It's a writer's life!

Enjoying the Aesthetic Movement in London - a themed day out

2011-06-12T12:00:00.014+01:00

If you’re a fan of the Aesthetic Movement, Orientalism, Medievalism or the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, here’s a suggestion for a great, leisurely day out in London. While all these art movements used naturalistic elements and favoured the art object as a thing of beauty, the Aesthetic movement was influenced by the discovery of Pompeii in 1749, Japanese art, Turkish desgins and Arab calligraphy and mosaics.

Begin the day with a visit to Lord Frederic Leighton’s stunning home in the Holland Park area. For only a fiver, enjoy the splendour of the golden mosaic frieze walls of the Arab Hall or enjoy Lord Leighton’s fabulous collection of Iznik ceramics and peacock-hued tiles that adorn the various rooms. If you're there before the crowds come through, you will feel that you’re a guest in his home as you stroll from room to room. Notice the natural light in his mega-studio as well as his impressive collection of works from Watts, Millais and other contemporaries.
From here, it’s only a short walk to the Victoria and Albert museum where the Cult of Beauty exhibition is running until the 17th of July 2011. If you have a Waterstones card, you can get 2 for 1 tickets to view all things Aesthetic and Pre-Raphaelite. Besides the numerous painting and Objects d’Art you’ll find William Morris wallpaper designs.

If you miss the exhibition, the V and A is full of beautiful things to entice anyone through its rooms anyway – so it won’t be a wasted visit. Don’t leave without lunching at the V&A Cafe/Restaurant or at least having a coffee while admiring the splendid Morris, Gamble and Poynter rooms, all originally built and decorated especially for the museum.
If you want something more substantial to tempt your Aesthetic tastes than the shop’s offerings, visit Liberty shopping store where the top floor is selling ‘Art and Crafts’ from the mid-1800s. You can purchase chairs, cabinets, sketches and various art objects that are products of the Aesthetic movement. Or just enjoy rambling through Liberty’s 5 floors before stopping at their watering hole for a cappuccino and a lemon tart.
Warning – I’ve had better ‘afternoon tea’ at other locations in London. For smaller, less expensive gift items you may want to pick up something from their stationery room or choose a scented soap from 20 different combinations on offer for under a fiver. Writers beware, Liberty has a fabulous collection of their own embossed leather bound journals but these cost a bomb. Their Manolo Blahnik and Christian Lacroix journals are much cheaper and equally as interesting!

Travel article - Bath

2011-06-09T10:30:00.003+01:00

My Website Launch

2011-06-08T09:00:00.000+01:00

It's finally here!

www.jessicafaleiro.co.uk

Website design by portrait artist - Caroline Wade
Blog photograph by photographer - Bernard Henin

Where can I find literary events in London?

2011-06-07T20:23:00.018+01:00

A friend of mine recently asked me this question. She reminded me that I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while. Whether you’re local or visiting from abroad, you might come across a visiting author you love and have always wanted to meet, but never had the chance to.
While doing my MA in Creative Writing, I attended author talks and publication industry events like the London Book Fair. The network of students and lecturers was a great source of information about what was going on, but there was so much more I could have gone to had I known. Three years on, I’ve narrowed everything down to the main literary festivals that I love and got a list of suggested websites and publications that one can refer to for more info on literary goings-on.

For what it’s worth, here it is:
Annual Literary Festivals that I love-
Kingston Readers Festival – April/ May
Literature and the Spoken Word festival – June
Hay Festival (the only non-London one I've been to)- May/June
London Literature festival- July
Richmond upon Thames Literature Festival – November
SW11 Literary Festival – September

The best sources for literary festivals and events are
- your local borough council website, the British Council Arts page and the following magazines –
Writer’s Forum
Writer’s Magazine
Time Out magazine – Books section.

Various cultural institutes also have literary events. Here are a few of my favourite sites:
Asia House
Somerset House
Southbank Centre
Keats House

Check your local bookstores for events, some of which are often free-
Waterstones Events
Foyles Events

And if you want to keep up to date with news from the world of Books, the Saturday Observer and the Sunday Times Culture supplement are great for reviews and stories. Also –
Guardian Books
Coffee haunts for Writers

If you’ve got any great websites on literary events in London to share, I'd love to hear from you.

So you want to be a travel writer

2011-05-30T10:02:00.005+01:00

I was extremely blessed to get one of the last 6 remaining tickets for a Southbank talk by Paul Theroux as part of their ‘Great Thinkers’ literature series this May. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the recent revelation to me that travel writing may just be up my alley came as a complete surprise and is leading me to pick up and explore writers I have never before been exposed to. I thought attending Paul’s talk might bring more to light about the ‘travel writing’ process. I was wrong.

Unlike most of the people in the room who had accompanied Paul on many of his previous journeys through reading his books, I was a newbie. But also unlike most of the white, middle class, non-immigrant Londoners sat in the auditorium, I could relate to his descriptions of travel as a process of self-discovery; where one could explore not only the places they were moving to, but the ones they were escaping from. I didn’t expect to gain truths about my own life journey so far.

In one of his anecdotes, he recalled how a grown man told him that he wanted to be a travel writer and asked Paul for his top tip.
Paul said, “That’s great. Where do you live?”
“At home with my parents,” the man answered.
To which Mr. Theroux replied, “Son, you need to leave.”
Leaving home is an important event, one that you’ll keep repeating as you travel. There’s the “I’m on vacation kind of travel” with your kids, your partner, your friends and then there’s travel, where you seek to understand the culture and rhythms of a place. Where you are open enough to let yourself inadvertently absorb something of the place you visit.
Paul Theroux explained himself saying that when one stayed at home, people around you asked,
“Why do you want to be a writer?”
“How will you make any money writing?”
“What will you write?”
And the final nail in the coffin...
“Who will want to read that?”
Leaving home can allow you to give yourself the permission to be a writer and to find the space to write. Once away, you always have more perspective about home; you appreciate it better and you can always go back. Whether you’ll be welcomed back when you return is something else.

