Josh Lyman: We're the most dominant nation on earth. But too often the face of our economic superiority is a corporate imperialism, our technological dominance shown by Smart bombs and Predator drones. We could do something else. Something generous and uplifting for all humankind. We could send the first representatives from Earth, to walk on another planet. We could land people on Mars. Needs work. Donna Moss: Needs something. Josh Lyman: Yeah, that inspiration thing. Josh Lyman: Voyager, in case it's ever encountered by extra-terrestrials, is carrying photos of life on Earth, greetings in 55 languages and a collection of music from Gregorian chants to Chuck Berry. Including "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" by '20s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him when he was seven by throwing lye in is his eyes after his father had beat her for being with another man. He died, penniless, of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down. But his music just left the solar system.
A recent break in The Gambia threw up a conversation about the excellence of Van Morrison. I thought I'd write a quick post or two about why Van is known as "the Man".
He emerges in the 1960s in Belfast, Northern Ireland - then caught in vicious sectarian strife between Catholics and Protestants. Only his parents are Jehovah's Witnesses, so he gets to be weird to both sides.
His first appearance is with Them, a band sometimes likened to the Rolling Stones. There's a great bassy ground to Them's work. Here's an example, covering Bob Dylan:
Them were noticed, but it was only with the iconic Astral Weeks that Van became a global phenomenon. The complex subtleties and texture of Astral Weeks really deserve a full hearing. It's dreamy lounge-jazz feel is strengthened by being virtually live - the entire album, widely regarded as one of the greatest ever made - Mojo rate it as 2 in their list of the best 100 albums, for example - was knocked out in a couple of sessions. As the recording engineer recalls:
"A cloud came along, and it was called the Van Morrison sessions. We all hopped upon that cloud, and the cloud took us away for awhile, and we made this album, and we landed when it was done."
Side one is called "In the Beginning" and opens with the title track, with its dreamily impressionistic stream-of-conscious lyrics:
If I ventured in the slipstream Between the viaducts of your dream Where immobile steel rims crack And the ditch in the back roads stop Could you find me? Would you kiss-a my eyes? To lay me down In silence easy To be born again To be born again From the far side of the ocean...
I had a friend who remembers that for about six months after its release (in November 1968), it was all anyone had on the turntable wherever he went.
It's influenced countless musicians, from Bruce Springsteen and Bono to Jeff Buckley, Joan Armatrading, Tracy Chapman and Elvis Costello. Artists like Johnny Depp and Martin Scorsese revere it. Costello calls it: "still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium, and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since."
The whole album is remarkable, evocative, courageous and often transcendant. But my favourite song, if forced to choose, would be Sweet Thing, which has a romantic delicacy almost unparalleled in popular music, for capturing the feeling and power of love:
And I will never grow so old again. And I will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain. Sweet thing, sweet thing.
And I shall drive my chariot, down your streets and cry. 'Hey it's me, I'm dynamite and I don't know why'. And you shall take me strongly in your arms again. And I would not remember that I ever felt the pain. We shall walk and talk, in gardens all misty wet, All misty wet with rain, And I will never, never, never grow so old again.
Difficult to follow that, to be honest. So a quick reprise, from the Astral Weeks show, forty years later, when Van revisited his enduring masterpiece:
Van may have grown older and grumpier, but he still conveys that love will tear that apart, and remains the most rejuvenating force on the planet...
Please feel free - indeed, encouraged, implored with - to comment, share, link and all that other 'People Power 2.0' stuff we're beginning to get quite good at.
After decades of scared silence, Libyans started talking, nowhere more obviously than on their walls.
A key feature of visiting Libya these days is the sheer ubiquity of graffiti. Inevitably much of this palimpsest will be painted over. For now though it's a record of an exuberant conversation, a breaking of the silence with the hiss of spray paint and a cacophony of caricature...
My favourites are the little kids' versions of Gaddafi - simplified but still recognisable, yet with subtle variations.
