The enhanced silence of the Tord Gustavsen Trio

Last Saturday evening my wife and I went to see the Tord Gustavsen Trio just up the road at the Wiltshire Music Centre.

I like noisy boisterous music (Brazlian, flamenco, blues etc.) and what my wife calls busy-busy music (Bach fugues etc.), but I also have a soft spot for Nordic Jazz. I have a number of Nordic Jazz CDs including the first one by the Tord Gustavsen Trio.

Anyway, the concert itself was well worth it in a very low-key way - a kind of musical meditation. The three musicians were clearly communicating with each other on many levels, even though the pianist and the drummer had their eyes closed most of the time and the bassist was mostly looking into a middle distance. In fact, from my studies of hypnosis, I would say that all three were in a very special type of trance.

The music itself was lyrical, reflective and sparsely romantic in that Nordic way. Somehow the attention that the musicians paid to each note fostered the same in the audience. There was even a drum solo that will go down as the most memorable I've ever heard because a lot of the time it was barely audible - a pulse, a shimmer, a rhythmic presence in the ear drums.

All in all the whole experience was very stilling and strangely exciting. In fact, the paradoxical notion of "enhanced silence" kept popping into my head. The next day I found out that Tord himself is studying for something between a Masters and a PhD in musicology. As he puts it, "It's all about living the paradoxes of life and art dynamically and fruitfully. It's about coming to terms with contradictions recognizing both sides of polarities without getting stuck in the middle-of-the-road."

Check out his interesting thoughts here >>>>> and the trio here >>>>>

In praise of Peppers sunglasses

On the first day of our US vacation we were confronted with the fierce heat and glaring sun of southern Utah. So we descended on Gearheads Outdoor Store in Moab and kitted ourselves out.

The moment we stepped out of the store I realised that my sunglasses were something special - fantastic polarization, greatly reduced glare, light and comfortable. Smudges cleaned off really easily. And a week later, they were still unscratched despite occasional tumbles.

So I was really upset when I lost them a couple of weeks later. I went back along the trail for an hour looking for them, with no luck. Then I searched every store I came across hoping to find a replacement as good. No luck.

On my return to the UK, I called the store in Moab, found out the brand (Peppers) and started looking for resellers online. There were just a few and they didn't have the models I wanted. So I e-mailed Peppers HQ, which turned out to be exactly the right move. A charming and helpful lady called Joy went out of her way to get some replacement sunglasses off to me. And in the space of just over a month, I have gone from never having heard of Peppers to being a big fan and advocate.

The formula? A really great product at a good price, plus excellent customer service.

Unexpected vacation high point

The family is gradually recovering from a US vacation of 3,000 road miles from the spectacular desert scenery of southern Utah (Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce) to the unique splendour of Yellowstone.

Amid all the memorable wonders of those great National Parks, my personal fondest moments came in between - literally. Driving up from southern Utah we stopped off a a little town in the north, Brigham City. The usual motels were all booked up, but we found a little family-owned place called the Bushnell Motel. It didn't have a pool or a breakfast facility and it wasn't arranged in the cookie-cutter lay-out that we found everywhere else (yawn). But our room(s) had plenty of space for the five of us and it felt just like home. It was such a wonderful change.

And instead of using the standard-issue motel pool, we drove a mile to the magnificent municipal pool and had a great few hours in the desert sun there with the the local people. And when the pool closed at 8 pm, we noticed a ball park nearby. So we wandered over and enjoyed the warm wind, the metallic clunk of baseball bats connecting with the ball and the gorgeous evening light on the mountain. Perfect.

In memoriam - Barbara May Ellis, aka "Bead"

Yesterday I had the sad pleasure of attending the funeral of my auntie, who passed away well into her 80s. She was officially Barbara May Ellis, but her children, grandchildren, great-granchildren, nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews and their friends knew her simply as Bead.

Those who knew her don't need any reminding of her sparkling personality and quirky ways - they were beautifully evoked by her grandsons Anton Llewellyn and Zavier Ellis. And for anyone who didn't know her, it's not much use me waxing lyrical here.

The important thing is that despite the tears and sorrow at her passing, no-one could think of her and talk about her without a chuckle and a smile, remembering her love of practical jokes and funny stories. She was a master of the art of fun and I want to mark out this little corner of cyberspace to commemorate her, with love.