I sat in the auditorium, my heart beating quicker and thought, ‘This is my life.’ I’ve been away from the idea of ‘home’ for 20 years – and now, I’m preparing to return. I know I’ll be welcomed, but those questions – they still linger there in the same recesses I left behind. I wish it hadn’t taken me 20 years to give myself the permission to write again – indeed, to be creative. But there’s something allegorical to be said about my ‘return home’ that is actually a ‘return to myself’ or at least, the creative spirit within me.

Although the above did cause something in me to stir wildly with resonance, it wasn’t the most profound thing that he said. The most profound (and poetic) was, “Keep in mind that the way one travels, reflects the way one lives their life.” If you travel without trusting in the universe’s provision, without optimistically saying to yourself – things will get better, without expecting a beautiful discovery around every corner – that just reflects that you’re suspicious of people in your life, that you are full of despair and have no hope for the future. Exquisite nugget, I thought.

I noted a host of tips from Paul Theroux’s lips on how to travel and travel writing in general. I’ll list them below for you. Who knows you just might find a nugget to inspire you and God knows we all need inspiration!

1. What is required of travel is the lucidity that comes with being alone.
2. If you’re afraid of being alone, don’t travel (paraphrased from Chekov’s famous line quote - If you’re afraid of loneliness, don’t marry)
3. Just as a fiction writer needs solitude to reflect and write well, a traveller (writer) needs to move around without anyone breathing down their neck asking them to look at that architecture on their right and wondering if they read the map correctly.
4. Pack only the bare necessities – a change of clothes, a bag that fits everywhere (on a bus, a train, a small plane, a crowded car), a notebook and pens.
5. When you’re travelling, you inevitably think about the past. Keep in mind that your baggage goes with you when you travel – your memory comes alive. Be prepared to deal with this. Travel doesn’t necessarily allow you to run away from yourself.
6. If you’re writing a travel book – people want to know about your honest reactions to a place. They don’t want to know how ill you were from food poisoning or how long the queues were for a bus ticket.
7. In any kind of writing, an ‘ordeal’ that someone went through really sharpens the mind. People remember ordeals. Our memory sharpens itself when it goes through its greatest fears. The prose is sharper.
8. Travel is a metaphor for living. If you don’t anticipate or enjoy travel, you don’t enjoy life.
9. You need to travel with a sense of optimism that things will always result in a discovery.
10. Good travellers are great negotiators. If you come from a large family (like Paul does) the last biscuit on the plate at tea-time is never snapped up, it’s discussed. Over-privileged people usually over-step their mark while travelling and cross sensitive boundaries because they don’t know the true art of negotiation.
11. Having a detailed map, studying it deeply, can heighten the anticipation of a trip. Stanfords in London is a fabulous place for maps of all kinds and a rare service that the city of London has to offer.
12. Flying distorts your sense of space and distance. If you want to understand a place, always travel over ground. The mystery of the world is revealed to you when you’re on the ground.
13. Spend two years in a country if you really want to get to know it.
14. When documenting travel experiences: write every day, write everything that happened every 8 to 12 hours, photocopy everything you write and mail it somewhere that it can be retrieved if you lose the original. This kind of discipline separates the writer from the non-writer.
15. Remember that when you’ve been welcomed into a country or a place, you have to return the hospitality and welcome people to your country, place, home.
16. Don’t call attention to your writing by writing in the present tense. Use the past tense so that the characters and stories come to the forefront and people are not admiring or distracted by the writing.

Paul Theroux was promoting his latest book, “The Tao of Travel” which lists 10 top things every traveller should know at the back of the book, which is a compilation of other famous travel writer’s works. He tends to have an honest, dry style of writing but the integrity of his journeying can’t be challenged. His openness to people everywhere he goes, even in conflict torn areas and his observations of humanity are touching and astute.

I’ve just finished ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ which is a lovely book of the Mediterranean countries and portrays the lesser known, non-tourist havens of Italy, Croatia, Greece and others. I was lucky enough to get my copy signed. His most famous travelogue is ‘The Great Railway Bazaar’ which everyone seems to recommend if you’re interested in reading about a railway trek across Central Asia, South Asia and the Far East. And to anyone who has the chance to hear him speak in person, do so. I can guarantee that at the very least, you’ll gain insight into the life of an extremely intelligent, very passionate travel writer.

Travel Writing books I've enjoyed

2011-05-23T09:38:00.000+01:00

When I was 10 years old, I fancied myself a poet. Furious mid-night scribbling of soppy lines made me believe that this was what I wanted to write. Five years ago, when I frantically attended every City Lit class on writing that I could, I knew novel writing wasn’t for me. A year ago, half-way into my MA in Creative Writing, I fell headlong into playwriting and submitted a compilation of short stories as my dissertation thesis. By then, I had learned a valuable lesson – ‘Never say Never’ and ‘Always be willing to be surprised by the Universe.’ So, when a friend advised me to submit a few travel pieces to the Times of India, I thought nothing much of it, convinced that it wasn’t my genre. Two published articles later I find myself looking at Travel sections in bookstores and noting down ideas for my very own travelogue.

Besides the bog standard Bill Bryson on my bookshelf, here’s what I have read (and enjoyed) so far –

‘The Virago Book of Women Travellers’ – nuggets of travel writing from various women from 1689 to the present day.
‘The Pillars of Hercules’ by Paul Theroux – a travelogue of his overground journey, taking the long way, from Gibraltar to the southern pillar of Ceuta in Morocco.
‘A Moveable Feast’ by Ernest Hemingway – his memoirs about his time living as an American expat in 1920s Paris surrounded by writers of the time.
‘Out of Africa’ by Isak Dinesen – a memoir of life on her farm in Kenya.
‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ by George Orwell – a portrayal of what it was like to work as cheap labour in Paris (also around the late 1920s, early 1930s) and forage for food and shelter as a tramp in London.
‘Eat, Pray, Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert – a travelogue of her year of travelling to Italy, India and Indonesia in search of her spiritual self through explorations in food and meditation.
And one of my personal favourites – Simon Majumdar’s ‘Eat my Globe’ – a description of his journey around the globe through food he enjoys and encounters.

