Midnight PlayList - the sweetest albums

Just now? 
Fire of Zamani, by Ice Prince

 

and then
Open Doors, by Nosa

But I could easily add
Merchants, Dealers, and Slaves, by Brymo
Anytime Soon, by Ajebutter22

So lucky, so lucky to have all this music...an embarrassment of riches, really, because there's also Baddo and the best album ever; The Girls like J'Odie, Ibiyemi, Asa, Nneka; Yoruba brother 9ice and Igbo brother Flavour; from-up-on-high Jesse-consciousness, and that's just the start of my list of slow-tempo options.  Bezzz, oh my God, My Baby. 

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Cleaner and saner in Lagos

To combat the congestion and pollution problems of cities,
"Walking and bicycling will become more important technologies of the 21st century."
- Jeffrey Sachs in Lecture 1.5 of The Age of Sustainable Development, a free online course. 

Ok, maybe not this

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Lyrics: The Case, by Jesse Jagz featuring Show Dem Camp

One of the best rap songs ever, lyrically.

 The Case

But can't find the lyrics online months after the release.

Your assignment: Dump the full lyrics in the comments section, or just transcribe short sections and I'll assemble them.  Thank you.  Bless you.  Don't make me have to do it all myself ;)

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Six months later...the lyrics are here!

Jesse:

1

Uh.
Sent me pretty flowers in April,
came on the wings of the angel (Gabriel)
The hand that rocked my cradle, he prepared the table,
something I could relate to even though I had no cable.
When I am unable, power's been disabled,
can't communicate to my own Tower of Babel,
Gabriel the angel came to my stable,
said chosen of the gods, hail able, we praise you.
See I speak the truth, you might choose to believe in fables.
Do you believe in angels or fake names and labels?
Stay true. Know the path I walk is gonna be painful.
Bring to the navel(?j1) like I'm going through labour.
Many men hate you, many more underrate you.
Get ready for betrayal, unfaithful niggers lay low.
Uh, you know the Universe only rewards the faithful.
Father forgive them they 'on't know what they do. Uh,
now check it:

.......
uh, now look what loving made you do
uhh, you're running when no one's chasing you
ah, I don't care if they love me (fuck it!)
above me only God can judge me.

uh, now look what loving made you do
uhh, you're running but no one's chasing you
ah, I don't care if they love me (fuck it!)
above me only God can judge me.


2

Late in December, I received a letter.
No signature or sender. I had the shit rendered,
turned out it was never no previous offender.
Marked up my calendar. Enter: forever.
We enter, time turns Spring into Winter.
It follows the Summer will Fall in the center.
Words from the letter, written to remember.
I'm a fucking avenger. The pen is my temper.
I'll send you a helper, my flow healed a leper,
MCs will remember me as the Elder
Idris Elba, Real Professor Peller
I don't need no umbrella I'm fly with my propellers.
When fear enter, the verbal airbender
break your agenda take no surrender,
you're getting dismembered, blended, get-
-ting reassembled, yes, with the emblem on the single.
The flow was peddled like gold medals
on all levels, same goes for all devils.
Soul rebels, when I flow the soul trembles.
Angels on chariots riding on gold pedals.

Chorus/Hook
+ Above me only God can judge me.

Ghost (SDC):

3

I'm not looking for acknowledgements, just give me knowledge trick,
see I got knowledge to self, so I know I'm the shit.
Room's full of smoke cos a product of my environment.
Now I'm feeling like Superman up in this Metropolis.
Making you Lex Luthor... my solar opposite.
Fuck, boys, you didn't know that there's no stopping this.

It's in God's hands so can't be deterred,
these words are Spurs and I'm Greg Popovich.
Truth, Nigger! Swallow it. This here is knocking, menn, what a dope beat
to put me in the zone, I got too much heat to get cold feet.
Too much heart to bypass, not enough time to waste,
so I'm here paying my dues cos it costs a lot to be great.
If you're still sleeping on us then you're two thousand and late,
for those who've been awake, welcome back to the future.

You couldn't stop my rise if you had the eyes of Medusa.
No statute of limitation can stop us from going nuclear.
Caught wind of the rumours - they're saying we must have fell off,
or went the pop route, financially we're not well-off.

I started doing this cos I thought we were being rep'd wrong.
Gandhi said be the change you desire if you expect more.
So I got to stepping, bench-pressing these bars.
You see the muscle I'm flexing? Got too much hustle to sell 'em.
uh, SDC - Jag Nation, Man, what a pairing!
Just like parents we're son-ning these niggers!
See, I'm made in the image of God so, with disrespectful intent,
fuck you, when you think you can judge me nigga.

