Saturday Evenings: Stay In, Sit Up and Switch On

So, apparently there are 104 billionaires in the UK and a fifth of those are Jewish. Jews are also likely to be three times top managers in FTSE companies compared to other groups. Finally, Jews are four times as likely to be non-executive directors in banking.

So what? You might be asking yourself. That was exactly the question I posed to myself when I finished watching Trevor Phillips’ recent documentary Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True.

I really do not mind provocative material, be it films, books or plays. Bring it on, I say. Freedom of speech is a right to be cherished and one I feel very strong about. But I do mind thoughtless, provocative theses. I do not like half-baked, eager-to-please arguments either. I believe that Trevor Phillips’ documentary erred on the side of controversy for the sake of controversy.

Provocative? No. Naïve reporting? Maybe

First of all, back to the Jews. This was the first group Phillips focused on to back up his thesis of race as a hard-to-approach subject in today’s UK. What complicates matters somewhat is that many Jews do not and will not acknowledge themselves as Jews. I should know, I work with some of them. You see their surnames, you make an assumption, you ask them about their Jewishness and they shrug their shoulders at best or say that they are not religious at all. To these people their Jewish surnames are just that, Jewish surnames. They could be Spanish or Igbo for all they care; they see themselves as secular first and as many other things after. Trevor does not, at any point during the film, say whether he asked this fifth of the UK’s 104 billionaires whether they kept kosher or not. Presumably these well-heeled Jews do not live in Stamford Hill, so access to them might be a tad difficult. Why, then, assume that just because their surnames are Jewish, they consider themselves to be Jewish?

That is the main problem with Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True. In his desire to provoke, Phillips leaves massive gaps behind. Holes big enough that you could drive a lorry through. Take the way he tackles the sex scandal in Rochdale few years ago in which several girls were groomed by gangs of predatory men. Trevor, quite rightly, focuses on the fact that many of these men, Asian, and mainly of Pakistani origin, were not stopped. One reason, as he clearly explains, might have been fear of being culturally insensitive towards this particular community. I agree with Trevor. But why does he not apply the same brush to the dozens of sexual abuse cases that have come to light in recent years (at the moment of writing this post it is Lord Janner’s alleged sexual assault on children and young people that is being talked about) in which the majority of the accused are middle-aged, middle-class, white men? If we can point the finger at one minority community and flag it up as an example of sexual practices that leave a lot to be desired, would it not be fair to do the same to another one?

The issue is that Trevor leaves far too many loose ends. Grooming and sexual abuse do not happen only in certain communities. They are not carried out by a particular cultural group nor are they related to individuals of a specific age group. They are the sad manifestation of a society that is sick. They are the result of the increasingly sexualisation of our youth, especially girls. They are also the sad outcome of a sexist, misogynistic society. I agree that culture, religion and other factors might have an aggravating influence but overall, we (journalistic “we”) have created the problem and now we cannot solve it. A country in which it is still OK to ogle at the breasts of a teenager on the third page of a tabloid, is a country that provides fertile soil for the likes of Jimmy Saviles and Shabir Ahmeds to grow and thrive.

I was disappointed in Trevor. There was such a hype surrounding the programme (I watched it on catch-up once the initial furore died down somewhat) and yet I felt short-changed. Phillips probably thought himself to be “daddy cool” for using the c-word (yes, that c-word!) preceded by the adjective “black” in reference to the incident involving the Chelsea captain John Terry and the QPR defender Anton Ferdinand. To me it was mere posturing. In my opinion the real Trevor came out at the end of the programme when he transformed himself into a giggling adolescent whilst interviewing former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Instead of pressing Tony on his ill-thought decision to invade Iraq which had the unfortunate side-effect of rolling back years of good and positive work with the Muslim community, Trevor committed the ultimate act of hara-kiri whilst a beaming Blair asked his former charge not to be too hard on himself. To say that the scene reminded me of the relationship between a slave-master and his servant would be apt. It was also rather uncomfortable.

There are many things to say about race. The issue is not whether they are true or not, but to explore the factors behind them. Trevor had the chance to give us a smidgen of that but in the end he, too, preferred to sacrifice good analysis for sensationalism. The irony is that the only victim was truth itself.



© 2015

Next Post: “Urban Diary”, to be published on Wednesday 29^th April at 11:59pm (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

Who owns culture? More specifically, when it comes to ethnic minorities, who owns their culture? How are guardians of said culture appointed?

