Child's Eye View

D on Freerunning/Parcour (27.5.07 watching Jump Britain - Channel 4/Carbon Media):
"They're pretty much like monkeys"

N on Seeing (4.07):
"Without the Eye I would feel so excluded from the world, not being able to see its beuty."

Hope

Cambridge - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

A long slow chat with Nick Baylis in the dappled shade of the trees in Granchester Meadows - hatching a creative plan



Tea and chat about very interesting lifestuff with Chris Carling



The Backs in Cambridge in bright sunshine - bookish tranquility

A river runs through it - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Having a meeting at the Design Museum overlooking the river - talking about the South Bank and Bankside Cultural Quarter and how it manifests itself in cyberspace



Chatting to Pat Kane (The Play Ethic and Hue & Cry) about punk, play and other things beginning with P



Chatting to George Auckland of the BBC class of '69 - which inspired my using the example of Joe Boyd's psychedelic UFO Club as an example of why radical creative scenes don't need official support to blossom (although cheap premises help)

Mr Blue Sky - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Walking across St James's Park and through St James's in the bright sunshine



Reading a Lew Archer detective book (The Blue Hammer) set in the hippy-dippy early 70s



Playing on the Big Art Mob

Desert Island Discs Revisited

D and I had a go at our Desert Island Discs in the car in Campbell Park, Milton Keynes back in August (06).

Here is what I came up with:

1* Miles Davis - Flamenco Sketches
2 John Coltrane - A Love Supreme part 1
3 Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy Me
4 Satie - Gymnopedie
5 Bruce Springsteen - Into the Fire
6 Siouxsie + the Banshees - Icon
7 Sinead O'Connor - On Raglan Road
8 Frank Sinatra - One for my Baby

revised from:

1* Miles Davis - Flamenco Sketches
2 John Coltrane - A Love Supreme part 1
3 Marvin Gaye - Mercy Mercy Me (?)
4 Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up
5 The Clash - White Man in Hammersmith Palais
6 Bill Evans - Love theme from Spartacus
7 Bjork - Hyperballad
8 The Doors - The End

And here's young D's first stab at it (then age 6):
1 Madness - Embarrassment
2 Bruce Spingsteen - Atlantic City
3 The Cranberries - Ode to my Family
4 Cornershop - Brimful of asha
5 Max Romeo - I Chase the Devil
6 Trumpton - Windy Miller song
7 The Jam - Batman theme
8 AC/DC - It's a long way to the top

Meanwhile N (age 11) had written his out long hand in a notebook, taking several months to pin his choice down:
1 U2 - Vertigo
2 Unite Tribe - Life and Death
3 Oxmo Puccino and the Jazzbastards - Perdre et Gagner
4 The Cure - Love cats
5 * Michael Franti & Spearhead - Sometimes
6 MC Solaar - Solaar Pleure
7 The Raconteurs - Steady as she goes
8 Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit

[to be finished]

Track of the Day

Star Spangled Banner performed by Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock

Playing around - today's Happiness Experiment entry

watching D enjoying himself alone on the swing

watching Jimi Hendrix hump his guitar - as visceral and force-of-natural as it comes

hanging out around Covent Garden with N& D - a classic haircut afternoon

Teen spirit - today's Happiness Experiment entry

An unbelievable performance by Patti Smith at the Roundhouse with the shades of Jimi and Jim



An evening out with my old pal Roddy, chilled chat



The words of Teen Spirit

Track of the Day

White Rabbit performed live by Patti Smith at the Roundhouse with a dreamy tale from the British Museum, all springboarding from the Jefferson Airplane song

Patti Smith at the Roundhouse

Jesus died/Gloria
Are you experienced? ***
Set me free
Frederick
Southern cross
White Rabbit (British Museum intro) ***
Helpless
Soul Kitchen
Because the Night **
River
White dress? Girl? Another dimension
Smells like Teen Spirit ****
Everybody wants to rule the world
Rock'n'roll nigger

Brando note

Brando as activist: He fought for an independent Jewish state in the 1940s, and was at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech). In the 1970s he switched his focus to the rights and treatment of Native Americans, and wanted to object to the actions of the United States Army with regards to the massacre of 300 unarmed Dakota Sioux in 1890.

