Clean Air

Yes, I know it's been a while. A long while, in fact. But anyway. A couple of weeks ago, here in Belfast, we knew that the first stretchng fingers of winter were exploring the landscape because the air was cold, there was frost in the morning, and the air was clean after a warm wet summer.

For the past couple of days, it hasn't been like that at all. To redress the balance slightly, at least in my own head, here's a womderful variation on the idea of presence, absence, and substance... a billboard that advertises clean air.

A ship, underneath a time in a city

The news from New York City that an 18th-century ship has been found underneath the (fortunately rainy) World Trade Center site reminds me of this fascinating look at the fact that in San Francisco, lots of scuttled wooden ships were actually part of the built city and are still there underneath it.

(It's worth reading around that last linked post, as there are plenty more riches to discover.)

(Edit - another blog about this here. And Gothamist here.)

Channel 4 and New Labour

The Labour Party in the United Kingdom came to power in 1997 in an election in which I voted for it directly, in Scotland. I was still a teenager.

Its period in power saw pop stars courted in Number 10, iconic additions to the cultural and architectural landscape of the country, including the rebuilding of a power station as Tate Modern and the partial demolition of institutionalised homophobia. Tony Blair bonded with George Bush in the weeks and years after 9/11, thousands of new crimes were added to the statute-book, the concept of the nanny state was talked about more and more, and civil liberties were eroded so much that a photographer cannot walk today down any street in London without fearing the oppressively chilling effect of Labour's Terrorism Act. My passport contains a microchip and antenna which invisibly identifies me wherever I carry it.

And yet. The one time that springs to mind for me, now that the Party's time in Government is over, is a dark evening in March 2003. It was raining, I was out of work, and the United States, assisted so essentially by the United Kingdom with Tony Blair at the helm, was just about to start bombing runs over Iraq because of the oil.

Shock and Awe, we were told to call it, even though it was neither. And I sat there, in this chair, all those years ago, feeling sad and sick and powerless. I had a beer, and lots of cigarettes, and thought of war. Back then, I couldn't have realised that the oil takes on a quite different sheen today. America's own Gulf Coast hates the stuff.

The Channel Four News aired earlier tonight as Gordon Brown stepped down as Prime Minister and Labour leader and removed himself and his Party from Government. An HD camera, fixed to a helicopter, provided dispassionately sharp aerial pictures.

And as the silent motorcade brought Prime Minister Brown into the courtyard of Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation to Her Majesty, the well-loved newsman Jon Snow provided a thoughtful commentary:

"Well, if what they say is true and the Queen really does watch Coronation Street, she'll be postponing it tonight!"

The cars stop. A camera in the courtyard records the scene. A shiny black door opens. There is, for a long moment, silence.

"...They say she does."

Ideal world

Someone just asked me what I'd do for entertainment in an ideal world.

I typed the following:


Morning, up earlyish but not so early that I'm bleary. Nice cool morning, hot coffee and croissants outside in green, delicate garden. Medium-long, hot bath. With either Radio 3 or 4 on in the background. Dress. Trip, by train, out of cool, modern but tiny Norwegian / Icelandic / Swiss alpine village where I live, with good book, magically arriving in large but originally medieval town for lunch. Wander around the cathedral after lunch, impromptu organ concert. Preferably Bach, Glass and Messiaen. Another train trip by magic train to London, nice jaunt in the tube to Tate Modern, to see some Cy Twombly. Beer and olives in the cafe afterwards. Magically end up in the Lake District for an early evening walk around a lake surrounded by mountains before dinner in an excellent little restaurant in Ambleside. Old-fashioned but magic train home, via a bar in, why not, Northern Canada, to catch some snow, fir trees and the Northern Lights, before getting back to Norway / Iceland / Switzerland, a LONG hot bath, whisky, continental sausage and cheese, and then bed.

Demand

Demand, originally uploaded by LutzSchramm.

