SUFIS on radioputer

Six Pillars to Persia featured Sufis last week. What a wonderful way it has been to find out so much about my - all of our- heritage. Indeed there is hardly one culture that has not taken many things from Persian civilisation.

Podcastit (download it for free and safely onto your I-Pod/computer).

one things about modern Iran I learned - every house has two books at the minimum and they are always the Koran and Hafez the sufi poet.

Here is one of his that I had never heard until it was live on air in front of me~

My Sweet, Crushed Angel

 You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God's heart at all.

Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy
To hear.

So what if the music has stopped for a while.

So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight.

So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love.

The mind and the body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,

But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits.

Have patience,

For He will not be able to resist your longing
For Long.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One.

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet,
O my sweet crushed angel.

Hafiz

BLAKE'S BIRTHDAY

Monday lots of eccentric people will be remembering someone who for his own eccentrcity, years ago, lived a very lonely.

Tonight Ive seen some really illustrative prints, in that they show the subtle side of Blake's constructed scheme of things. It had much to do with the yoga that I've been practising for nearly TEN YEARS!

Anyway see your own William Blake prints and read of how all men might one day become prophets.... also hear the radio show about him on Resonancefm

Infotainment? Or tardy interest by the apathetic majority?

After Nicholas Cage's attempt at topicality in 'Lord of
What', sorry 'Lord of War' (see here), the US of A has
come up with another film that makes you wonder if
the A has always stood for Asses.

But at least they are thinking about it.

'Syriana' seems like your ordinary cheesey opportunist American film that makes big dollars out of our spam-head cinema-goers paying £7 a head for something that won't even stimulate theirs. However, it has spawned this thought echoing around millions of American heads:
"GEE! Since it's now in a FILM, perhaps what theyTRUE!" have been saying on the news is actually TRUE?!"

Witness the thoughts of canned-meat-chompers online:
Participate in oil change

And the trailer's canned chocolate sexy woman's voice tells it all at the opening: "Imagine if 30% of Americans were unable to heat their homes, imagine if gasoline were $20 at the pump".

Is that the limit of their understanding?

Well - if it takes a George Clooney in a beard to put a taste of reality on those Clinique lips and reach for their chardonnay-numbed brains via their nip-tucked eyelids - then so be it.

Though it makes me sick, I am a total hypocrite and no better than anyone else, so I will probably watch the film and reccommend it to any of the comfortable hordes who still drive to work and use plastic in every facet of their factory-produced lives who'll lend me their attention for a moment.

Ahh, I don't normally rant. Forgive me, and thanks for lending me yours....

Art Guerrilias - don't give up the day job.....

Excuse me?!

You've come to see the arrrrt?

But you old hag!

We ARE the arrrrrrt!


Responsible members of the British workforce display their varied sense of humour, using only their work requipment as props. Amidst the throng of art connaissuers, our intrepid workers build the unreal out of the real through these pictures. Paid to do so, no less.

Ready for any situation, our art guerillas do more than just face the daily grind: they really take the piss.


More pics here.

No privacy

"Sell your cleverness and buy
Bewilderment.
Cleverness is mere opinion,
Bewilderment is intuition."

Rumi.

I made some short films, they were shown. One was a poem film, from which this still comes. It is called "Sleepwalk". Lots of fun making the soundscape, which in itself is a piece. It was a great precursour to these, my 'back to Iran' days. My unckle colin said after the screening, however, that is was 'a sad film to come from such a bubbly person'. We all have our wells. Mine is filled with sounds and images of Iran, see Kiarostami's 'Five' for the perfect audio of a Tehrani childhood.

Now I feel I need to make another one. But I have so many projects including a play that is rubbish, even though the BBC have approved it. I cant type anymore as I am being invaded...

We Are Iran

It was GOOOD. I knew Nasrin Allavi would be an animated and heartfelt speaker.
Here is Nasrin's book: WE ARE IRAN

And the musicians website: AMIR BAGHIRI


Now there is a portugese band in the studio and they have various drums along with a little banjo. It sounds like summer and I hope that all the bloggers in Nasrin's book get encouraging and warming emails from listeners.

Please buy We Are Iran from Portobello Books, and get writing to all those people locked in the bubble. Afterwards I asked Nasrin if she wouldn't get involved with Amnesty's letter writing dept....but I guess she has already done more than any other individual I know to help.

I Imagine My Death on A Bus

---

Grunting in disagreement
She pulls against the glass that fractures yet further.
And falls, slow in unbelievable agony.
Pieces in blood glisten
Like landing lights on an airstrip
And sounds of approaching sirens
Echoe her own engine, in alarm,
In ill-prepared submission, and
Slowly shutting down.

More poems (and conversations - considered and off the cuff)

Old School

How can a shared reality that is really a fiction bring so many people together?
It might be the story of every institution and belief system. Yellow socks and school rules, all made to be left to hang and be broken, these are the threads that hold us together.

What kind of comradery between those who have been through certain 'ranks'? It cannot be simulated.

I'm reading 'We Are Iran' at the moment. The book of real blogs. They share so much yet are each a prismatic view of the same situation. When the authoress comes in on the show, what will I ask her? Me who has so many questions...

At work today someone from my old school came in. It was not the first time he had come into the gallery, but this time I was more sure it was him. Once we had recognised each other I noticed how we were immediately on the same level. That is the result of 9 years of boarding school life where a child goes home only every 6 weeks. Words we understand that noone else does - such as 'housey' and 'squit' and memories to be conjured such as the smell of wet wool coats and the splinters that the dormitory floor gives one through bright yellow socks, but in the midst of absolute fun, one never cared about.

Anyway all this is the subject of another website altogether: MY 16th CENTURY SCHOOL

Meanwhile I am in the middle of a island that is distancing itself from any shore, and there are negative forces.