Developments of a sort

It's been a great day for understanding and change, and in total, I've gained really good insight into how my life in the UK is developing, so let's lie back and think of England, nixing that sayings sexual undertones, of course.

That's some dysfunctional family.

It's been about two months since I arrived here, beginning my sixth attempt at settling down in Blighty. Blighty...really? To be honest, I don't feel I'll ever be comfortable saying all of the Britishisms, but for the sake of a future Commonwealth readership, I'll at least acknowledge their existence.

To me, offering detailed anecdotes about being a Yankee expatriate in the UK is about as interesting as watching paint dry, and I'm sure Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Bill Hicks (who intended to relocate here) and Sylvia Plath did a better job in their day and way. With that said, what can original statements can be offered?

Hand on heart, I can say that I have a loving affection for Britain. I feel far more comfortable being here than I ever was in America, which seems odd, considering how the US isn't exactly a developing backwater failed state and I really don't have any problems with Americans or the idea of America. Living there just isn't my cup of tea.  Europe made me do it.

                      
Nixing comparisons of his fame, talent or youthful pretension, Scott Walker's explanation for living here offers reasons that I share. 


In 2004, I had the chance to visit Greece. I was floored by beauty of the country. Nothing else was necessary. Flying back to America, to New Jersey, with its car-clogged superhighway arteries, cookie cutter homes and tasteless chain stores, and then realizing that this was the romping ground of many a NYC commuter got me sufficiently motivated to get out as quickly as I could. I took great advice and transferred colleges, boarded a plane and came on over.

Funnily enough, the UK was not my first choice. Germany was. My character gravitates towards the austerity that many Germans demonstrate, so I figured, why not? Well, I'll tell you what happened to that idea. I lasted about a year and half before I began to miss speaking English full time and all of the cultural facets of the Anglosphere. I wanted to live in Europe without the hassle of being endlessly reminded of cultural and language barriers; a pathetic problem to have, but an honest one just the same...so I moved to the UK.

How rude! Are you honestly trying to say that you moved to the UK because of language and culture? Well, hopefully not. Britain is also very conducive to my idea of a good life. People here are witty, curious about the outside world, and ethnically diverse. It's as if the Empire lead to an improved America: one without the reactionary extremities of individualism or the anti-intellectualism of its political class. That's perdy cool to me.

Of course, a lot of hot air can be released about Britain's greatness, and I don't want to sound like I'm reading from a poorly edited script. The history of this country is as bloody as it is fascinating. Just the same, at least we Americans are well versed in rapacious and violent pastimes, too. But I digress...

The UK is also a great based from which to travel around the world. Literally. From Auckland to Alberta, you can catch a plane to London, and its something I admire tremendously.

In the end, maybe it just comes down to that airport.

(Will finish the post tomorrow - exhausted!)

Tinariwen and America's history in the Middle East

Tinariwen


Lately, I've been listening to a fantastic group of Tuareg musicians from Mali called Tinariwen "deserts". I had the good fortune to see Tinariwen in Poland last year at the Open'er Festival in Gdynia. They mystified the homogenous European audience with some of the best music I've heard in years. With twangy guitars, long, droning rhythms and beats, the band, adorning traditional Tuareg attire, made the evening a truly unforgettable one. Here's a song by them that I heard that night.

Here's an English translation of the lyrics, courtesy YouTube's  TheMehdieval :


THE TRAVELLER IN THE DESERT

I am a traveller in the lone desert
It's nothing special
I can stand the wind
I can stand the thirst
And the sun
I know how to go and walk
Until the setting of the sun
In the desert, flat and empty, where nothing is given
My head is alert, awake
I have climbed up and climbed down
The mountains where I was born
I know in which caves the water is hidden
These worries are my friends
I'm always on familiar terms with them and that
Gives birth to the stories of my life
You who are organised, assembled, walking together
Hand in hand, you're living
A path which is empty of meaning
In truth, you're all alone 


I am still searching for a translation of Chet Boghassa.


What fascinates me about this group is their history, and the utter originality of their style. It's as ithey took Brian Eno's and David Bryne's My Life and Bush of Ghosts,  stripped it down to bare musical rudiments, and mixed it with traditional Tuareg song.





