The film poster that has Godzilla tearing up great chunks of the city and eating alive New York City should have been a giant Pacman, I think. For technology has eaten New York. And not only New York: Copenhagen, Madrid, Berlin: these are cities where I have witnessed this carnage, sinister and almost silent. We […]
I was uncomfortable at Woodford to hear the Tibetan monks who had been hired to chant the festival’s “Dawn Ceremony”, alongside the thrilling singing of Tenzin Choegyal, being largely ignored or at best treated as background muzak while many people chatted and caught up, hugged loudly and with much syrupy performance, anointed one another with […]
This cafe has changed its muserly, miserly, whispery music for Neil Young. He owns the business. His voice is quiet but sure and it penetrates. People gain confidence in such good musical hands, or seem to, and soon the hushed conversation level has risen like water roaring and the blond baby sitting on his mamma’s […]
Went into my favourite bookshop today, which has owls carved of different woods stashed in all its corners. For the first time I noticed the sign on the back of the door: Antiquarian shops are places of inner peace. There followed a series of red circles crossed by red lines, like no-through-road signs for traffic: […]
On the Weihnachtsmarkt before it closed I had this most marvellous adventure. Rounding the corner my friend & I following the thread of sound came on these two solemn, courtly black American musicians, not young, setting forth the Gospel According to Lionel Richie. I have never been a convert but somehow the lissom groove of […]
Just now walking down the street the most miraculous small experience. It’s growing dark and the shop windows glow like lamps. I came out of a side street full of bars and cafes onto a shopping strip thronged with parcels. Among the clots and clumps of other people approaching from the opposite direction I met […]