Photo: "Gone Years" by Alvaro J Alvarez; used under Creative Commons licence:
I'll leave the exact details of the consequences of the #grannytax imposed in Britain's recent Budget to the policy-wonks. Who wins, who loses, by what exact amounts - this is their meat and drink. But I'll add this:
In recent weeks, various major reports - including this one - have detailed the disgustingly inadequate treatment of the elderly in Britain's so-called 'care homes' (more accurately described to me by a Jordanian shop-keeper once as "these prisons you keep your old people in.")
We're all ageing, moment by moment, second by second. God-willing, we'll probably reach old age and infirmity. Yet our indifference and contempt for the aged - in the supposedly civilized, once wealthy, laughably "first" world - is everywhere around us. Robbing their pension pots by tweaking tax "allowances" (such infantilizing language, isn't it?) and diluting the value of their savings with inflation (or to use the flatulent language of our times, 'quantitative easing') are a mere bagatelle in the scheme of things.
When did you last notice the old? Cease the endless 'getting and spending' and, say, stop in on an elderly neighbour who would love some company but has too much dignity - real dignity of the kind that's now, frankly, old-fashioned - to ask for it? Our own fear of the hot (or is it cold?) breath of mortality stops us thinking about this stuff properly. Yet we're all heading there. In greater quantities than ever before.
Now might be the time to think about the world of the aged a little more.
Herewith the first lesson, from the excellent Book of Mirdad by the Lebanese writer Mikhail Naimy. Highlights in bold for the busy - because we have so little time, don't we? So little time...
Chapter 23: MIRDAD HEALS SIM-SIM AND SPEAKS ON OLD AGE
Naronda: Sim-Sim, the oldest cow in the stables of the Ark, had been ailing for five days and would not touch any feed or water, when Shamadam sent for a butcher saying that it was more prudent to slaughter the cow and profit by the sale of her meat and hid than let her die and be atotal loss.
When the Master heard of it he became exceeding thoughtful and straightway hurried to thestable and into Sim Sim’s stall. The Seven followed in his wake.
Sim-Sim stood sad and almost motionless, her head hanging low, her eyes half-shut and her hair bristling and devoid of sheen. Now and then would she barely move an ear to chase away an impertinent fly. Here great milk-bag hung limp and empty between her thighs; for Sim-Simtowards the end of her long and fruitful life was denied the sweat heartaches of motherhood. Her hipbones jutted out, grim and forlorn, like two tombstones. Here ribs and vertebra could easily be counted. Her long and slender tail, with a heavy tuft of hair at the end, fell straight and stiff. The Master approached the ailing animal and began to stroke here between the horns and eyes and under the chin. Occasionally he would pass his hand over her back and belly, speaking toher all the while as he would speak to a human being:
MIRDAD: Where is your cud, my generous Sim-Sim? So much has Sim-Sim given that she forgot to leave herself even a small cud to chew. And much as Sim-Sim yet to give, her snow white milk is till this day running crimson in our veins. Her sturdy calves are trailing heavy ploughs in our fields and helping us to feed many a hungry mouth. Here graceful heifers fill our pastures with their young. Even her refuse graces our board in succulent greens from the garden and luscious fruits from the orchard.
Our ravines still echo and re-echo good Sim-Sim’s lungful bellowing. Our springs still mirror here benign and lovely face. Our soil still cherishes and guards with jealously the ineffaceable prints of her hoofs.
Too glad are our grasses to feed Sim-Sim. Too pleased is our sun to caress her. Too happy are our breezes to glide over her soft and glossy fur. Too thankful is Mirdad to see her through the desert of Old age and be her guide to other pastures in the land of other suns and breezes.
Much has Sim-Sim given, and much has she taken; but more has Sim-Sim yet to give and to take.
Micaster: Can Sim-Sim understand your words that you should speak to her as if she had a human understanding?
MIRDAD: It is not the word that counts, good Micaster. It is what vibrates in the word. And to that even a beast is susceptible. Besides, I see a woman looking at me out of meek Sim-Sim’s eye.
Micaster: What is the good of speaking so to aged and failing Sim-Sim? Hope you thereby to stay the ravages of age and lengthen Sim-Sim’s days?
MIRDAD: A dreadful burden is Old Age to man as well as to beast. And men have made it doubly so by their neglectful heartlessness. Upon a newborn babe they lavish their utmost care and affection. But to an age-burdened man they reserve their indifference more than their care, and their disgust more than their sympathy. Just as impatient as they are to see a sucking to grow into manhood, just so impatient are they to see an old man swallowed by the grave.