Chorus/Hook


Tec (SDC):

4

Uh,
Yeah,
shhhhh,
Kneel to no man cos only heaven's above me,
Call us Rap Messiah so I wonder where the love be
And if they will remain if the shit starts getting ugly.
Will Babylon corrupt me? Guy trust me, they're trying.
All the fake smiles, the schemes, the lying.
The ways of the sheep can never make sense to the lion
so there's no point in replying. I'm just killing them with silence.
Uh, the revolution has begun.
I'm feeling like the chosen thinking maybe I'm The One.
I'm feeling like Gowon the second that he picked that gun.
Guy, there's power in my hands I wonder what I will become.
Huh, when there's no place to run.
I'm bound to feel the heat I'm flying closer to the sun.
Will I hold on to power or, maybe I will run, or
shey I'll plant the seeds for the future ones to come.
This dictator rap guy, ki lo de t'en rap bayi?
My penmanship is supreme it shall never capsize.
Yeah. It shall never capsize.
I don't spit on the mic, my guy, I baptize. And that's life.

THE END.

On beauty as required, or desired, of the female

Last week I was explaining about my hair, and ended up with
"my idea of beauty is this natural thing" and
"I am hot" and
"I want to be healthy [and strong] more than I want to be pretty" and
"I'm also lazy" because he'd asked if it was just laziness.  Well yeah, who wants to spend any time or energy on hair?  Do you? and
"I've always hated the whole salon thing, the process, AND [especially] the results..."

It still surprises me that the hair question is a question.  I think, of all the important things in the world, how are we talking about hair?

This is me with A LOT of make-up ;)

Red Is Irresistible, but it's just colour, guys :)

Almost forgot, I also said to my friend/interviewer:
"I still get laid."  So, hey, I mean, if that's the whole point... 

Musical interlude: Halleluyah by Loose Kaynon, with fine girls in the video of course.

Anyway, listen to old-enough-to-be-your-grandma Bisset.  She knows how to be a bombshell, but learned that being more low-key led to better relationships.

Jacqueline Bisset was once proclaimed the most beautiful film actress of all time.

Actor Jacqueline Bisset has claimed that young women today are obsessed with being “hot”, rather than “charming”, “romantic” or “beautiful” by Ian Johnston for The Independent (UK), Monday 22nd September 2014

 Bisset, 70, who appears in the film Welcome to New York, said that she had once been like that herself but had found that being more “low key” led to more fulfilling relationships.

The English actor, who appeared in films such as 1968’s Bullitt with Steve McQueen and Francois Truffaut’s 1973 film Day for Night, was once proclaimed “the most beautiful film actress of all time” by Newsweek magazine.

“It’s brutal out there now,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “Girls today are so attractive and sexy, and they show themselves off in such an obvious way, so men feel that they are in a sweet shop.
“The flip side is that women see themselves as interchangeable. I feel that this obsession to be ‘hot’ is more prevalent than ever it was in my youth.
“It’s not, ‘I want to be charming and magical and romantic and beautiful’. It’s ‘I want to be hot’. In other words, ‘I want men to want to screw me.’”

Bisset said some women were like this partly because of a sense of “desperation” and “often end up feeling used”.
“I went through a period like that, when I dressed and behaved in a certain way,” she added. “I couldn’t handle the results: it didn’t get me where I wanted to be. So I started to be more low key and I got better relationships as a consequence.”
Bisset said she had “never fully embraced feminism”.  “I certainly thought it had some good points but … women are becoming so tough,” she said.

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Heat

Seyi Shay - Murda:
Would call this a summer jam but it's always sexy summer in Nigeria.


Eva - Lights Out:
Girl be speaking up for us.


Victoria Kimani - Prokoto:
Oh Queen Victoria, who cares if that's Zulu, Yoruba, or freakin' Xhosa...
It's Swahili :) 

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Graffiti update: now a cow moos in my room

Little children had it right all along: crayon BELONGS ON THE WALL.  I did most of this one on Friday under the influence of three rounds of Show Dem Camp's Clone Wars 2 album.

It's like a cow (Taurus chic) in paradise,
there's gold and food and sand and sea,
butterflies and flowers and bamboo/palm
and spiralling curvy things everywhere

Remember the humble beginning?  I told you I was going to frame my mirror, and now I over-framed it.  Don't do drugs, kids.  Do love, do art, do that good music that you love. 

:)

As I jammed that day I remembered what Bez had just written about music you could work to:

Music to sip wine to...make love to... mop the house to, singing along looooouuuuddd!
— BEZ (@BEZidakula) August 20, 2014

How it makes you feel....what it says to you...how you hit repeat on one song and play for an hour... not to dance to ..but to work to..
— BEZ (@BEZidakula) August 20, 2014

Getting the photo, with Kunle O's friend Madu C.

One day I'll do a Rufus Wainwright marathon - then what will happen to the walls!

Some secrets about music, because I love you:

good speakers.  i wrote that before.  i don't always follow my own advice.

close your eyes.  throw a cloth over your head if you have to.

stand up , grab some crayons, ... it is madd.

poor speakers.  hear the same thing differently.

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slave, a slave to a dream.

