Celestial Voices

There's something magical in Celtic music that makes my spirit soar beyond mundane boundaries every time I listen to it. I don't know how the Irish could keep loads of those great old melodies during the time and why we, Iranians, couldn't. I wish we could. Those Celtic melodies divinely express a spectrum of different senses from wisdom, joy and love to the deepest grief. Iranian musicians say that in Iran we have just kept the grief part during the time, and lost most of our vivacious melodies, that's why we are now the top sad nation in the world. Without music we are spiritless and gloomy.

Anyway. It's been some days that I can't change my playlist to play any other item than Loreena McKennitt's songs. Her voice is unique and makes part of me departing during any of her songs. Mixed with some eastern instruments she sometimes shifts to new age style. In 2006, she gave an album called An Ancient Muse, 9 years after her last album in 1997. In 2007 she had a concert in Alhambra, Spain. This video is from that concert:

Do You Find Me Sadistic?

La Mariée était en noir (The Bride Wore Black) (1968)
Directed By: François Truffaut
IMDB
My Rate: 4/5

I was surprised to learn that this film is the archetype of Kill Bill's plot. How intelligent Tarantino is.! Kill Bill is just another intelligent hybrid movie! As you may guess, the story is like this:

In the wedding day, when the bride and the groom come out of church with the guests around them, out of nowhere the groom is shot and the despondent bride pledges a revenge the other day in the same church. She finds the the killers' names and addresses and makes her "DEATH LIST FIVE" and crosses out the names one by one. But of course there's no sign of Tarantino violence or martial action in this film. The bride is a woman and uses the women's tricks to seduce her victims and commit her cold blooded revenge.

This is the second time that I see the original model of a quite new film that is based "totally" upon the older one. Fortunately both new films worked great and were more interesting for today's taste. The other one was Abre Los Ojos by Alejandro Amenabar which is remade by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky. Certainly Abre Los Ojos is a genuine film but it has some small flaws in the ending scene when the main character, César, is going up and down the building to figure out that the building is not real. In Vanilla Sky these kind of small flaws were patched, and of course some unique sense of sadness is imbued in the film with great selection of music used in it. About Kill Bill no further explanation is needed that it quenches the today's audience need to watch bloodshed, suspension and thrill.

Acoustic Simple Pleasures

1. JOJO /kho-kho/, that's how Spaniards represent evil laughter. I'm happy that I can pronounce that /kh/ sound. Regarding to this page at least 309 million English speaking people in the world can't pronounce it!

2. Hugo Weaving in V for Vendetta wore a mask in the whole movie, he made a revolution with his sonorous voice in the movie, and made me remember his conversation with Neo, in The Matrix, forever:

...In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson... program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number. You pay your taxes. And you help your landlady carry out her garbage...

3. The first CD I burned for myself, was a collection of Eloy albums. The German rock band who took his mystic name from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, one of my favorite books to read over and over as a teenager, where human beings in some future time are divided into two castes and the delicate, rich, healthy, lucky and aristocrat caste is called Eloi. Eloy is categorized as a space rock band. The heavy organ and bass fills that each play a major role in the songs, always make me high. I call it the natural high feeling. A sense of Floating, which is the name of one of their albums.

Cauldron of Hate

Death and The Maiden (1994)
Directed By: Roman Polanski
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5

In some Latin American country a brutal fascist regime has been subverted. Paulina Lorca (Sigourney Weaver), a former political activist who has been tortured by that regime now lives in some coastal suburb with her husband Gerardo Escobar who has also been an activist but now is a lawyer and tries to litigate the dogs of the previous tyrant. Paulina still suffers from the trauma of the tortures but has never thoroughly disclosed the traits of the torments she had been through. One rainy night incidentally she recognizes her torturer accompanying her husband to home. Time to get revenge. Time to get things even. Time to have a straight-up talk with Gerardo.

Considering myself in a situation like that, I thought what would be the best thing to do? As an observer you may say, yes, that's the best time to get revenge. Take an eye for an eye. Rape him if you have been raped! There he has sat, his hands are tight, he has no power, you can adjudicate, you can torture him and get his confession, and finaly you can execute him. Better slaughter and butcher him. But how many people really can do that? Can I kill somebody who have done the worst things to me? Am I capable of applying justice even if I'm totally in the right? I'm afraid I am not. I think I am not.

