Book Review: Our Bodies, Their Battlefield by Christina Lamb. Reviewed by Peter Frankopan in the Observer

I read somewhere that Christina Lamb had a new book out. I'd come across Lamb's work when I was teaching at Richmond upon Thames College. One of her articles was anthologised in Cupcakes and Kalashnikovs - a book celebrating 100 years of the best of women's journalism.

Her article, "My Double Life: Kalashnikovs and Cupcakes" caught my attention. It described the conflicting priorities of being a foreign war correspondent and a mother of two young daughters. So when I saw she'd written a book I bought it. I didn't pay much attention to the title. If Christina Lamb had written a book I knew it was going to be good. What I hadn't reckoned on was potentially how life-changing that book could be. 

It is probably the most distressing book I've ever read. Sometimes as I read I just burst into tears. Sometimes - after finishing a chapter I decided to stop reading. But I didn't. Despite the difficult material. It is harrowing. It is also incredibly compelling to read.

I could write a short book review but Peter Frankopan's review in the Guardian says it all. I've posted his review below and put a link to the review on the Guardian website.

Yazidi women at a ceremony to commemorate the death of women killed by Islamic State in Iraq, March 2019 . Photograph: Ari Jalal/Reuters

Rape writes Christina Lamb at the start of this deeply traumatic and important book, is “the cheapest weapon known to man”. It is also one of the oldest, with the Book of Deuteronomy giving its blessing to soldiers who find “a beautiful woman” among the captives taken in battle. If “you desire to take her”, it says, “you may”. 

As the American writer, Susan Brownmiller has put it, “man’s discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times along with the use of fire and the first crude stone axe”. And yet, despite the ubiquity of rape across time and in all continents and all settings, almost nothing is written about those who have experienced sexual violence.

Lamb writes about her discomfort at seeing statues of military heroes in stations and town squares and the names of those who fought in battle in history books. Yet those who have suffered most have done so in silence – unmentioned, glossed over and ignored.

Our Bodies, Their Battlefield provides a corrective that is by turns horrific and profoundly moving. Lamb, the chief foreign correspondent of the Sunday Times whom I have known and admired for years, is an extraordinary writer. Her compassion for those she talks to and deep understanding of how to tell their stories make this a book that should be required reading for all – even though (and perhaps because) it is not an enjoyable experience. 

We meet Munira, a Rohingya who was raped by five Burmese soldiers in quick succession and was then confronted after her ordeal by finding the body of her eight-year-old son who had been shot in the back as he was running towards her. We come across a five-year-old in the Democratic Republic of Congo who had been raped, who kept repeating that they had been taken “because Mummy didn’t close the door properly”. 

Rape has been used as a tool of fear, but also for soldiers to create grotesque bonds of solidarity We meet Esther Yakubu, whose teenage daughter Dorcas was kidnapped in 2014 by Boko Haram in Nigeria. When Lamb sees her two years after their first meeting, Esther has aged 10 years. “I can’t sleep, I can’t breathe,” she says. False alarms and raised hopes of her daughter’s release have come to nothing. “I go to church every day and pray for her to come back. I hope one day God will answer.” 

We meet Victoire and Serafina, two Tutsi sisters of extraordinary bravery, who talk about their experiences during and after the Rwandan genocide – where 800,000 were murdered in 100 days in 1994 – while George Michael’s Careless Whisper plays over the radio in the background.

Rape has been used as a tool of fear and intimidation, a way of devastating communities but also for soldiers and young men to create grotesque bonds of solidarity, trust and loyalty. While Lamb recognises that sexual violence against men has been and is a problem – noting that some estimates suggest that nearly a quarter of men in conflict-affected territories in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have experienced sexual violence – the focus here is on women. 

No one is safe, as Lamb shows: under the wrong circumstances, in all corners of the world, communities who used to have drinks together and celebrate one another’s children’s birthdays and achievements turn on their friends and neighbours’ wives, sisters and daughters in an orgy of brutal violence. In many cases, it is not coincidental: rape is perpetrated systematically and deliberately, such as in the war in Bosnia where one European council report stated that it was being used in “particularly sadistic ways to inflict maximum humiliation on victims, their families and on the whole community”. 

It was the same in Bangladesh in 1971 and in Argentina under the military junta in 1976-83. And it is the same in the world around us today. As Lamb takes us through the trauma and suffering of women in the Middle East or in Burma, we are chillingly reminded that despite legislation being passed to classify rape and sexual violence (against women and men) as a war crime, the International Criminal Court has not made a single conviction for war rape; that there have been no prosecutions for the abduction of Yazidi women or of young girls in Nigeria. 

Lamb’s disgust at the way victims continue to be treated shames us all. Some of those responsible for what happened in Rwanda walk the streets of London and Paris freely. Amnesties were given to military officers who committed atrocities in Argentina under the junta. A statue commemorating women forced into sexual slavery in the Philippines was taken down (to be “relocated”) after President Duterte was persuaded it was distasteful. A plaque on the wall of the Liberation War Museum in Bangladesh says it all: “There are not many records of this hidden suffering”, referring to the rape of 200,000-400,000 women by soldiers from Pakistan in 1971. 

