by bombs in the war?), sprouting solar panels and skylights, things up here more friendly with the sky.

The roads narrow up to the top of the hill. If you look carefully you can see where the tiny spirits of the dead (the old woodsmen and charcoal burners of the 19th century) congregate, sitting together in the holes in fence posts or hiding next to the birds' nests, stroking their white beards and sharing a pipe over complex betting games (based on actuarial predictions of environmental devastation and played out over decades). But you have to be very quiet. And if they offer you the pipe, say no, you have to stay on this side, where you can still enjoy the museum.

Anga Diaz - Echu Mingua live

Knockout gig last night from conguero Angá Díaz and the live version of Echu Mingua from La Línea 06 at the Barbican. Echu Mingua was my favourite album for a long time (and according to the nice man at World Circuit it was all thanks to my hysterical review in Fly that all the proper papers noticed when he attached the CD and sent it round a second time - the rest is history) and the live set did not disappoint. This was "fusion" at its best - unforced, spontaneous, infused with collective commitment - with a powerful core of Cuban musicians, rhythms and tunes (vocal (El Indio), trumpets, bass (Felipe Cabrera), percussion and of course congas) complemented by the Malian Baba Sissoko on talking drum, ngoni and vocals, French flautist Magic Malik and DJ Dee Nasty (OK, he got a bit irritating at times), with a guest appearance from the phenomenal latin jazz violinist Omar Fuentes (?) - and everyone pretty much mucking in anywhere with vocals and percussion. Impossible to bottle the spirit and energy of the concert, but highlights included a voice-and-bass duet version of Dos Gardenias from Cabrera and El Indio, Fuentes' blinding outing over a phenomenal groove in the rhythm section, some genuinely enjoyable audience participation in the closing set etc. (You'd have had to be there.) One major distinction from the album was the absence of piano, or indeed any harmony instruments at all. I missed it once or twice (Pueblo Nuevo was perhaps so much Rubén González's piece that the late pianist was considered irreplaceable and Cabrera gamely and expertly played the whole tune on the bass - the result was interesting but occasionally thin) and the version of A Love Supreme palled a little at times in the absence of middle. But in general, it made things more interesting. And Magic Malik has a nice line in two-part harmony - I've never heard anyone else sing and play the flute at the same time (with completely different registers, rhythms and notes).

Angá and his merry band were supported by X Alfonso, a long-haired Spanish shouty rock/hip-hop outfit who had very little in common with the main attraction. Vaguely typical of world music promotion. (It's all sort of latin, they're bound to enjoy it....)

Anyway, got to go and make breakfasts for my house guests.

full circle

Spent part of the weekend with my 95-year-old grandmother and (surprise surprise) spent a lot of it talking family (though her memories of zeppelins on fire over London in the Great War were pretty good value too). It's striking how time seems to flatten out for her (in spite of being still sharp as a pin and full of good cheer). Once or twice chatting to my 35-year-old brother she clearly had him confused with my 71-year-old Dad ("that was 1938, so we'd had you already"). Apparently she occasionally confuses my uncle with my late grandad, which sounds more disturbing ("you and I were courting then....").

Anyway, she could be forgiven for that, given the stability over time of our family roots; I'd always known my Dad was born at home in Balham, just a few miles away from our current base. On Saturday I discovered that grandad's was a home birth in Sydenham - so with young master Shorter Romero due for delivery in a Forest Hill living room near us, it turns out in the long view that I (hospital on 5th Avenue, Manhattan) am the anomaly. Though of course my little one will enjoy the distinct advantage of having shaken off three quarters of his old world genes (thanks to three American grandparents).

chomsky in brockley

Found a rich seam in Bob from Brockley's blog. Not only has he written this entertaining little polemic against Chomsky (thanks for the link goes to my friend the ex-neocon fellow traveller Matt) but he is also doing a round-up of sarflondon blogs. I am feeling slighted to have been left out and will put him straight.

awww...

innat nice. feeling all warm and fuzzy in a web 2.0 kind of way having been asked to post my photos to a Forest Hill pool on Flickr, and been led into a pleasant little corner full of local love.

And earlier this evening I had the kind of experience I don't have too much any more. put Laurie Anderson's Big Science on the office stereo and, realising I had never really listened to it properly, listened to it again while cycling home. I suppose the endorphins and the slanting evening sunshine had something to do with it, but the combination of hearing all the sounds through headphones and the words properly, with all the joyce-ian mucking about wrapping up oblique lyrical (and can we call them timeless after 25 years and unforeseeable revolutions in information technology?) commentaries on the ache of modern life, geopolitics, the subconscious, suddenly had scales falling from my eyes, vistas falling open in front of me, jolts of amazement and recognition.

It's almost embarrassing to admit this - it's a classic album after all, containing a top ten hit. But there we go, sometimes things can just sneak up from leftfield and surprise you.

And then, in the middle of a residential street, I saw this.