The Magic Lantern

We, Persians, are famous of unique demeanors and grooves, some are righteous, some are culpable. One of the latter ones is our inclination to necrolatry not in its literal meaning but in the way that we tend to praise long eulogies for the mortified ones and exaggerate about their virtuous traits when just before they die, we completely ignore them or in the case they present or support some contrary or unique idea, we destroy them as much as we can.

I felt the same when I wanted to write about the news I read today in the papers: "Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman Passes Away In The Age of 89".

Sometimes you find the great ideas and people so late. A couple of months ago I watched my second film of him, Winter Light, my first film of him was Wild Strawberries. I was astound with what he does with lights in his films and how simply, with no action or much effort he presents the most complicated cognition of human-beings and God relativity in Winter Light. It was very impressive. So I bought his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, and collected around 20 of his films with the help of a friend. I was about to define an "Ingmar Bergman Project" for myself, but I postponed it, to deal with "some more important stuff"*, anyway. Now that he's dead, I should be Persian.

* ...and who knows which is which and who is who...

Infinite Creativity

The Five Obstructions (2003)
Directed by: Lars Von Trier & Joergen Leth
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5

Some call it an aristocrat fancy game of two intellectual directors. I don't see anything wrong about it even if we consider it so.

Actually it's a meta film. Von Trier challenges his favorite director Joergen Leth on remaking one of his earliest films called The Perfect Human, which is a unique short film about how the director sees human being as a series of motions, habits, manners, actions and reactions. Over these shots of a single actor and actress, Leth asks questions like "What does the perfect human think about?" and so.

To do so, Von Trier sets very random and spontaneous obstructions for Leth, on his way to remake the short film. Like that when they speak about smoking a Havana cigar, Von Trier comes with the idea that his first episode should be filmed in Cuba! You can read about the obstructions here.

What made me so fond of this film is what it left me in the end. Just like Von Trier's masterwork, Dogville, you are imbued with some feeling of vague awareness that is hard to express in words and questions like who is who, how things are done, how a spark of an idea leads to some splendid consequent that no one has ever thought about it. How infinite the human being's creativity can be? Does it make the human perfect? I don't know.

Signals And Systems

Finally you find somewhere quiet, you sit down and close your eyes for a moment, you take a deep breath, play your media player to listen to your favorite songs, you inhale deeper and deeper, you ventilate your lungs more and more, you feel your heart beating slow down, you stretch your hands and feet, and enjoy the blood rushing through them, this is heaven... but suddenly your phone rings! RING .... RING ... RING ..., and you sell your heaven to a phone call that 99% of the times is not a matter of life and death. It seems inevitable, it's like we're conditioned to such things like a phone call. When it rings you give up everything to answer it! Who has set it as a rule? How has it penetrated in our minds? How many times has it happened to you?

Phone calls are not the only example of this situation. We do things in certain ways that we have used to them. But just think about doing them in some other style. Maxwell Maltz suggests: one morning when you go to work, as you fasten your shoelaces, and you always put the right lace on the left one, this time do it vice versa, and see how the world changes within you.

Next time it rings, just smile to it, and tell I won't answer you, and see how some strong feeling of joy spreads in your veins. Of course there's a caller ID function and you can call him or her back a couple of minutes later, but feel that you have the choice, you are not a slave of a human made signal, you are free, just don't let it ruin your moment of glory.

P.S. To friends: hey don't test it on me, I am the one who suggests it to you so exempt me from your experience, thank you. ;)

Different Worlds, Same Idea

As I told somewhere before, I sometimes check my old mp3s and make selections of them. This time I was investigating Chris de Burgh's songs. In his first album (1975 - Far Beyond These Castle Walls), there's a very mellow, romantic and oneiric song called Satin Green Shutters. He depicts his hopes and dreams of having "the most beautiful house in the world" and having his love of life forever and having "the most lovely children in the world". I know that at least his last wish came true a few years ago, when his daughter, Rosanna won the miss world title. Many people were fascinated here because Chris de Burgh has many fans in Iran.