Here's a really great summary of their history:


"Of course, it is difficult, and wrong, to ignore the band’s cultural background and amazing history. They are cultural representatives of the Touareg both by choice and by default. The Touareg are nomads of the Sahara desert who migrate through Mali, Libya, Niger and Algeria. The band’s origins date to the early 80s when unemployed Touareg men, their economy destroyed by fifteen years of drought, were encouraged by Muammar al-Gaddafi to train in Libyan military camps in the hopes of turning them into his mercenaries. Ibrahim formed a small musical group called Taghreft Tinariwen to entertain the members of the camps. Throughout the 80s, they entertained and informed Touareg populations around the desert, their reputation spread by countless duplicated cassettes. Several members of the band were active participants in the early 90s rebellions against the Malian government until the conflict was finally put to rest in 1996. At that point they turned their attention full time to music. Since the release of their debut ‘Radio Tisdas Sessions’ in 2001, Tinariwen have toured heavily, but within a very well defined milieu." - David Dacks, Aol Music

What I love about them is the way in which they utterly efface of stereotypical trappings of Western-sponsored "World Music" by being an unpretentious, authentic and meaningful group. There's no sense of gimmickry. Here's a video that's totally unrelated to my assertion about New Age gimmickry:



For those of your who are truly fascinated by the Berbary nations, if only to better understand their culture, this short documentary is really worth checking out.




"Barbary" Berbery States

During my undergrad studies, I took a course on Middle Eastern history. In retrospect, it was more like  a journey through time! The detail that I gained from my former professor was painstakingly nuanced. I decided to study the area for a simple reason: 9/11. For all of the platitudes that Americans offer on the reasoning of the perpetrators of that hellish atrocity, one thing is certain, we will always benefit from knowing more about their motivation. Though it's pathetic to suggest that it took a national tragedy to interest me in the event, in all truth, the Middle East was simply not a main interest of mine until that event occured. Some of my closest friends were of Middle Eastern decent, but that was not really particularly vital for me to ruminate over.  Now...well, we all know why it's important.

In my time during the course study, I picked up a very interesting work on the history of American involvement in the Middle East. One can easily infer that it has a pro-American bias, but regarding its historical accuracy, its a highly objective work. Here's a lecture from its author, Columbia University fellow Michael Oren, speaking at UCSB.

Interestingly, Tinariwen is consists of Berber musicians. It's interesting to contrast their dignity with the portait of the Barbary States.

In general, I very much hate the idea of calling Berbary peoples "Barbary". The clear implication is that they are pirates. Without question, some engaged in piracy, but to reinforce the word as an affirmative way of describing North African nations is deplorable. I'm glad Mr. Oren does not. To be clear, some leaders of 18th Berber states were not civic leaders with the vision of individuals like Mustafa Kemal Attatürk or Sadat, they presided over regimes sustained by religious fervor and plunder, but to be sure, that depiction is not relevant for modern day Berber inhabited North Africa - region that people in America could benefit from knowing much more about.

Fun fact: Did you know that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams signed the second treaty recognizing the United States with Morocco?

Hostelsurfing and Swedish Artists

Credit http://www.hostelmanagement.com/

Another day, another relocation.  After nearly a week with a lovely Portuguese/British family in Shoreham, UK, I'll be heading back down to central Brighton to spend the next two days with a very lovely friend from the University of Sussex. Getting ready for the transfer is always stressful - particularly with pretty serious financial constraints. 

As most people I've met while CouchSurfing or hostelling can attest, life away from home base is both fun filled and challenging. Fun filled for reasons such as being able to go out with people from foreign lands, discover new locales and have an occasional drink, and challenging because it all comes at a price which you must somehow recover. Sometimes it even comes at a variable price.

In Brighton, when the weekend comes up, automatically every hostel charges double from the Sun-Thur cost. Fair enough: more people, more labor, more clean-up should equate to greater cost. However, for someone like myself, who's basically got enough to support himself for a week at this point, it's serious business.

Of course I don't want to spend every post discussing money issues, but I figured I should at least try and drive one point home about it. With considerable planning and time, it is possible to live on the cheap abroad. If you have the patience to deal with no fixed residence or income, then the world is yours to experience. Some people experience it living on the streets - thankfully it hasn't come to that yet, but if it did, I'd have no problem doing that, either.

A long while ago, I gave up on the notion of stability. I myself, being a very shaky character, relish the thought of not knowing where I'll end up next week. For the time being, I'm happy occasionally going back and forth between Brighton and London. After all, I need to find a job in order to escape this island and put food in my stomach.

"I drink beer very slowly, and Hemingway was drinking beer with me, in the saucers you get in those Paris cafes. And the saucers began to pile up..." Morley Callaghan

For me, having a cooked meal is a heavenly experience, no matter the variation. For a short while, the twists and twirls of flavor in my mouth relieve all stresses and worries. 

Imagine how this guy must have felt after 127 hours of it:

He makes the American expatriates in 20's Paris look like lightweights. 

