Circles of Life

 

By chance, I wandered into London's Serpentine South gallery and was instantly taken with Kamala Ibrahim Ishag's State of Oneness exhibition there.

Her art is weird but wonderful... and her recent work has explored what she sees as "interchangeability and metamorphosis" between plants and humans (and women in particular).

She says: "I believe vegetation and humans are one and the same. We eat plants for sustenance, we die and are buried. We become sustenance for the plants."

It all sounds a bit Lion King but actually, to me, it makes perfect sense. Life is eternal – not our own lives, but life – in all its inextricable manifestations.

And Kamala Ibrahim Ishag's paintings do a rather good job of putting us in our place.

State of Oneness continues at Serpentine South, Hyde Park, until 23 January 2023.

Abba Fabba Do!

I've been away... I'm back.

As the world falls apart, at least we have music. There seems to be great live music everywhere now in this post-ish-pandemic period.

But of all the gigs I've been to recently – and that includes seeing Bob Dylan's resumed and wonderful Never Ending Tour at Le Grand Rex theatre in Paris – the most mindblowing, back in London, featured ABBA. Or at least the Other Fab Four's 3D avatars.

Performing alongside a live 10-piece band and with a light show and visuals worthy of a Pink Floyd wet dream, they left me and my companions speechless – which is quite an achievement.

There had been endless hype about how groundbreaking this show was going to be. But it didn't live up to that hype – it went far, far beyond it.

The music – 90 non-stop minutes of it – is just about all of ABBA's finest moments, with the dial turned up way past 11. The only pauses are for some genuinely funny and poignant comments from Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha and Anni-Frid – via their avatars but, like the whole extravaganza, full of warmth and humanity.

It's expensive but worth every pound. Just go!

Boundless Unenthusiasm

I mentioned The Boundless Sea on this blog back in 2021 – and wasn't too complimentary about it, since I felt it didn't quite live up to the over-the-top plaudits published on its cover.

At that point I was only 200 pages in... but now I've finished the other 700...

It was a close run thing, since David Abulafia's water-based great tale is distinctly, er, dry.

It's a remarkable – if ultimately rather dull – book. But it does do a good job of chronicling humanity's greed, violence and selfishness – all, sadly, the drivers of so much of the nautical exploration and adventures catalogued here.

Abulafia often speeds through complex and momentous events, but for some reason he always finds a little time to rubbish Thor Heyerdahl. He discounts the Norwegian adventurer's theories about westward migration across the Pacific from the Americas – and then dismisses him as a "self-publicist".

I know only a few things about Heyerdahl. But they include the fact that he put his life on the line more than once to test his theories... and he was a bloody good writer...

And Heyerdahl's books have all the passion that The Boundless Sea lacks.

The Goat Man's Tale

 

I've been away... I'm back... A lot of work and a lot of music has kept me from blogging for a while... But the surprise appearance of a wonderful new book has kicked me into writing something about it.

In all my travels over the decades and among all the amazing people I've encountered, one has to stand out... Tommy DiMaggio (aka the Goat Man).

Having hiked across the Arizona desert with him and his pack goats, I knew he was a master of many things. But I didn't realise he was such a damn fine writer.

Maybe that's because he has such great stories to tell... but it's also because he has a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase way of telling them. In fact, he writes like he speaks...

All My Employees Are Animals is part-autobiography, part-cookery book and all heart. There is laughter – and food – on just about every page as Tommy takes us from a warm but gritty childhood along the somewhat crazy road to his development as a cook and an extraordinary character.

I had just been re-reading The Real Frank Zappa Book when All My Employees Are Animals arrived unexpectedly. And I have to say there are some similarities on the page between Frank and Tommy... They are both honest American voices telling it like it is... 

Sadly, Tommy's book doesn't get as far as his Arizona goatpacking days... so surely there has to be another volume... or two?

All My Employees Are Animals is available here. 

Naples in Perspective

A last word from me on Naples – for the time being – can be found in the latest ssue of the excellent magazine Perspective...

https://perspectivemag.co.uk/letter-from-elsewhere-naples/

Ithaca In Words – and Pictures

Jane Cochrane oversees her paintings being displayed

Preparations are under way for the official launch of Walking In The Footsteps Of Odysseus, the new guidebook to Ithaca by Jane Cochrane in which I played a bit part as walk-checker and sub-editor.

A capacity audience is expected to be at Paddington Library for the event on 28 April when Jane will be in conversation with me, talking about the genesis of the book and her love affair with the island so closely linked to Homer's Odyssey.

Whether or not you are going to the launch, you are now able to see some of Jane's beautiful Ithaca paintings on show at the library – for as well as being a meticulous researcher and writer, she is also a talented artist.

More information at www.janeocochrane.co.uk.

Amsterdam Nuisance

 

When is a guidebook not a guidebook? Possibly when it's called Secret Amsterdam.

My recent series of blogs, See Naples and Live, owed a good deal to some great travel and history books, not least the excellent Secret Naples by Valerio Ceva Grimaldi and Maria Franchini, published by Jonglez.

Naively I bought the Amsterdam volume in the same series, from Stanfords, just before going to spend a few days in the city, thinking that it would unlock delights similar to those I had been led to in my favourite Italian city.

It was not to be. 

A visit to the French garden of the Institut Francais sounded enticing... until it turned out that the Institut Francais was no more. The building was empty and, thanks to a local shopkeeper who ushered us through her store, we were able to see that the garden had long been derelict – it didn't even have any decent weeds.

The hi-tech spaceship-like interior of the ultra-fashionable Shoebaloo footwear store sounded like something out of this world... and so it proved to be, since its designer interior had been stripped out and got rid of, to be replaced with something that could only be described as a fairly ordinary shoe shop.

The Boutique of the Little Ladies, a 19th-century association dedicated to giving women financial independence, sounded well worth a visit... but the address at Leidseplein 33 didn't appear to correspond to any building in or around this square.

Having become a little wary, we checked, the evening before, the information that the entry to the Garden of the Geelvinck Hinlopen House Museum was indeed via the rear at Keizersgracht 633... to find that address clearly disused. We didn't go back...

I suppose in the end all this was my fault for not reading the small print on the final page of the book and the publication date of 2012. But should guidebooks be on sale that long after their use-by date? In a charity shop, maybe... surely not in a mainstream store?