I waited for a while before posting about Exhibition B here. The atmosphere was too toxic and the language too “black and white” (no pun intended) to risk showing my head above the parapet. As a blogger, I have always prided myself on the sort of discussion that happens in my (virtual) space. No matter what I throw at you, fellow bloggers and readers – and I throw a lot – the responses are most of the time respectful and mature, which is probably one of the reasons why my blog has remained troll-free so far.

Sadly, none of this respect and maturity was present when a group of protesters closed Exhibit B down.

For those of you who still don’t know what I’m going on about, Exhibit B was an art installation that was due to open at the Barbican at the end of September before it was cancelled. The show was created by a white South African artist, Brett Bailey, and a cast of black performers and contained disturbing scenes of black subjugation inspired by the 19^th and early 20^th century “human zoos”. Throughout the exhibition the performers fixed their gaze deliberately on visitors. Some of the scenes were hard to watch – or so I have heard because with the show being closed down I missed the opportunity to have my say – depicting the horrors of the systematic dehumanisation that happened throughout the period of imperial Europe.


Art or an expression of white privilege?

Immediately after the press release went out the battle lines were drawn. On one side stood the censors, acting on behalf of a whole community, or culture, rather, and on the other side were the defenders of free speech and artistic freedom. I found myself on the latter camp. What complicates my position is that I am a black immigrant. In the eyes of those protesting against Exhibit B I have betrayed my people, my culture and my roots; in their eyes I am a Judas.

What we seem to always forget is that Judas gave back those thirty silver coins and I have never taken any to begin with. The irony in this whole “storm in a tea cup” situation is that by forcing an institution as respectable as the Barbican to close an art exhibition, these (self) appointed guardians of black culture have contributed to the same problems they purport to fight against.

As I have argued before in this very space the biggest threat to my existence as a black immigrant in today’s Britain does not come in the shape of a boot worn on a racist thug’s foot, likely as it might be. It comes, more often, in the condescending attitude to me and black immigrants who think like me, that prevails amongst some well-meaning folk (especially those in the upper echelons of power) for whom I am nothing but a category. By denying us a platform from which we can argue issues like this one the protesters against Exhibition B validated those prejudices. Black people can’t think, they are not good at analysing and assessing works of art for what they are.

I’m writing this post in the middle of October, a month when we normally hold Black History Month in the UK. This is an event that does not appeal a great deal to yours truly, despite the fact that I have contributed to it as a performer, as a dance tutor and as a film festival curator and organiser. But still, the thought persists: “Why should we have just the one month to celebrate the many achievements in black culture?”. There should not be a Black History Month but a Black History Year, where you don’t feel the pressure to hire black musicians (usually percussionists because drumming is so African!) at the last minute to show that you are completely “clued-up” about diversity. Actually, scrap the whole Black History Month/Year. Black history exists, it’s palpable and real, deal with it on a day to day basis.

This world of patronising attitudes is the one in which these self-appointed censors operate but they don’t seem to have any awareness of it. The other irony is that the majority of those marching against the show had not seen the installation. The person who started the online petition that ultimately led to the closure of the show, Birmingham-based activist and journalist Sara Myers, said that there should have been prior consultation. She also added that the exhibit was “in very, very bad taste for our community”. Your community? Wait a second, that’s also my community! Lee Jasper, former advisor on equalities to ex-mayor of London, Ken Livingstone said that “black people, not white liberal elites are the best arbiters of the extent to which this exhibition is helping or hindering the challenge of combating racism and prejudice.” Wrong on all accounts, Lee, the best arbiter is you and you only. If, as Bertold Brecht stated “art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it”, you, Mr Jasper and your fellow protestors, took away my hammer and, thus, deprived me of the right to shape my reality.

I understand how the process of spear-heading a movement occurs. It can be intentional or totally accidental. If you happen to be in the right place at the right time when discrimination against a particular group takes place and you raise your voice against this treatment in an articulate and clear manner, you might end up as the leader of the pack. It is then that you might start feeling that your views are the right views, the only views even, for everyone on your team, whether they agree with them or not.

I am sure that Sara Myers’ intentions were good. I am not criticising her for that. I am sure that she thought that by getting 23,000 people to sign a petition calling for the closure of a show in a free, democratic society she would somehow contribute to the development of our race. The problem is that Sara Myers is not all black culture. In fact, let me be really controversial here, before black culture there is something called human culture.

