the sourcerer: Pan African Space Station

Showing posts with label Pan African Space Station. Show all posts

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Harbour House and the Weeping Guitar.

These are things that I like: going for a long walk on the beach. Seeing the street lights come on. Wiping sandy feet on the doormat and watering the garden. Having a yearning for good fish and going to the Harbour House for dinner.

Rare Yellowfin Tuna on a bed of garlic-mashed potato. Salsa verde and wasabi mayonnaise. Wilted greens. All topped with a perfectly poached egg. Waves crashing around us. Service was the perfect balance between quality attention and leaving well enough alone.

Afterwards we sat looking over the bay and listened to Righard Kapp play his guitar live on Pan African Space Station. "A mixture of composed pieces and spacey improvisation." The first time I came upon Righard, he was playing his guitar with a small handheld fan. It made the guitar sound like a lute or a sitar. He makes his guitar laugh and talk and wail. He takes an instrument of wood and metal and strings and makes it breathe. Later I drove home in the misty rain and saw lightning far away on the horizon.

Harbour House. Kalk Bay Harbour. Kalk Bay.

021 788 4133

Monday, October 4, 2010

~ The Imperial Tiger Orchestra is the coolest thing since electricity ~

Or: The lead actress is in my car...

Or: Brice Wassy ~ you're the man!

Or: Bye Bye Albert.

I spent an evening and a very late night with some of my favourite people on Friday. :-)

The Production Designer made a mean broccoli and coconut curry. We had it with champagne. Then off we whizzed to the Albert Hall, which sadly is closing down. I've been invited by Nursery Rhymes for Adults Inc. to collaborate on their next project. The lead actress was handed over for a wardrobe fitting and she came along for the ride.

Brice Wassy, you are the man. You with your leather hat and your beaded vest and your animal tooth necklace and your killer smile.

Mr.Wassey's drumming was superlative and he was accompanied by an equally nimble-fingered bass guitarist and keyboard player. Their hands were a blur.

these photos from E.'s i-Phone

And then: The Imperial Tiger Orchestra. They're a six-man outfit from Geneva playing tunes inspired by the Golden Age of Ethiopian music in the 70's. With trumpet, saxophone, drums and an assortment of strange Ethiopian instruments, this bunch of snake charmers had us mesmerized and very, very happy. Dark and jolly. The epitome of rhythm.

Fantastic people, I want you on my i-Pod.

And so long Albert, I miss you already.
❤

You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.