Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful

Escaping scrutiny

When reading about government proposals to peer ever more deeply into the lives of their citizens, I suggest that you apply a variation of Rawls‘ original position to decide whether any given measure will be for the better, or for the worse. The question is this:

If you did not know whether the government proposing this measure was a benign liberal democracy or a malign totalitarian dictatorship, then would you want this measure to be implemented?

All is well when cuddly-wuddly New New Labour proposes these measures, and people nod and hum and let it slide. If it was the Burmese military regime, I wouldn’t be so bloody sanguine about it, would you?¹ The question to ask is not whether your government is benign or malign, but whether this is the sort of information that you think the government should have in the first place.

Perhaps you would. [↩]

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26
Oct 08

Gorilla gorilla gorilla gorilla

The alarm was raised with greater frequency than any one of us cared to note. “Look at Rhodes’ face! What’s he doing?” Cue satire, cue maudlin moralizing, cue dramatic pauses, cue unrequested musical interludes – all of these and more were his coin, and believe me when I tell you that he spent that coin freely.

After the war, Rhodes disappeared. Shaken by his experiences, he shunned human intimacy and thai food, roaming through the forests, appearing only at waystations to discombobulate traders (both the innocent and not-so-innocent) with erratic video footage. Further downriver, we could all hear the alarm that greeted each visitation – “Look at Rhodes’ face! What’s he doing?”

Word came to us that he had finally emerged after nearly 30 years of self-imposed tossing, turning and tufting, perfecting his craft on the farthest shores of what might be considered the great sea of acceptability. Now he brings us footage of those he previously considered friends (and sometimes more than friends). Can any good come of this? we ask ourselves, Can any good come of this?

Yes. Look at Rhodes’ face, and you can easily tell what he’s doing.

Look at Rhodes' face! What's he doing?

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / art / london — No Comments
11
May 08

Untitled Artists: Soodad al-Naib

In 2003 I worked for some weeks in Baghdad following the invasion of Iraq, based at the UN headquarters in the Canal Hotel. As many of you probably remember, the Canal Hotel was bombed up on 19 August – shortly after I left the mission – killing many of my friends and colleagues. This is a long way of explaining how I first met Soodad al-Naib, one of the Iraqi staff working in the Humanitarian Information Centre while I was there.

Soodad was injured in the Canal Hotel bombing but after moving to London, she’s made an amazing recovery and is now pursuing a career as an artist. Her paintings are dark and deep, almost abstract but with a mythic storytelling quality. Her work is going to be part of the Untitled Artists Fair in London this year, from Saturday 31st May – Sunday 1st June at Chelsea Old Town Hall. Admission is free but you need to have tickets – download them from this link. Come on, free art! What more could you ask for?

While reading this post, you should be listening to

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by Art Brut.

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / iraq / life / montenegro / video — No Comments
16
Apr 08

You’re Moving Where Now?

Rupert and family are moving from the wilds of London to the far more civilised Vancouver Island in Canada, which I believe used to be part of the British Empire until they had their membership revoked for being too close to the US. (Geography fact: Vancouver Island has a larger population than Montenegro.)

Rupert Howe

I’m proud to say that I knew Rupert before he became a big vlogging star and sold out to The Man – he directed our award-winning (ahem) short film “Tracks”, back when we were in short trousers. For a while I was worried that he would drop out of film-making completely, but he came back from a completely unexpected angle – using his mobile phone camera to shoot and edit short films about his life.

Video-blogging can easily turn into navel-gazing, but he managed to avoid this when he started out by posting what were essentially comedy sketches about a movie geek trapped in a dull office job in his dad’s company. The fact that Rupert was in fact a movie geek trapped in a dull office job in his dad’s company only made the sketches funnier. And sadder. But mainly funnier.

Now he’s all growed up – married to Kate, father of Amy, and no longer working in the dull office job – and his vlogs focus on his real life as opposed to his fantasy life. It’s great stuff, mainly because his slightly manic delivery makes for compelling viewing, but he’s also just a great bloke. Witness one of his recent posts, where he laments the annihilation of the local Post Office and interviews his local PO manager Mrs Patel.

The Minute wishes him the best of British in the New World. Please do keep videoblogging – I would join you, except my cellphone is nowhere near as flash as yours.

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / music — No Comments
27
Mar 08

Dilemmas of the clean-living gentleman blogger

Andy and Meg have recorded a new song, but I can’t mention the name of aforementioned song because my parents read this blog. What would they think if they knew that I hung out with people who sample David Lee Roth and sing

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in close harmony?

Whoops.