Exhibit B was part of that human culture. The fact that both creator and institution had to go to great lengths to convince people that the installation was not racist shows how far we still have to go as a culture. If the installation was or wasn’t racist I would have liked to arrive at that conclusion myself. I don’t need Sara Myers or Dr Kehinde Andres to tell me how to assess a piece of art. The protesters also showed huge contempt towards the performers for whom this was an opportunity to explore their own roots and events from the past in which their forebears were probably involved. By forcing an arts centre to cancel an exhibition under the aegis of freedom of speech these self-appointed guardians of black culture took away the performers and the artist’s freedom of speech. Please, stand to one side, let irony back through in again.

Sadder than the spectacle of so-called defenders of black culture protesting against an arts installation was the Barbican ceding ground. Bigots come in many shapes and forms, not just in the shaven-headed hooligan or the tie-and-suited Ukipper model. They can also be academics who have earned their stripes by writing books about race or activists raising awareness of racism. An arts centre, on the other hand, has a duty towards its users and visitors regardless of their gender, skin colour, (dis) ability, religion, sexual orientation or race. The Barbican shouldn’t have closed down the exhibition. Engagement? Yes. Censorship? No. It looks as though we still haven’t learnt the lessons from Salman Rushdie’s fatwa.

Black culture, or the black community, as Sara Myers called it, is bigger than these self-appointed guardians can imagine. As Aditya Chakraborty, senior economicscommentator for The Guardian, wrote in a thought-provoking column last week, you can be Bengali and black. This is not a combination that springs quickly to most people’s minds. Moreover, black not always is the main identity marker for some of us born outside the UK. Should we then give up on our main identity markers to match Sara and Kehinde’s ideas of blackness?

I will always fight racism whatever shape it takes. But sometimes it is harder to fight it when it comes from people you would otherwise see as your allies.



© 2014

Image taken from The Daily Telegraph

Next Post: “Pieces of Havana, Pieces of Me”, to be published on Wednesday 5^th November at 11:59pm (GMT)

Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music... Ad Infinitum

The official summer season kicks off in two days but this blog owner has been suffering its effects for a couple of months already. Due to the prolonged cold weather we had after March when spring should have arrived, pollen has appeared later than usual. And that goes for tree pollen and pollen from flowers. So, you could say that I have been under a double attack in the last ten or twelve weeks, except for my fortnight holiday in Cuba back in April.

This is the reason why my recipe tonight carries sugar up its sleeve, to me summer is sugar, I have no idea why. This is one dessert I will be making very soon if I can just get over the fact I have to include rum. You see, I’m teetotal. But I confess it’s the pineapple that’s done the trick for me.

I came across this pudding in the pages of The Guardian’s new(ish) Cook supplement and knew immediately I had stumbled upon one of those delights my family will be asking for again, again and again. Words by The Soul Food Girls Supper Club, by the way.

Pineapple and rum upside-down cake with hot buttered rum sauce

For the cake

435g pineapple rings, drained
2 large eggs
125g golden caster sugar
150g plain flour, sifted
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
50g unsalted butter, melted
Zest of ½ a lemon
75ml semi-skimmed milk
3 tbsp dark Jamaican rum
For the sauce
100g light brown muscovado sugar
120ml double cream
120ml dark Jamaican rum
2 tbsp unsalted butter
Grease a round cake tin and preheat the oven to 175C/350F/gas mark 4. Line the bottom of the tin with pineapple rings – you may need to squeeze them in a bit to make them fit. Cut the remaining rings in half and line the sides. In a bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and frothy. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder and mix well. Add the flour mixture to the eggs and sugar, and combine well. Add the butter, lemon zest, vanilla extract, milk and rum and mix well. Pour the cake mixture on top of the pineapple rings and bake for about 40 minutes until it has risen, is a light brown colour and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let the cake sit for about 5 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool completely. The bottom (the top when it's upside down) of the cake will look underdone: this is because the pineapples are so moist, but the rest of the cake will be fine – so don't worry! To make the sauce, stir the sugar and cream in a saucepan over a medium heat until melted and it has become well combined. Add the rum and allow to simmer until slightly thickened. Add the butter and stir until melted. Pour over the cake while hot and serve immediately.

For more recipes visit soulfoodgirlssupperclub.blogspot.co.uk

The music to go with this recipe has to make the listener melt like the sugar and cream in the saucepan. The kind of melody that makes you go: “I’m easy like Sunday morning”. That’s why I am going to start with the still little-known Alice Russell. What must Alice do to be better known by soul and jazz lovers? There was a time when her albums Under the Munka Moon 1 and 2 were played back to back to back in my house. Breakdown is the reason why. Beautiful harmonies with a strong voice.



