1900s Tbilisi

White Jazz

Oh it's all so very arch and English I know, but I just remembered how much I used to love this band...

Istanbul huzun poem for Belgrade...

You cradled me through this city.
Held my hand so
lifted gently above sodden streets
rain smashed through the soles of my shoes.
I did not notice that they had been full of holes for you.
Gradually wearing through from days held
Walking
Streets wrapped warm shivers from the trail of your hands
Too large for mine, they had enclosed me.
But I was okay.
You stood tall,
Shaded me from darkness
The drips of light that fell from your smeared hair bruised the side of my face.
I smiled then.

That night the city curved around me.
Too small
to be held properly
You encased me in your body.

There was a tower that saw everything.
Noticed us crawling streets that wound up to it
Like reversed rivers
It was a little confusing where they were going.
But they all led to the same place -
You and me and this city entwined in damp stone and old water.
We would be held here in flashes of light
An imagination snagged in electoral flags,
Scattered like village fete bunting.

The house with the face stared at me when you spoke
Laughed in ribbons of crumpled wood
Cried private history
It understood.

This city floated around us -
Too far to touch I had to see it in snapshot splutters
Minarets and blocks of flats the ground was trying to steal back
Crumble in so it could feed off their stories.
It held their secrets safe - people could walk the streets and not be weighed down by them.
I whispered mine out on the wind
Stroked your hair as you lay in my lap and hoped you’d get lost in an incantation.
I needed to lose you somehow and it was hard with you so close.
You would not let me go

Like the weather balloon broken from its tether
We drifted away.

Thought if I did so fast enough it would take with it these ideas of us that were
too strong now.
You were too strong for me.
As you smiled I felt the soft ropes that bound me to you tighten - mark my skin so
I was
Stained in pin-prick blushes.

Too much silence
(in miniature)
Made the small birds louder than cars.

The empty bus stops flickered
Strained to illuminate this place too caught up in darkness, falling
It fluttered
Caught the water breeze
Made new

Echoes spread themselves across the stone
Matted rain so these last dregs had to struggle more
To be heard
The light was heard more than seen here
Reflected like dropped stones and
Your silent whispers
I had misunderstood.

I touched your hand as you failed to move away.


Istanbul is a melancholic longing, he’d said.
Held in my eyes,
You sprinkled through the cracks that fell across buildings.

Memories of a city... pt 2

Michael took much better photos than me...








It's funny when you visit a new city - it's the initial atmosphere that hits you that always fascinates me. Istanbul wasn't what I expected - too functional in some way - but rather than dismissing my preconceptions, I felt like they were true, but hiding... There is a whole different city lurking on the same land somehow. Like it is waiting for you to understand and then it will reveal itself... One day I will go back and find it, but for now Michael's photos do quite a good job at catching the hints that flew past us on the wind...

I <3 oversized cats...

A good topic for a hungover Sunday morning and a not reluctant, as I'm too pleased (they are so good), acceptance that Simon was right and not making fun of how gullible I am. Ligers exist! Immense excitement...



I have always been a fan of fat animals - my pet rats remained enormous even after a strict fruit and veg diet (though they did use their exercise wheel as a hammock...) - and capybara will always rule the fens in my heart... But anyway - what I actually want as a pet right now is a Maine Coon cat - you have to see photos of them with random strangers I don't know to truly appreciate their scale... And they have tufty ears like lynxes!

Memories of a city...

Orhan Pamuk was right about Istanbul - the melancholic longing of huzun somehow is the key to this city...

I'm off to...

ISTANBUL! So in honour of my impending adventure with the lovely Michael here is the only video for a Selda Bagcan track I could find. God that album is good...

If the Nolans hailed from Tbilisi...

In the words of my friend Sandro...

...FIRST GEORGIAN RAP!

Drunken Georgian lads = singing

I really love Georgian polyphonic singing and I also really love how Georgian's sing at every opportunity. I remember when me and William were there in 2007 we were serenaded by friends of friends in a park and sat in on teenage boys learning traditional song as a matter of pride. I also love how in these clips they are managing it whilst really drunk and chain smoking... I can't help but wonder if British boys sung more we'd have less fighting and vomiting in the streets on Saturday night... Having said that Georgian men fight more than any I've ever met so... maybe this is a silly point. The clips are quite funny though...

The Paper Hats

A very dear old friend of mine makes very beautiful music under the name The Paper Hats. He has just released a record of it called Deseret Canyon. If you want to hear snippets of it and him talking about Mormon alphabets, world fairs and distant adventures and history you can do so here. Enjoy!

Is that all there is...

On the subject of martinis, radios and bows as a remedy for emotional woes, here's a fabulous performance of my favourite Peggy Lee song...

Improved design for modern man

I got this from Fed By Birds (see links). I like how the man has a birdcage and a detachable heart (useful sometimes sadly) and the lady has twigs tied with bows, martinis and a radio - we're obviously the better sex for a self-sufficient party (which in some ways is the healthier way of forgetting about the emotionally sadder things in life)... It's by a 1940s Russian surrealist...