This isn’t much compared to my steadily growing reading list of travel writing:

‘The Age of Kali’ by William Dalrymple
‘India in Slow motion’ by Mark Tully
‘Pictures from Italy’ by Charles Dickens
‘The Great Railway Bazaar’ by Paul Theroux
‘Ox Travels’ – by different travel writers.
Anything by Colin Thubron
‘Full Tilt’ by Dervla Murphy
‘The Global Soul’ by Pico Iyer

If you’re wondering what common themes link these choices, here it is – I’m interested in travel writing about India, food explorations while travelling and expatriate life abroad. Send me your own recommendations to add to the list!

Writer's room Series

2011-03-02T20:35:00.006Z

I’m surfing the guardian Books pages online. My eyes fall on a small picture. Its a room full of books. I can’t resist clicking on it.
It gets bigger.
My heart races.
My eyes go to the title of the item.
I salivate. Its called the Writer’s Room Series.
I’m in heaven.
Sofia Coppola once said, “Real estate is pornography for women.” If that’s true, then drooling over ‘Writer’s rooms’ is the voyeurism for me. Here are some of my favourites to help me dream. Light aplenty with nice, big windows, ceiling to floor bookshelves and solid oak desks surrounded by soft leather armchairs and sofas. That’s what my dream writing room would look like. How about yours?

Of cultural ghettoes and Identity politics

2011-02-15T22:01:00.003Z

The first time I heard about Elif Shafak was when I saw an event invite circulated to Creative Writing students saying that she’d be speaking with Professor Richard Cohen and signing books at the Rose Theatre on 7th March. She’s an award-winning Turkish novelist who blends Eastern and Western traditions of storytelling.
What peaked my interest was that the invite was sent out by one of the faculty saying that ‘she was soon to be a worldwide literary figure.’ I decided to test this theory out for myself.

I don’t know about you but my litmus test nowadays is to check whether a writer has their own website (check) and then check whether they are on TED talks (double check). I mean, Wow! The woman is a gifted storyteller and eloquent to boot. If you’ve ever spent a second wondering about your identity as a writer – especially if you were raised with non-Western roots, you’ll find something here that strikes a chord.

Shafak speaks about ‘cultural cocoons’ as cultural ‘ghettoes’ we create by putting walls up to kill everything within that thick circle including imagination. She speaks about superstition and spirituality in Turkey, throws in Sufism and Rumi like it is a second language to her and eludes to the whirling dervishes within writers. There is a memorable moment she describes when she was in Istanbul during the 1999 earthquake and she rushed out to see her extremely conservative local grocer sitting next to a transvestite with a black wig, offering him a cigarette. That’s what she thinks of first when she thinks of the earthquake now.

Its worth listening to the first fifteen minutes is only to get to the last quarter of the talk where she says that students of Creative Writing courses are told “Write what you know.” She advocates that this is limiting, stunted. Instead Shafak says, “Write what you can feel.”

I’m sold. I can’t wait to hear the woman in person.

If you dream deep enough...

2010-12-20T19:44:00.001Z

When I stop to think what this year has meant to me, writing-wise, what jumps out at me is that its been a year of milestones achieved and dreams coming true. I can recall the sense of determination, when I began my first class on the MA in Creative Writing two years ago, with which I wanted so badly to have Hanif Kureishi as my tutor at the end of the two years, when I had to write up my final collection. Instead in May 2010, my allocated tutor turned out to be an unimaginable 100 times better - his editor from Faber and Faber. My first deep insight into how publishers think, breathe and behave. In July, I got to read out aloud, for the first time to a UK public, an unpublished work in progress from my short story collection. In September, I submitted a 15,000 word chunk of my 'Ghost stories from Goa' along with a 3000 word critical essay, as my Master's thesis. In October I had my first travel article published by no less than the Times of India and they've just accepted a second from me, to be published in 2011. I also managed to get the first 15,000 words of my second book written up this year. And all of this, while in full-time employment in a demanding job that I love and am thoroughly grateful for.

So, don't ever tell me dreams aren't possible. I'm living proof that everything is possible - if you dream deep enough.

The OXFAM Readathon

2010-07-08T19:18:00.001+01:00

The OXFAM readathon
At 9.20pm exactly on Monday the 5th of July 2010, I got to read ‘The Exorcism’ ,one of the stories from my short-story collection. Pause. I got to read, out loud, for the first time in my life one of my own creations. I got to read, out loud, to members of the public, complete strangers, something that I conceived and birthed myself. Needless to say, this was a milestone in my life.
About Oxfam Bookfest 2010 readathon

The 2010 Oxfam Bookfest will launch with our fantastic readathon event involving a day and night of continuous reading aloud by authors, creative writing students and Oxfam volunteers at Oxfam’s flagship Bookshop in Marylebone on 5th July. The readathon is intended to celebrate the central role that books play in people’s lives and the impact that buying a book from Oxfam can have on the lives of poor people around the world.

Last year’s Bookfest resulted in a 40% increase in book donations to Oxfam, and in the months following Bookfest the charity made £400,000 through the sale of books. Oxfam is hoping that this year’s Bookfest will be just as successful. Over the course of a fortnight more than 500 Bookfest events will take place in Oxfam Bookshps and regular Oxfam shops, and in libraries, community centres and other venues around the UK, featuring well-known authors and a host of activities for the whole family.