From Alice we go to a duo of whom I haven’t heard anything for ages. Jazzyfatnastees is summer and vanilla extract, in all their sultry glory. Enjoy.



Why is it that a lot of social uprisings and riots take place in the summer? Gordon Lightfoot wrote about the Detroit riots in the 60s in his immortal song, Black Day in July. It’s only a couple of years ago that London was ablaze in the summer and look at Turkey and Brazil now (although it's autumn time in the souther hemisphere, I hasten to add. But I'm looking at it from our "summer" point of view). That’s why my third musical offering tonight comes from the godfather of rap, the late Gil Scott-Heron and one of his more consciously social compositions, B Movie, inspired by the also late former US president Ronald Reagan. Timeless tune.



Yasmine Hamdan is a new singer in my music collection. I love her voice, her projection, her arrangements. To me, here’s someone who doesn’t want to be labelled as “exotic other”, which is, sadly, the attitude I find very often amongst lovers of the wrongly called “world music” (I thought all music was world music!). Anyway, Samar, from the album Ya Nass, is beautiful.



We finish with Stevie, or rather his daughter Aisha Morris joining her dad in a duet of a song that needs no introduction. This is summer, mi gente, it might not be my favourite season, but with that pineapple and rum dessert I can put up with anything. Bring it on!



© 2013

Photo taken from The Guardian

Next post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 23^rd June at 10am (GMT)

Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

Asked once from where he got his inspiration, the late Cuban filmmaker Humberto Solás answered: I just go out and live. Now, I might or might not be right about his exact words, but the message was clear: for him life acted as a catalyst which spurred him on to make movies. The mundane, the quotidian; that was what motivated Solás. Not least in his magnum opus, Lucía, a film about three women living in different moments of Cuba's history. That ordinariness is present in the Lucía of 1895, Viscontiesque influence, notwithstanding. It is again found in the second story, set against the backdrop of the Machado dictatorship and it's ubiquituous in the final instalment, which takes place in the '60s as the Revolution gathers pace.

This approach to everyday events by artists and the use they make of them to transcend or otherwise, has been on my mind lately as I've just reached the mid point of Virgilio Piñera's Teatro Completo. Virgilio was Cuba's foremost writer and Teatro Completo is a collection of all his plays, some of which I'd already read and others which I hadn't. Piñera carved a very creative - though not always successful - career out of the mundane and ordinary. His innovative approach is there in Electra Garrigó, arguably the first play ever written in the style that would later become theatre of the absurd (Ionescu's The Bald Soprano premiered in 1950 in Paris, whereas Electra was written in 1941 and first saw the light in 1948 in Havana), it's also present in Aire Frío, Virgilio's semi-autobiographical family drama. Piñera's art was grounded in the local and recognisable. When Luz Marina complains endlessly about the heat in the first act of Aire Frío, her words acquire a meaning much deeper than at first glimpsed. Beyond the usual moan about the omnipresent hot weather in Cuba, there lies a message of frustration and disappointment; of being locked in a non-stopping carousel in an underveloped society.

For whom do writers writer? For whom do painters paint? For whom do film-makers make films? These questions have been circling my head lately like vultures following a pride of lions to see what they can scavenge.

It seems to me that some of the art - and I include literature in this definition, too - under whose infuence we have remained for centuries was created for a specific audience, and had even a somewhat ephemeral touch to it at the time. The Mona Lisa is the face of a local woman who is shown neither smiling nor grimacing. Yet, it is this ambiguity that has secured her position in the artistic canon. Bach's approach to music was at times minimalist and repetitive, a style that we could say was a precursor, in a way, to the work of contemporary composers such as Phillip Glass. However, his work has been acknowledged, and quite rightly so, as ground-breaking.

Was transcendence in these artists' minds when they set to create their masterpieces? I doubt it. Leonardo da Vinci was a protégé of Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, by whom he was often commissioned to work on different projects. Any of his designs or models could have become as famous as the Mona Lisa. In Bach's case, he was not just a composer, but also an arranger and teacher. For these two artists their craft was a way of paying their bills. Hardly the romantic idea transcendence stands for, but reality nonetheless.

If I was to answer the three questions I asked before I would say that writers, painters and film-makers write, paint and make films for themselves first and foremost. Which is not to say that the end result is so labyrinthine that only they hold the key to the entrance and exit of the maze. No, it means that the art the artist creates must satisfy the artist above all. Of course, I've left out mortgage, bills and family on purpose. Please, don't burst my bubble yet. But my theory is the same: art is grounded on localism, the immediate and the quotidian. This is what makes The Beatles' A Day In the Life a segue to Joyce's tale about a day in the life of Leopold Bloom. Furthermore, art and its significance also depend on context.