 

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari poses with released Nigerian schoolchildren who were kidnapped by Boko Haram from their school in Dapchi, in the northeastern state of Yobe 

In the modern world, our new technologies sometimes facilitate the suffering, with Facebook being accused of helping incite racial hatred in Burma. Sometimes there is an outcry, such as in Nigeria where the kidnap of the girls from Chibok led the world news, as Michelle Obama and a host of celebrities championed a campaign to “Bring Our Girls Back”. That soon petered out as attentions turned elsewhere, with activism replaced by paralysis. Eighty of the kidnapped girls were spotted by drones in the Sambisa forest, yet remained there for six weeks. As the British high commissioner tells Lamb, when the question was put to Whitehall and Washington about “what to do about them… answer came there none”. The reaction to the address given by Denis Mukwege when he won the Nobel prize for his work to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict sums it up. “Everyone applauded,” he said, “but nothing happened.” Back in his clinic in West Africa, he tells Lamb that numbers of young children who have been raped is rising. As for rape and sexual violence: “it never stops.” This is a powerful book that not only underlines how women have been written out of history, but how victims of rape have had their suffering enabled, ignored and perpetuated. We cannot understand how the international community and the UN “just stood by and watched us be raped”, Victoire tells the author in Rwanda. And yet, she goes on, “the same things are happening over and over again around the world. We are just simple women, but it’s hard for us to understand.” No one who reads this will finish without reaching the same conclusion. 

Peter Frankopan is professor of global history at the University of Oxford

Click here for a link to the review in the Guardian

The different sizes of objects and structures in the universe

A student shared this video animation with me a little while ago. Thought I'd share it with you.

Don't forget to switch to full screen. I'd mute the video as the soundtrack isn't great.

20 albums in 20 days Deja Vu by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. The FB posts should be posted without explanation or commentary. But I've been a little distracted lately. So I've failed the deadline. However, this seems a suitable distraction. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentary is expected. However, this blog seems a suitable place to make a few comments and explanations on the album.

I watched Crosby Stills and Nash in concert. It was their 2009 performance at Glastonbury. It was brilliant. Here's the video. Enjoy.

Here's Neil Young's performance also from Glastonbury 2009. Enjoy.

After watching the Crosby, Stills and Nash set yesterday, for the first time, I wondered why Neil Young didn't join them. Well, that was answered today when I watched the Neil Young set. Also for the first time.

His performance was so large there wasn't any room for anyone else. It was wild, shamanic. It was raw and elemental. Just incredible. 

I did enjoy Crosby, Stills and Nash but Young took the whole thing onto another plane. Don't you think?

20 albums in 20 days Sir Yehudi Menuhin conducts Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Tallis and other works

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. The FB posts should be posted without explanation or commentary. But I've been a little distracted lately. So I've failed the deadline. However, this seems a suitable distraction. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentary is expected. However, this blog seems a suitable place to make a few comments and explanations on the album.

I can't remember where I first heard this album. Here are two possible sources and one memory - it's possibly faulty but possible.

A friend gave me three albums. This was one of them. She didn't explain why she gave them to me. She thought I'd like them.

Katy's mother had this album on vinal. 

I think I first heard Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis at my cousin's bedroom. It was late. We were ready for bed. I was on the floor on a mattress. Jeff got out of his bed and put on this piece of music. I didn't know what it was called but I remember hearing a sudden rain of violins, followed by a pause, a plucked bass and then gradually drifting into sleep as the strings wove in and out. Lulled me into sleep.

20 albums in 20 days The Well Tempered Clavier by J. S. Bach performed by Glen Gould

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. But I've been a little distracted lately. So I've failed the deadline. However, this seems a suitable distraction. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentary is expected. However, this blog seems a suitable place to make a few comments and explanations on the album. This was the last album posted to the 20 albums in 20 days challenge.

One day Stephen came home with me from work. He was probably going to stay for dinner. The house was empty. Katy, Iona and Arran were out somewhere. They weren't going to be back for a while. 

We wanted to listen to the new CD I'd bought. Stephen knew this music. I was a stranger to it. I'd been introduced to it and was gradually getting to know it.

Stephen suggested we play the music loudly and lie down on the floor to listen to The Well-Tempered Clavier. 

So we made ourselves comfortable, lay down and closed our eyes in front of the speakers and heard the whole piece from beginning to end. We didn't talk. Heard the music in our ears, felt the music pulsating through the floorboards.

It was an electrifying experience.

Click here to watch and hear Glen Gould play a brief extract from the piece.

The Making of Poetry by Adam Nicolson

This was a joy to read from the beginning to the end. It's a mixture of literary history, biography and memoir.

Adam Nicolson follows - literally - in the footsteps of Coleridge and William and Dorothy Wordsworth on their year-long retreat - from the summer of 1797 to June 1798 - to the Quantock Hills in Somerset. It covers probably one of the most important events in the development of English poetry.

This is the year the poets wrote the poems that were to become the Lyrical Ballads. A book that transformed English poetry from strict adherence to form and stylised language. Poetry dominated by intellect and reason. 

Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote poetry plugged directly into the natural world, it was elemental, sensory and emotional. It captured the voices of real people and their struggles with the world. It was alive and vital. It celebrated the imagination.
So Nicolson walks where they walked - day and night, season by season. He reads what has survived of their letters, notebooks and journals during this time.
Nicolson observes the same landscapes the poet's visit. He visits the same woods and villages. He writes as they write - with a poets eye for detail and the mythological. The Quantocks appear to us as a sacred place. England is transfigured first by the poets and then again by Nicolson. 

The book also presents us with character portraits of the two on the brink of their success. The solitary Wordsworth and the sociable Coleridge. He traces the arc of the relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth. At first intense and positive and later fraught with tensions and conflicts.

And all the time Nicolson reminds his readers of the wider context - the war with France and the British authorities locking down the country, terrified of protest and the growing threat of revolution.   

This is a book that beautifully evokes, reminding us - both readers and poets - that we are the cultural children of these men and women of genius.  

Click here to buy the book online.

Jigsaw Sky

I'm watching

clouds playing jigsaw

with the sky

20 albums in 20 days Miserere by Allegri and Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli performed by The Tallis Schollars

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. But I've been a little distracted lately. So I've failed the deadline. However, this seems a suitable distraction. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentary is expected. However, this blog seems a suitable place to make a few comments and explanations on the album.

Allegri's Miserere

The first time I heard this piece of music I was driving over Kingston bridge. I had the radio on. The programme was Desert Island Discs. It was chosen by one of the guests. When I heard that boy soprano climbing to the high C I lost concentration and almost veered off the bridge. 
I'd never heard anything like that before. The voice climbs to a plateau. Or like a bow pulling back a bowstring, holding an arrow - ready to release.  And then the sudden release. Every time I play it, it takes my breath away.


Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli

The first time I heard this piece of music was at a party my mother threw in 1974 or 1975. Click here for a post that makes a passing reference to it.

In 1976 I became seriously ill with a rare autoimmune disease. Eventually, I was admitted to hospital for six weeks. There I was diagnosed, treated and returned home. Over the following few years, I experienced ever diminishing waves of the disease. Sometimes this required hospitalisation, sometimes I was sick at home - often for long periods of time. This meant I had to start and re-start college courses I was trying to complete. These years were unsettling and at times very stressful. One significant feature of this time was intermittent bouts of insomnia. It was pretty awful and I tried different ways to get off to sleep. None of them worked. Then one day I started listening to music all through the night. I was trying some way to distract my attention and release me into sleep. Eventually, one night, I played Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli. I must have bought it after hearing it at the party I've referred to earlier. And I fell asleep while it was playing. I slept most of that night. 
The playing of the record when I went to bed became a regular habit, a routine, even a ritual. It worked every time I needed it. It was wonderful. But after awhile its power over me diminished. 
I stopped playing Missa Papae Marcelli. Its hypnotic choral polyphony became too elaborate and the multitude of voices began to stimulate me rather than lull me off to sleep. 
I didn't hear the name of Palestrina again until I went to Hatfield Polytechnique. That first year I shared a kitchen with Keith. And quickly we got on to talking about music. Click here for a link to a post where he's mentioned again.

Over the years I've realised I used music as a form of self-hypnosis. I've suffered from various bouts of insomnia and have found various pieces of music to help me and Katy to sleep. Click here for a post about my Sleep Music.

Simon Armitage on Desert Island Discs

So as I put the finishing touches to my last post, I hear this episode of Desert Island Discs. I have to post a link to it. Click here for the link.

20 albums in 20 days plus - Dave Stanley

So I've posted about a cousin - my own age - who introduced me to Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. She also helped me get to know a little more about David Bowie. Click here for a link to that post. 
I've also told you about another cousin, six years older than me. He introduced me to Planxty and folk music, John Dowland and Early Music. He also played me Vaughan Williams, an introduction to classical and devotional music. Click here for a link to that post. 

But now I have to tell you about Dave Stanley. 

I remember the first time we met. It was at the Coffee Bar in 1974. 

The Coffee Bar was a youth club. 

My mother worked full time for Kilburn's Child Guidance Centre. She was a secretary to the team of Educational Psychologists that worked at the centre. At some point in the early 70s, she decided to change her career. I don't know if she wanted to earn more money or she felt dissatisfied by her work as a secretary. With her three children growing up I think she craved a more stimulating life. At first, she became a youth worker. I think this work was voluntary at first. Then she did an evening course run by the local authority. Suddenly she was a student again, surrounded by a bunch of people, young, engaged and interested in the world. They were people that had an interest in young people. They were all going into youth work.

Studying with these people must have felt like a breath of fresh air in the dull and static life she had been living up to this point. Her move into youth work would eventually completely change her career trajectory and her life.

At the end of the course, she threw a party or a gathering at our little house in Wealdstone. They all came. There must have been about ten of them. She must have asked them to bring music to play. Someone bought a guitar. Someone else bought Palestrina. Though that sounds really weird. Why would anyone bring Palestrina to a party? Click here for a post that expands on that short musical encounter.