Later, in the same day, I was running with my friend in the park as our regular sports schedule. He talked about a poor worker of a freight company who had rented their house many years ago. He said although he had a poor family but he always talked like he had enough money for everything. He always had bigger dreams than his pocket. They moved out and they had no contact with my friend's. But yesterday, oddly enough, the door bell rang and yes it was that worker with his wife riding a precious brand new BMW to come over my friend's family. He now owns a freight business himself and has sent his son and daughter to university. He is wealthy and happy with his family as he always thought so.

It was a nice coincidence to me. It doesn't matter what you are or how big or small your scale is. How much you are famous or how rich you are. You'll become what you think of yourself.

Here's a couple lines of Chris de Burgh's Satin Green Shutters:

"Where your dreams are, put your hopes, you know they will not fail you,
Where your love is, put your heart, oh what would you do if your dreams came true?"

One Week Father

Vozvrashcheniye (The Return) (2003)
Directed by: Andrei Zvyagintsev
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5

The portrait that is carved in my memory about a Russian movie, is a black and white, long and boring film whose story usuallys happens in a village fully covered by snow with poor muzhiks living there, very few words uttered and so on, everything converges to dejectedness in those films.

After a long time of watching western movies, this one was handed over me. The only thing it has in common with that style is it's minimum words. This, along with astonishing scenery, blur and cold colors makes it a very calm and relaxing film.

It's the story of two youngsters, Ivan and Andrey, who have not seen their father since they were very young. The only memory is a family picture hidden in the attic. But suddenly the father comes back out of nowhere and takes them out to a short trip which lasts longer than expected. He teaches them how to be a man, he says: "Use your hands" in response to feeble boys' complaints facing to physical works for the first time.

It's a tribute to fatherhood I think, in contrast with Pedro Almodovar's Return and it's highly recommended as well.

Cold as Ice

La Tourneuse de Pages (2006)
imbd
Directed by: Denis Dercourt
Gog's Rate: 4/5

My devotion to french cinema is nothing new, I enjoy quite a lot movies coming from our northern neighbours for many reasons: the real/credible stories, whirling plots (which do not frame the spectators), the beautiful scenery and cinematography are common in these films, or at least more common than they are in the cinema which comes from the other side of the Atlantic.

The film 'The Page Turner' is not a typical french movie. At the very beginning, I had the feeling of watching a Merchant-Ivory film, no feelings, no gestures, very few words,... pure seriousness. A very cold movie, with a cold-coloured cinematography.
I don't know if I should tell something about the plot: The daughter of a low class family plays the piano, but it's rejected in the last minute, as the teacher makes her lose her concentration during a exam. Years later they meet again, and the teacher (who doesn't remember the girl at all) wants her to turn the pages on her concerts.

I would strongly recommend this movie for the uneasiness which causes the young belgian actress Déborah François, the rare atmosphere which is breath all over 85 minutes. The ending is (also) great. I would rate it '5', but I saw it yesterday, and I may still be under the influence of such a fine piece of machinery, which lies inside this film.

His Mysterious Ways

Babel (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu
My Rate: 5/5

Impressive, breathtaking and real! They are the first expressions that came to my mind describing it. Babel is composed of 3 stories occurring in Morocco, Mexico and Japan, connected to each other in a curious way and as we may expect from Iñárritu (the director of 21 Grams), with a slight time shift. But that's not the point that makes the film so interesting. The point is that it is so much real like a bitter story of "somebody else" you read in a newspaper everyday. Sort of disastrous stories that we read a lot about these days. The stories you wish that somebody could have done something to prevent them, but that's not possible. Somethings happen with no intension, they just happen. I don't know if we should call them God's will. People here normally call it so.

The main theme of the film is the human's solitude. The lonely human who is nothing apart from his family and his home, who is afraid of strangers and who is nothing if left alone and not supported by the family. We are still as vulnerable as a lonely kid in a desert.

The title of the post comes from the film Constantine. In the last scene John Constantine (Keanu Reeves) says: "He (God) does his works in mysterious ways, some people like it, some don't." Some people may like this film some don't. It depends on how you interpret the world.