RIP Bead

Learning to see anew

I went for a vigorous spin on my bike last Sunday, and for once didn't take a camera - it was raining. But even without a camera, I found myself looking more appreciatively around me, taking more delight than usual in the lines, patterns, colours, shapes and forms of everything around me.

Vision is a highly "synthetic" process, meaning that the brain has to work hard to combine all the visual input from our eyes, moment by moment. What we see and take for granted as "reality" is in fact a selective composition that we put together in our heads without knowing it. And one of the most striking things about taking photos -certainly at first - is the huge difference between what we think the picture will look like and what actually emerges.

For me, taking photos purposefully is turning out to be an on-going process of re-learning how to see - a real adventure.

Anyone for scratchy music?

Ever since CDs became mainstream there has been a counter-current of audiophiles who insist that valves and vinyl make for a warmer sound. As for MP3, hard-core audiophiles won't even consider it.

Over the years I've also noticed that classical musician friends are largely indifferent to the whole issue - their sound systems tend to be pretty ordinary, even though they pay a fortune for instruments and agonize over the timbre and nuance of live performances.

I raised this point with a couple of musician friends recently, knowing that their whole music collection is digitized and played on a Bose+iPod set-up. "How can you be so picky about performance and so indifferent to sound system quality?" I asked. They had to think about it for a moment. And they came to the conclusion that the important thing for them was to hear what the musician was trying to do with the music rather than how well it was reproduced. They don't expect recording and playback to be more than a shadow of the real thing.

As for myself, I'm absolutely delighted that I can get all CDs and audiobooks and podcasts onto an iPod. And I'm amazed how different it all sounds played through room speakers, different earphones and car systems.

Readiness to be inspired....

Thinking a lot about creativity at the moment and wondering how people do it ... certainly in the visual area, which is way outside my home base. So I was perusing Luminous Landscape and came across an excellent essay by Alain Briot. The following is an excerpt and the full piece is here>>>

Being ready means being able to dedicate time to being inspired, something that in today’s society, and in the life of a majority of people, is rarely the case. In other words, if you hear yourself saying “Yeah, right. Like I can really drop everything just because all of a sudden I feel inspired!” you are actually expressing how most people feel. There is little room today for inspiration in most people’s lives. However, if your goal is to create artistic photographs, if your goal is to be an artist, in short if your goal is to create art, you must make room for the muses to visit you, or for when inspiration strikes, whenever that may be.

The pleasure of not quite understanding

Was it "'scuse me, while I kiss the sky" or "scuse me while I kiss this guy"?

There have been loads of songs and lyrics I either didn't hear properly or just plain didn't understand. When foreign friends asked me to transcribe the English lyrics of songs for them I often found myself unable to explain what they meant.

For the last 20 years or so Brazilian, Portuguese and Spanish-language music have been big in my playlists. And as with the English lyrics, my understanding is sometimes pretty complete but often patchy and impressionistic. And I've recently realised that there's great pleasure to be had in not quite understanding things. It leaves space for words and images to establish themselves and take on a life of their own. And when you think about it, that's how everyone learns their native language as a child.

Unforgettable

A morning workshop with David Thomas, a red-headed ex-fireman from Halifax who has dramatised his competence - memory - by learning and reciting Pi to 22,500 places without a mistake.

An ordinary-looking man with a sly sense of humour and a mastery of memory techniques that he quickly taught the group. While we were memorising a list of 20 items in four minutes, he memorised a deck of 52 cards!

Highly recommended. (Oprah like him too)

Us and Them

Sometimes, just very occasionally, it hits home just how amazing it is that individual human beings manage to communicate with each other at all, let alone pretty constantly. After all each of us assembles our own version of "reality" inside the light-proof box of our skull, picking and choosing from the deluge of information supplied by our sensory organs.

I remember finishing a 5x4 day course, when 120 or so people were asked to take paper and crayons and draw a representation of their experience. We had all sat in the same room those 20 days, heard the same things, gone out for lunch and drinks together, and yet looking round the 120 visuals hung on the wall, no two were even similar. All were different. And that was just 120 people.

The fact is, every other human being out there is "Them" and Us is really just "Me". If I'm going to kid myself that "Us" includes my family, my friends, my colleagues or my countrymen, then I may as well keep that "Us" boundary flexible and recognise that it's down to me who I regard as "Us".