We were quite an isolated family. We didn't have many friends. Our family life was mostly dull and uneventful. Then suddenly there was this party. Mum had mentioned she wanted music and I, of course, volunteered to play the music I had. I dread to think what I must have played them. The Pink Floyd would have been okay. Even cool.  But I cringe now at the thought of playing the Black Sabbath or the Hawkwind. Someone came to rescue the music. But suddenly I found myself briefly invited into the room. I wasn't a host or a guest. But I felt I belonged. I didn't stay too long.
Soon after the party mum told us she was going to work a couple of evenings a week at a youth club just opening up nearby. In fact, it opened just opposite my sister's school in Wealdstone. Whitefriars. The school was considered a real dump back then but it still exists and seems to be thriving. It's in Whitefriars Avenue in Harrow. There a couple of factories close by - Windsor and Newton and Hamilton Brushes. Apparently, most pupils ended up working at one or the other after they left school, aged 15 or 16. 

So mum went to work at the youth club on Wednesday evenings.

When she started there she invited the three of us to come down to the youth club.  Let's say I was 15, my sister's were 13 and 11. I think my sisters were quite young to be going there. Although I was the right age I was incredibly nieve. We had lived a sheltered and very protected life. We weren't really prepared for what we discovered there at the coffee bar. 

I imagine the youth club was set up to cater to the local secondary school children in the area. But the club was dominated by bikers. The majority of them were of working age. There were a lot of them. They wore black leather jackets and drove motorbikes. Thinking about them now I reckon they were skilled or semi-skilled workers. I imagine some of them were car or bike mechanics, some of them in retail, some factory workers. 
I think some still lived with their parents, some were lodgers, renting rooms in family homes or sharing flats.

One really important aspect of the coffee bar was the music. Rock 'n' Roll reigned supreme. The music was totally linked to 1950s-1960s, American Rock 'n' Roll. The music system in the coffee bar continually played music from that era. Everything from Bill Hayley to Elvis Presley to British Rock 'n' Rollers including, John Leyton who sang, "Johnny Remember Me" and the Tornados" Telstar." When the film, "That'll Be the Day" was released in 1973, that must have been a huge boost to some of the older bikers at the club. Perhaps the film and its fantastic soundtrack maybe inspired some of the younger ones to follow the lifestyle it chronicled. But 1962 was about as recent as the music went, "Shakin Stevens," "Alvin Stardust" - despite his earlier career as Shane Fenton - and "Showaddywaddy" were totally off the playlists. 

I suppose if there was one song that summed up that place for me it must have been The Shangri-Las, singing, "Leader of the Pack."

Dave Stanley

So we started going to the coffee bar. My sister was quite excited by the place. She seemed to fit in very quickly. She made friends with some of the bikers and a girl about my age, two years older than her. The girl went to the sister school to mine. It was right next door. 
I use to go down to the coffee bar at lunchtime. It was a bit of a walk but I was an outsider at the school. I didn't have any friends there. To be honest, I didn't have any friends at all. Although I didn't fit into the coffee bar like my sister, at least I wasn't being bullied there and perhaps here was an opportunity to start fresh and begin to make friends.
So on this particular lunch-time, I was sitting up at the counter and was eating a burger or a hot dog. The girl, my sister's friend, was standing next to me, with her boyfriend who had his arm around her waist. She had her back to me. But he must have been facing me. He said, "Can I have a bite of your burger?" and of course I said, "Yes." And that was it. We were friends. 

It all happened very quickly. He took me to my first pub. It was either the Railway Hotel or The Queens Head. He bought me my first pint. It was a pint of lager. I couldn't drink it. It must have been a Saturday afternoon. There was a whole group. They kept buying the drinks. There were 4 or 5 pints all stacked up on the table. They were all mine. 

I can't be sure how old he was. But we think he may have been five years older than me. I met him when I was either 14 or 15 years old. So he was probably 19 or 20. Thinking back to that time I think he was pretty messed up emotionally or psychologically. I don't think he had any friends his own age. He was an outsider. Like me.
He said he was an ex Hell's Angel. I wanted to believe him then. I don't believe it now. He didn't have a motorbike. Later, I remember, he drove a car. He had a black leather jacket. His hair was short. 
I can't remember much about what we did or where we went but music played an important part in our time together. 
He introduced me to The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. Click here to read about that experience. And click here to hear the album

Then sometimes we'd go back to his home. He lived in Stanmore with his mother and older brother. For some reason, I think she had re-married. I never met her husband, Dave's father or stepfather, but I met, once or twice, Dave's older brother or stepbrother. Dave played me his brother's music. He was older. A serious adult. He played "In the Court of the Crimson King" by King Crimson. I adored that album.

One night he played, Rick Wakeman's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth." I absolutely loved that record.  

Click here for a link to a YouTube to hear the whole album. 

I was like a sponge. I just soaked up everything he played me. I bought a few albums by Hawkwind. In Search of Space was the first one. I played it a lot. My interest in them - long gone. Thinking about it now Hawkwind seemed to embody the same values I had. But at some point, I realised, the music and the scene they represented wasn't for me. 

