It is good news that the UN is taking action on the Sudan crisis. Clearly any action to stop the massacres of civilians in Darfur is to be welcomed, even if many believe a UN resolution should have been made a long time ago.
However, I’m reminded of Jeffrey Sach’s analysis of the Darfur crisis, during his Reith Lectures in the spring. If the conflict in Darfur is borne out of scarce resources, especially water, then the presence of soldiers in the region will not solve the underlying problem. Military intervention here needs to be backed up with humanitarian intervention. That’s the next step.
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The artists/musicians from FOUND remix some of the melodies created by Kimho Ip’s Yang-chin, a traditional chinese instrument.
We were at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Leith for a content gathering event, watching a chef prepare some Dim Sum (which we then ate). FOUND will use the audio and video they captured for a new composition, to be performed at the end of the Fringe Festival.
In the meantime, they will be launching their Ettiquette project at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop this Saturday. I can’t make the event, but it will apparently feature an entirely new set of music. Its always fun to see what these aimiable and slightly hairy “pop chancers” come up with…
One interesting (although highly incidental) aspect of FOUND’s various projects is their use of a blog to document their activities. The advantage of this is that they do not need to write a lengthy essay at the end of each project, justifying their activities to their funders and sponsors. The blog acts as this documentation.
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I was in the Scouts, yet most of the descriptions I read about the movement are alien to me. I don’t know the words to ging-gang-gooly. I do know what a reef knot is, but that only means I would score one out of ten if you were to set me a knot tying test.
More importantly, I do not recognise the earnest, God-fearing, royalist, regimental movement that is being eulogised as the scouting movement celebrates its 21st World Jamboree. My memories of the activities invariably involve grime and general unhigenicity, coupled with criminal deforestation and subsequent unfettered, unnecessary bonfires. It is not the lessons of teamwork or civic responsibility that I remember, but rather an every-boy-for-himself sense of self-reliance (Swiss Army Knives can fuck off, by the way – what you really need is a nice sharp Opinel Number Seven).
I remember torrential rain on the Brecon Beacons and Bodmin Moor, and the chronic agony of trudging thirty miles overnight through muddy farmers fields (my toenails have never really recovered). I remember hauling a green trek-cart up the hill at Ceasars’ Camp, near Aldershot, and the deflating realisation that we had made a navigation error and the effort had been worthless. When I think back to those Friday nights (before I discovered that I could gain admission to pubs) I am amazed I could summon the will and the energy to complete whatever task was presented.
I was reminded of those dark nights during this past weekend at WOMAD, where the mud made any journey a workout, and made keeping clean and dry impossible. Yet not one squeak of complaint could you have heard pass my lips. That, for me, is a cause for smugness and self-congratulation. More than anything else, I think that scouting taught me stoicism, the virtue that above all others, we British like to claim as our own.
A very muddy Charlton Park during WOMAD 2007.
I did hear a few voices of dissent about the organisation of this year’s festival, and how those in charge should have better anticipated the wet weather. However, I think this was probably just teething problems at the new venue. Thank goodness the festival was not at Rivermead again – I hear the Thames has flooded there and the entire festival would have been cancelled.
I am in agreement with Stephen Dalton at The Times:
But it was the Senegalese hip-hop trio Daara J who virtually hijacked his show, bounding around the stage in flowing white robes like hyperactive Jedi Knights.
Seth Lakeman and Dhol Foundation also had me jumping.
“You drive me round the bend, Thomas” she would say, her voice dripping with distain. “You never do anything for yourself.”
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She was wrong of course, but I never argued back. I never once raised my voice to drown out hers. I just let her speak. It didn’t matter to me that she was chastising me like a mother scolds her child. Just to hear her was to know that she was there, that I was with her, that she was mine.
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“I’m having a breakdown, Thomas” she would say, her voice quivering like a car running over a cattle grid. But I knew she was being melodramatic. She was an actress after all. An attention seeker. I would listen to her, and obey her in silence.
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She had a pointed, slender beauty. Perfect for the stage and screen. The directors loved her poise, her calm. But I loved her voice, the way her lips formed her vowels. No trace of an accent. No hint about where she had come from. She was always ‘here’.
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She was my must-have accessory. After a show, she would be on my arm, and I would open the car door for her. Just sitting on the leather seats turned her on, and she would whisper in my ear all the way home.
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“I have a new job, Thomas,” she said one evening. It was voice-over work, she said. She would be recording her voice for other men. “We have gone as far as we can go,” she said calmly, and stepped out at the traffic lights.
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I feel as if I have been driving ever since. The flat no longer felt like home without her voice wafting through the rooms, without her constant nagging and ordering and complaining about where I had gone wrong. I never spend time there now. Instead I sleep in my car, and take long journeys through the busiest cities and to the farthest beaches. So long as I keep driving, and I keep my sat-nav switched on, she will always be there, telling me where to go.