The Age Of Kali

Kali sprang to mind this evening on the way home. Not an everyday occurrence, I grant you, but it sparked memories of Poly Styrene singing 'Melancholy' in the Age of Kali, of William Dalrymple's book 'The Age Of Kali' and of my first encounter with the goddess.

Kali the Hindu goddess is an aspect of Durga, wife of Shiva, and is not the same as the demon Kali whose name is associated with the last age in the cycle of times. In Hindu teaching, the Age of Kali, or Kali Yuga, is the final age when humankind turns away from spirituality, the age of vice and discord, and we're in it now. The world will end in fire and a new, fresh age will begin.

I first met Kali, the goddess, in a wonderfully colourful Hindu temple in Singapore in the early 90s when she was  eating the heart of a virgin. It was all blood and entrails and I moved on. It was a bit like this photo but more colourful. A year or so later is my first strong memory of Kali when I went to Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh in Northen India.

I was visiting the Hindu and Jain temples in the UNESCO World Heritage Site and came across a couple of smaller temples that were still used occasionally. One was to Kali. I took a few steps inside and it was pitch black, no windows or light reaching inside to let me see what was inside. I thought, OK, I'll take a photo with flash and then I'll see what it's like when I have it developed (this was pre-digital, younger readers). So I did. The flash exploded and then the air exploded around me with shrieks and a rushing of wings all charging at me. I took the hint and got out of there quickly.

Now, once I was out in day light again part of me realised that the sound of shrieks and wings must be bats and I'd disturbed their sleep. Another part of me wondered...

I think it was also on that trip across Northern India that part of Kali's nature was explained to me by one of my guides.  She has a reputation for violence and drinking blood but there is a reason for that. In ages past she and other gods were fighting the demons to protect mankind and she saw that every time a demon was wounded or killed and a drop of their blood touched the earth then another demon sprang up to join in the war. Her way of preventing the demon hoardes from ever-increasing was to eat the demons and make sure she drank all their blood. It obviously worked since we're not overrun with demons today.

Since that time I've always been a bit more respectful to Kali. I have encountered her several times since that journey and I always bow my head slightly at her image. I think of brave warrior Kali rather than blood-thirsty Kali.

When I returned home from that journey and got my films developed and printed I found an odd photo of a dark, blood-daubed statue of what looked to be a goddess. It was very grey and mirky but the splashes of rust on it indicated red. I couldn't remember taking that photo and then I remembered the Khajuraho temples. It was the photo of Kali.

I shall have to hunt it out from the boxes of photos I found last week and remember my first encounter with Kali.

One World One Voice

Do you remember seeing a television programme back in 1990 called 'One World One Voice', a nearly one hour-long visual album of world music conceived and directed by Kevin Godley? I do and I bought the cassette when it came out on Virgin records.

I distinctly remember watching it on my little portable telly and remember four sections in particular: Robbie Robertson (why not Buffy Sainte-Marie?) quoting Chief Seattle at the start, the 'One Voice' section, the Dave Stewart section in a Hindu temple (nice to see you've all got your shoes off people) and the Kodo Drummers backed by an orchestra at the end. There are many more memorable bits but those are the ones that stick in my memory.

I found my cassette of the music yesterday and, today, I found the actual programme on YouTube. It's 52 minutes long so you'll need to set aside some time to watch it but it's worth it. A lot of it is a continuous loop of music with changing themes and emphases and then, every now and then, a new theme or song is introduced.



It includes great musicians from all around the works, most of whom I don't know. But I do know Peter Gabriel, Sting, Andy Summers, Joe Strummer, Suzanne Vega, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Eddie Grant, The Kodo Drummers, Dave Stewart, Shakespear's Sister, Bob Geldoff and, of course, Kevin Godley. There are lots more in there if you care to look.

I suspect the reason this has never been repeated is due to licensing and other 'biz' issues but it deserves to be seen again. Or for someone to remake it for the 21st Century? 

The Buffy Sainte-Marie Tape

I've mentioned before that I first came across Buffy Sainte-Marie through a half-hour programme of her music on BBC2 in 1975 or 1976. What I don't think I've mentioned is that I taped the programme, as in recorded onto a cassette by holding the microphone against the speaker on the little portable telly in my bedroom. I don't know why I did that, but I did.

The programme was made up of Buffy's songs played over short films that were quite literal. One that springs to mind was of a happy couple claiming native American heritage holding a dinner party with folks chatting and smiling while 'Now That The Buffalo's Gone' played, a song calling for support for native peoples. I don't recall any footage of Buffy in the programme at all.