Captain

South Korea started her car industry lunge at the same time Iran did. They improved day by day, but we produced that junk product over and over for more than 30 years and we were proud to call it our national automobile. Koreans developed other industries and we developed ideologies. The result is that today we are a great market for Korean cars and electronic goods. I use a Korean monitor on my desktop. Korea is a symbol of economic development for Iranian economists.

During 1996 Asian Cup our national football team defeated Korea 6 - 2, that was a great achievement because even in football we have been always behind them. The man of the match was today's best scorer of the whole football history in the world: Ali Daei, who scored 4 of 6 goals.

Daei has had the undeniable position as the team captain till the last FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. But that wasn't easy for him to hold the position. As he got more and more famous he became the target of the most envious critics inside Iran. From one side he became the best scorer of all time with 100+ goals in international matches, but from the other side he was cruelly criticized by the media because he had some deficiencies during some matches and the media and people following them wanted him to retire. Finally all pressures made the national team coaches to omit the long term captain from the list.

He didn't gave up. As he was playing in a mediocre team in Iranian Premiere League, he accepted to coach that team in the middle of the season, and in the end, that mediocre team was the champion of the league with Ali Daei's last goal. He abandoned playing football with glory and with all the envious people who always tried to destroy him.

I once read somewhere describing Daei's personality, it said: "He is the kind of men that has plans for everything, except for his death". And I saw him in an interview when he was asked: "Is there anything in the world that you like to exchange football with it?" and he said: "I exchange football with every good thing in the world. Football is just a small part of my life, I've got many other plans and issues that I like to follow, football isn't my everything."

He is the man of his plans and fighting for his plans.

Non-Linear World

11:14 (2003)
IMDB
Directed by: Greg Marcks
My Rate: 4/5

We have a famous and beautiful poem in Persian literature, I can't remind the poet's name. It tells the story of an eagle that spreads its wings and flies to find something to hunt, but is hit itself by a hunter's arrow. During falling down the eagle looks at its wing and the arrow and finds his own feather at the tail of the arrow, it sighs:
"At who we should protest? We're responsible for what happens to ourselves." (the whole effect and beauty of the story is in the Persian the poet has used, and you can't find any of that in my translation!).

Most of the time these effects are not so apparent as that eagle observed, because the universe is so complicated. The nature is curved and non linear, that's why works of art that follow the style of nature are more affecting. 11:14 adheres the same scheme. A very simple story told in a non-linear way, from different points of view of different observers and effectors. this kind of narration is supported with some butterfly effect philosophy make an incredible movie from a young and independent director. I can compare the narration to the way of "21 Grams", (but in a more simple way, 21 Grams was much more complicated), and the character design to Tarantino's characters with all their stupidities.

Move It!

It's always the matter of time Mr Shellman! So move it!

The Girl In Scarlet

Schindler's List (1993)
IMDB
My Rate: 5/5
Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Oskar Schindler is a German businessman who comes to Poland in the first days of occupation by the Germans in 1939. During the evacuation of jews from the cities, he picks some of them for labour to establish a factory producing utensils for the German army. His factory then becomes a refuge for the fugitive jews who prefer labour to death. Watching the Holocaust happening, shocks Schindler and makes him to spend all the money he has gathered from the factory to buy jews' lives from SS officers by bribing them and saving the jews from being slaughtered in Auschwitz concentration camp.

It's in black and white mostly, except that deeply affecting scene when Schindler watches the slaughter from a vantage point and he sees a little girl in scarlet dress running for her life and the only coloured thing in the scene in the little girl. Very touching. The film has many of these emotional peaks showing that how people suffer and what war has done to them...

Behind any war, is some stupidity and behind the stupidity is some ideology. In 1945, when Germany is defeated, a Russian soldier enters the camp and with the Russian accent tells them: "You are liberated by the Soviet army!". Yes, liberated but bound to another ideology that supports killing of the people for another purpose, another kind of groove, another 45 years for another ideology, and then another.

How many do we need?

Which One's Pink?