A few minutes ago, I said to a friend:

I'm currently cobbling together a blog post solely for my own benefit about an organ in an open-air tower in a castle in germany, inspired by the photos of a guy who takes photos of models of photos of quietly significant things in recent German history.

Pavey Ark and Old Peculier

Now, I know this is just a video, but I am putting it here because Jonathan doesn't approve of me using Twitter, and I meant to put it here at some point anyway. It's actually not really a video at all, but a series of stills taken with a digital camera on a rotating mount. I think they timed the rotation precisely so that they'd catch the cliffs above the lake being illuminated by the sunrise. More info here. Click through to Vimeo and watch the video HD and fullscreen, though.

24 hours, Pavey Ark from Michael Moloney Studio on Vimeo.

Pavey Ark is a fell (local dialect for mountain) in the Lake District, NW England. It stands above the valley of Great Langdale, which is the most beautiful valley I have seen in the UK, and is climbed most via the Stickle Ghyll ascent from the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel down in the valley bottom (not so much a hotel although you can stay there, but more a wonderful, atmospheric no-shit climbers' bar with higgledy-piggledy wooden snugs and a big old black range with a fire when it's cold, and Old Peculier on tap).

The point of Pavey Ark, as with most fells in the valley, is that it is both beautiful to look at and hard to get up. You can't stroll up the steep path by the stream which flows from Stickle Tarn (the lake in the video). You can't stroll from the tarn to the summit.

And that cliff above the tarn - you can, if you wish, take your life in your hands and climb it without ropes, and I have done so, although at the temporary expense of my nerves. And the skin on my fingertips. Should you try the same thing, don't try it on a wet day, and if the day is wet, watch your step on the way down from the tarn. You may break an ankle if you're not careful.

But the Old Peculier at the end of it all is so good. Worth rushing for.

Blasphemy

Brr. It was -4 here last night and there is a light dusting of snow over everything. So that the birds could have a drink, I had to break the ice on the buckets in the garden this morning with heavy blows from a hammer. I couldn't be happier.

Anyway, perhaps I'm just not awake yet, but 'blasphemy' itself seems a strange, messy, sticky sort of word this morning. In any case, there is now a blasphemy law in the Republic of Ireland which means that if you utter something that causes enragement within a religious brow, you can be fined up to twenty-two thousand pounds.

So, feeling that isn't right, I've decided to post the excellent website of some people fighting against it - keep trying if it's slow - and the Guardian's story about it, reminding you of its importance by way of this other news story. (The guy who drew the newspaper cartoon of Muhammad all those years ago and raised such controversy has been pursued again - this time by an axe-wielding maniac.)

Giving thanks

Giving thanks, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Well, after going through the snaps of Thanksgiving dinner that I took last night, I can't think of a better one to go at the head of a little blog post about it than this one.

It's not that I chose to apply an old-fashioned cross-process for the heck of it. There is something very lasting about the way that a tired host and a good friend sit down contented after a mammoth meal on a warm traditional occasion. So lasting that it can span decades, back to the days when you had to wait for your paper memories to come back from the lab, the colours all changed and random and wonderful and smudged like the colours of your memories themselves.

It was a lovely meal, a lovely night, lovely people. And the cheese and honey afterwards weren't bad either.

In honour of CERN

Large Hadron Collider, originally uploaded by chippa.

Well, over one year later, the 'Big Bang Machine' or Large Hadron Collider underneath Switzerland and France has been repaired after its rather expensive hiccup, and was restarted last night. Two proton beams have been injected into the collider so far and have been spun around at buttock-clenchingly flabbergasting speeds, and nothing's exploded yet.

More pictures here. The video below is a timelapse of the construction of just one ickle part of the thing.

Roni Horn, a new... exploration

I should point out that if you click this link, you will see an article about an artist I have written about before. With her boobs out.

I suppose she felt like celebrating the latest incarnation of her retrospective.