I also bought a few Black Sabbath albums. I played them a lot. It took some time to realise this music wasn't for me. The music seemed dangerous. Some of the lyrics seemed to feed my growing interest in the occult. This was Dave's music and I didn't feel the same about it as he did.

He became my best friend. We did everything together. He often came round to the house. Our friendship was intense. He became a family friend. 

But it was short-lived. Perhaps at the end of 1975 or the beginning of 1976, he became a Christian. We'd drifted apart a bit. He went away for a while. I think it was Scotland and when he came back he was a Christian. He was different. Whenever we met he went on about Jesus being my saviour. He kept telling me to invite Jesus into my life. He said Jesus would make everything alright. I had absolutely no idea what he was on about. It felt completely alien to me.

One day he invited my sister and me to a big Christian meeting at the Royal Albert Hall. I think it was a Pentecostal gathering. It felt alien and unfamiliar. The place was absolutely packed. There was a lot of dancing and waving of hands. The music was loud and repetitive. There was a lot of audience participation. People were praising God and shouting "hallelujahs!"

Then one night after this meeting I knelt down by my bed and prayed to Jesus. I asked him to come into my life. There it was done. I told Dave what I'd done. That shut him up. That was in early 1975. Nothing changed. But 10 years later in 1985 I did become a Christian. 

For a time Dave was my only friend. But things were beginning to change. In my last year of secondary school, I began to make friends. There were one or two lads in my class I began to talk to. And again music became the currency of our friendship. I remember we met up once in the record shop. They wanted me to hear this album. 

In the final year, the girl's school next door to our boy's school merged. We became Mountview High school. I began to make friends with one or two of the girl's. My loneliness was beginning to end. Slowly. 

The school doesn't exist now. They knocked down the 1930's buildings and the breeze block temporary huts, probably built during World War II and were still serving as classrooms in the 1970s.

In April 1976 we moved from Wealdstone to Kenton. I started work in Bond Street London. We'd stopped going to the coffee bar sometime before we moved. And Dave Stanley just seemed to fade away into adolescence. The past. 

20 albums in 20 days Blue by Joni Mitchell edited and updated

This is an updated and edited post originally published to this blog on 1 April. I've not been able to update the original post.

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. But I've been a little distracted lately. So I've failed the deadline. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentaries are expected on Facebook. However, in these difficult times, it seems writing about these albums is a suitable distraction. I thought this blog seemed a suitable place to write a comment or two about the albums.

A long, long time ago we visited a cousin of my mother's. It was 1973. I was 14 years old. I had bought Starman and John I'm Only Dancing. So I was a committed fan of Bowie. But I think this story took place before Aladdin Sane was released. They had two daughters. One was a couple of years older than me. One about my own age.
I reckon her sister - maybe two years older - shared her music with her younger sister. 
I have an even older memory of visiting this family. We visited their house. I think in Kent. I remember hearing Down Town by Petula Clarke on the radio. And someone played - I assumed the older sister played Revolution Number 9 by The Beatles. That earlier memory might have taken place late 1968 but most probably 1969 when I was 9 or 10. 
Anyway, back to my later memory in 1973. At some point, we must have escaped the parents. And somehow lost my two younger sisters. Just the two of us, my cousin and me and a record player, a radio and a cassette recorder between us. This was probably the first genuine conversation I ever had with her. Quickly we found music to talk about. It's possible I'd brought with me my radio - a present from this very family for my Barmitzvah - a cassette recorder and a lead that let me connect cassette and radio. I remember setting it up to record the top 20 on Radio 1. That's possibly how we got talking about music. I remember recording, Roberta Flack singing, Killing Me Softly. After the programme, we carried on talking. She mentioned three names to me. Firstly, she said David Bowie. She told me about Ziggy Stardust. I expect she played some of the album to me. I recognized the song Ziggy Stardust. It was the B side to Starman. 

Then she mentioned Neil Young. Perhaps she played a bit of After the Gold Rush. Did I know the song before she played it?  And almost in the same breath, she mentioned Crosby, Stills Nash and Young and their album Deja Vu. Then finally, she said the name Joni Mitchel and I'm pretty sure she played me a bit of Blue.
A little time after that visit I bought, After the Gold Rush and possibly Deja Vu. But for some reason, I didn't buy Blue. I bought instead, For the Roses. Perhaps I'd forgotten the name. Perhaps it wasn't in the record shop - definitely Discoveries in Harrow. I played it a bit. I wasn't hooked then. It gradually collected dust in my collection. 
To be honest I can't remember when or why I bought Blue. Perhaps I went back to Discoveries when I had a little money. Or maybe I found it after they'd restocked it. Maybe I couldn't get the songs out of my head and just had to buy it. 
It feels like it's been with me forever. I love it.

So, I feel a little awkward about admitting this but I owe a significant proportion of my musical history to a cousin I've met less than half a dozen times. It's awkward because it was so random. The seeds of part of my musical history are rooted in someone I barely know. I haven't been in contact with her probably since 1978 or 1979. I don't think she really liked me. I think my mother's cousin looked down on my mum. Maybe they thought they were better than us. They certainly had more money. That can create a lot of tension within families. 

