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Music and culture have never been divorced for me,” he says. “How can you go to somewhere like Cambodia and have no sense of the history and the politics of the place? Music does not exist in isolation. It’s dynamic, like language. It’s self-referential and always changing.
I’m delighted by the wonderful news this week that Andy Kershaw will soon be back on our airwaves with an amazing new global music series called Music Planet. I, along with many others I’m sure, have sorely missed Andy’s adventurous spirit, mischievous sense of humour, brilliant observation, and exceedingly good musical taste.
It is so good to see him back on the rails. I can’t wait for the series to begin, for all the unexpected, undiscovered, sonic delights that will come our way, and to resume my aural education with Kershaw - a man who always stimulates my ears and mind.
In the meantime here he is telling it like it is in the Observer today.
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After the eating there is the walking and there is the putting the tinfoil and paper and all of the wrapping into the garbage and there is the rushing off to your gate. But when you have gone to your gate, there are the bags and the bins and the men with the trucks and the roads and the gates and there are the engines doing the beeping and the backs of the trucks doing the tilting and doing the dumping and the garbage doing the sliding and the garbage hitting the ground and the holes in the ground getting fuller and you can hear the ground groaning.
You can hear the ground groaning and you can hear it saying, “No, please, not more, I just can’t take any more, please, won’t you stop? Won’t you please stop? It is hurting so much and there is no room, please won’t you stop? It is getting too much. It was OK for so long but now it is getting too much. Why can’t you see? Isn’t it clear? I thought it was clear. Why don’t you see? If you don’t stop I don’t know what I will do. I don’t know what I will do, but I think I will have to fight back. I mean it, I will have to fight back. I will have to do something because I cannot do what I am doing. I do not know what it will be but it will be something and it will be painful and you will not like it and it will be harder than eating a sandwich held in your hand and exposed to the air. It will be harder than that, much harder than that. I don’t mean to be mean but it’s all I can do and can’t you see I’m hurting? Can’t you see I’m full? Can’t you see I’m empty? Can’t you see it? ! But you don’t see it. You don’t see it. Why don’t you see it? You just keep going and going and wrapping and taping and bagging and eating and throwing and rushing until it’s too late and I hope it’s not too late for you I hope it’s not too late for me I hope it’s not too late.”
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Ok, so I’m just gonna come right out and say it - this is hot!
I know this is an ad ostensibly made by men for men for bottled water and therefore it should piss me off in every conceivable way, but somehow it’s just ridiculously sexy! And therein lies the twist. Surely this ad was made in the knowledge that many women find Dita as seductive as men do and thusly the happy ending is that everyone now finds Perrier sexy. I’d like to think that I’m above this kinda adman schtick, but instead I find myself thinking this is a beautiful, clever, daring, sexy ad for bottled water! Damn damn damn.
Must wash my brain, but not with Perrier.
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Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.
Good ol’ Charles Eames - would so dearly have loved the chance of hanging out with him and Ray for a day. They were such brilliant designers, with a beautifully direct creative ethos:
“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.”
On an evening when I am frustratedly ‘picking away’ at my corner, I’m bolstered by Charles’ words that my careful, intense picking might make a difference.
My current design storytelling task is to try and find an engaging way to illustrate interconnectivity. It’s all about the connections…
As Charles said: “The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections. It will in the end be these details that give the product its life.”
Oh for some Eames-like divine inspiration… I’m trying to channel their playful, joyful and yet functional energy. I might have to sleep on it…
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What’s the Pantone colour for CO2? This brilliant image makes a very simple but direct point. Thanks to @hannnahthompson for the tip. Gotta love this concise storytelling.
Via FFFFOUND!
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Gorgeous work by James Whitaker for @DoLectures - let’s hope they pick these beautiful short films for their idents.
Over the last couple of months I have been filming three idents for the Do Lectures, a set of talks held each year in west Wales by Do-ers - authors, farmers, publishers, campaigners, advertising creatives, entrepreneurs, inventors, mountaineers. People who do interesting things.
The idea behind the idents is that each day brings the opportunity to go out into the world and do something new, whether that’s sail across the Atlantic, write a book, climb a mountain or learn something new.
The Do Lectures are picking their idents from a selection submitted by different people so these may never get used but they were fun to create… Unfortunately, 75mph winds and a blizzard thwarted my attempts to do one across snowy mountain tops in Scotland. -
Fantastic pallet stage being built at #WOMAD by Norwegian studio Tyin with the Fourth Door Review Roots Architecture project.
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I just love this powerfully coloured portrait by artist Francoise Neilly - what do I know about her? Not a lot, except she’s French and is one funky mother of a painter!
Via The Cool Hunter
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The final thing I’d say about optimism is this. If we took the loopiest, most moonbeam-addled Californian utopian internet bullshit, and held it up against the most cynical, realpolitik-inflected scepticism, the Californian bullshit would still be a better predictor of the future. Which is to say that, if in 1994 you’d wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you’d still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since.
@cshirky on optimism, the futility of paywalls, social media + culture in the Guardian.
Great positive outlook, + useful historical perspective, on social, cultural + intellectual innovation online:
“So even with the sacred printing press, the first things you get serve the basest human urges. But the presence of the erotic novels did not prevent us from pressing the printing presses into the service of the scientific revolution. And so I think every bit of time spent fretting about the fact that people have base desires which they will use this medium to satisfy is a waste of time – because that’s been true of every medium ever launched.”
Looking forward to downloading Clay Shirky’s new book into my brain: Cognitive Surplus; Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
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Ohhhhhh - @janellemonae is da bomb! Here’s just a little taster of what I probably won’t be seeing tonight in London town - ooh it hurts just thinking about how awesome she’ll be.
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