One of the best experiences I've had lately with CouchSurfing friends was with the Uni Sussex student I mentioned earlier at a gathering of the group Sussex Hijackers, a film club devoted to really great foreign cinema. Last week I was take aback by the Ingmar Bergman film that we watched, The Seventh Seal.  A tale of pending doom for a Swedish village during the Black Death,  its protagonist, a former Crusader, plays chess against the Grim Reaper, hoping to do one more meaningful thing before demise. Here's the trailer of the film:

Whoops! That's a scene from the 1993 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Last Action Hero which tips a hat to Ingmar's masterpiece with a cameo from Sir Ian Mckellen. Here's the real deal from 1956...it's become a personal favorite.

The Seventh Seal (1956)

But it's not all about food and uncertainty and Ingmar Bergman for me these days. I've also taken a real interest in visual art. There's a really fantastic Swedish artist whose work I've recently seen online, who I believe has also been featured in Sweden's Lyrikvännen and Ordkonst. The works are whimsical and austere at the same time. Though I'm by no means an expert in drawing or painting, the detail that she stresses is evident in nearly all of her pieces.

For me, its a total departure from the pretentious artistic landscape of contemporary art in Europe and America to be found at august modern art institutions. The emotions conveyed are real and vivid, and not depicted in a half-assed manner under the clear stress of a deadline.  In doing so, they demand a great deal of attention from the viewer.

Attention is something that few gems of art receive. In talking about hostelsurfing and art, one film can rest on laurels with a timbre of both. It's a combination that all non-starving artists should aspire to.

A very important film to me, not for children or safe for work.

Tyler Durden: How's that working out for you? Narrator: What? Tyler Durden: Being clever.

Shh! It's not nearly 8 AM in England. You can't be Punk-sutawney Phil at this hour.

Another bright, sunny, and warm day in Brighton. Of course I'm going to spend the morning writing indoors!

I woke up this morning and immediately started contemplating my life.  Most people would probably make the bed first:

But I think its important to take things one at a time. Style, or a lack thereof, makes a man in others' eyes. In that regard, my life so far has been a showcase for the blind. Ha!

Back on message, I'm beginning to wonder whether staying here is a truly good idea. In reference to yesterday's message, yes, I don't really enjoy a lighthearted approach to traveling, and for what it's worth, could live in a saucier, more exotic environ than southern England, like perhaps the cool teaching job along the 38th parallel in South Korea that I reluctantly turned down, but as a friend reminded me yesterday, beggars can't be choosers. Sure, it would be great to snorkel around the Great Barrier Reef (if that's legal) or spend a fortnight with Bedouin tribespeople in North Africa, but you've got to crawl before you can walk, before you can run. I have yet to get a job.

At this point, really any sort of position will do. I had an interesting time working in a factory last year, but as far as I can tell, that position is still available. Hard to believe that people still work in factories in the 21st century. It was the sort of experience that is reminiscent of classic cinema from the silver
screen:


Fritz Lang's Metropolis, 1927

What's most humbling about working in a factory is the knowledge that people from all over the world earn a living doing this full time. From Cambodia to Senegal, people labor in factory settings with varying degrees of safety. In England, of course, conditions have improved greatly since the 19th century. I saw no children monotonously toiling away, and if they were, they were very well hidden.

No, the people I encountered were mostly adults from around Europe, a diverse grouping of folks which included post-graduate Brits, traveling Spaniards, job hungry Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Frenchmen, and Czechs. There was also substantial Middle Eastern, African and Asian representation: war survivors from Iraq and Somalia, aeronautical engineers from India and newlyweds from Malaysia.  Apparently, we all had one thing in common: the pursuit of Sterling. Maybe some of that Protestant Work Ethic stuff as well.



I haven't spoken much about this experience because frankly, I found in my conversations with people here, no one really found it amusing or particularly fascinating that a university graduate from America was laboring as a migrant worker. Then again, tell that to the husband from Bangalore studied jet propulsion at Sussex or the professor from Essex with a PhD in chemistry doing the same. Hard times fall on all people, no matter their nationality,  social standing or circumstance.

That's right, I have no class or nationalistic sympathies.  From what I see in Britain, there is no blanket understanding of poverty by those distinctions. I encountered as many people from Latvia assembling boxes and stuffing crates as I did painting at St. Martin's College in London. Anyone who works a shoddy job knows that they always have choices in life, no one is putting a gun to their head to toil (at least in the West.) In other countries people are often threatened with violence for not working hard enough on the job.



That's not to say, of course, that the work is somehow enriching or enlivening. It's simply necessary, and that's the bottom line.  When a person agrees to do factory work, they are soberly reminded of the situation, the monotony, the long hours and occasional pains. Who cares! It's a Glengarry Glen Ross world, get used to it, right?