Bucharest Exhibition

I have just got back from Bucharest where we had the opening for the exhibition for Metroarts proposals. It went really well and at the press conference the lady from the Peasant Museum said I had captured the spirit of the Romanian peasant! It's running at the Carturesti gallery for the next couple of weeks. Everyone's work looked great. Here's a few photos of mine:

Lighthouse of Green Gables

I've always rather wanted to live in a lighthouse. I'm on the peaceful bliss that is Prince Edward Island and found this one in the dunes near Green Gables today:


On the subject of Anne of Green Gables I remember playing this myself when I was 8, but that was in a dinghy in Somerset, but at the time it seemed suitably Romantic...

The ghost of the '67 Montreal World Fair/Biospheres rule...

They really do...




There was also a disused themepark (another pet interest):



Habitat 67 is possibly the most amazing utopian housing project I've ever seen, and looking out to it from the old port you could also see the most extraordinary old industrial building ...





Ahhh the joys of geek pilgrimages....

If I were to be Queen...

The strength of weakness - Tarkovsky

"Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion is not brave emotional energy but just a friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves, let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible, when he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant, but when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win." - extract from Tarkovsky's Stalker.







I've never seen a film so like my rural, industrial ruins dreamworld in my life. Who knew it lay in mystical Russian sci-fi - but I'm very glad it did... It makes sense strangely... And it reminded me of my Grandfather - the most gentle, kind, strong and spiritual man I've ever had the honour to be connected to...

Hold London in your hands

Designed to help people find their way around London for The Great Exhibition of 1851 - maps combined with fine fashion, the Crystal Palace... Oh how I wish I could have been there...!

Echoes and Imprints

Cabinet of imaginary travel curiosities c.1323-2193 and four Armenian stones, 2008.

Holiday secrets

Found photo album and fictional luggage tags, 2008.

Travelling Light...

I have very unseasonal flu so am wallowing in musical nostalgia - this grainy bit of super 8 is probably my favourite music video of all time. I remember watching it when I was 16 and thinking that's what cool grown up couples look like - I can't quite believe it was 14 years ago... Stuart Staples' lyrics at their most sublime too - "there's a crack in the roof where the rain pours through, that's the place you always decide to sit..." sigh...

Also for perhaps less sublime, but equally poignant, nostalgia, this song as it puts it "gets me every time"... Why can't bands do strange faded city atmospheric Englishness anymore?

God I miss The Chart Show...

Mountain Spirit

I've been a little too sad to write recently what with all the horrors going on in my beloved Georgia (plus a slight detour of various friends' bands coming to stay and riding around in vans with boys drinking snakebite - I probably should be too old for that... Plus finishing my novel and starting various art projects). However here is a Georgian tourism video that always brings a smile to my face - I'd rather remember more optimistic times...

North Country Maid

A wonderful clip from the brilliant 1965 documentary about the Waterson family including a heartbreaking rendition of North Country Maid - proper english folk music - no skipping and tie-dye in sight. And mates of my dad...

The importance of geography lessons...

In a yahoo forum mentioning the escalating conflict between Russia and Georgia over Abkhazia earlier this year:

"WHY IS THE RUSSIAN ARMY IN ATLANTA?
I WANT ANSWERS DAMMIT!!!”

“RUSSIA OUT OF U.S. NOW !!!!!!!
…GEORGIA NOW…WHO`S NEXT ? FLORIDA ?,…AND THEN WHO ??? THIS MUST STOP !!!!”

“WHY ARE PUTIN’S TROOPS IN ATLANTA?
have not head of this until now - this is outrageous !”

Atlases are interesting, people...

Music for Queen Bees...

I learnt to read music very young - my dad taught me as I began to learn recorder (the proper playing of which is a rant for another day) and as I began to realise that these strange scribbles were a way of writing - that you could read what you hear in terms of pitch and rhythm etc as well as words i was hooked (my writing is so rhythm and atmosphere obsessed I sometimes wish that punctuation was more like musical notes in terms of pauses etc) - I remember sitting in the garden and listening to the birds around me and wondering how these sounds would look written down - the strange distant swishes of the river and the humming of the bees. Luckily for me in 'The Feminine Monarchie' written by the polymath, Charles Butler in 1609 - he tries to do the latter.

This was a very important bee book for many reasons, including that he overthrew the idea of the King bee being in charge in favour of the Queen bee (hence the title) - there's some amazing illustrations that can be seen on Bibliodyssey, but for me it is the musical notation that fascinates. When he first transcribed the sounds of rival Queen Bees he used a simple triplicate metre, but soon changed it to become a madrigal for four singers. I had seen this picture before and always wondered why half of it was upside down and apparently it was written in this way so that four people could stand around it and read without being squashed. I always find it funny how people these days think they're being shocking or avant-garde, whether it's in art, writing or music - I guess it's necessary for exciting things to continue in such worlds, but if you take a moment to look back, there's nearly always a random precursor quietly resting away a few hundred years ago...