I would say 'that is all' here, but as always with Roni Horn, that's not all.

Autumn day

Autumn day - mushrooms, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

The Guardian says today should really be a bank holiday, so it's good fortune that I decided before the weekend that today would be a day off.

So after reading the article and smiling at my freedom, I had a cup of hot coffee and headed out into the very autumnal local woodland for some photography, which you can see more of if you click the photo and explore the rest of the set.

Multicoloured Belfast City Hall

Multicoloured Belfast City Hall, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Yes, I know this is blurry and horrible, but our City Hall has been given, from what I can tell, just a new electrical system, a café, and a lick of paint.

Anyway, the really striking thing about it is that they've taken to making it look like a rainbow at night. The colours shift and merge into one another. It's a striking effect and very welcome as we head into darker nights...

Keith Jarrett - Testament

Keith Jarrett - Testament, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

It is NOT natural to sit at a piano, bring no material, clear your mind completely of musical ideas, and play something that is of lasting value and brand new (not to mention that these are live concerts, and the audience's role was of utmost chemical importance: they could change the potential and shape of the music easier than the difference of pianos or hall sound). I then did a series of solo concerts in Japan in the spring of 2008 that seemed to hit a technical high-note in the history of my solo events. I wasn't sure what could possibly happen next after these concerts.

Then my wife left me (this was the third time in four years). I quickly scrambled to stay alive (music had been my life for 60 years) by setting up a Carnegie Hall Concert (a leaflet inserted into the program for my 25th Anniversary trio concert there in October 2008 advertised a solo concert in late January 2009), but before I did that concert, Steve Cloud managed to quickly come up with two solo concerts in Europe: Paris and London. I had not played solo in London for, I believe, 18 years. These were the first solo events since my wife had left. I was in an incredibly vulnerable emotional state, but I admit to wondering whether this might not be a "good" thing for the music. It truly didn't matter; I had to do them. - Keith Jarrett

When disasters have befallen me, I have not had the (difficult) good fortune of being able to set up a concert in Carnegie Hall to blow the blues away. And in the two concerts recorded on these three CDs, Keith Jarrett certainly does blow his blues away - or if not entirely away, there's a lot more here besides The Blues, or Gospel, or the lush, tearjerking tunes that nestle into the corners of your mind for months on end.

The first concert, on CD1, is from the Salle Pleyel, Paris, recorded on the day before Thanksgiving in 2008. The second concert, spanning CDs 2 and 3, is from the Royal Festival Hall, London, recorded on the following Monday. It's sometimes tempting to feel, when you remember what you were doing on the date a recording was made, that you have somehow influenced the music - in my case, that a warm Thanksgiving table, very special people, new experiences and a sense of quiet acceleration at the start of winter have leaked into these CDs as if by magic - but of course, that's wrong. We all influence music anew each time we listen to it, and if there is anything fresh and bracing about Jarrett's creations here, there is also plenty that is warm and slow and like a summer night. This is music that will last until next spring - and next century.

I won't spend time giving a 'proper review', except to say that these concerts aren't as raw and fragmented as the earlier album 'Radiance', nor are they quite as coherent and complete as the Carnegie Hall Concert. They do, however, keep Jarrett pecking at fresh material in short episodes, the results are always satisfying, there is always something old behind them, and those tearjerkers are there too. Obviously, you should really buy the CDs as soon as possible, but first, read Jarrett's liner-notes at Amazon, and have a preview listen there - but a better listen at the ECM Player.

Tower house

Christ Church Greyfriars , originally uploaded by EZTD.

If you fancy living in a church tower thanks to the Blitz, it'll only cost you four and a half million pounds. But it's well worth it - you get a prime location in central London and a garden in the shell of the bombed-out church. The photos look wonderful. I don't know how long they'll be up, mind you. Via Londonist.