Beauty in depth

Sometimes you just get lucky. Take yesterday.

I was surfing round some of my favourite online haunts when I stumbled onto an article in Luminous Lanscape called Taking Your Photography To The Next Level. Part 1

Original and stunningly aesthetic photos along with thoughts and words that both made sense and inspired. There are two more articles on the same subject by the same author, George Barr. He talks about assessing where you're at technically and aesthetically.

I went to bed thinking about his images and thoughts, I woke up thinking about them and I reckon I'll be thinking about them for a long time to come.

Jump here to his gallery

In support of Alan Johnston

He's the BBC's reporter in Gaza who was abducted in Gaza on 12 March.



You can pick up an Alan Johnston button here >>>>>

Urrrgggh - it's technolust

Most years I go through at least three or four spells of lusting after a piece of hardware or software - marvels of technology that will of course transform my life.

Sometimes the lust goes away without being consummated because my attention has locked onto something else. Sometimes the lust just keeps on and on until I do something about it and actually buy the piece of kit. And sometimes I even use it after I've bought it!!

The latest object of desire was one of these here>> but as so often happened, one thing led to another and now it's one of these here >>>

Maybe it's the boys' toys thing. Maybe it comes from being brought up in the heyday of science fiction and James Bond. Maybe it's just distracting myself with mindless consumerism. Whatever - maybe I should just let myself enjoy it.

Living with art - digging a little deeper

On the subject of "vivir con arte" Profesor Grahasta wrote (see Spanish below) that for the Greeks to consider something a work of art, it had to have order, balance, contrast, unity and harmony. But that maybe these five elements represent the expression of the aspirations that we all have in our lives.

It's a good start, but a little Apollonian for my taste. It's missing a little bit of the Dionyssian, the flamenco, the edge of daring, the leap in the dark.

----------

El "arte de vivir" es una expresión extraña. Los griegos fueron los primeros que elaboraron la teoría del arte. Buscando las razones y las reglas de esas inspiradas creaciones humanas, llegaron a la conclusión de que había cinco elementos que debían hallarse siempre, para que algo fuese considerado "una obra de arte": orden, equilibrio, contraste, unidad y armonía. Pero... ¿Sólo en las obras de arte se encuentra esta excelsa combinación?

Quizás, estos cinco elementos representen la expresión de las aspiraciones que todos tenemos para nuestras vidas.

Leaning about vs. Learning how

In my 53rd year, which I reckon to be halfway through my life (touch wood), I find myself in a frenzy of learning how to do new things, aka "skills-based learning". So much of life is weighed down with receiving information (=knowing about), it's refreshing and invigorating to put learning into action. And it's very satisfying to go from learning how to knowing how.

The local university (Bath) has a "Division for Lifelong Learning" offering a great range of courses for all-comers; I learn Digital Imaging (e.g. Photoshop) there on a Monday evening and from the Internet which is stuffed with interactive courses teaching Photoshop. The University also has a fantastic sports department, so Tuesday evenings it's tennis lessons with other "mature" learners. And just up the hill we're very lucky to have a performing. recording harpsichordist who also giives weeks piano lessons to five-thumb klutzes such as myself. And in several locations round the country, the London College of Clinical Hypnosis delivers accredited courses in one of my favourite subjects - I attend the London courses one weekend a month.

For anyone of any age interested in learning "how", this a fantastic time in history.

Addictions

I reckon many people have addictions to a greater or lesser extent. By addiction, I mean repeatedly doing something against one's better judgment - usually because of the feelings that come with it, or the feelings that are masked by it.

I've recently half-broken an addiction to the action serial "24". Having had series 3, 4 and now 5 on DVD has made it possible to get to the end of one "hour" and go straight into the next "hour" - to get the next "fix", as it were. It's been instructive to recognize the "next fix" craving and push it away.

I have been a computer game addict (sad, eh?) and I broke that one by uninstalling the games and binning the software. I also have an online forum addiction that waxes and wanes. Currently it's waning.

From what I can see, it's also possible to be addicted to certain feelings, which results in behaviour that delivers those feelings. Angerrrrrr. Outrage!!! Moral superiority. Self-elevation. Being right. Winning. Titillation.

All of which inclines me to believe that many of the things that many of us do are ultimately means of creating certain feelings that we want to have. Goals (conscious or unconscious) are often the means to get the feeling. I guess the trick is not to think that one can't have the feeling without reaching the goal.

