Halloween

Why do we have this? I really don't remember ever being aware of halloween as a child or 'celebrating' it at all. And now it seems to be everywhere. Here in France it feels like the build-up to Christmas.

To me it's about evil. So I am being grumpy old dad at the moment. After explaining why I wasn't going to drive her the 1Km to school (pollution, dad's need for exercise), and now the denial of the existence of Halloween I think my eldest daughter is having her worst fears confirmed about the miserable 'old man' alone with his newspaper and music in the corner of the room.

The Onion

A while ago I blogged on the USB fridge that holds one can of coke. On the occasionally very funny website 'The Onion' I have just seen a spoof advert for the USB Toaster. Today's joke is clearly tomorrow's reality.

This posting allows me to direct you to another spoof piece on the site that had me in hysterics:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/use_of_n_word_may_end_porn_stars

I hope those of you who are not overly sensitive souls might enjoy it. Those prone to shock...enjoy being shocked.

Infidelity

A friend approached me the other day with a problem. About 12 months ago his wife embarked on an affair with another man which lasted about 6 months. The affair is out in the open which is fine. He and his wife haven't had sex since the end of the affair. They get on well even now and comfortably life in the same house with their children and provide a loving atmosphere. My friend does not want their relationship to end. He would probably not mind if his wife embarked on another affair. What is important to him is that his children have a happy, 2 parent home which they do at the moment.

His wife has just approached him about a resumption of a sexual relationship. He is not interested although in all other ways he feels close to his wife. By saying he doesn't want a sexual relationship any more he puts home stability at risk. By saying 'yes' he crosses a line he is not interested in crossing. What should he do?

BusinessBalls

There are a number of vogue ‘business speak’ speak words and phrases that really annoy me. As I earn around 50% of my income as a corporate trainer I get to hear them more than most. Here are a few of them:

1. ‘Best Practice’

This annoys me because I believe in the infinite creativity of people and the potential we have to do something effectively in ways that are unique to us as individuals. The words ‘Best Practice’ imply only one way. A surefire way to stifle initiative and innovation in employees. I notice that some organisations have even started to develop ‘Best Practice’ departments. Surely a recipe for ‘our way is the only way’ thinking. And corporate death as a result.

Government ministers (Ruth Kelly in particular) use this a lot because they think that by using it they signal that they have a handle on their ministerial portfolio and what success means in, for example, the health sector. Will a journalist one day ask her what ‘Best Practice’ means because it means nothing to me at all.

To be able to adapt to the situation you find yourself in to me is a priceless life and workplace trait and will be increasingly so in the future. ‘Best Practice’ is the antithesis of that.

2. ‘Competencies’

Is there a job ad that doesn’t include the word ‘competence’. As opposed to what – incompetence? Competence means base level ability to me. Is that what our organisations want to employ? Surely they want the excellent rather than the merely competent?

And things are getting worse. I see the increasing use of ‘competency matrices’. People get employed to develop this gibberish – usually in Human Resource Departments. What does this add to any organisation? It sucks the money out of investment in the future and sucks the life out of people as it drags them down to a base level of mere ‘competence’.

3. ‘Human Resource Development’

I have blogged on this one in the past. As my fellow blogger Arkangel (http://simplepleasures3.blogspot.com) has recently said, was there a more cold, calculating, inhuman phrase put together to refer to human beings?

4. ‘Singing From the Same Hymn Sheet’

Which means theirs not yours.

5. ‘No-brainer’

Usually said by those who have lost the ability to think at work i.e. lost their brain.


6. ‘Let’s Brainstorm this’

‘Let’s get all the ideas out on the table so that you feel better but in the end we’ll do it my way anyway’.

If I ever use any of the above in my books you have the right to turn me into a human resource (whatever that is). Actually I do use ‘Brainstorming’ in my new book on creativity but I take the position of the cynic on this one. We know that , for most of us, we do not get our best, most creative thoughts in this 'forced' environment. Most of us need time - get the problem on the back-burner - to come up with a creative solution.

Writing to ENO

I have an MP3 with 15 Brian Eno albums on it and I am trying to listen to all of them in one day while working. Today is book proposal day (1 down and 2 to go) and Eno is the perfect friend to the writer. As I write I am in the middle of Here Come The Warm Jets album. 'Baby's On Fire' is the current track and what a genius track it is. But is the guitarist Robert Fripp or the guy out of the Pink Fairies? Answers Please.