The older cousins - my mother and her cousin - lost touch with each other years ago. And so did the younger ones - me and my cousin. I think she carried a box of fruit to my hospital bed once. That might have been in 1981. That's the last time I saw her. There's something so insignificant and banal about our dead relationship. But there is this music that stays with me. It reminds me of her now.

I think Joni Mitchell is a musical genius. I love For the Roses now. She has that extraordinary voice, it wanders around fast and slow, high and higher. It often seems to follow its own course. You can hear in throughout Blue, The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Hejira. And sometimes she has playing with her Wayne Shorter and Jaco Pastorius. Musicians from Weather Report and Miles Davis.

20 albums in 20 days After the Gold Rush by Neil Young

I was nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to FaceBook. I've been a little distracted. The album covers should be posted without explanation or comment. The album covers should have had a significant impact on my life. Although the FaceBook challenge excluded explanations or comments, that's actually not the case for my blog. This seems a really suitable place to make a comment or two.

I have already posted on this blog how I first heard about this album. Click here to read about that experience. But here's a memory I have about listening to Neil Young.

In 2004 I was in hospital for about 9 months. It was a really traumatic and difficult time. Healing and recovery was slow. After 4 months of treatment that eventually ended with life-changing surgery, I was moved into a large empty 8 bed bay on another ward. The acute phase of my stay had ended. I was now on that long, slow road to recovery and healing. 
I enjoyed being alone in that bay, but missed terribly my working life at college, my church fellowship and my home life with my wife, Katy, and my two 10-year-old children,  Iona and Arran. Family and friends from various strands of my life came to visit often. This was an incredibly positive, stimulating and comforting time.
One time my sister Debra came to visit. She bought with her a CD of music she thought I'd like. This was old music I hadn't heard in decades. One CD was Harvest by Neil Young. Click here for a link to YouTube to hear the full album.
I remember sitting up in the hospital bed. I was engaged and animated. I was really pleased to see her and happy to play the CD she'd bought with her. She didn't tell me what it was. She knew I'd know it.
Then she pressed the play button and I heard the first heartbeat drum strikes and guitar plucks. 
I felt I'd been punched. Those first notes of 'Out on the Weekend' hit me like pain that melted into a feeling of loss. It spread out through me. I hadn't played that album in 25 years. It was such a familiar sound pattern. Maybe I'd been dreaming that record in my sleep. The music was in me. It was part of me. It hit me like a punch. It passed through my head. The waves of sound overwhelmed me. I fell back against the pillow, my eyes blinded with tears. I covered them. I wanted to be alone at this moment. To savour the closed graves of memory suddenly springing open wide. 

My bedroom in Walton Drive. The box room at the front of the house looking out at the road and straight down to the two Kodak chimneys at the bottom of Harrow View. A narrow single bed that fitted half the width of the room and filled the whole length of the room to the window.
Opposite the bed, a wardrobe, its doors open up into the space between wardrobe and bed. Next to the wardrobe, when we first moved in in 1969, there was a short chest of draws. 

I have an early memory of bonfire nights. I think mum and dad bought a box of fireworks every year. They weren't particularly great boxes. There was at least one rocket, a Catherine wheel and a Roman Candle. A few sparklers. Lighting the fireworks never lasted very long. So I'd retreat to my room and look out the window. From there I watched the neighbourhood fireworks. Sometimes just rockets and other times more spectacular displays. Because our house was on the slope of a hill, we were a little raised up. We really did have a view of Harrow, especially from my bedroom. 
But after a few years, I got rid of the chest of draws and we replaced it with a wooden table. Maybe three feet long. I put all my records under that table. On the tabletop, I eventually moved the family record player. It became mine.
When I came back from school, after dinner in the evenings, for long stretches of the weekends and long summer holidays, this room was mine and music dominated a lot of the time I spent in that room.

I remember going to a Rick Wakeman concert probably in 1975. Click here for a post about how I first heard the album, 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth.'

The concert launched Wakeman's new album, 'The Myths and Legends of King Arther and the Knights of the Round Table.' That was not a good album in my opinion. But I think he also played, 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth,' - now that was a good album. I took a close friend. She stayed the night. We lay awkwardly on that single bed for hours listening to The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Wakeman for most of the night. 

Or did I buy tickets for us to see Mike Oldfield play, Tubular Bells? I did see both at Wembley Arena. 

I remember a bunch of people - friends? - all cramming into that box room. There were two or three couples sprawled out on that bed. I climbed onto the wardrobe and played 'The Dark Side of the Moon and Echoes from the album Meddle. They stayed till really late. That happened a few times. We drank beer,- or was it just coke - smoked Players Number 6 and ate crisps. 
Those people seemed older than me. I don't know why they came. I lived miles away from where they lived. Perhaps they wanted to be out of the rain. Perhaps it was only a box room but it was mine, it was private. We welcomed people into our house. Or maybe it was the dope they'd bought. Or was it mine?

I remember bringing my close friend - the one I'd gone to see Rick Wakeman with - into that bedroom. She bought a friend of hers. They were disco queens. I think their school, Salvatorian College used to run weekly or termly discos. And I imagined they reigned over those nights. They were beautiful, sexy, heavily made up and full of glitter. They were totally out of my league. They sat on the bed. I played them Echoes. The friend kicked the table. The album scratched.