Venue: Oxfam Bookshop, 91 Marylebone High Street, London W1U 4RB

If that’s not enough to believe me, here are the rules the readers were sent:

1. Please can you arrive 10-15 minutes before your reading. A member of the Oxfam team will be there to meet you

2. The readathon will take place in a specially created event space at the front of the shop and there is seating available while you wait

3. Please feel free to listen to other readers

4. A microphone will be available and if you choose to use it, your reading will be heard on the sound system throughout the shop

5. A readers’ armchair is provided to sit in

6. Or you can stand to read

7. Please begin your reading by stating which book you’re reading from: ‘I’m going to read from….’ and continue to read aloud up to 20 minutes [there will be a big clock for you to check the time or we will tell you]

8. As you come to the final paragraph of your reading could you please raise your hand or signal that you have almost finished

9. The next reader will then come to stand beside you. Please finish the reading by stating ‘and the last word of my reading is…’

10.The next reader will then take over reading aloud

And finally…if you still don’t believe me, here’s the photographic evidence. Ta daaaa!

The Cellist of Sarajevo

2010-06-22T15:34:00.002+01:00

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway is a gorgeous find. Its one of those books that I saw on shelves of all the major bookstores about a year ago but filed away in the recesses of my mind under: Some other time when the furore has died down. I can’t say whether it’s the process of patient waiting till I am not surrounded by the buzz of a title before I read it, not unlike the way I waited for two years to finally see Evita and loved it. Or whether it’s the quality of the writing – but I loved this book. The structure, the topic, the plot details and the characterization were all unique learning points for me. To be told the story of a city at war with itself from four points of view that were well developed and empathetic was something lovely to behold. The language was simple but the evocative emotions and pictures painted by Galloway were what drew me in. Five stars in my book!

Tokyo Cancelled

2010-06-18T15:27:00.002+01:00

Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta weaves modern fairy-tales that are probably more like the Grimm Brothers original stories than the latter versions that have made their way down through history. Dasgupta’s book of short stories is particularly interesting for a study in frame narratives that hang the stories together. The stories speak for themselves and outweigh the frame narrative – its just there to assist in giving the reader a better eye view. The stories themselves are wonderful little feats of imagination strung together in successful narrative. The Memory editor is a particular favourite of mine with a young boy who is hired to streamline a memory database and erase huge parts of people’s memories before selling them pre-packaged products of their memories, but only the ones they can stand, that make them happy, until his own memories are in a similar state of crisis. The map-maker of Frankfurt takes on a surreal twist that enters the realms of the macabre. The rest you’ll have to read for yourself but the tones of the Emperor’s new clother, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Seven Dwarves and Jack and the Beanstalk are all there in broad daylight for your to see. What Dasgupta weaves them into however, is something else.

Seen anything good lately?

2010-03-31T18:35:00.003+01:00

LOURDES: Jessica Hausner's little French film is everything but. It advertises itself as the story of one pilgrim, a frail young lady called Christine played brilliantly by Sylvie Testud, who is paralysed from the neck down by MS. Christine is a part of a group pilgrimage to Lourdes with volunteers from St. John's Ambulance assisting the pilgrims. The main character that steals the show actually turns out to be Lourdes itself, cinematographically portrayed by Hausner as a Disneyland-like spot with the main attractions being the Grotto and the Baths. Hausner takes her time with each scene and those used to more action-oriented sequences may find it trying. But, if you surrender to each scene you will find all the beauty of story-telling in the facial expressions of the characters as they reveal one layer of emotion after another. Patience really is the reward in the final scene which lingers on our supposed protagonist's face. Lourdes is portrayed as a world of contrasts; the formica-like tackiness of pilgrim hostels, and shops filled with souvenirs of Mother Mary figurines contrasted with the Disneyland-like quality of Lourdes. The real show-stealer for me is the script. Well-paced, it bring out the cynicism of the faithful through the joking humour of one of the older volunteers and the by-the-bible answers of the card-playing priest. The real questions we are faced with are: Who really has faith?, What happens to it when suffering hits?, and What does a miracle really look like?

I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS: This is the true story of a gay

con-artist who lied his way into and out of jail probably more times than I have fingers. The movie gives the primary driver for this as his love interests. Its Jimmy first, then Phillip Morris - who he meets in jail, and then falls so deeply in love with that he successfully cons both his and Phillip's way out of it - for a limited time. Those of you familiar with Jim Carrey's style will see slightly toned-down glimpses of it through-out the movie. But, the fantastic acting job really is in the portrayal of Jim Carey and Ewan McGregor as two gay men deeply in love. They pull this off so believably that the rest of the story-telling can go on without anyone being distracted by the lack of belief in this couple's dynamic. I have to confess that the real marketability of this film is that it is based on the true story of Steven's character played by Carrey. The fact that the events really happened and showed up the inadequacy of the US prison system to keep low security prisoners in place is remarkable.

THE BLIND SIDE: There is definitely a place in the movie-watching world for yet another down-and-out-meets-lucky-break, awe-inspiring story. Only hard-core cynics who don't know what it is like to open their doors and let a stranger in will find themselves dry-eyed at the end of this movie. We don't need to see what the projects are like to get a picture of the down-and-out. Neither do we need to see the luxury of the lucky-break situation because that's not where the luck is. It is written in the relationships of this story. Centered around a rich, Southern, charitable matriarch who takes in a homeless yet promising teenager from the projects, what this movie delivers to me is the story of one in inspiring woman who didn't respond to the negative influences of her environment bu the positive ones and struggled to deliver what what right through the challenges she faced. Teh lesson to be learnt here is how unconditional love and support given from her family can be recycled outwards to others and then back in. It left me wondering how many unsung heroes are really out there. Not enough and plenty of self-proclaimed heroes I'm sure. But, the model is there. And of course, Sandra Bullock is fabulous as the matriarch. She deserves every accolade coming to her for her portrayal of Leigh Ann Tuohy.

Red

2010-01-24T15:15:00.001Z

'Red' is John Logan's fantastic biopic of Mark Rothko starring Alfred Molina as the self-indulgent Abstract Expressionist and Eddie Redmayne as his assistant. Set in the period when Rothko and Pollock were at the height of their fame, just after Pollock's death it brings all of Rothko's insecurities into the forefront as an artist being rubbed out by the next best thing - the massively popular Pop Art culture that was a product of the Brand culture at the start of American consumerism.