'What's brought this up?' I hear you ask. Well, I'm having a bit of a clear-out and I found two boxes of old cassette tapes (that's an old form of technology for the younger readers)  buried away when I thought I'd long got rid of them all. And guess what? Despite getting rid of most of my cassette tapes years ago, I seem to have kept the tape with the Buffy programme. From the other music on the tape it looks like the programme was broadcast in 1976 so that clears up the timing question. The case is a bit battered but the cassette looks ok. I can't play it of course, because I no longer have a working cassette player, but I've still got the tape. I'm quite pleased by that and will keep it anyway.

I can tell it was before punk exploded just by some of the songs I taped on the same cassette:

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - 'Boston Tea Party'
Bryan Ferry - 'The Price Of Love'
Rod Stewart - 'The Killing Of Georgie'
Twiggy - 'Here I Go Again'
Kiki Dee - 'Loving & Free'
Manfred Mann's Earthband - 'Blinded By The Light'
David Dundas - 'Jeans On'
Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - 'Here Comes The Sun'
5000 Volts - 'Dr Kiss Kiss'
Bee Gees - 'You Should Be Dancing'

... and so many others (it was a C120 tape after all - if you don't know what that means then you're definitely under 35).

Of course, the problem with having a long-needed clear out is that all work stops every time you open another drawer or another box to investigate what gems I thought were important enough to hold onto. That means work is progressing slowly. In one box I found a load of ceramics - bowls and plates - that I gathered on trips to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in the '90s. Some are obviously meant to be decorative but what's the point in letting them collect dust in a box?

I've also found box on box on box of photos. Literally, thousands of the things going back 30-odd years. I, obviously, need to look at every single photo to see if it evokes a memory. And decide what to do with them all.

At least I'll have more space after this to collect more stuff to replace it with!

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the Apollo Theatre

I went to see 'The Curious Incident' the other night, not really knowing what to expect other than it's been getting rave reviews. It was first staged at the National Theatre before moving to the West End so it's obviously got something going for it.

It's an odd tale adapted from a book, the tale of a 15 year old boy somewhere on the autistic spectrum who hates to be touched but who loves maths and space. He finds a neighbours' dog killed with a garden fork through its body and decides to find out who killed the dog.

That leads him on a journey to discover that his mother isn't really dead and that his dad's been hiding a secret stash of letters from his mum to him. He overcomes his fear of other people and noise by travelling to London from Swindon to find his mother and returns to Swindon to take his maths A-Level. His reconciliation with his dad comes when he's given a dog (ok, the cutest puppy I've seen in a long time). It's an oddly compelling play that doesn't really go anywhere but we do get an insight into the lad's life and autism.

The staging is really quite novel and seemed to be inspired by an old Human League set with lights coming on and off when needed. I suspect it's meant to help define aspects of the lad's brain firing when he's thinking and experiencing things or some such. I particularly liked the depiction of the escalator to the Tube at Paddington Station. You never know what might be the next part of the stage to light up. I thought it was great fun and was almost a character in its own right.

Throughout the play the lad lays out a toy train set, gradually spreading across the stage, adding buildings and trees to make it more realistic. At the end the train and the set comes to life, choo-chooing around the stage and, as the buildings wake up and start to glow I realised it was a depiction of the journey by train from Swindon to London, complete with London monuments. Very clever.

I liked the optimistic ending when the lad gets his maths A-level result of an A* (naturally) and he goes on to say he'll take another exam next year, go to university and get a first class degree and have his own flat. Somehow, in his own erratic way, I think he'll mange it.

Mutya Keisha Siobhan - 'Flatline'

Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhan Donaghy, the original Sugababes, are back together and planning to release their first single, 'Flatline', on 1 September. They've published it on Soundcloud as a teaser and you can listen to it here. It seems to be all over the internet and twitter today (which is how I found it) with everyone loving it. That  bodes well for the album.



They've been recording for a while so, presumably, they're ready to release the new music and do all the promo stuff that goes with it. They're going under the name Mutya Keisha Siobhan - or MKS - which makes sense to me. Although Siobhan left after the first album, the first few 'babes albums were classics and I'm looking forward to the new record.

Welcome back girls - back in business indeed!