I had a night in London on Monday and stayed at fellow muso and wine fanatic Brian's house. The next morning we felt truly people of the world. He heading to the airport for a plane to Marrakech and me for a plane to Perpignan in France. Soon for me it will be Port-Au-Prince. What a thrill that is going to be. I can feel the butterfiles starting.

Out of jail, out on bail

Gil Scott-Heron was one of my first musical heroes. Ironically this most ascerbic of commentators on American society has, in the last 20 years been far bigger in the UK than the US. Gil has been in jail for the last two years. He skipped a probation order to appear on stage with Alicia keys (a sure sign that Gil had 'lost' it). But Gil is now out, recording a new LP and has just done his first post jail gig in New York. he will be doing his customary 7 nights at the Jazz Cafe no doubt. And he is recording a new LP. So in honour of his release here are the lyrics to his greatest (and much copied moment) 'The Revolution Will not be Televised'.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

ECM Records

I am 'playing' tonight. And I am playing with ECM records output. And I am listening to Qaws by Anouar Brahem, Jan Garbarek and Shaukat Hussein and I am thinking it is one of the most remarkable pieces of music I have ever heard - Garbarek's blistering quasi-arabic sax solo near the end is one of his finest moments and Brahem flies. ECM records was the label that took innovatory jazz to a new level and made Scandanavia the leader in jazz progression from the 1970's. It has retained that position to this day. George Russell, the great band leader thought the Scandanavians second only to Africans in their innate sense of rhythm.

Anouar Brahem is a Tunisian Oud player who has yet to produce a track that is anything less than interesting. For those that don't know him his album 'Thimar' with Dave Holland and John Surman is a useful entry point. But his greatest is 'Khomsa'. One of my five best albums of all time. His latest 'Le Voyage De Sahar' is fabulous too.

The Rugby World Cup

Rugby is proving itself. As are the French. And I believe we are witnessing one of the best sporting competitions ever held. There are two reasons for this. The first is the rise of the ‘smaller’ nations challenging and sometimes beating the ‘bigger’ ones. This has now made the sport ‘global’ rather than a manifestation of empire. We have crossed the bridge. The second is the amazing level of support. It is interesting to compare this world cup with the soccer one. In the early rounds of the soccer world cup you often get games played in almost empty stadia. But in the RWC even the minor games – USA v Tonga for example – have been attracting crowds of 30,000 plus. This would be unheard of in football. I was reminded of the 60,000 crowd who watched a world cup qualifier between Georgia and Russia a couple of years ago. The French deserve credit for their great support and I was thrilled for them that they reached the semi-final. I was at Lyon airport at 10.30 on Saturday night and was able to join hundreds of people huddled round two screens for the last 15 minutes of the match against NZ. A wonderful atmosphere.

And now, against all the odds, England are playing France in the semi-final. How did that happen?

The Life of a writer

You know when you have been selected to take a more diffcult path in life when your books are translated into Korean, Arabic and Albanian and not Spanish, Chinese or any other language with huge commercial potential. I look forward to the £4.97 royalty cheque (6 month period ending October 2007).

With 3 books planned I have been writing synopses. Actually I lie. I have been trying to write synopses whilst listening to huge amounts of music. As I haven't given musical recommendations recently this is what is currently 'tickling' me according to my itunes playlist:

Dave Douglas - Freak In
Astor Piazzola played by Gidon Kremer
Promise of a Fisherman - Santana
Gilles Peterson in Africa (Fela Kuti tracks)
J Dilla - Donuts
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Five Stairsteps - Behind Curtains
Harold Budd and Brian Eno - Ambient 2
Chico Hamilton with Eric Dolphy - Ellington Suite
Airto - Seeds on the Ground
Zbiegnew Preisner - Kieslowski film soundtrack music

And that was just today...

Bliss was it...

...in that dawn to be alive.

I am going to see Pharaoh Sanders live at the Jazz Cafe.

And I cannot wait.

Feeling down

Getting bad feedback from a client is not nice. And reminds me not to take work that doesn't interest me for the sake of the money. I am nearly at the point where I can choose my work. Perhaps now is the time to be hyper-ethical and take only that which 'tickles' me.