Deep down what I want is:

for everybody (well, more people) to read and/or watch the Richard Wilbur translation of The Misanthrope (how many times - in 10 years - will I read this and laugh like a fool?) Buy.

for like a million people to read Three Sisters or whatever I'm calling this novel (watch this space)

for my city to be in compact, efficient, rational, gorgeous form (I imagine 'vertical cities' (sort of), public transportation, open-shared, low walls, art heart, green and sky, ...)

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I may have forgotten a few things, and my priorities may change next week or next year, but trust me, I want.  Will get what I want.

The song that doesn't end

:) It's Lamb Chops Play Along :)  
How I loved this song, still do.  

The sun shines in my room

Look what I did with wax crayons on a newly re-plastered (long story, water-damage) wall.

I'd been itching to paint surfaces larger than my A4 sketch paper.
Then came the rough wall-finish in my room and the need to disguise it.
So I grabbed my long-idle pack of kiddie crayons and started to scribble
First some purple, then some blue, and - why not? - some sun rays.

Detail: sun

Hey, why not paint all over the apartment?
I can frame the mirror on the wall in yellow and brown; finally it can stop being a boring rectangle.
I can even create more crayon frames just to "paint" scenes inside.
Never be bored again :)      

A sunny 'bonjour' to me

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Now I have to live without 43Things

I am sad to announce that this site, which has been my friend for a decade, is now to close down.    On 43things.com , you could list and track up to 43 open goals of yours - sleep more, learn French, kiss in the rain, or whatever.

It allowed journal-style entries, with replies, pictures, comments, and a host of meta features - you could mark the goal as done, or postpone it, or even give up. Just for fun, you could give and get cheers on your goals and updates, browse for funny or popular goals, or create New Year resolutions.

I first discovered it while blog-surfing (cyberstalking really) a software-head friend's girlfriend, seated at my desk at my room in the Cats (Catalina apartments) in grad school.  I really liked 43things.  It was a fabulous Web2.0 social application. 

The founders/creators of 43Things also created a lively site called 43places, and there was also 43people, allconsuming, then I stopped noticing their new sites.

I used 43places to organize my dreams of travel.  You could write entries on places you'd been, but front-and-center was a list of where you'd like to visit.  It featured flexible, intelligent programming using RubyonRails tech, such that you could list a country or continent, or a site or town; it didn't restrict you to one level, while it unobtrusively tracked the relationships between those places e.g. it was cool that I could indicate India, and separately the Taj Mahal, and do photos and 'social' relating to each in a way that felt natural.

43people was rather short-lived, and I mourned when they axed it.  "Who do you want to meet?" it said, and I did indeed meet some of my 43people :)

I liked to keep my front-page list very short; my last 43things profile had only five items on it.  Meanwhile, over the years, I learned from others how to simplify, unclutter, have fun, crush on my crushes, like my likes and choose my choices :)  For most of my years with 43, I really meant to get the PhD, but that's not yet done, and who knows if ever.  When I finally publish my first novel, I won't be able to share that milestone with my cyberfriend the robot and my anonymous 43things friends.  Still, it's amazing how much one little site helped me along the way.  Thanks, kids of the robot co-op.  Thanks, 43 community.  One love.

The good news is that Coursera is still alive.  Plus, maybe there is a Web 3.0 around the corner.  California (and Seattle, well, West-Coast) idealism rocks.  

Spent most of the weekend in such a good mood

Now time for le bad mood.  Oh well, it'll pass.  Les blues...

Pirate Latitudes - a-thrill-a-minute

I just watched The Count of Monte Cristo

which was, surprisingly to me, a lot of fun.(Surprising because I'd thought it was a Guy Ritchie film and I've hated the ones I tried.  Turns out it wasn't, it merely featured an actor named Guy Pearce)
I remember there was a time I was just mad about the lead actor James Caviezel.  His eyes I think.  I can't remember now what the film/project was.  It must have been The Passion of The Christ?  Who falls in love with Jesus' dreamy eyes, like, uggh. 
Monte Cristo reminded me of this novel,

Pirate Latitudes, by Michael Crichton, which in one way is one of the best I've ever read.  And yet when I talked about this book with the writer-bookseller last week but we didn't have time :( I said the book was "pacy".  It had a thrill a minute, such a lot of fun, heads were chopped off, hungry rats used as weapons; there was no dull moment.  Like a children's book, we said, full of event.  And no character development, he added, which was sort of maybe true, in a way.  And we agreed such books are, eh, for those who don't know a good book, like, for the masses.  And you know, the great thing is if you meet someone who says they don't like to read, this may be the one you use to draw them in.  He was soooo cute.  What am I to do with all these handsome gents everywhere I turn?

But I had to run and meet my people who were doing lunch a few doors down, else Juan (no really, his real name, from someplace in the Pyrenees mountains, near Benasque) and I might have got to analyzing and snobbing some more.  Which is not a bad thing, it's just talking about a thing, talking about a thing with nuance, with respect, with irreverence, a mixture of both; measuring the worth of the thing on a fine scale, making an incisive examination of its layers, just because we can.