More than the brief look into Rothko's life, albeit fictional, I enjoyed Logan's tightly written playscript. He covers themes that are still relevant for artists even today and pokes at the artists that still sell-out to consumer brands today, whatever new form they may take. He grapples with vivid language to bring out startlingly simple images of death related to white snow for example. If I was to make any criticism of the written work it would be to say that the writing holds no surprises. The story has a predictable rhythm, the words are well-chosen and build the mounting tension ver well.

Molina is exacting and precise in his performance. Unlike most US actors who fail abysmally when they take to the stage, Molina's British stage training holds out well for him and he delivered an enjoyable performance, one that I would recommend to any artist to attend before the 6th of Feb 2010.

Anish Kapoor

2009-12-06T19:41:00.001Z

The first time I set eyes on Anish K was at the Tate Modern at least five years ago. All I remember was a red square that if I stared at long enough sucked me into its bloody vortex. A living womb. It was disturbing to say the least. Emotional. Graphic. But, quiet.

Here are the pics from some of his best works at his latest exhibition at the Royal Academy, taken by stealth (allow me to get on my soapbox about that - you can take pictures of all the greats up close and personal at the National Smithsonian Art Gallery and MoMA; I was practically ramming my digital cam up Rembrandt's nose, but not in London. Why is that? Answers on a post-card.)

Visceral. I know. Cannisters of blood-red paraffin and oil shot once a day into a corner of the Royal Academy rooms. There was splatter everywhere. He used the same material shaped into a block 10 by 10metres roughly that was gliding back and forth through three rooms with arches, again, smudged at the edges by the red paraffin as it slid past. A room steward told me that it takes an hour and a half to get from one edge of the room to the other.

This room was full of poo-shaped cement piled on top of wooden pallets. The rooms before smelled of paraffin and oil, this one of cement. There was The Hive which smelled of iron rust. Did anyone else notice?

Seraphine de Senlis

2009-11-30T21:22:00.001Z

I went to see a new movie that's out called 'Seraphine.' It's in French, with English subtitles. It's about Seraphine Louis, a cleaning lady for middle class families in rural France who began painting at the age of 41 because her guardian angel told her to do it. After hours spent in the day doing physically demanding labour of cleaning people's houses, beating the dirt out of laundry on river banks and working at the butcher's she would go home and paint all night by candlelight. The few centimes she earned she spent on paint and canvases instead of food and rent. To this day, no one is sure what materials she used to create the glossy, waxy look of her paintings which were mostly flowers in colourful bloom. (The one on the left is painted on a two metre long canvas). It is speculated that she used paraffin and wax stolen from prayer chapels in church, mud and twigs from river banks and blood from the butcher's shop where she worked. She was a devout catholic and sang the latin mass and hymns as she painted at night.

As the story goes, she painted herself into a mental asylum and eventually died in comfortable isolation in her seventies. But, not before she was discovered by a German art collector and dealer named Wilhelm Uhde who turned out to be her patron and protector.
The movie was cinematically evocative from the deep throated sounds of latin mass being sung to the click-clackety metallic heels worn by Seraphine's character, played by Yolande Moreau. It won awards at Cannes and not without reason. I recommend this movie to art fans and artists (writers, dancers, actors etc.) alike if not for a life-like depiction of what it is to be consumed by passion for your art and driven to express it through your physical being, then at least to appreciate the stellar performance of Yolande Moreau.

I've finally found a reason to visit Paris again (after at least two years away) - the Musee Malliol where a few of her paintings are supposedly on permanent exhibition. Anyone with me?

Artist's date at Vic and Albie's

2009-11-27T22:06:00.003Z

I've lived in London for close to a decade now and yesterday visited the V&A museum for the first time, properly. The South Asia section has Tipu Sultan's wonderful mechanical tiger. It's life-size and depicts a tiger nipping a European soldier in the neck. There are some stunning life-size portraits of Indian dynastic rulers. The room is also full of beautiful paintings of Mughal rulers and stories from the lives. This is definitely a place to go when I am ready to write my story of romance set in the Mughal period. The Jewellery rooms are inspirational and full of unique designs that I'm sure are being copied even today. There is a winding steel staircase in the middle of the blue-black coloured room.

There are also a few Rodins that I must return for: The Fallen Angel - are they two bodies kissing, is it two people entwined deeply in each other's arms or is it just one Icarus-like angel with wings sweeping the granite coloured ground? The Muse - twisted, armless. Is she Rodin's muse? Everytime I see a life-size Rodin I'm tempted to rock it from side to side, in search of its fulcrum, to see where he filled the base and where he left it hollow for that delicate, measured balance that every metal sculpture of Rodin's contained. Another favourite was the Prodigal Son - the way it occupies space in the room is fantastic, stretching out into air, trying to free itself from the V&A's sculpture room and the left hand is almost curled into a fist. Why?

My discoveries of the day: Two corridors of Frederic Leighton's frecoes and mock-ups of 'The Art of Industry as applied to Peace' and 'The Art of Industry as applied to War.' There were some stunning, magnificent, huge Edward Burne-Jones.

Another precious and valuable discovery: Beatrix Potter's original illustrations in pencil and in ink of Peter Rabbit, the Flopsy bunnies and others. What makes them so valuable is not the illustrations that she made herself - every ink mark and ink colour exquisitely shown in the mellow lights of the special exhibit, but the museums' narrative explaining her method and process leading to publication. She used text and image precisely, actually drawing out the sketches and watching them sit with the text on the opposite page on blank books - in fact creating the dummies for the published material, to make sure the text and image sat next to each other harmoniously.

