This is a song I wrote inspired by the uprising in Iran. Some images are ours, some borrowed. The background loop - "Allah O Akbar" (God is great)- is chanted after dark from the rooftops of Tehran & other Iranian cities...
From The Rooftops By David Kootnikoff
On the rooftop a bird is building her nest It’s springtime tonight in this city of unrest While the bird keeps on working for some future prize The harder she fails, the harder she tries
When the stars come out people rise from below And their voices ring out as the dark shadows grow They cry out for god in the heat of the night They cry for each other, for comfort and light
From the rooftops you can hear their hearts in their song Beat back the night until all fear is gone While the dark pushes in like the blade of a knife But the wound that it leaves only bleeds life
In the morning the bird rises up with the dawn To continue her work, to sing out her song And the people wake up to the beating of wings To gather together ‘neath the shelter she brings
On the rooftop a bird is building her nest It’s springtime tonight in this city of unrest While the bird keeps on working for some future prize The harder she fails, the harder she tries
March 21 was the first day of Spring and the first day of Norūz, the Iranian/Persian New Year.
The photo above was taken this summer by Yuko when we visited Persepolis. It dates from the 6th century BC during the reign of the Persian Empire and is the Zoroastrian symbol representing the spring equinox. The bull symbolizes the Earth and the lion, the Sun.
We're standing in the shade of a Homa, a bird from Persian mythology. Whoever the Homa landed on became king of the empire. That's me attempting lift-off:
Seems everyone's gettin' in on the Iran action - below is Obama's Norūz message:
Isn't music criticism just a veiled attempt to create an exclusive canon of what's cool?
David Kootnikoff Hong Kong, China
SFJ: I thought it was an overt attempt to get a seat in the balcony.
There might have been a canon of cool—Velvets, Miles, Rakim, etc—but it seems compromised now by the light-speed news cycle and a fragmented audience. That is: If all your friends are nuts about Conor Oberst, you might achieve coolness by being a J. Geils freak, but that won’t play as cool in the midst of genuine J. Geils fans. Some rap fans try to outdo each other by finding C-list Southern rappers to champion over Jay-Z, though they will likely fall back on Jay-Z if their uncle asks them to name a rapper who is genuinely as good as [fill in blank with sixties jazz legend]. Consensus cool, give or take a “Paper Planes” and a Radiohead, is so rare that it feels almost accidental.
Ha! I take his point - terms like "cool" or "hip" have become somewhat obsolete, but the truth remains that so much of what critics do is reinforce their own prejudices. I like what Globe & Mail critic Carl Wilson suggests in Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste - one person's cup of tea is another person's cup of meat. No one can understand/like everything - at least let's be transparent in our preferences.
As Ann says in Breakfast At Sulimay's - "I like it, yup, I like it a lot."
My article on Xi'an has just been published. Here's the full version.
"The earth around Xi'an has revealed some amazing treasures. For over 3,000 years, Xi'an has been at the centre of the Middle Kingdom, once serving as China's capital and more recently as a hub for its burgeoning space program. Twelve hundred kilometres southwest of Beijing, Xi'an was the easternmost point on the Silk Road that connected China with Europe. For centuries, caravans carrying jewels, spices, and silks bound for Central Asia and Europe departed from here. Xi'an was China's portal to the wider world, and it still exudes a cosmopolitan charm.
The following day we visited the Terra Cotta Warrior museum, on the outskirts of the city. Housing over 7,000 life-size terra cotta figures excavated from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, this is Xi'an's main attraction. Thousands of visitors flock to the site each day, so long lines are par for the course.
After waiting about 30 minutes we entered the museum compound, shuffling past a giant white statue of Emperor Qin, who, after coming to power in 246 BC, commissioned the warriors to protect him in the afterlife. We were immediately greeted by row after row of these ancient guardians, all facing us as if ready to receive orders. They looked as if they had just emerged from the earth, ready to engage in conversation if not combat. It was truly an awe-inspiring sight.
"The warriors are arranged as they were buried: in rows of three inside huge covered pits. The first houses about 6,000 warriors, all meticulously crafted with individual expressions. During a raid on the tomb by General Xiang Yu's army less than five years after the death of Emperor Qin, the warriors were smashed into pieces. Many have now been painstakingly put back together, but it may take a century or more to complete the task."
Zadie Smith has an excellent essay in the New York Review of Books called "Speaking In Tongues" examining multiplicity and Obama's ability to speak "everyone":
"In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues. That's how you get from your mother to your father, from talking to one set of folks who think you're not black enough to another who figure you insufficiently white. It's the kind of town where the wise man says "I" cautiously, because "I" feels like too straight and singular a phoneme to represent the true multiplicity of his experience. Instead, citizens of Dream City prefer to use the collective pronoun “we.”
Throughout his campaign Obama was careful always to say we. He was noticeably wary of "I." By speaking so, he wasn't simply avoiding a singularity he didn't feel, he was also drawing us in with him. He had the audacity to suggest that, even if you can't see it stamped on their faces, most people come from Dream City, too. Most of us have complicated back stories, messy histories, multiple narratives.
It was a high-wire strategy, for Obama, this invocation of our collective human messiness. His enemies latched on to its imprecision, emphasizing the exotic, un-American nature of Dream City, this ill-defined place where you could be from Hawaii and Kenya, Kansas and Indonesia all at the same time, where you could jive talk like a street hustler and orate like a senator. What kind of a crazy place is that? But they underestimated how many people come from Dream City, how many Americans, in their daily lives, conjure contrasting voices and seek a synthesis between disparate things. Turns out, Dream City wasn't so strange to them."