The very young and the very old are equally helpless. But the helplessness of the young conscripts the loving, sacrificial help of all. While the helplessness of the old is able to command but the grudging help of few. Verily, the old are more deserving of sympathy than the young.
When the word must knock long and loud to gain admittance to an ear once sensitive and alert to the faintest whisper,
When the once limpid eye becomes a dancing floor for the weirdest blotches and shadows.
When the once winged foot becomes a lump of lead, and the hand that moulded life becomes a broken mould,
When the knee is out of joint , and the head is a puppet on the neck,
When the mill-stones are ground out, and the mill itself is a dreary cave,
When to rise is to sweat with the fear of falling down, and to sit is to sit with the painful doubt of never rising again,
When to eat and drink is to dread the aftermath of eating and drinking, and not to eat and drink is to be stalked by hateful Death,
Aye, when Old Age is upon a man, then is the time, my companions, to lend him ears and eyes, and give him hands and feet, and brace his failing strength with love so as to make him feel that he is no whit less dear to Life in his waning years then he was in his waxing babyhood and youth.
Four-score years may not be more than a wink in eternity. But a man who has sown himself for four-score years is much more than a wink. He is the foodstuff for all who harvest his life. And which life is not harvested by all?
Are you not harvesting even this very moment the life of every man and woman that ever walked this Earth? What is your speech but the harvest of their speech? What are your thoughts but the gleanings of their thoughts? Your very clothes and dwellings, your food, your implements, your laws, your traditions and conventions, are they not the clothes, the dwellings,the food, the implements, the laws, the traditions and conventions of those who had been and gone before?
Not one thing do you harvest at one time, but all things and at all times. You are the sowers, the harvest, the reapers, the field and the threshing floor. If your harvest be poor, look to the seed you have sown in others and the seed you allowed them to sow in you. Look also to the reaper and his sickle, and to the field and the threshing floor.
An old man whose life you have harvested and put away in granaries is surely worthy of your utmost care. Should you embitter with indifference his years which are yet rich with things to be harvested , that which you have gathered of him and put away, and that which are yet to gather would certainly be bitter in your mouth. So it is with the failing beast.
It is not right to profit by the crop, and then to curse the sower and the field.
Be kind to men of every race and clime, my companions. They are the food for your God-ward journey. But be especially kind to men in their old age lest through unkindness your food be spoiled and you never reach your journey’s end. Be kind to animals of every sort and age. They are your dumb but very faithful helpers in the long and arduous preparations for the journey. But be especially kind to animals in their old age, lest through the hardness of your heart their faithfulness be turned into faithlessness, and their help become an hindrance.
It is rank ingratitude to thrive on Sim-Sim’s milk, and when she has no more to give, to lay the butcher’s knife to her throat.
Naronda: Hardly had the Master finished saying that when Shamadam with the butcher walked in. The butcher went straight to Sim-Sim. No sooner did he see here than we heard him shout in joyful mockery, ‘How say you this cow is ill and dying? She is healthier than I ,excepting that she is starved – the poor animal – and I am not. Give her to eat.’
And great was our amazement, indeed, when we looked at Sim-Sim and saw her chewing the cud. Even Shamadam’s heart softened and he ordered the best of cow-delicacies brought to Sim-Sim. And Sim-Sim ate with a relish.
This beautiful picture, Snow, is by friend, the quite wonderful artist Emily Patrick.
I'm pretty much heads down throughout the festive season, working to deadline on a long piece based around Libya for Technology Review, as a follow up to Streetbook (which took up several months in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco & the UK this year).
So it's quite likely this is as near as I'll get to general seasonal greetings this time round. Sorry about that.
By way of recompense, this beautiful picture... and the equally beautiful Snow in San Anselmo, a song by Van Morrison which if you know it, you'll be happy to hear it again, and if you don't, you'll regard as one of the better presents you get this year...
After three months work, visiting three countries and the aftermath of two revolutions, here is some long-form investigative journalism: a 6,500 word article...