The Impossible Girl - 'Stellar Alchemist'

The first video from The Impossible Girl (aka Kim Boekbinder) to promote her new album, 'The Sky Is Calling', was released today - 'Stellar Alchemist'. Watch it here:



We see Kim dancing in the raging heart of the Sun as she transforms into the Stellar Alchemist. I'm looking forward to seeing Kim in London for the first time on 30 August.

'A Crisis of Brilliance' - Dulwich Picture Gallery

The new exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery is called, 'A Crisis of Brilliance' and is a collection of works by young British artists at the start of the 20th Century who all attended the Slade School of Art in London. They were Paul Nash, CRW Nevinson, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and David Bomberg. The exhibition was inspired by David Boyd Haycock's book of the same name from 2009 and features 71 works from between 1908-1922 chosen by Haycock.

It's an inspired decision to have a group exhibition so we see the artists experimenting with different subjects and media, from early student works to finding their own styles. The period covers the First World War and included are some war paintings, depictions of ravaged countryside and ravaged humanity. Some are quite painful to look at. Early student sketches and portraits give way to increasingly individual paintings. A sketch of a naked standing woman by Carrington is really quite special showing that from an early age she was an astonishing draughtswoman.

The surprise for me was Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, an artist I'd never actually heard of. He seems to have had a checkered life but I liked his angular paintings and shied away from his disturbing war paintings like the bombardment of Ypres and 'La Patrie'. 'La Patrie' depicts dead and dying soldiers lying on straw in a barn, left (in all likelihood) to die since there were so many of them on the Western Front. It is a dark painting in so many ways and made me think of my Granda who was there at the time and wounded.

Two of my favourite paintings were by Mark Gertler, both due to the rich colours and shapes on the canvas - 'The Fruit Sorters' and 'Gilbert Cannan and His Mill' with Gilbert and two huge dogs in the foreground. 'The Fruit Sorters' is an interesting composition with barefoot workers carrying fruit and I peered at the woman with the fruit basket 'hat' to work out where her hair ended and the basket began. I wonder - is it based on reality or just a whimsy of Mark's when he began it? Whatever, it's a nice antidote to the pain and destruction in Nevinson's war paintings.

Gertler also painted a lovely portrait of Dora Carrington, titled 'Portrait of a Girl in Blue Jersey' and the title describes it perfectly. Carrington is shown with her severe haircut wearing a blue jersey and sort of smiling. The colours are  a lot richer and deeper than in this version. I like that painting in all its simplicity.

Carrington is probably the most sympathetic of all the featured artists and the only woman. I saw a rare screening of the film about her life and love for Lytton Strachey a few years ago (with Emma Thompson as Carrington) so am vaguely familiar with her life  but what has never been fully explained is her apparent reluctance to be an artist - an exhibited artist. She was quite prolific in some ways and produced a sound body of work but she drew and painted for herself and for Lytton, for her friends, not for the public. She was an astonishing portraitist, finding the detail that makes a portrait come alive and we see that in her portrait of 'Mrs Box', a farmer. It's the fine detail of very gently sketched lines around the mouth and eyes that made me look twice - elegantly depicting age and weary labour over the years.

Her masterpiece is her portrait of Lytton Strachey which is part of the exhibition. She focuses in on a few details that make the portrait come alive and you need to see it in front of you to see the details. At first glance it's the oddly elongated fingers that draw the attention but up close you can see the carefully painted glasses, his ear and nose, the nails on both hands with the rest of the image being sketched in. It really is marvellous to see it up close, particularly surrounded by the other paintings in the exhibition to give a context in time. After the exhibition it will, I expect, return to the National Portrait Gallery.

Carrington killed herself shortly after Lytton's death from cancer. She wrote, "Everything was for you... I see my paints & think it is no use for Lytton will never see my pictures now, & I cry".  That's a terrible sadness. Everything was for Lytton

Dulwich isn't in the centre of town but it's easy enough to get to - if you get the chance go and see this great exhibition and marvel at the works and dreams of a set of young artists that we should hear more about.

Buffy Sainte-Marie's Tribute to Richie Havens

Buffy appeared at the memorial concert for Richie Havens and I've just come across this video of Buffy (courtesy of her blog) talking about her old friend and singing a song called 'We Are Circling'.



The photo published in 'Vanity Fair' that Buffy mentions is this one (and that's the only time I've ever bought that glossy magazine):

Richie has gone down in history as the man who opened Woodstock all those decades ago but I'll remember him as the man holding hands with Buffy.