That's been the classic vexing debate after Pink Floyd's break up, between Roger and David's fans. The question comes from what Roger had heard in a convention in the early days of Pink Floyd. Someone had asked: "Oh by the way, which one's Pink?" thinking that Pink Floyd is a band member name. That made Roger to write Have A Cigar later for Wish You Were Here Album. A song about fame, fortune, money, and "riding the gravy train" in music industry.

Thanks to my introducer to Pink Floyd, he gave me the video of a cover band called "The Australian Pink Floyd". A pack of very talented Australian guys who could make themselves the most prominent and serious cover band, at least the only one that I know. The video is their concert in Liverpool in 2004. They have covered the whole Dark Side of the Moon and a bunch of other songs incredibly great in a big stage imitating all those post-Roger concerts style. The audience were enjoying themselves completely because although the music was greatly performing, the men behind the microphones were not the legendary official band members, so one could just say: shout and scream, who cares? This ain't Pink Floyd! The same idea was supported by the band themselves! They had replaced the classical pig with a funny giant kangaroo dancing during One of These Days (that scary song)!!! That made me laugh about an hour insanely! I enjoyed it a lot.

What I'm thinking now, is what Roger was saying in Live At Pompeii video. Answering questions about the expensive and unique equipments they used to perform their music, he said:

RW: This is the question of using the tools available when they are available! And more and more now there's all kinds of electronic goodies which are available for people like us to use. If we can be bothered and we can be bothered... It's like saying give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton, you know, and it's not true! Give a man an amplifier and a synthesizer and he doesn't become whoever, he doesn't become us... I'd like to say if we were at a gig, it could be nice sometimes to say: Go on then, there it is, get stuck in! In fact open the show, it's gonna be 4000 people in here in half an hour, get out there and knock them out man, and then they'd say: Oh but we don't know the equipment and need time to rehearse! So we'd say: So did we about four or five years ... if people come to a concert and they don't like it, they don't come again!

and in another argument:

RW: Steve you're good at your job, but you could never produce a record so it's silly of you to try!

Steve: No rubbish! if you take a crappy enough group with only twelve songs...

RW: that's not we're talking about!

Steve: We're talking about producing works of art, or Pink Floyd records! That's 0.01 percent of the market, there's plenty of other crap going on!

RW: We are not talking about it at all, we're talking about a record producer who is in charge of a recording session. In order to be in charge of a recording session you need to have a minimal, not minimal, you need to have a fairly extensive knowledge of what the equipment is about and what music is about and what rock and roll's about, well steve knows what rock and roll's about but he got no idea of what the equipment is about, he's got very little idea in terms of technicalities, he knows what he likes.

Steve: Plenty of people have produced very successful records on that basis!

RW: Who?

...

RW: All Im' saying is in the finished article the only thing that's important is whether it moves you or not, there's nothing else as that important.

Easy Movie

View From The Top (2003)
IMDB
Directed by: Bruno Barreto
My Rate: 3/5

After a hard day arguing with a "dog", and after my fit of hatred was put out by listening to Animals, it was the time to bring my attitude back on track, probably by watching an easy movie. My random choice was successful and surprisingly supporting the idea that I'm reading a lot these days: having clear and detailed vision of your future goal and strive to get it.

Donna (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a small town girl always wished to see the world but she never had a chance to even leave that small town. After a break up with her boyfriend, she incidentally watches a famous and successful stewardess in TV, and that sparks a will in her heart to gain whatever she wishes. It's a simple, easy and delighting romantic comedy. I liked it.

The Virtuous And The Vicious

Volver (Return) (2006)
IMDB
Directed by: Pedro Almodovar
My Rate: 5/5

Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) is a maid, she lives in Madrid with her husband, Paco and daughter, Paula. Her parents are both dead in a fire accident in the suburbs of Madrid, where they used to live. She has an old and ill aunt left there and comes over her from time to time.

Paco is the only male character in the movie! All other main characters are females! In the first glance it seems very feministic. The brave woman's life who tries to come over really big problems. Women are the ones who "govern" everything by their natural senses: love, hate, envy, motherhood and smelling! (There's a reference to that in the movie) in contrast with the men are the ones who only look for alcohol and sex no matter with who. But looking more deeply and optimistically, it seems like a tribute to motherhood and the mother's natural tendency to raise and protect.