Frida Kahlo used her body - almost literally - as her main inspiration. That her art exceeded all expectations can be pinned down not just to her creative prowess (and her famous partner, Diego Rivera), but also to her personal circumstances. Same with Picasso's Guernica. Without the historical backdrop of Italian and German warplanes laying waste to the eponymous town, his painting (commisioned by the Spanish Republican movement) would have joined the ranks of many others that have shown throughout the centuries the tragedy and suffering armed conflicts inflict. Another example is Korda's iconic photo of Che Guevara, which was actually shelved until El Guerrillero Heroico set off to export his radical ideas on how to make a revolution to Africa and Latin America. Then it became the must-have fashion item of wannabe revolutionaries the world over.

There are, however, cases of artists, including writers, who want to transcend at all costs and therefore make their works as inaccessible as possible, in the hope that only those belonging to a selected group can decipher their message. Sometimes even the act of decoding said work of art is tantamount to sacrilege; so much they want to rise above everything and everyone. Or on other occasions they go after the big themes, which is why there was so much controversy over Franzen's latest novel, Freedom and the way it seemed to want to depict and sum up quite ambitiously an entire era: the US before and after 9/11.

In my case, I prefer the artist who thinks local but whose art goes global, whether he/she intends it or not. And in that category I place Gil Scott-Heron, who sadly died a few days ago. Of all his trail-blazing songs, The Revoluton Will Not Be Televised, B-Movie, Lady Day and John Coltrane, the one to which I've always felt more affinity is Brother. It appears in his debut album, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. When he sings 'We deal in too many externals, brother/Always afros, handshakes and dashikis/Never can a man build a working structure for black capitalism/Always does the man read Mao or Fanon', the message the melody conveys goes beyond the harangue to which Gil subjects his black brethren. The fact that a track featured in an album whose title refers to an address in New York makes me feel that way is testament to Scott-Heron's ability to transcend.

True art, in my opinion is grounded in the local and the quotidian. Virgilio, Kahlo and Scott-Heron knew it. That's why they went out and lived.

© 2011

Next Post: 'While My MP3 Gently Plays', to be published on Wednesday 8th June at 11:59pm (GMT)

Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts

I was recently on a train, travelling from Gatwick airport to London with my earphones and mp3 player on. Up until then my little device had behaved itself, sending up tunes that were suited to my mood: I'd just said goodbye to my mother, who had stayed with us during the summer. I wanted music that was neither of the weepy type, nor of the uplifting kind. My mp3 had seemed to copy my brain's instructions fairly well; I did not have to press once the 'skip' button as I made my way to the train station.

The book I'd brought with me to read on my way back to London also fell in the 'neutral territory' category. It was 'A History of God' by Karen Armstrong, a British author who has written extensively about religion, its origins and influence. However, whilst I welcomed the distraction the book brought me, how it took my mind off my mother's return to Cuba and the fact that I would not be seeing her again for some time (years maybe?), I had no reason to suspect that both my brain and my mp3 player had colluded, unintentionally, to give me a little surprise.

Halfway through my journey Gil Scott-Heron's 'Did You Hear What They Said?' kicked off on my mp3 player. This song is a powerful lament about the loss of a young person's life, the circumstances surrounding it and the author's blatant refusal to believe something like this could happen. Precisely at that moment I was finishing the first chapter of my book, 'In the Beginning'. To be even more exact, I will quote the fragment I was reading as Scott-Heron's melody reverberated in my ears:

"Despite his earthbound approach and his preoccupation with scientific fact, Aristotle had an acute understanding of the nature and importance of religion and mythology (...) Hence his famous literary theory that tragedy effected a purification (katharsis) of the emotions of terror and pity that amounted to an experience of rebirth."

Unlike Karen's 400-page treatise on religion, Gil uses only twenty-six lines to express his incredulity and anger. Out of this twenty-six verses, though, nine are repeated throughout the tune. This renders his song poignant and cathartic, especially as it crescendoes towards the end. Listen to the final stanza and I dare you to remain dry-eyed: "Did you hear what they said/Yeah did you hear what they said/Did you hear what they said/About his mother and how she cried/They said she cried, 'cause her only son was dead/They said she cried, 'cause her only son was dead/Woman, could you imagine if your only son was dead/And somebody told you, he couldn't be buried/hey, hey, come on, come on, come on, come on/this can't be real."