It's like discussing taste to develop taste and, for some (elitist) folk in the world, this matters.  Then you read The Seagull and other plays and see that this separating from the world, drawing away to think too much, it kills.  First with boredom, then madness lol.  So enough "cerebrating" - found that word yesterday, can't find the passage now.  Really, I've actually decided to tone down the "I want to write, I am writing, I will be a writer" drama and just do it or not do it or whatever.  Haha funny. 

I'll reread the plays sometime, it turns out, and it will likely be for the insights, the answers to "what's the meaning of life?"  But the thrills matter too.  The jabs, like this one: "...she would always take on big parts, but she acted them crudely, without distinction - with false intonations and violent gestures.  There were moments when she showed talent - as when she uttered a cry, or died on the stage - but they were only moments."  Woooooah.  Tickled.  I'm re-reading that.    

Snippets - on music, my racism, learning quantum, and what I'm blogging next

1. I finally bought a harmonica last week.  The first thing I played on it, beyond just blowing in and hearing what happened or trying to blow from left to right was 3-3-2-1 to try to sort of mimic the guitar opening in The Search, like one of the loveliest songs in my life right now.  Cos the internet how-to guide said blowing is one skill, then said something about sucking too so I tried that and got my mi-re-do to work.  Meanwhile, Jesse Jagz is in concert in a few weeks - August 2nd at the MUSON Center in Lagos.  I hope the audio equipment isn't weird this time, cos there was some lack of definition/fidelity/power in the speakers at the Shrine concert last year.  I know it will be an amazing evening for me :)

2. Listening to classical nowadays - just downloaded some of the top 50, top 100, classical music for beginners things you can find online.  That's what happens when too much of the current music is not awesome enough lol.  It occurred to me that I can tell my Mozart from my Bach.  I know way too much about Western civilization. Found that I even know a little of the music from The Valkyrie and from Aida even though I've never watched them.

An aside on racism, judging the beauty of languages, and being labeled a 'machine': 
Germany flogged Brazil at the World Cup semifinal match on Tuesday, bringing some of my anti-German sentiment to the surface.  I listened to Jessye Norman (beautiful big black woman) singing Wagner thinking "so terrifying", such un-pretty and martial music, and anyway wouldn't Puccini, Verdi, and Italy have been a better match for this black girl; forgetting that my attempt at categorizing German as cold and terrible makes no sense, when even Beethoven was German.  Anyhow you don't need to be German to do what the Nazi party did.  And nobody perpetrates such without the support or assent of others, or at least I wish that with the UN nowadays that would be the case and the world would gang up against any such oppression.  
Maybe I need to learn a little German.  And Dutch.  Somehow my familiarity with the Romance languages - Spanish, French - reinforces the warmth I feel towards the people and maybe if I stop avoiding the German language, I would become more able to appreciate the so-called German machine, the beautiful football that scored 5 goals in the first half against Brazil on Tuesday.  I'm going to let myself learn a little German.  I'll stop thinking that Persian/Farsi sounds like a slice of heaven even though it rooshes and shooshes too but somehow German just, the closest it comes to romance is like violent porn.  Speaking of violence, I've read Jelinek too.  But she's Austrian.  Now it gets confusing because classics-wise Vienna/Austria is pretty (think Strauss, the waltz, ballgowns with fitted bodices and parties featuring violins and sheer delight! Away with the music of Broadway, be off with your Irving Berlin, ..., when I want a melody lilting through the house, then I want a melody by Strauss: it laughs, it sings, the world is in rhyme, swinging to three-quarter time  - that's By Strauss, in Ella Fitzgerald's voice, another beautiful black Taurus woman).  Language-wise, I hear Austria is German, and that WW2-wise, it was Nazi, and now there is the guilt and even the cold darkness, the unfriendliness and terror of which Jelinek wrote, and for which her work is so hated and so important and to me inspiring.  
What do you think should be done about victor's guilt, post-violence?  The former Nazi lands must keep acting contrite in part because the world is still afraid of them, post-trauma.  Similarly in Japan which once became so capable that it terrorized China (Nanjing tales) and taunted America (Pearl Harbour), they do not have the same militarization rights as the average country.  And to some extent for white South Africa, which succeeded in its apartheid policies for decades, there needs to be an active anti-apartheid raft of good deeds and of penance for a collective sin?  
What should be done preemptively about the fear of getting too big, too good, the fear of making the weaker one cry?  One school of thought is just be great; winning is good, it's the whole point.  A more modern way is to embrace holism, be great for as large a set as possible, not just self, but self and neighbours, not just nation, but all nations, not just humanity, but all earth, not just this earth, but the future and space and outer space.  This is one simple idea that I keep trying to articulate, the benefits and methods of holistic thinking.  
If you hear the other thing I'm saying here, it's that I'm a little bit racist - at least in football, but it goes a little beyond football - and that as usual I'm going to combat my ignorance with a little learning. 