The Theatre and Performance rooms were a wonderful revelation and surprise. I think I could easily sit or wander around those 4 or 5 rooms and find something for inspiration: whether the wonderful photo of Nuyreyev demostrating the Nutcracker and captured forever in a stunning ballet pose that will always occupy an amazing pace in time (taken by Reg Wilson). Or the Victorian marionette of a skeleton next to a very moustachioed and bearded red devil, or the amazing set models for different plays that are displayed that made me oooohhh and aaaaahhh in awe. Especially after the classe I had last night on compostion and form in theatre - but that's for another blog. All in all, a successful hour and a half of an artist's date chock full of inspirational references for the future.

My Haiti trip

2009-11-07T15:09:00.001Z

M.I.N.U.S.T.A.H.

That's the acronym for the UN Peacekeeping force in Haiti. Everytime someone said the word I expected them to break out into a rap song about priests. They're EVERYWHERE. UN Peacekeeping 101 - the force comprises volunteers from all country military or police forces. They are required to wear their country uniforms everywhere off-base with a flag and country name tag onto their left shoulders. I love seeing them congregate in a mixture of countries over breakfast at my hotel terrace, which they did almost every weekend. You also get very used to armed checkpoints and all and any peacekeeping personnel walking around at breakfast with holstered guns and tazers on the ready. Certainly makes coffee-time interesting! The other thing you see everywhere are UN vehicles in almost every car park or bumping around on the non-roads of Haiti. Here's one.

Gingerbread houses

Imagine my surprise when I read on the front page of the Financial Times Sunday edition before even touching down in Haiti about Gingerbread houses that were going out of style in Haiti from lack of resources to update them. Gingerbread houses in Haiti! There's a whole block of Haiti called Bois Verna that's full of these run-down, dilapidated houses. Built in the 1900s to 1950s, no one seems quite sure why they were built. Theories are the influence of the World Trade fair that brought Art Nouveau design to the world (although I don't see the connection between Art Nouveau and Gbread houses myself!) and the influence of US visitors to Haiti. The only other place I've ever had the joy of seeing such unique design is in Martha's Vineyard at the Old Methodist Camp where 300 houses are now standing in Oak Bluffs. Once I read the article, I had to see it for myself. Here are some of my pics - rather bad because of the mid-day light and having to take shots from the street!

Haitian Art

Very popular with the tourists, there are colourful pictures lined up against road-sides in Port-au-Prince, waiting for a sale. The themes are all similar - Haitian landscape or crowds of people demonstrating some aspect of Haitian life. Also unique and beautifully haunting were the dark, flat-iron 2-D works mounted against white backdrops. My hotel had plenty of those - here are some pics.

Taptaps

The mode of transport in Haiti is a pick-up truck fitted with a curved roof at the back that can sit about 10 people in it. They're called tap-taps and in most cases are scarred horrifically or are painted quite exquisitely. Most of them whizzed past too fast for me to catch a photo, but I got one of a parked, vacant tap-tap here.

The Workshop

Of course, the reason I was in Haiti was to train our partners there in advocacy. Here are some pictures from the last day of the workshop of 20 participants excluding translators and other assitants helping coordinate it all. This is the part of my job that I love the most - meeting the partners, getting to know their business and knwoing that I can add some value to improving the already fantastic work they are doing on the ground to help the poorest of communities. Most of our partners work in Education and health but some of them are starting to assist communities in disaster preparedness. Civil society in Haiti doesn't have much of a history of activism or forming a collective voice to stand up for their rights. Three decades of hardened, command and control political regimes will do that to one of the poorest countries in the world. The fact that they were mined out of all their gold by colonials and have now stripped out 90% of their forest cover by the end of the last century hasn't added to the solution for their economic recovery. The coffee industry, which is based on the Arabica bean, is able to meet national needs but Haiti imports most of its food.

As my workshop participants were more than happy to discuss in the most impassioned voices, its the free trade policies of Haiti that are killing any incentives for local production. The room swiftly divided itself into one side that was happy to stand by local production being able to supply existing demand with more government and consumer support and the others saying that there was no way rice production in Haiti could meet the needs of a quickly growing population. If I'd had the time I would have set up a debate and discussion of the two sides of the problem so that the group could decide how they would develop a position on the issue. But there we go - the irony of international development. Not enough money, not enough time and more than enough work to be done. More of that another time, but for now, some pictures of some of the people that made Haiti a real pleasure for me to visit, the workshop participants:

Pictures of Port-au-Prince from a height

Status quote

2009-10-17T22:22:00.001+01:00

One of my absolute favourite quotes:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

From Marianne Williamson's book "Return to Love." Nelson Mandela famously used this quote in his inaugral address in 1994.

The Artist's Way

2009-10-16T22:28:00.001+01:00

For those of you who have already heard me wax lyrical about Julia Cameron and her book, "The Artist's Way," you will know for yourself the usefulness of the two tools I'm about to talk about. For those of you who haven't read the book, used to be creative and wonder now when you lost your way - this book is for you. If there are only two things you need to take away from this book to build into your daily routine so that your creativitiy is jump-started its these:
Numero Uno, Morning pages: Set your alarm for half an hour earlier in the morning, get up and write three pages of stream of consciousness stuff into a journal before the busyness of your day and your mind take completely over your sanity. The point is to put the things on your heart, mind and soul onto pages. IF you feel there is nothing to say, put down three pages of nothing. Think of it as a way of massaging the knot out of a tough, harderned muscle. I do. It works. According to Julia, you'll see amazing results within weeks. I only noticed after a year - but I'm like that.
And Two, The Artist's Date: Once a week, take your lovely self on a date. With yourself. No one else you know allowed. This could be as large as a weekend visit to a new place or as small as an hour of coffee while reading your favourite paper in a new cafe you've always walked past and wondered about but never wandered into. Cameron actually gives an example of buying gold stickers and putting them in scrap books or other places of interest. This is harder for me to do. I find it easy to hang out in places that I know like my fave coffee hang-outs or discover new ones. No problem. But if you're like me, you will find your weekends taken up with household chores and social time. Throw in the huge amout of quiet downtime I need in my life personally to read, write and remain sane and there is very little room to be creative for myself EVERY week. Golden stickers on a scrapbook stress me out, don't even seem worth the investment of time compared to what you want to achieve with an Artist's Date (focus people): Enhanced Creativity. But my oh my, is it worth it! As with everything, its all about practice and giving yourself time to get into being on a date with yourself. I'm still learning but my last one was walking around in Gamla Stan, Stockholm.