Visual creativity

Is it possible to develop visual creativity or is it something some people are just born with? Even at age 7 or so my daughter was already way better than me at drawing, painting and collaging. Now at age 12 she could be my teacher.

I'm creative enough with concepts and words, but visual is a weak area for me. So I'm wondering whether I can stir things up inside and develop greater visual creativity, just for the hell of it. And I'm wondering whether my hypnotherapy learning will enable me to mobilise something latent in my unconscious. Stranger things have happened.

It's a beautiful life

A couple of lifetimes ago a lovely young woman in Granada, Spain, introduced me to the idea of "Vivir con arte" - literally, to live with art. I don't know what the exact translation is, but for me the spirit of those words was about the presence of beauty and creativity and ingenuity and zing in life.

Elegant Simplicity

There's no escaping complexity but it is possble for complex elements to come together in ways that feel intuitively right - Elegant Simplicity.

It's the sort of feel that Apple goes for.

Googling around on the notion of Intuitive Design, I came across this organization -suitably named Intuitive Design. True to the name, the website is Elegantly Simple and has some very interesting ideas.

Knowing yourself

Chatting with my excellent friend Mike Wilsher yesterday, we stumbled on an intriguing paradox. It's an observation rather than a criticism.

Many people don't have a clear sense of who they are and what they're really about in life. I'm no exception, although things seem to be getting a little clearer.

And many people have a very fixed idea of who they are - such a fixed idea that they limit their possibilities. "I'm not the sort of person who...." etc.

The paradox is that they're often the same people.

Which charity to choose?

There's no shortage of deserving causes that could put some of my (and your) money to good use - AIDS, environment, housing, medicine, animal welfare, old people, the terminally ill..... It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the choice, and to feel that whoever you donate to, thousands of other causes also need your money.

I've come to the conclusion that to make a wise choice in allocating my charitable giving, I need to be looking for maximum leverage. And it strikes me that a lot of the big ills in the world are caused by oppressive governments. On balance, the more honest, transparent governments are accountable and look after their people better than the more corrupt, incompetent governments that stiffe dissent. Corrupt governments (and their suppporters in less corrupt countries) swallow vast amounts of money that could fund thousands of grass-roots projects.

So my money will be going to an organisation that is dedicated to combatting oppression. And unless someone can tell me otherwise, the organisation that has the best track record in doing this is Amnesty International.

Media fragmentation

Last night I finally finished watching "Cache" (Hidden), a French-language movie directed by an Austrian. It runs to about 1 hour 53 minutes, but it took me three viewings to complete - one on the DVD at home a couple of weeks ago, then on my laptop in bed at my mum's place last week, then finally last night on my laptop in bed.

The movie itself is a little "arthouse" - not at all the standard Hollywood stuff. It leaves more questions than answers. And watching it in bits in different places was strangely appropriate.

The previous feature film I rented was Amelie (also French) which I also watched in bits.

At the moment I'm just not prepared to commit practically two hours non-stop to watching a movie and I'm certainly not prepared to commit to being in front of the TV at a particular time to watch a series. So we rent "24" on DVD, four episodes at a time. At around 45 minutes an episode, it's easy to squeeze in at the end of the day between other activities such as reading to the kids, piano practice and sleep. Perfect.

Enlightenment republics don't want women leaders

There are two great Enlightenment republics in the world - the United States and France, both established in the late 18th century and both inspired by Enlightenment ideals - especially freedom. Both regard themselves as beacons of progress for the rest of the world. Both threw off the oppressive yoke of monarchy and opted for presidential democracy.

Yet over 200 years later it's only now that France and the United States are facing the real prospect of voting for a woman president. And both Hillary Clinton and Segolene Royal are facing enormous hostility and a lot of sexism. As Jonathan Freedland showed in his BBC radio programme "The Long View", Margaret Thatcher faced a lot of sexist sneering, but that was 30 years ago.

I suspect the British were able to accept a woman Prime Minister because the logic of royal succession has put a woman on the throne a number of times. Force of circumstance has put a woman on top and life continued - the country didn't suddenly decline into a bunch of softies collecting shoes, swapping recipes and consuming romantic fiction.

Aside from the political merits of the two presidential candidates (who would follow Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush - not exactly stellar presidents), I don't think the French or the Americans are yet ready to allow a woman to take the top job