In other music news, masochist sits through all 763 MP3s submitted to SXSW this year – and reviews every single one of them in 6 words. Now that’s an impressive level of commitment, or possibly just a truckload of drugs. The top pick – what a pick! – were Creature, Canadian pop rock with more vim than my mum’s cleaning cabinet. For your listening pleasure:

Creature – “Brigitte Bardot”

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / indonesia / music / video — No Comments
24
Dec 07

I like it when Indonesian music videos are filmed in London…

… especially when they feature people I know!

After getting in from Dhaka yesterday, I went for dinner yesterday with Natasha and her husband Richard. Now I haven’t seen Natasha for about 2 and a 1/2 years (since I finished the tsunami contract with WFP, in fact), so it was a bit weird to meet up with her in London. Even stranger was her new alternative career as a video model for Indonesian rock bands, as you can see in this clip from Padi….

Apparently one of the comments on YouTube says that the model does a really good job of looking lost – Nats pointed out that she had been in London for exactly four days, had no idea where she was, and so looking lost was remarkably easy.

Nice track, anyway. The Indonesian equivalent of Coldplay, or something.

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / london / music — No Comments
19
Nov 07

The Berakah Project

If you haven’t seen Gary Cohen’s documentary Judah and Mohammed, you should track it down somewhere and watch it. It gets under the skin of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and after an hour of following two young men – one Israeli Jew, one Palestinian – it gets under the viewers skin as well. What made it especially powerful for me was that you are actually watching Judah and Mohammed grow and change over a period of 18 months, without any sermonising by the documentary makers. It’s this human story that really brings home the futility of the conflict, and the way it distorts people’s lives on both sides.

This was a good excuse to write something about the documentary, since I wasn’t blogging at the time it was screened. However I should also say that Gary is hosting the launch party for The Berakah Project, a group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim musicians on 27th November at St Paul’s Church on Bedford Street in Covent Garden. Too often, these sorts of project turn into a worthy muddle, but the music clips on their site talk of a dynamic blend of different styles with firm roots in the music of the middle east; so head along and enjoy.

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / music — No Comments
7
Nov 07

Tessa Souter and the perils of MySpace

A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to befriend Tessa Souter, a British expat living in New York earning her crust as a jazz singer. Since then I’ve seen her a few times – whenever we happen to be in the same city (London, New York, Washington DC) I make sure that I go and see her play. She has a very fresh mainstream style with a pinch of exotic flavours, writes tunes that really come from her heart, and plays with some great musicians. Everybody that I play her album to loves it, which is always a good sign – maybe you should buy a copy for yourself?

If you don’t feel like buying an album solely on the basis of my recommendation (I don’t see why you wouldn’t – I have really good music taste), then there is a very easy way that you can hear Tessa’s music and support her at the same time. Simply click on this here link to Tessa’s MySpace page and you’ll instantly increase her number of hits. This sort of thing impresses record companies, you know, plus you get a chance to listen to some good music while you’re at work. Everybody, as they say, is a winner.

Unless MySpace crashes your browser, which just happened to me twice. I should emphasise that this wasn’t Tessa’s fault, however.

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / television — No Comments
29
Oct 07

Do you know what you’re wearing?

Simon Ostrovsky bets that you don’t, and he’s prepared to make you feel guilty about it. All you need to do is to watch Newsnight on BBC2, this Tuesday at 10:30pm. Apparently the government of Uzbekistan may be involved in some shady dealings (“not again”, I hear you sigh), this time involving the clothing industry. Now usually clothing manufacturers are absolutely above criticism, but who knows? Watch and find out – if you don’t have a television, or you’re in the Balkans, or something crazy like that, then you’ll be able to catch it after tomorrow on Newsnight Video Highlights.

Sought My Company Voluntarily, Now Regretful / UK / politics / television — No Comments
10
Sep 07

North Circular Stories

I met Simon Ostrovsky in Berlin, where he sold me a bike that only had one pedal and then disappeared. I forgave him because he makes really interesting documentary shorts, like the recent North Circular Stories that aired on Channel 4 two weeks ago. Obviously I missed them – we don’t get Channel 4 here – but they’ve now been uploaded onto something like YouTube.

The films uncover an underworld of Eastern European migrants in London living in abandoned houses on the city’s infamous North Circular Road, and forming a tight-knit community of Latvian and Lithuanian menial workers, freeloaders and students alike.

I love this format – basically these are the documentary equivalent of pop videos, with three minutes to tell the story and a tendency to get under your skin. There’s no time to present an argument or squeeze a moral out – what you get is people’s lives, edited.

Perfect for our information-saturated culture. Without further ado, I give you – North Circular Stories.