3. I really want to know what quantum science is about.  Maybe I already sort of do.  One thing that helped: Week Five of Physical Chemistry on Coursera.  I just finished weeks one, two, three, and five this week.  Off to do weeks four and six.  This is why I get Coursera fatigue.  But it's so great to have such awesome education available for free, that I can't resist.

4. Yes, I'm definitely bingeing, overdoing it, because I'm also reading some good plays because somebody recommended Chekhov, and about to start two Coursera courses (hopefully one of them is unamazing enough that I'll drop it) on The French Revolution and on Managing Risk for Development.  I bought the book of plays, and bought the harmonica, in Barcelona shops, on my first trip outside of Nigeria in many years.  Thanks to my lovely sister for getting married in Spain, and thanks to the embassies for not rejecting our visa applications a third time.  Is this racism too?  From what I could see, not all the prostitutes in the tourist section of Barcelona were African :)

5. As usual I have thoughts on education - good thing I work in education - and now I'm thinking I'll write some of them here in a series called "homework for victims of the ASUU, SSANU, ASUP, NASU and other miscellaneous strikes in tertiary education."  I do a lot of what the kids stuck at home should be doing with their time - study online, read what you like, do a lot of what you love even if it's watching Korean drama series or playing football or teaching something or selling something, maybe get a job or a traineeship, learn French, write about your life, ... 

There is a song called Dorobucci, by the Mavin crew of Nigeria. It is lousy.

I have become obsessed with this song because it is quite possibly the worst recording of any type that I have ever heard. It was allowed out of its birthplace because the producers, promoters/radiopeople, and likely the general public (including my sister who played the song over and over for an hour last weekend, which is how I heard the afflicted song in the first place) are deaf.

Compared to this mess, Kwality (My Lion King) has a charming quality to it. The off-keyedness in Lion King may be the future of music, and at least in the meantime it made us laugh. My Lion King My Lion Queen roooaarrrrh.

I remember that dorobucci too had a few redeeming qualities – its name was not one of them as I was never going to listen to a song titled hashtag + dorobucci by some Nigerian buffoons. There was a good drum thingie in the beginning, which I understand comes from the fact that Don Jazzy knows drums and beats or at least experiments a lot, after which Don Jazzy started to sing and boldly record off-key – off with his head, if only I was a North Korean dictator!, and there were multiple singers, at least one male voice that was good that I recall, and there was a female, indisputably Miss Tiwa who started sweetly though on another song or another key like she didn’t care, then she reached doro gonna do whatever he gonna do so now it was now nice like an Itsekiri tune or something – a new kind of sweet, but then someone pissed her off so it was doro squeaaal, doro nyaaah, doro it was horrendous.

My big lesson from this song is that the Mavins can really f-up music. Sometimes they’re ok, like their album made in one day full of ok very just ok, cringe, but ok, bow-and-go music; but when they want to be mean they really serve up the crap. It’s like they’re trying to insult us with the rubbish they make.

Sorry if this comment was long, the music was aggravatingly bad.  
(Note, this was intended as a blog comment on a popular entertainment site, but some of the best sites don't like negative comments - but they welcome praise)

This is what I like

My Jes-se.  A pos-se.
Perfect joy.


Asa, grim and powerful.
The world needs Asa like it once needed Sade.

I'll be back. 

Bonus:

10 more years

I started this blog ten years ago, in May 2004. 
Here's a wish that I'll still be blogging ten years hence. 
Amen. 

Small things and big things - an essay from my private little book

I'm listening to a collection by Rufus and reading from my diary.
5am on April 1st 2014: "I've figured it out: I keep pretending to give a shit, when I don't."

Here's the rest of the entry:
I feel like it's really one theater event, this life, and the things that seem to matter, or that matter at all, are just little.  And if there's a God, or if we're in the Matrix, or whatever - who knows?  And one person filled with so much love exterminates all the butterflies in the world (they are forever trapped as larvae; although in their short lives, 'forever' is what - three days?) so the world may eat or something.  Another, filled with so much hate builds a company that takes over the world and makes all but ten people absolute slaves.  Who gives a shit?  Just plot twists.  Then the world will go on.  Or it won't.  Then we'll go to heaven.  Or we won't.  Then the present will be transformed, transmuted, into the future.  Or maybe it'll just poof! and be gone.  Big boo hoo.  
But the little things make us cry still.  A film in which two fall in love.  Tears of joy.  A megastar musician whose art one thinks is lousy.  Oh, protest out of proportion.  
We all should be very bored.  But thank God, we find small things to fight for.  
We all should be very bored.  But how many believe how small these our lives are? 

Three three!

1. Alhamdulillah, birthday tomorrow.

2. Thinking back to when I was 12 or 13, you know, I haven't changed much.  In particular, I still have this beautiful mind that I love.