Reading and listening to music at the same time are like the coloured lines I see in those charts in The Economist magazine. One indicates domestic growth, whilst the other points at per capita spending. At some point they will cross paths, but this happens very rarely. I admit that I like listening to music whilst I read, usually of the non-intrusive variety. Jazz and classical music get thumbs-up whereas anything with words in it is either skipped or muted. However, this attitude puts me in the pro-Muzak group, an association I strongly dislike, as I'm all for listening to music with intention, not as if one hated it so much, that it has to go and stand in a corner like a child that's been grounded. There's another quandary when you listen to music (with words) whilst reading. In the best case scenario the lyrics will add value to the book you're reading. Yet, do you really need that addendum? After all, the reason to read a book is to immerse yourself in the plot (in the case of fiction). The downside, on the other hand, is that you might end up paying more attention to the music - that's what usually happens, doesn't it? - and will forget about the plot. Then, why bother to read at all?

But occasionally, especially when I'm on the go, book in one hand, mp3 player in my pocket, I don't mind tunes with words in them. In fact, sometimes the phrases on the page complement the lyrics in my ears. That's what happened with that Gil Scott-Heron song. I've listened to it many times; it's one of my favourite tracks by the so-called grandfather of rap. And yet, on that train journey from Gatwick to London, I was moved by it more than at any other time. Mathematically speaking, it was the combination of both 'neutral' and real elements that did it for me: non-fiction book about religion+electronic gadget churning out high-quality pop+my mother's return to Cuba=reflection about the end of polytheism and the start of monotheism in the world and the consequences of this transition.

Gil's song builds rapidly due to its short duration. Still, even after having heard it countless times that second verse is probably one of the more distressing ones I've ever heard in my life: "Did you hear what they said/Did you hear what they said/Did you hear what they said/They said,they shot him in his head/a shot in the head to save his country/a shot in the head to save his country/Come on, come on,come on,come on/this can't be real." Involuntarily, as I listened to these lines, I somehow created an internal debate where on one side I had Scott-Heron's harsh, poetic reality playing against Karen Armstrong's explanation of Nirvana on the other side: "We are told that Nirvana is a permanent, stable, imperishable, immoveable, ageless, deathless, unborn, and unbecome, that it is power, bliss and happiness, the secure refuge, the shelter and the place of unassailable security..." Well, no, it isn't, if you get shot in the head and then can't be buried.

I already anticipate posters leaving their comments this week to be split between those for whom silence should be the only companion when reading (or writing) and those who don't mind the nasal intonation of an Amy Winehouse or the drunken inflection of a Tom Waits when diving into the depths of Borges, Munro or Chesterton's works. What I've personally found is that when I listen to music whilst reading not only does the world around me change slightly, but also the one inside.

© 2011

Next post: ‘Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music’, to be published on Sunday 16th January at 10am (GMT)

Road Songs (Marcato)

Last week I had to go to see the nurse at my local doctor's surgery because one of my ears was blocked (well, actually she syringed both of them just to be on the safe side). Now, I know that this column does not busy itself with organs responsible for maintaining equilibrium and sensing sound. This weekly space is about sharing with you music I listen to whilst out driving. So, bear with me, please.

Whilst one of my senses was suffering, my mood changed and a feeling of helplessness kicked in. I felt deprived, especially in the morning when right after waking up a sentiment of despondency overcame me. Finally on Wednesday last week I went to see the nurse and within 30 minutes I was back to normal. Caveat, though, I am not going back to have the same treatment. By law nowadays nurses and doctors must give patients a run-down of perilous side-effects that might occur after they undergo any type of medical procedure. Amongst the ones that cleaning a blocked ear can bring about are partial or total deafness and heart attack. So, next time it will be the olive oil.

However, on this Wednesday morning as soon as I steppped out of the clinic, the only effect I had was that I suddenly felt like the world had opened a new leaf from its ancient book to me and I was skimming through it studiously. True, I walked to work but later on that day and then two days after I was already behind the wheel.

'Do not use any type of personal stereo', said the nurse. Well, I don't need to, I would have replied. I've got me music in the car, luv.

My ears, unblocked once more, transported me through melodic canals as my hands steered the wheel through the streets of London. As the music breezed out of the car stereo my sense organs attuned themselves to the effects of both gravity and motion. The gravity was the outcome of all these musical notes falling softly on my lap. The motion was driver and vehicle choreographing adventurous (but not hazardous!) moves on the road. The result of that polyphony is below for everyone to enjoy.

Copyright 2008