Smith is right, of course. Most of us do come from varied backgrounds and if we're honest, contain multitudinous voices and identities. This may seem like a shock to some, but it's a fact worth celebrating for the rest of us. As Arthur Rimbaud noted at sixteen, "Je est un autre" ("I is another"). This realization is the golden key to dream city, the elixir (aka: compassion) that allows us to cross boundaries, understand and even voice the "other" if we're lucky.
Smith also references the great American poet, Frank O'Hara who put it his own way:
The video for U2's first single "Get On Your Boots" turns out to be pretty sticky...and hard. It's the video equivalent of a Jeff Koons sculpture dipped in candy floss ice cream...
...or maybe it's like a trip to the local planetarium. As Sun Ra says: “The music is different here, the vibrations are different, not like planet earth...”
"It's based around the idea that men have fucked things up so badly, politically, economically and socially that it's really time we handed things over to women. We had our doubts when we saw a rough cut – but the finished video is brilliant. He's [Alex Courtes] really nailed it."
Eh? I guess that explains all the sexy ladies with moustaches. I prefer Ann Powers' Obama connection:
"This is U2's celebratory announcement of a new historical moment, one in which America and the world confront the catastrophes of the recent past and bust out some elbow grease to make things better."
I'm a long time, die-hard fan, but this song and now the video just reek of stale product. Sure, the riff is sticky - ear candy - but why the limp vocals? And how about these lyrics:
That’s someone’s stuff they’re blowing up We’re into growing up Women of the future Hold the big revelations
At least "Vertigo" sounded like a rocket in flight...it's as though a vampire sucked all the sugar out of the band...and hard candy without the sweet is like sucking on plastic...or tinsel.
"When Soe hears my wife is Japanese he quietly apologizes. During the 2007 anti-government protests one of his fellow compatriots - a young soldier in flip-flops - shot and killed Japanese photographer, Kenji Nagai, at point blank range in the heart of Rangoon.
Deciding whether or not to travel into Burma, a nation of 50 million, wasn't easy. Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has recommended tourists stay away until "genuine progress towards democratization" is made, while others such as Thant Myint-U, an historian and grandson of former United Nations Secretary General U Thant, argue for engagement.
I made my decision after befriending a Burmese student in Hong Kong who had been confined and tortured by the regime. He urged me to go, meet the people and report back about his country. I knew to avoid any organized tours and meet the locals to prevent our money going directly to the junta."
China is celebrating the Year of The Ox amid financial & political uncertanties. This year is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, the 60th anniversary of modern China's founding and the 50th anniversary of the great famine.
The authorities are hoping against hope that economic growth doesn't fall below 6%, while recent stats reveal as many as six million people from the countryside have lost their jobs in the cities.
This explains why parts of Obama's inauguration speech were censored.
Here's a brief insight into what people outside of the major centers are enduring courtesy of Yung Chang's documentary film, "Up The Yangtze":
I’m still feeling stoked by Obama’s inauguration on Tuesday. While I didn’t think it was as rousing as it might have been, it still set a new, higher standard of conduct for the US to live up to. It was prose, not poetry, austere, not flamboyant and rooted in a plainspoken vernacular rather than coated in sugary platitudes. The John Williams piece, "Air And Simple Graces," performed by Iztak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma, is based on an old Shaker song called "Simple Gifts":
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
This seems to me an appropriate tone for the task of reclamation at hand. Highlights:
Aretha Franklin digging deep on "My Country Tis Of Thee" (and her hat!):
A pre-recorded Perlman & Yo-Yo smokin’ on “Air and Simple Gifts”:
Rahm Emanuel hamming it up:
Chief Justice John Roberts fudging the oath!
My favourite section of Obama’s speech:
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.
Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.
Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations.
For those words to be realized, Obama must pursue the Bush administration's war crimes:
The gospel according to David Byrne rolled into the HK Convention Center last night. It was his first time to perform here and he put on an awesome show (3 encores!) mixing tunes from his current collaboration with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today together with Talking Heads classics. He brought along a seven piece band – drums, percussion, keyboard, bass, three backing singers and three....cheerleaders! (dancers).
The new material was gorgeous, warm and expansive, a true realization of the secular gospel he has been pursuing with Eno. There were moments of ecstasy - "One Fine Day", "Life Is Long", "Everything That Happens" - and funky whigouts - "Life During Wartime", "My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)", "Once In A Lifetime". For "Burning Down The House" they slipped on tutus...
Set List:
Strange Overtones (Everything That Happens) I Zimbra (Fear Of Music) One Fine Day (Everything) Help Me Somebody (Bush Of Ghosts) Houses In Motion (Remain In Light) My Big Nurse (Everything) My Big Hands (Catherine Wheel) Heaven (Fear Of Music) Crosseyed And Painless (Remain) Life Is Long (Everything) Once In A LIfetime (Remain In Light) Life During Wartime (Fear Of Music) Air (Fear Of Music) I Feel My Stuff (Everything)
Encore Take Me to The River (Buildings And Food) Poor Boy (Everything)
Encore Burning Down The House (Speaking In Tongues)
Encore Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Everything that happens will happen today And nothing has changed, but nothing's the same And every tomorrow will be yesterday And everything that happens will happen today
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