3. I want to end the fake phase our world is in, with media and branding and PR of everything vacuous, hyping the hype bubble, and for what?  Just to draw a bit of money from the attention.  That, and I'm with the pope on dethroning money from its lead in the pantheon.  The cult of money ought to be this small minority thing, but what do we have instead?
 
4. In Lagos, Nigeria, dense with youthful energy, but with constraints on access to capital (there's a difference between wasted oil wealth and active capital) coupled with hugely increased access to information and markets, we find creative expression that is simply world-class.  My REALbubbler.blogspot.com chronicles this renaissance.  It is possible that nobody is making better music these days than Nigeria.

Dying, living, and living well

A few health headlines I just found basically say that:

YOU SHOULD SLEEP
That I can do.  Off to sleep in a bit.  Back in the day, I used to say "sleep is for the weak."  Now I know that it's a luxury and "I'm worth it."

DIESEL IS KILLING US
Better move out of the city before you get lung cancer.  And I think of all those rats in the neighbourhood, whose lives are cut short as they unknowingly take in all these fumes. 

WEED IS GOOD FOR THE BRAIN
All things in moderation.  PS I've never tried myself, but I love a second-hand toke, it smells nice and makes me happy.  Seriously, I don't know how to smoke.  Or whistle.  Or ride a bicycle. 

On twitter, a moment of symmetry

I'm finally learning how to use the thing :)

Better get a pre-nup, hahaha

Love In The Future (John Legend) is such a perfect album, yet I hate it so much. Today, for a change of pace from Janelle Monae and Pitbull, I decided to treat myself to a little Legend.  

The album is genius really, great compositions (although All Of Me/All of You is, as I like to say, akin to a great ten-ingredient salad: it would likely have been even better with just the first six ingredients) , extremely capable voice, a confident and assured message...  

This message is what I hate so much - who can stand all that romance, love and marriage? Sometime in the future, when governments need a campaign to get people loving and procreating again, yeah, sure, grab this sappy album with its excrutiating cover - bloodred flowers on a plain white background - and honeydoused lyrics. 

The album is a great illustration of what I call thematic unity; not only do the titles, cover, lyrics and style, match, but the songs actually bleed one into the next - delightful! ) Anyway, moving on - the one thing more gag-inducing than this music is its official video, I'll spare you and just show a (much saner) live performance instead.  
 
I didn't want to puke at All Of You on this latest listen.  I managed not to think of the near-inevitability of divorce maybe, like hey, Monsieur or Madame Stupid-In-Love, you'd better get a prenup hahaha. I kept my mind away from the many musical transitions and my theory of salad ingredients. I was using the good speakers and having a good time. ( Speaking of which, I need to get rid of every poor audio machine in my life soon...equipment quality really matters when listening to music. )  I was really enjoying myself. 
To summarize, Love In The Future is a perfect album about...Love In The Future.  It believes in love and wants you to believe too.  Technically, it's flawless.  It should have won whatever the big award is.  
But by the eighth track just now I had to stop the music.  It was getting to be too much sap for my delicate mind to bear. 
 Makes me immature, I guess. I mean, who hates John Legend?

My latest pastime is laptopera

This week was...ugh.  No power from Monday to Friday.  My inverter was dead too.  No internet, and sometimes no water.

On the first no-electricity day, I read The Flannigans.  I expected an Irish novel and had in fact bought it in part for its unapologetic green cover.  Instead I found a simple telling of small-town politics and a family conflict in Newfoundland, Canada, far from their original Irish homeland.  This novel was indeed a little "literary treasure" with its wise measured observations and clear presentation.  P.S. I bought it used but nice and shiny, probably unread, and signed by the author too :)     

The Flannigans, by M.T. Dohaney

Before the extended power outage, I'd been drowning in music; listened to almost all of Chocolate City's oeuvre - M.I.'s two albums, his brother Jesse Jagz's two albums, Ice Prince's latest album, Brymo's album.  Then I moved on to Omawumi's albums.  Tuface was supposed to be next.  There is so much good music in the Nigerian pop/entertainment space these days.  Love it.  

I'd also finally done something I've been meaning to do for months: watch opera on my computer.  I live in the-megacity-with-no-opera-house Lagos, so why not?

I found this Carmen: 

And this Rigoletto:

Enjoyed both verrrry much.  

I may never go to the movies again.  There is so much entertainment that is superior to the movie-theater experience...I think.  

One week ago, just before reading The Flannigans, I finished two really really cool novels.  

Better Times Than These.  

Nanjing 1937: A Love Story.  

 

Many great things about both these works:   

I love the humour of the latter...oh the sharp ending too.  I would read it again.  It's one of those repetitive, not-really-about-the-plot novels.  In fact I didn't read it in a straight line because it got boring sometimes but you would like parts better after peeking a chapter ahead.  But I liked the quirky main character and the sarcasm of the writer Ye Zhaoyan.  I laughed out loud often. Making fun of marriage is fun.  