Frozen

No - it's not cold here today. Just ever so slightly chilly first thing in the morning. So far, at least, Autumn here has been kind. 'Frozen' alludes to the title of this photo gallery from the New York Times. I know a lady in Belfast who keeps a house very much like this one...

Open spaces

Luigi Russolo - The Revolt (1911), originally uploaded by Marc Cox.

The painting above was finished not last year, but nearly 100 years ago. It's by an Italian artist called Russolo, and it's called The Revolt. Russolo was a Futurist, and the Futurists were fierce, angry artists who wanted to smash the prescriptive, ordered ways of thinking of the past and speed towards a modern future that was more fast, free and easy than the slow, bogged-down past.

During my recent holiday in London, I did a lot of walking. I did some photography, some of it while walking, other bits while sitting down or ambling aimlessly. While sitting down, I was usually also reading or thinking. And whereas earlier this year I was thinking about light and dark and surface and depth as things in themselves and what their properties might be, this time I'm thinking more about movement through dark and light, and movement across surfaces. And what the dark and the the light and the surface contain, and mean.

Moving across the earth, whether you walk down your road, or whether you take a tube-train in London and pop up above the ground again, or whether you fly, has lately become very... directed. We start our journeys from a particular patch of ground given some significance and a name. We move from that point to another point, and to do that, we usually walk along a road, or a path, or we follow a map, or we sit within a form of transport that will impose our route upon us. We are as directed in our movements as actors upon a stage or as plants upon a pergola.

Richard Long is an artist who is interested in those paths and roads and the surface of the earth and how we move across it. He is interested in prising greater freedom of movement from apparently regimented ways of moving. For example, one of his works comprises a higgledy-piggledy series of worm-like lines, moving freely across a white surface - the lines are actually an unmarked map of the paths and roads which 'allow' our movement over a particular area of the English countryside.

Another work, which looks much more limitational, is a straight line drawn across a map from one random point to another. There is no path - the idea is simply to treat the surfaces of the earth along the line - the random sequence of mud - stone - paved road - grass - pebbles - dry leaves - more grass - mud - heathland - outcrop - crag - as free land to be travelled upon and over without paths in mind, without routes to follow. The straight line ruled across the map suddenly opens out in the imagination and becomes the pathless way without rules of any kind. And his gallery installations - the ground on the wall in the form of mud, lines of mud splashes looking as delicate as the shoots of bamboo or reeds on a Japanese print - simply draw further attention to the freedom of the surface.

Which is why, wandering aimlessly around the gallery, I was surprised when a Tate gallery attendant told me I couldn't take a photo of a group of stones. And which is also why, wandering wide-eyed around Tate Modern's Futurism exhibition, I was surprised at how directed a future the free-thinking, museum-smashing, free-thinking, velocity-loving, car-driving Futurists seemed to be speeding so headlong and blindly towards.

It's not that their love of the machine is alien to me. I love aeroplanes and fast trains and slow, clunky underground ones, with their shadows and sounds and flashes of light and colour just as much as they did. But it's all so samey for fierce, free-thinking people, isn't it? And all those people in the painting above, rushing forwards as one, so fast that they seem to be breaking the sound-barrier... couldn't they see the threat to freedom lurking in a mechanised future?

Or was it that nobody could have seen that, and now that we're in the present day with its planes, trains, automobiles and timetables, it takes an artist like Richard Long to nudge us out of the airport, away from the coded motorways and across the open fields?

(And another couple of things. One: there's no way my camera could have captured all that - stop your silly snapshot policies, art galleries. Two: Roni Horn's art, which I blogged about before, suddenly seems more 'Free-Futurist' than ever.)

Magic

Well, I'm back from a holiday London - apologies for the silence, which I know has persisted for longer than I have been in London. There are good reasons for it, the most prosaic of which are work and being tired and not having had a creative thought worthy of a follow-through for a while. I may blog about some things later.