Wrong. As far as I'm concerned, all people are entitled to live like fat, useless and excited slobs -  gluttonous, lazy, and happily stimulated. Aside from the physiological,  environmental and socio-pathological entanglements associated with such a lifestyle, I believe that everyone has a right to live well, and however they please, provided they harm no person. I suppose if I was very PC I would also include every living thing, but I'd rather not ride a train of principles to logical oblivion. Soon I'll be demanding equal rights for bacteria.

Of course, I don't believe in deprivation, socialism or any sort of transient means of stealing from one group of people for another's benefit. Kind of stupid, if you ask me. What I do support is the highest standard of living for all people, all possible emanicipations and freedoms for the individual (that also harm no person), and apparently, no one left to foot the bill. Wish I could tack that on my CV!

Aside from dogmatically promoting my idealism, I'm also going to start doing online surveys for cash today. I know, it's the Hollywood Squares of employment, but honestly, it's worth a try. If it means I can work from a houseboat in Indonesia, I will.

On a totally unrelated note, today is the birthday of Mike Pniewski, a truly inspirational gentleman who writes great literature and who has also had numerous roles in American films such as Ray.




I suggest you add him as a friend on Facebook immediately, your soul will be far better off for it.

Happy Birthday Mike!

Introduction/What about the money thing?

I travel a lot. This fact is indisputable. Now, I find myself in search of employment in the United Kingdom. It's a taxing challenge; sending out resumes, handling kind hearted rejection from employers, writing pithy notes to friends on Facebook about the experience. As a resident in Europe, assuredly among many from foreign lands, I'm adjusting to a culture that I only understand through literature, history, and a smattering of first hand experience. What guides me through the madness?

Men like Henry Miller and Jack London have always helped me in my ongoing existential dilemmas- but now their wisdom is stale and myopic, and any pretense of behaving like a turn of the century adventurer seems anachronistic at worst and laughable at best.

Henry Miller

Jack London:


But that's the world that I choose to live in. I'd rather live a life of endless financial uncertainty, transient career prospects and short-lived romantic escapades than assert a false character of myself to newcomers.
 I have great, understanding friends who put me up.  I tramp along. I CouchSurf. Doing these things makes me feel alive, particularly when I feel that my life is heading truly south. Amazingly, these folks know how to turn any frown upside down.

Back at home in New Jersey, my old friends, with whom I have histories dating back to preschool twenty plus years ago, do their best to carry on despite the realities of a down and out 21st century job landscape.  Some of my friends have landed off-Broadway roles in the City (New York), some hold degrees in Astrophysics, and some are pursuing their dreams in Hollywood Land. By anyone's standards, we seize opportunities and make the best of our privileges. We are jokers and kidders, but never forget the decades of hard work which lets us laugh so hard.

With that said, a desire to work towards new privileges is what brought me here. Despite having grown up in the Northern U.S. with all of the luxuries money could buy, I felt unsatisfied. Bizarrely, I was in the position to leave, and thankfully, I took the opportunity. I took on EU/Polish citizenship and left. Now, for better or worse, I take on the challenges of having made that decision. Doing so leaves me prone to fuck things up constantly, but just the same, I never regret the lessons learned along the way. Trotting down that path has lead to me changing my arrogant vocabulary a bit. I haven't suffered enormous pain. I worked some shitty jobs, but who hasn't? The best kind of money to receive is the money you've made yourself.

As all of the world's people knows, money talks, and bullshit walks. Sorry to be so brash, but ain't it the truth? For me, making money is a long process of seduction - wooing your way into conference rooms, asserting your character, tastefully flaunting your stated abilities, and sealing the sensual deal with gusto so the balance in your bank account appears. Whoa, that's a lot of alliteration, but you'll literally know why BS and walking are correlated after pathetically staggering down streets like a traumatized victim of aggravated financial assault 'cause you couldn't work your magic. But I digress...

There are plenty of moments each day when I just want to scream "Fuck this shit, I'm heading home!". For EU citizens from the East all too often, that's how it ends up. For me, it's the same, just make sure to add a thematic backdrop of the Trail of Tears to the American case. People from all over the world head to Britain to make their way in life. Perhaps unbeknownst to them is the crushing reality of A: Not being British and all the problems coupled with having few connections, B: Initially earning crap wages and C: the exchange rate differentials. You might have slaved back at home; that's not to say that you won't slave here. Just the same, I'd rather be a wage slave in Western Europe than anywhere else.

I love you, Britain. Please return my phone calls.