The first is a Vietnam war story by Winston Groom, of the Southern USA.  It was most excellent in its descriptions of moods, motivations, long-festering emotions.  I associate such emotional intelligence with the South.  Its Chapter Two made me say yes, that is how I felt, when I lived in a fishbowl thinking I was brilliant goldfish and being disoriented at seeing upturned noses instead.  First time I saw my feeling about that period so understood anywhere.  It could be the first time I even understood it.  So of course I didn't want the guy at the center of this beloved chapter - Frank Holden - to die.  He'd been a Princeton tennis star.  He was probably great to look at.  I overlooked his flaws.  Well, he died.

Reading Vietnam and reading China.
The Nationalists of China alongside the Viet Cong organization.
The US excusrsion into that SouthEast Asian theater vs the cool detachment of the upper crust months before and up until a gigantic war on China.
...All this makes me want to learn a little more Chinese.

Read some other stuff in between too: a poetry/motivational/fiction thing that I liked and read twice (Dream Maker).  Some stories from a giant collection by William Trevor (again, I trust Ireland.)  And so on.  But when there was no electricity, I was so miserable I just read newspapers and such, and waited...  

Besides all the usual books, music, movies, blogs and online courses, I have this new hobby: laptopera.  New word.  Next up to watch: an old Tosca (in black and white) and (after all these years of anticipation) Madame Butterfly.  

Let's Misbehave!

They say that Spring means just one thing to little lovebirds We're not above birds Let's misbehave!!!	They say that bears have love affairs And even camels We're merely mammals Let's misbehave!!!
There's something wild about you child That's so contagious Let's be outrageous Let's misbehave!!!
Now listen, Hon, a little fun Would be attractive While we're still active, Let's misbehave!	It's getting late and while I wait My poor heart aches on Why keep the brakes on? Let's misbehave!!!

Words from Let's Misbehave, by Cole Porter
Images from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Next up, in online course world

My MuslimWorld course ends next week.  My Alexander course starts now. 

Alexander pictures

What is it about? 

"This is a course about the life, leadership, and legacies of perhaps the greatest warrior in history and certainly one of its most effective, if controversial, leaders.  The course invites you to ask and answer a number of questions about Alexander’s story that are just as fascinating and relevant today as they were 23 centuries ago.

First, how did Alexander conquer the Persian empire in less than a decade, without ever losing a major battle? The Persian empire was the largest and most successful empire in the long history of the ancient Near East. Before Alexander conquered the Persian empire, no one believed it could be done, let alone by someone in his early twenties. It just can’t have happened; but it did. Over the next few months I’ll explain how.

Second, we’ll ask: what were the leadership qualities that Alexander possessed? What did Alexander know, what did he do to get tens of thousands of people to risk their lives repeatedly on battlefields to help him achieve his goals? Perhaps more importantly, how did he get people who had been enemies to put down their weapons and work together? Were – are - those leadership qualities passed down in the genes? Can leadership be taught or learned? If so, how?

Third, we will take on one of the most controversial questions about Alexander: was history’s greatest warrior gay? Straight? Bisexual? Can we understand Alexander’s sexuality using modern terms such as gay or straight or bisexual, as some historians have argued? Or are such terms fundamentally misleading when applied to an ancient culture?

Finally, we will look at the question of Alexander’s legacies. Is it really true, as some scholars have claimed, that Alexander appeared at the end of the fourth century B.C.E. like a kind of fiery comet that burned brightly for a short time and then exploded, leaving nothing but a trail of mythic vapor? Or did he fundamentally change the world in which he lived in ways that are still being felt today?"

- Was Alexander Great? The Life, Leadership, and Legacies of History’s Greatest Warrior is HIST229x on edx.org  .  The course instructor is Guy MacLean Rogers, Professor of Classics and History at Wellesley College.  Come on, join up. 

On constitutional struggle and the challenge of modernity, with Iran as an example

Iran is a nation-state that is descended from the Persian empire of Biblical times. 

In those days, more than 2000 years ago, kings like Nebuchadnezzar and Darius conquered lands as far as the Levant, in the historic home of the Jews. Wikipedia has that "Iran reached the pinnacle of its power during the Achaemenid Empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE, which at its greatest extent comprised major portions of the ancient world, stretching from the Indus Valley in the east, to ... the northeastern border of Greece, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen." 

To cut a long history short, over the centuries, this civilization has seen ignoble defeats in war and also the self-inflicted malaise of incompetent civil administration.  In fact, in this course, we learn that a state's achievement in war and in administration are closely linked in a mutually reinforcing, or mutually eroding, cycle. 

So for Iran, times have changed.  Their landmass is greatly diminished.  They boast impressive ruins, ancient architecture and ancient feats in technology and the arts, but are not today first or best in anything.  How does a people so aware of their majestic history handle such a discrepancy between their great expectations of themselves and their mediocre reality?  If they could do it before, why are they not doing it again? 