Anyway. Yesterday, something happened which was rather mystifying, somewhat eye-opening, and a source of confusion even today. I don't simply mean the act of travel, although it is like that also. I mean what happened when I was sitting, a little worn-out, before the closed door of the departure gate, minutes before the security girls appeared to check our passports and shoo us to the plane.

I had settled down for what I thought would be no more than a few minutes. A few minutes passed. My eyes misted over with memories of London. Little things about my surroundings brought me back - the gradual sparse arrivals in the little lounge, the out-of-place guy standing on the left, the.... out of place guy standing on the left who had been looking around him, the only person standing... and who then looked straight at me as if he had intended to all along, and then smiled right at me and shyly and firmly walked over and knelt down on the floor in front of me.

He reached into his pocket. "A trick." The eyes. The smile. Maybe Italian? Maybe Eastern European with a tan...? A pile of coins. Two little containers of metal. His smile. His eyes directly on mine. The coins go into one container. He puts it into my hand and closes his hands around mine, ever so gently, still smiling at me. And I am expecting slight of hand, flicking between his eyes and his hands, no movement. Just his smile. Everything else stops. London is forgotten. I haven't felt this way in a year. His smile says he meant this. He must have meant this.

He could physically yank the damn thing from my hand and I still wouldn't notice, so it is hardly a trick. But the coins in my hand have disappeared from the container. Of course they haven't, I think. It's a trick. But the childish amazement comes back and I clap and grin and smile at him and he laughs quietly too, and leans towards me, and brushes me with his hair, and touches me and said "...see you..." and touches me again and walks right out of the gate and down the long corridor back to the main airport and never looks back.

I sit there, dumb, and think: he's not on my flight. This gate is miles from the others and everywhere else too. He meant this! Should I run back?

So then, of course, all the closeted-in-public gay and bi guys on the flight had noticed this and had to sit near me on the plane. And flirt, in silent Northern-Irish ways. But that wasn't the point.

Who *was* he?

If you're reading this, I was in the yellow t-shirt, and I think you have beautiful eyes, and I know those coins were fake. Totally.

Normal

Hanging off, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

Boy 'tried to eat toy sandwiches'
Teenager 'beat toddler to death'
Man climbs 200ft wheel attraction
Teacher raped by boy wins damages
Taxi driver rapes male passenger

The above headlines are all real. Who'd have thought it?

I was sitting in a bar facing the Belfast Eye (the 200ft wheel attraction) when there was a minor commotion at the windows, and my friend John said "What's going on?", and we proceeded to figure out what was wrong.

A guy said "There's a guy on the top of the wheel!". We drank more. He didn't come down. We went outside. A very drunk guy didn't drink more. He was carried to a bench next to an improvised police cordon below the wheel. Then the police went away. The guy on top of the wheel still didn't budge.

The drunk guy, helpless, was hugged and posed beside for photos by grinning Belfast delinquents, as if he was a Guantanamo detainee about to be happy-slapped. Other Belfast teenagers looked on, silent and horrified. A guy who tried to help was called a dick. The guy on top of the wheel didn't budge.

And then, a couple of hours later, the guy on the wheel came down, and the world went back to normal.

Gin and tonic

Gin and tonic, originally uploaded by peripathetic.

In honour of the first properly summery day Belfast has had this year. Warm air, no wind, gentle sounds of traffic and birdsong in the background... and very, very cold Gordon's and tonic water. Perfect.

Singing ringing tree

The singing ringing tree 1, originally uploaded by felixspencer2.

This is one of a series of hilltop sculptures, collectively titled Panopticons, in Lancashire, England. The others are Atom, Colourfields, and Halo. They are based on the cohesive idea of the panopticon, a type of building which would allow an observer inside in a single place to observe all rooms.

The concept of panopticons as buildings was originally applied to prison design (dreamt up by the now stuffed Jeremy Bentham). How fortunate that it has been conquered by such lightness.