Calling all student writers...

2009-09-22T14:58:00.000+01:00

Yikes! Classes have begun this week. When did a whole year go by? What did I do between now and then? Four complete stories with editing, one limp play, a couple of sonnets here and there, lots of editing work done for the University Press and a couple of ideas for writing projects. Makes me wonder about one of my favourite lines from one of my favourite movies, “What if this is as good as it gets?”

My writing goals have been sharply whittled down to making sure I get one book written up by the end of this academic year. Yep, 30th September 2010 I should have 9 stories written up and sewn neatly into a coherent ‘book.’ I’ll call it my first baby. God knows I’m having labour pains!

Any other studying writers out there? How’s it going for ya?

Yummy Writing

2009-09-19T21:51:00.001+01:00

I’ve been slow to write lately. Reason: Writer’s Brain. That’s what I call having too many thoughts in your head to think – all writing related of course! So, I’ve resorted to reading instead and I’ve been watching as many movies as possible – learning to appreciate them for their plot, storylines, editing, dialogue – stuff I never chose to notice before. I actually stay long enough after a movie to scan the credits now to see who wrote the screenplay. A whole world of Writing for Movies is opening up for me people. You read it here first!

My latest favourite is Julie & Julia. If you love food and you are a writer (as I do and am) you simply MUST see it. No excuses! Even if just for the opening scene with Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci sitting in a French restaurant and Streep’s character Julia Child savouring the first morsel of her dish. As a writer, I just love the visual that no words are needed when food hits the senses. I’m a big fan of keeping it simple. A simply delicious moment in the movie.

I’m a Meryl Streep fan though, that helps too. And I thought she was fabulous in this movie.

What I love most about the movie though is that it brings to life a woman’s struggle to blog – enter Julie Powell. After watching this movie, I wasn’t sure what to do first – google Julie Powell’s blog or Master the Art of French cooking! So I went for the easier choice - http://juliepowell.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

The Fourth of July

2009-07-04T14:56:00.001+01:00

Here's a few ways to celebrate the 4th of July at the Vineyard, Edgartown-style:

Vineyard Baby

2009-07-01T03:08:00.001+01:00

Getting to Martha's Vineyard yesterday was fun but hard work! My friend Corinna and I used almost every means of popular transport to travel by land, air and water - the metro, then a train, then a flight, then a shuttle to the ferry which led to an hour and a half journey in wonderful weather with bracing winds culminating in a couple of slightly seasick girls descending upon Oak Bluffs, MV. We were met with an offer of cocktails on the harbour which worked a treat! The picture is of me on the ferry by the way. Note the wonderful tan which hides the peakiness under my eyes.

This morning was another day of wonderful, sunny weather. Corinna and I took the bus from Aquinnah where her parents have a gorgeous house with a view of Vineyard Sound from their huge front deck, to Edgartown. We had lunch on the harbour there at the Seafood Shanty. I had a wonderful Shrimp and Scallop linguine with a coke and tried a spoonful of Corinna's clam chowder. Here's the linguine! Although the food was wonderful, it was just a great place to be with fantabulous views of the harbour, the water and there was a great bar upstairs. The service was also fantastic, with the floor manager coming around and introducing herself to each table, asking us how our meal was and to let her know if there was any problem.

What followed was a trip to the Vineyard's Museum on School Street. For the price of $7 we spent about half an hour finding out about the Vineyard's rich and varied history from making its money from the arduous industry of whaling in the 17 and 1800s to its African-American heritage, the Wampanaog tribe of native American Indians living in Aquinnah to the influx of the Portuguese in the early 1900s, the development of the Methodist campgrounds in Oak Bluffs into the famous Gingerbread houses to the infamous Aquinnah cliffs that bear evidence of MV's geological history when it was entirely underwater to when it was first made into an island 500 years ago when glacial melt separated the existing island surface from mainland Massachussets. If you do visit, don't miss the Fresnel lens sitting majestically in the frontyard or the headstones of Clare Luce's hens.

We ended out trip at the Vineyard by popping into Mad Martha's for a couple of scoops. Mine was Maple Walnut and Blueberry - both equally made in heaven with huge chunks of walnut and entire blueberries in purple ice-cream. Out of this world! As for the story of how Mad Martha got her name - I'll have to save something for next time!

Venice fever

2009-05-01T21:46:00.001+01:00

Yes, its true. Every beautiful thing you've ever heard about Venice is actually true. It is one of the most romantic places on earth. I was never interested in or understood Italian renaissance art until I visited the Academia and saw the works of Titian, Canaletto and Bernini among others. I felt the Titian Blues and understood the fascination with the colour; the mystery behind it. I understood why it is possible that modern technology isn't able to replicate the exact blue from Titian's works. Artistic skill was at its hey-dey than. They were experimenting with art as artists knew it. Cutting-edge, radical and political even though they largely stayed with religious themes or portraits of the powerful Doges.

San Marco's piazza was fabulous not because of the hideously glossy church with its kitch mosaics all over the place but because of the story of what it stood for and represented. The piazza was named because of St. Mark's chapel which carried the remains of St. Mark recovered from Alexandria in Egypt by the Venetians who smuggled his buried body out of the country and through Muslim customs by wrapping it in slabs of pork meat. The chapel was built to house his relics and to give the Doges a place to pray. But as the Venetian empire slowly gained power, the chapel was added to and eventually developed into St Mark's Basilica which stands there today. A testament of the power of the Doges but also their lack of taste in this traveller's humble opinion.