I remember....

Cassini Approaches Saturn

Here are three short films from the Cassini space mission that ended in September 2017. I believe the films are made from actual photographs. No CGI or 3 D modelling was used in the making of the films. I'm just overwhelmed by the quality of the films and of course the subject of the Cassini space mission. I'd been following the mission soon after Cassini - Huygens went into orbit around Saturn in 2004.

Here is an explanation of what can be seen on the video from the APOD website. What would it look like to approach Saturn in a spaceship? One doesn't have to just imagine -- the Cassini spacecraft did just this in 2004, recording thousands of images along the way, and hundreds of thousands more since entering orbit. Some of Cassini's early images have been digitally tweaked, cropped, and compiled into the featured inspiring video which is part of a larger developing IMAX movie project named In Saturn's Rings. In the concluding sequence, Saturn looms increasingly large on approach as cloudy Titan swoops below. With Saturn whirling around in the background, Cassini is next depicted flying over Mimas, with large Herschel Crater clearly visible. Saturn's majestic rings then take over the show as Cassini crosses Saturn's thin ring plane. Dark shadows of the ring appear on Saturn itself. Finally, the enigmatic ice-geyser moon Enceladus appears in the distance and then is approached just as the video clip ends. After more than a decade of exploration and discovery, the Cassini spacecraft ran low on fuel in 2017 was directed to enter Saturn's atmosphere, where it surely melted.

Click here for a link to the APOD website post

Psalm 53 in Aramaic

A friend posted this on Facebook. I thought I'd share it around.

Enjoy

John Prine, One of America's Greatest Song Writer's, Dead at 73

Click here for a link to an obituary of John Prine published in Rolling Stone magazine. 

Hello in There by John Prine

Goodbye John Prine

Thank you

Angel from Montgomery by John Prine. Played by Passenger, Stu Larsen and The Once

20 albums in 20 days Meeting by the River by Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt

I was nominated by a friend to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. The album covers should be of albums that have had an impact on my life. No comments or explanations were expected on Facebook. However, this blog does seem a suitable place to post explanations and comments on those albums.

The problem is, this album did not appear on that list. On reflection, I think it probably does qualify for a place on that list of 20 albums. Though I'd find it hard to remove one of the 20 I've already posted. So I include this album cover as a plus one.

Sometimes music comes out of the blue. The radio was on in the dining room at Cowden Rectory in Kent. It was Easter 1993. I was just walking past when I heard one of the pieces from this album. Whatever my destination was it suddenly changed. I went into the room and closed the door and just stood there and listened. When it finished I listened out for the name of the album and the artist. I had the CD in my hands within the week.
It is an extraordinary collaboration. Cooder and Bhatt had met just half an hour before the recording. It was totally unplanned and unrehearsed. Completely improvised. 
I don't know really what grabbed my attention. Perhaps it was a sound so completely at odds in that setting. That fusion of East and West was so different from the traditional Church of England songs played at Easter. . Cooder's slide guitar plucking out the blues and Bhatt's homemade instrument flooded the Rectory dining room with reminiscent to classical Indian raga. I fell into this music and played the CD over and over. 
Click here to hear Ganges Delta Blues, probably my favourite track.

About a year later - Stephen - a colleague and friend - and actually the guy who nominated me to post the 20 album covers in 20 days; told me about Ry Cooder's collaboration with Ali Farka Toure. I've written about that a bit, here.

One thing I found so fascinating about the album Talking Timbuktu is my growing interest in the Blues. I didn't really know anything much about the blues. I still don't really. But when I hear it something inside me seems to melt. It seems to fit into a rhythm that suits something inside of me. I can't really explain it. Here's a performance of Amandrai, from the album. Click here for the performance.

I loved all of this music and was intrigued by the Malian traditional instruments and its rhythms. It connected with something I'd realised about modern western music. The roots of our music can be traced back to Malian and West African traditional music. 

In fact, I remember hearing on the radio or reading somewhere that jazz is a fusion of West African traditional music - brought to the US through the slave trade and Eastern European music, brought to the US by Jewish refugees. Klezmer. 

Then in 1997, I heard about another collaboration. The Buena Vista Social Club. I bought it the moment I heard about it. I played it so much. My father would have loved this music. And I loved the albums that came out of this one, especially those by the singer, Ibrahim Ferrer and pianist, Reuben Gonzalez.

20 albums in 20 Days Kaira by Toumani Diabate

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. But I've been a little distracted lately. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentaries are expected on Facebook. However, in these difficult times, writing something about these albums seems a fun thing to do. A suitable distraction. And this blog seems a suitable place to write a comment or two about them.

If you hover your cursor over the artists named here, you'll find links to the songs on YouTube.

Friends came to visit me when I was a patient at Northwick Park Hospital. It was a long time ago. They bought this record with them. I loved Kaira from the start. I've been playing it since then. Probably 1979 or 80. This album was my introduction to what became, World Music. There was something so hypnotic in this music. At first, it carried me away, out of that hospital bed to another land. But later at home, the album became part of my summer music. I remember playing it driving through Richmond Park in glorious sunlight. I remember the sun shining through trees. Branches, blown by soft and warm southerly breezes. I remember driving south through France, on a family holiday, our car windows open, and the heat and the music flooding in. 