Suzy queue - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Campari & soda with my old friend and fellow company director Sue overlooking Borough Market - the sensible way of doing an AGM



Listening and chatting to Susan Greenfield, chief exec of the Royal Institution, about science, society and the impact of technology



Snapping public art around Blackfriars, in particular the Lever Bros building, for Big Art Mob

Track of the day

Entre les lignes: Clouee au sol by Keny Arkana (feistyfemale rapper from Marseille)

Les ailes brulees, clouee au sol
La tete vers le Ciel, vers la splendeur de l'eternel ailleurs

(Nah you don't get that darn in Sarf Lunden do ya?)

Track of the day - the dull flame of desire

the dull flame of desire by bjork from her new record volta

I love your eyes, my dear
Their spendid, sparkling fire

Strange days are here - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Today:
Listening to a new record for the first time - in this case Bjork's Volta

Chatting to strangers - a French teacher escorting ten teens on the train to Luton. On Thursday evening, a hippy woman on the terrace of the Barbican tracking down buyers of Syd Barratt's furniture.

Reading Joe Boyd's White Bicycles on blues, jazz and picasso

Yesterday:
Saturday morning love and marriage

Sauturday afternoon snooze

Saturday night movie - Running with Knives

Frank on Fear

Frank Sinatra:
Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world - to an individual or to a nation.

Living well - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Van singing Baby Please Don't Go at the Roundhouse - shared with U



A helter-skelter chat with John Thackara with his delightful 'Dutch' accent - about everything from growing veg to public art to Alzheimers.



A lively chat with U and Neil Burgess in Marine Ices, Chalk Farm about life, love and the universe, and shrooms and music and living well in the present.

Van at the Roundhouse

Back on Top
Days Like This
Cleaning Windows
Moondance
Playhouse
Real real gone
Bright side of the street
Baby please don't go ***
Precious time
Jack (all work...)
Jackie Wilson Said
Domino
Gloria

Wonder if Jim sang Gloria here at the Roundhouse with The Doors? Wonder if Patti Smith will sing it here next week? That will be the conclusion of a wonderful musicfestweek...

Joe Strummer's Campfires

Julien Temple on The Future is Unwritten:

"The flickering flame and the mystery of the face half-obscured give you a lot more drama visually. It's also a great place to interview someone because they lose their self-consciousness when looking in the flames.

There's also something about the circle around the fire. I wanted people to get the idea that Joe's life did close a circle at the end. ... he made it clear that he thought [these campfires] were the most important thing he'd ever done, more even than the music. He brought together people from madly different backgrounds: duchesses and priests and car-thieves and soldiers. ... He'd just say let's have a fire! And he'd have one every other week. They'd go on for five days in his yard."

This relates to an earlier blog entry inspired by Joe

Echoes of Dylan - today's Happiness Experiment entry

Listening to live music in the first floor room at the King and Queen pub in Foley Street, London W1 where Dylan played when he first visited London in 1962 (at a folk gig organised by Martin Carthy)

Stroking Tommy Boy (whilst reading Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas) on the garden bench in the sun

Wandering around Fitrovia with the enfants terribles during Maud's farewell party

Soap opera - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Soap-stone carving with D - went up to Tiranti's in Warren Street to get the stone and riffers - memories of moustachioed Laurence Broderick and his otters



Stracciatelli - at Church Lane italiano - with a little sprinkling of Neil Diamond



Scraping lightrods (listening to Radio 4)

Image courtesy of Laurence Broderick - www.laurencebroderick.co.uk

Sweet Thames - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Walking over Tower Bridge (sunlit views of the Thames) to Shad Thames area

A hole in a stocking

Lunch with 'the pink girl' - Debra Giles, catching up on the Redbus crew

Play's the Thing - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

The view down from a propellor-driven plane travelling south from Scatland - an off-shore wind farm, yellow patches of rapeseed, meandering rivers, amphibious coastal land revealed at low tide.

Meeting two of the three designers behind EbOY - an inspiring example from Berlin of play made work, work as play

Reading short plays for The Radio Play's the Thing

Glasgow Walker - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Evening sunshine flowing down the hills of Glasgow - echoes of San Francisco

Outdoor office in the grassy square at the summit of West George Street

Positive feedback on Big Art Mob

Mob rule - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Going live with the Big Art Mob - listening to the announcement after the first TV airing (Watch this Space)

Sunset walk through the streets of Glasgow - from the Glasgow Choose Life office to the hotel

Reading Hunter Thompson while high in the sky