In the 19th century, Iran was under the rule of the Qajar dynasty, and by the early 20th century, this largely incompetent rulership had for "neighbours" the clever Russian and British empires.  Iran was losing badly - not just land, but even the labour of the people, the wealth of the remaining territory, was committed to servitude and debt payments. 

The British, and later, American meddlers were of course not their traditional rivals - say Ottoman, Arab, or their conquered minority tribes.  Modernity in the 19th and early 20th century meant that a country that lay oceans away could 1. have commercial or martial interests in your own country and 2. actually cross barriers in communication and transport to realize its aims.  That is, to say, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the challenge of modernity came to many of our territories in the form of European colonialism. 

Modernity does not have an easy definition.  Wikipedia employs these subheadings in the attempt to define it: politically, sociologically, culturally and philosophically, secularization, scientifically, artistically!  The explanations then focus on the use of reason and loss of "God" concept, and the incidence of a prescribed set of institutions in government and economics.

Basically this verbosity exposes the term as a weak one.  Being centered on the experience of those who use it, its meaning may change from one place to another and from one decade to the next.  In fact, the discussion forum for this course has featured some debate or complaint over the use of the word "modern, not modern, or modernity." 

Still, it is a reasonably useful term because I know what it means, you likely do too: it relates to things of the new age that are not things of the times past.  It relates to things from the bringers of new things (USA, say) and not things we have known for generations (the customs of my people, say.)  I think it is easy to get annoyed with the term if one does not identify with the European dominant culture that defines it.  This may be the case for Iran, as it is often the case for Africans, Muslims, Texans, and others who are beset and besieged by this new dominant power. 

In this course, we learned that there are four idealized responses to modernity that have been adopted in the Muslim world, and that they are Secularism and emulation, religious Reformism, traditionalism, and fundamentalism.

Turkey has tried to jettison its own culture to chase after the West.  It changed its writing and dress, abandoned its religion, adopted new laws, bureaucracies, and secular rationalism.  Today, it has a strong economy alongside a nagging feeling among citizens that it should "be itself" sometimes.  Who knows if the Europeans will ever admit Turkey into their club - the EU - or if Turkey will stop caring? 

Iran had its phase of emulation, when the royals enjoyed foreign travel and racked up debts to finance it.  Perversely, they even "emulated" the tactics of their tormentors in 1951 by nationalizing (claiming their rights to) their own oil. 

Egypt, like Turkey and Iran, has a grand ancient history.  It has had a Western-backed secular leadership over a largely religious population, with a constitution that was nominally Islamic but allowed reform and interpretation to suit the modern elite.  Today it's in the midst of a bloody struggle and for six months has been ruled by the military. 

The people of the Gulf, in Saudi, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and so on, may not have had great civilizations, but they are proud of their fiercely independent history in the desert.  So far, they trade with the West - oil for modern goods - but have not adopted its laws.  Will they need to change from their traditionalism to Western laws and bureaucracy to manage modernity, defined here as close contact with the rest of the world and its objects and ideas?  I believe that process has already begun, as they purchase state-of-the-art education and financial centers.

Iran too is no slouch technologically (two words: nuclear weapons) but how quaintly Islamic its constitution is!  It permits a bureaucracy to function, but at all times inferior to and checked by the ayatollah.  I can't imagine how, except through fear and force, the Iranians have maintained this government for more than 30 years.  The Iranians I've met are barely Islamic in lifestyle, so why do they accept the authority of a purported voice (sign) of God?

References:
1. Wikipedia: Iran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran
2. E. Afsah's video lectures: https://class.coursera.org/muslimworld-001/lecture/index
3. Course discussion forums
4. Wikipedia: modernity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernity
5. My experience in Western, Muslim, and other countries.
6. Aljazeera.com and Al-Jazeera TV.

Note: I wrote this essay this week as part of an excellent online course on 
Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World

Here was the writing prompt:

This course has presented four distinct response patterns to the challenge of modernity. These four Models of Adaptation are, to recapitulate:

1. Emulation/Secularism
2. Religious Reform
3. Traditionalism
4. Fundamentalism

In the preceding weeks, you have been presented with one country or sub-region that embodies each of these response patterns. But do remember that these models are ideal types, that is that we can generally see elements of all four simultaneously at play in any given society. Iran, that you have just learned about in this week, is a good example of this general fact: we can find elements of all four models of adaptations throughout its modern history.

YOUR TASK:

Write a well-argued, clearly structured, exposition that addresses at least three key questions:

1. What is special about modernity and which challenges does it generally pose to traditional societies?
2. Which challenges did Iran face from the 19th century onwards and what had these to do with modernity?
3. Which elements of the first three response patterns can you make out in modern Iranian history, and what accounts, in your view, for the ultimate success of the fourth in the shape of the victorious Islamic Revolution?

REQUIREMENTS FOR YOUR SUBMISSION:

This is a short writing task of maximum 1000 words (less is acceptable, INCLUDING references)
...