Amanda Palmer at Glastonbury 2013 [Part 2]

Amanda is now off on tour after her Glastonbury appearances at the weekend. Sadly, there's no footage of the show but bits and pieces are starting to emerge, little bits in the press, photos tweeted and blogs appearing. There's a lovely fanboy piece by Alex in his blog about winning a free pass and meeting Amanda a few times (read it here) and a great photo by Simon Godley:

Alex includes the setlist for her show on the Other Stage:

Do It With A Rockstar
Want It Back
The Killing Type
Oasis
Bottomfeeder
Common People
Leeds United
Girl Anachronism
Ukulele Anthem

and also for her appearance with Billy Bragg in the Leftfield on Saturday (for which thanks). Amanda also went crowd surfing with her trailing coat like on the last tour and, hopefully, she'll do it on the current tour. I found this photo somewhere but can't remember so sorry for not giving it a credit.

So that's it for the moment. Only two weeks until I see Miss Palmer at the Roundhouse again. I shall continue to wear my Punk Cabaret Is Freedom badge, obviously, since you never know when you might bump into her. And by 'you' I obviously mean 'me'. I'm overdue a hug or two...

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum - British Museum

I went to see the latest blockbuster exhibition at the British Museum, 'Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum'. It was exceptionally busy when I went and suspect the whole run will be like that but it is definitely worth seeing if you can make it.

Of course, we all know the story of Pompeii - and therefore of Herculaneum - in that Vesuvius erupted and splurged the region in volcanic ash that covered the two cities and buried them and the people and artefacts deep in ash for nearly two thousand years. This exhibition tries to bring the old cities back to life by not just showing an array of amazing artefacts dug from the buried cities but by putting them in context. The exhibition is themed around a 'standard' Roman house of the time, placing the artefacts in and around the rooms of a typical villa.

We're given the kind of exhibits usually found in bedrooms, in kitchens and gardens. We see the frescoes, implements and furniture usually found in different rooms as well as the beautiful wall paintings decorating some rooms. Some are extensions of the spaces they represent, like the reconstruction of a garden room decorated with delicate plants and birds to take the garden into the house. We're also shown some of the statuary that might be found in a typical garden, some more salubrious than others.

There are statues, paintings and mosaics of gods and heroes, of noble men and women of Pompeii and Rome, of scholars and athletes, of Greek tales and Egyptian goddesses. They're all there somewhere. We're given statues of stags dragged down by hunting dogs, of a drunk Hercules under the influence of Bacchus and taking a leak wherever he choses just like any mortal, of Pan and a goat. This is everyday stuff for those ancient Romans, just like having the household toilet in the kitchen since it helps with kitchen waste (maybe not the best design feature of the house).

Because this is about Pompeii and Herculaneum then, of course, we have to have plaster casts of the dead folks and this was quite sad. The bodies are long gone but the space they left in the ash give us casts of the bodies of people and animals. This was rather sad, us gawping at rough casts of dead people, particularly the family group of parents and two children as we see them lying where they fell, killed by the heat and the ash, seeing the space their bodies occupied as their liquids evaporated and tendons went into spasm and we see them leaving a space of pain. I silently apologised to them for looking in at their final agonies.

The exhibition closes with the busts of a man and a woman and a quote from shortly after the catastrophy sometime in AD 90s:

"In a future generation, when crops spring up again, when this wasteland regains its green, will men believe that cities and peoples lie beneath? That in days of old their lands lay closer to the sea? Nor has that fatal summit ceased to threaten." Statius Silvae AD90s.

So soon after the eruption of AD79 the cities had vanished so completely that is was easy to believe they'd never been there. The exhibition also notes that an area of Naples used to be called Herculaneum, presumably because that's where so many refugees settled.

There was a small joy for me in the exhibition. Under one of the statues was a reference to Lucius Caecelius Iucundus, a banker of Pompeii who I was introduced to 38 years ago when I did Latin at school as part of the Cambridge syllabus. I was rubbish at Latin but I remember Caecilius and his family, his wife and children, slaves and his villa. Their world ended with the eruption and, although no-one knows whether they died in Pompeii or escaped, they live on in the Latin syllabus and in the memories of people like me. My teacher, Mr McCleod, might not have got me through the exam (more about my own laziness than anything else) but he gave me memories.

One of the most touching things in the exhibition is the portrait of the baker and his wife that forms the poster for the exhibition. Him with his rolling pin and her with her stylus. It's a touching portrait that says 'we were just like you'. The ages may pass but do we really change?

If you get the chance, go and see this exhibition. There's so much more to it than I mention here.