The fun of Venice, if you're lucky with the weather and Maria and I were, is that you can walk everywhere or take the boat-bus (vaporetto) to get to where you want to. We saw the Rialto bridge and rather than rent expensive gondolas, just took vaporettos and I was able to take some great pictures down the Grand Canal. Venice can be expensive, but a bargain if you look out for it. Lunch was standing outside the BEST pizza place ever and for two euros and fifty cents we had huge, hot slices of pizza with cokes while watching exhausted tourists walk past in search of more expensive restaurants to sit down and eat. And for all coffee-lovers out there the best coffee was at the Art-Deco train station for one euro and sixty cents only. Bargain!

Tea?

2009-02-24T08:34:00.000Z

Sunday afternoon tea with Maria at the Wolseley was an experience. But, the highlight for us both, undoubtedly, was the perfect flavour of mustard in the ham and mustard finger sandwiches. The strawberry jam had entire mini-strawberries in them. The fragrance of the jasmine tea made me think of gardens in India, where they sell strings of jasmine to put into your hair.

As afternoon tea places in London go, I'd give this one a four and a half star rating at least, half a star less because they have a no-photographs policy (which is understandable considering the celebrities dotted around the place). The experience and ambience is definitely worth the price.

From the second the doorman opens those double doors to you, you feel like you've entered the 1920s. They have preserved every little art deco detail, including the original cashier's counter. The Wolseley was originally built in the 20s as a car showroom. It still have the original marble floors where the cars where shown. But, it went bankrupt very quickly and was sold to Barclays bank. Barclays left in 1999 and the Wolseley was converted into a restaurant in 2003, when it opened.

They do have other food options, but if you do go, have the mustard and ham sandwiches. Maria and I dream of them!

Izzard

2008-12-12T12:04:00.000Z

Eddie made me cry last night.

From the first twenty minutes into the show I had aching cheeks, a split in my side and had run out of tissues to stave the tears pouring out of my eyes. Besides looking very good with his neatly kept goatee and his well maintained shape, his style didn’t fail to amuse. Topics covered included Noah and 'the boat’, Moses and the burning bush and commandment number ten about ‘not coveting your neighbour’s ox.’ He also stopped mid-show, twice, to look up something on his i-Phone using wikipedia. The first was the origin of the word Assassin, which he had to look up to prove to us that it came from the word ‘hashasin’ because they were on hashish when going on the kill. And the second time was when he got the value of Pi wrong. We booed and hissed at which he took out his trusted i-Phone with a slight flair, made us wait while he looked it up and then read out up to 7 digits after the decimal promising to ‘remember that for tomorrow’s show.’ The DVDs aren’t out yet, but I can’t wait for “Stripped.”

Post script – The two manuscripts were attacked with machetes and lay bleeding on the floors of my workshop class at university Tuesday night. The stories will be laid to final rest this weekend, when it is hoped that their re-incarnations will be regarded more kindly by all!

Poznan

2008-12-08T20:47:00.001Z

Back from Poznan and what a ride it was! Literally.....18 hours of train journeys through Belgium and Germany. Poznan is beautiful, cultural and hospitable. The market square is a treat. But, most of my time was spent getting to know the Internaitonal Fair grounds quite intimately. That's where this year's climate change negotiations are being held. From my alarm sounding off at 6.30am to collapsing on my bed at midnight, it was an intensive time of understanding a new language of COP, COP/MOPs, SBIs, SBSTAs, Contact working groups, Articles and sections. What was the highlight? Possibly the NGO party halfway through the negs, where government delegates, NGOs and journalists were all boogeying down on the dance floor at Tuba club. We even had a delegate from the Ministry of the Environment for Brazil waiting in line to get into the club.

Its an amazing experience sitting through various groups negotiatin in plenaries and working groups, informal sessions which are closed to all non-governmental people adn listening to political negotiators wording their positions in language dripping with meaning that is over the heads of people who are new to this world of language. "I must insist Mr. Chairman" basically means "No, I don't accept your proposal. Accept mine or we're in a deadlock." "We need more time to review the proposals put on our table," basically translates into "We are trying to buy more time while we do the math here but if it doesn't add up and we're not happy we are going to do everything in our power to put the brakes on." Poznan will forever go down in history as part of the climate change negotiations. We had a Kyoto Protocol and a Bali Action plan. So maybe a Poznan Plan???

In the end, I'm happy to be back and have a few days rest before getting my flight to Christmas in India. I have to pop off now but you'll hear from me soon - I'll have to let you know how my manuscripts were regarded in the two workshops I'm attending tomorrow. Watch this space!

A New Beginning

2008-11-17T20:37:00.001Z

So its not officially my first day at university but I wanted to create a blog to mark this time of "back to school" for me (it was either a blog or a tattoo and between you and me I'm not into pain). It wasn't an easy decision you know and I don't believe that all wanna-be writers need to do an MA in Creative Writing in order to be a writer. Heck, they can just - WRITE! Or cheaper yet - publish a blog! For me, it was all about wanting the structure and externally-imposed reason to discipline myself into writing. But most of all, I wanted to be surrounded by other writers and 'those creative types' that I don't have in my family or among my friends at all. How's that going you ask?

It's been a month and a bit so far. My first module of the four I will be taking over the next two years (think you'll be watching this space for that long?) - yes I'm a part-timer - is a writer's workshop. For those of you not into the lingo - that's a self-chosen torture chamber where I have officially paid to have not only 8 of my peers listen to me read out a piece of work that I will hone and prune into a publishable sort of shape by the end of the module (insert the bit about crossed fingers here), but also ask them to comment on it in a not-so-nice way thanks-very-much! Oh yes, 8 peers and one published writer. A Whitbread First Novel winning, Orange Prize short-listed sorta published writer.

The truth is I LOVE IT! I'm a big believer of pruning and honing so bring it on baby! I went into the library the other day and just walked around in a daze in the English Literature section, feeling like I had landed on my mothership - back where I belonged. Know that feeling?