Years later I enjoyed the collaboration between Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Toure in the album In the Heart of the Moon. It's a fantastic album.

I'd first heard the music of Ali Farka Toure through listening to Ali Farka Toure's collaboration with Ry Cooder in the album Talking Timbuktu. Click here for a link to a post that refers to that discovery.  

The whole album Talking Timbuktu is fabulous but scroll down to 21:45 to hear an amazing blues duel between Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate. 

Here's a link to a performance of Savane, the title song from the album of the same name. Ali Farka Toure plays live with a band. There's so much pleasure and joy in this performance.

Quite separately from this album, but now interested in the music of Mali, I'd begun to buy compilation CDs as a way of discovering other music from Mali. Somehow I stumbled across the World Music Network and their Rough Guides of World Music series. I bought an album. African Blues and discovered two names that still captivate me. 

Firstly there's Oumou Sangare. I listened to the album again and again. And her song and her voice, right at the end of the CD just knocked me out. The song Saa Magni comes in layers. At first, a fiddle then hard plucked guitar strings or is it a Cora? It introduces a melody and sets up the rhythm. And then a chorus of women's voices. All of this lays there waiting for that extraordinary moment when her voice breaks through and seems to change the world. Forever. Here are two recordings. Click here for the recording I heard on that CD. Heard it for years before I took proper notice of her and bought an album of hers. Click here to watch Oumou Sangare perform the song live. It comes in at 8:30. But really the two songs are stunning.

Secondly, Boubacar Traore. His voice on this song is completely mesmerizing. Click here to hear this extraordinary voice. A voice of the desert. Gouged from sun and sand. Lost to the wind. Bursts into the air with no one listening. Yet hangs there. Waiting. Hope. It captivated me for years before I decided to track it down and discovered him and bought a couple albums. 

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

This review contains spoilers.

Mostly set inside the corrupt, brutal dictatorship of Gilead we read the testimonies of three characters. Aunt Lydia - the one narrator that links us to the earlier novel, The Handmaid's Tale. She is probably the most powerful woman in Gilead. She has the ear of one of the founding Commanders of this oppressive state. She also is the head of Ardua Hall, the training centre, archive and home for the Aunts of Gilead. She is the source. Highly placed in Gilead, she is waiting patiently for her moment to expose the corruption and injustice of the regime and bring it down. Destroy it.

She waits for Baby Nicole to return to Gilead. She will pass on to her the files, evidence of the appalling crimes committed in the State.

The second narrator is the daughter of a highly placed Commander and his wife. Her name is Agnus. However,  - her mother - Tabatha is dead and the Commander wants another child. His new wife - Paula - wants Agnus - out of the way. Out. Married off. But she's terrified of marriage - especially to this founding Commander Judd. He's presented as a sexually depraved. She pleads with the Aunts to enrol her as an Aunt in Ardua Hall. This seems to be the only legitimate channel for women who don't want to be married in Gilead. 
The third narrator is Baby Nicole. She is smuggled out of Gilead by her natural mother - a handmaid - before she could be taken to become the child of a Commander and wife. I think it's possible that Baby Nicole's handmaid mother is Offred the narrator of The Handmaid's Tale. Baby Nicole has lived the first 15 or so years of her life as Jade in Canada. She's cared for by her adopted parents - members of a terrorist organization - Mayday, committed to the destruction of Gilead.
Gilead wants Baby Nicole back. She's become a symbol of Gilead. They send spies into Canada - Pearl Girls to try and find her. Gilead gets close. They kill Jade's adopted parents. 
Jade's told by other members of May Day that she has an important mission. She must return to Gilead - undercover - to meet the source. The source will give her files to smuggle back to Canada and there publicise and expose Gilead's crimes to the world.

And this is what she does.

So it's been 35 years since The Handmaid's Tale was published. I think what worked well for me in that novel was the simplicity of the narrative and the plot - and very little of that. What worked was the restricted nature of Offred's world view. The wider world is hinted at and inferred by Offred's narrative and rarely made explicit. Gilead and its corrupt and rigid power structure based on gender and class is presented in all its unsettling and disturbing reality.
In The Testaments Atwood broadens out our vision of Gilead. She pulls back the curtain a little further. So we get a clearer and more closely focused picture of Gilead. This is both satisfying and also frustrating. Satisfying, because we want to know more about the workings of this oppressive regime. And the novel delivers this for us. Frustrating, because we want our imaginations to wander through this dangerous and threatening world. Atwood treads a difficult path between these two poles. I think on the whole she's got it right. But only just.
Like The Handmaid's Tale, the prequel is similar in that the plot is slow developing. It's the presentation of Gilead and the development of character and relationships that dominates the novel. But then in the last fifth of the novel, the plot suddenly takes off, with Jade travelling back into Gilead, meeting Agnus and the source at Ardua Hall. She discovers that Agnus and Jade are sisters, and then finally returning to Canada with the evidence that will destroy Gilead.