The lesson - don't try to deal with a subject like feedback skills in front of 100 hyper-analytical, introverted lawyers. I corpsed for the first time in five years. The last time was when I had 200 hundred housing workers for a day and I was asked to do a workshop on teambuilding. No-one told me they were going on strike the next day.

cosmorgasm

I was at Vienna airport on Saturday evening and, browsing through the magazines I saw this on the front of Cosmopolitan:

'THE BLENDED ORGASM'

So deep. So strong. How you can have one tonight.

Now, I have tried a few things in my time, but I had never thought of reaching for the magimix as a means of satisfying a woman. Perhaps this is where I have been going wrong.

Broken Dream

Almost a year ago, just after I began this blog I wrote about how ageing means settling into mediocrity for many and how Rod Stewart, who was superb for about 4 years - 1969 - 73 and has done nothing with any musical merit since continues to peddle trash and get paid for it. I don't blame him - I blame all of those people who buy the stuff. I say all this because I am just listening to 'In a Broken Dream' by Python Lee Jackson from 1972. Python Lee Jackson is Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck. And it is a fabulous piece of music.

A gun pointed at your head?

Dinner the other night with a Kosovar friend of mine who told me a little more about the Serbian threat in 1999. His neighbour then, a Serb, who he had known for a number of years, came up to him one evening, out of the blue and pointed a gun to his head and asked him what he done to his wife. He took my friend outside and my friend feared for his life. Suddenly this man's wife called out to him. She had been out all day.

A few weeks later my friend was at the Macedonian border trying to get across the border to escape the murderous Serbian army - as were a million others. Near the border he came across a Serbian soldier who again put a gun to his head and this time I think my friend thought his number was up. At the moment a large number of US planes under the guise of Nato flew overhead. My friend's life was spared as the soldier deemed it prudent to get away as fast as he could.

My friend bears no ill will towards the Serbs - he just thinks that there was a huge, collective brainwashing going on there. That doesn't stop him being passionate about Kosovar independence. We are now very close to this happening. Kosovo will be fine. The Americans are committed here for fifty years having built their biggest army base in central Europe in the middle of it. Kosovo is massively important to them and Clinton (and Blair) are gods for setting NATO troops against the Serbian army. It would be just about the only place that Bush could walk down the main street and be cheered.

There is a book waiting to be written about Kosovo that takes its history up to the moment of it's independence. I would quite like to be the person to write it.

Interesting Times

Strange things in the last few days:

Sitting opposite Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku as we waited for the plane to Pristina. Kosovo. It is strange to sit with someone who you know has killed.

Coming out of the train station in Vienna on arrival and seeing the great Joe Zawinul’s ‘Birdland’ jazz club opposite with a small but simple tribute to him. He died two weeks ago as I mentioned in a recent blog. Zawinul was a hero of mine.

On arrival at Pristina airport slowly realising that the person I was sharing the official car with is the person who approves my visits and agrees to the cheque being signed. He realised who I was before I realised who he was. Hence his line of questioning which it took me a while to fathom.

Reading the Daily Telegraph (through lack of any other option) and being surprised at the low level of debate and rational argument in such an esteemed paper. Many ‘news’ articles were actually opinion articles apparently designed to brainwash the gullible. Simon Heffer’s column just full of rant – advocating the immediate abolition of the UN. Really Simon? His column just seemed nasty. The letters page full of ‘The country going to the dogs’ and ‘rapidly becoming 3rd world’. What a miserable way to see your country. Especially as it is patently untrue. It is just different from the way they want it to be.

England making a reasonable impersonation of a rugby team last friday.

Being aware of my complete lack of sex drive at the moment. Good or bad? I remember the late George Melly saying that life became so much easier when he didn’t have to control a wild beast anymore. I don’t think I am at that stage yet but the lack of ‘desire’ is puzzling.

Sleeping solidly for 9 hours without waking up. For the first time for a while I had a spring in my step this morning.

Having my mother arrive in France with new boyfriend and thinking that I do not like her at all. I started to feel like my sister does about her and I started to feel a little guilty about that. It’s the first time I have ever felt no connection at all and I could not wait to get away and on the plane at Lyon. She is drinking very heavily and is clearly telling lies to a number of people, me included.

But despite some of the negativity above I feel positive at the moment although my hypochondriac tendency is coming out. Hence no alcohol for a few days.

Music of the day: Zakir Hussain – Making Music. Thanks to the Half Note blog in NYC (my favourite blog at the moment) for reminding me of the beauty of this album.