There are deeply hidden family secrets which are concealed from one generation to another, but a chain of events makes them unrevealed and that's the motive of the film. So that's very hard to have a review of it withough letting the cat out of the bag, but I won't do that. Watch yourself and enjoy it because in addition to the interesting story, it has great shots, great angles, bold and stirring colours and everything to make it a French film, although it's Spanish.

Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
IMDB
Directed by: Frank Darabont
My Rate: 5/5

Everything is in the chain. Good things come in your good times, when you look for motivation, it will find its way to you. The Shawshank Redemption is the story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) an innocent banker accused for the murder of his wife and her lover, and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Shawshank prison. The prison shows the teeth in the first night to him and all other new comers. When one of them couldn't help crying after the lights out, the guards beat him to death!

The hard labour, ruthless wardens, rapists, and the solitary cells are enough to make everybody break down, but:

[spoiler]
Andy never gives up, he uses his abilities to make it a better place to live for other prisoners, he asks for financial aid for organising a prison library by writing a letter per week to charity organisations for 5 years, until they accept to help him with a 200$ check, but he won't be satisfied by it and starts to write two letters per week to beg for more aid!

He gives useful financial advices to the guards and that makes him known to the prison warden. The warden makes him his consultee to perform money laundry for him! That gives great power to Andy, although he is humiliated as a criminal by the warden. But Andy has bigger plans in his mind...
[/spoiler]

This is a story of hope and endeavour. Although it's ficition but who cares as long as it's beautiful and motivating? Andy says in a scene to his friend, Red (Morgan Freeman): Get busy living, or get busy dying. The world was very cruel and unfair to him but he chose the first option.

Respect and WCs

As I came to Austria, I created a blog and published an article (I wouldn't call it a "great article") about surprising things that I found in this country with the following picture:

The text said more or less:

"It's incredible that nobody ever had the simple idea of printing in toilet paper something different from flowers or stripes. It's a channel for spreading ideas or knowledge, or at least, that may have thought the manufacturer of the roll in the picture.

Question: In which year were the first football world cup held?
Answer: 1930

This roll is a monograph on football. I have to confess that when I found it, I unrolled a couple of meters, just to read some questions more. I left it as I found it. Sure you'd have done the same. It's tempting"

Later on, it was Monkey who proposed that such trifles (or -french-based synonym bagatelles) make a difference between modern, open minded countries and developing countries. Respecting the knowledge, and respecting each other is the basis to produce more intelligent citizens and a better society.

I do agree.

Inventing History

My father was a radio buff before his illness and old age could take that interest from him. That habit gave us the chance to always have those foreign radios sounds spread in our house every morning before we leave for school or every night when he got back from work. So during the war years we had the chance to listen to BBC, VOA and DW before we know anything about satellite TV channels, and they had become a pre-school-have-to-listen-everyday besides Pink Floyd's Time intro in The Calendar of History programme from the national radio.

Speaking about history, VOA Persian radio channel, had a history section too, which used to review some important events in the United States history happened in the same day. I can never forget the day the anchor said that: "today is the day Mr X brought the WC indoors for the first time in US history, and from then people started to build their WCs inside their houses"! I remind how much we laughed for the matter me and my brother. How important that could be to be written down in the history pages of a big country?!

Now speaking about 300 the movie, offended as any other Iranians by a country with 200 years of history with history books god knows how much thicker than ours having 7000 years of art (not history), and humiliated recently in Dubai, a country with less than 30 years of history, scanning my eye like a potential criminal or smuggler as an arrival welcome, I say that's all our own fault! Our own failure!

It's the matter of self respect. If you do not respect yourself, you shouldn't expect it from the others, how powerful it may be over you (US) or how panicked (UAE) it could be from you, if Iranians learn to respect each other, other things can get better. I bet there's no way out and I don't see any sign of it.

P.S. To know more about toilets, bathrooms, and WCs and their relationship to the self respect, I encourage my friend Gog to put an English copy of that great article about Austrian Toilets. Thanks in advance Gog.

Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun

To follow the path:

Look to the master,

Follow the master,

Walk with the master,

See through the master,

Become the master.

Black Books and Cult Books

Our memory is weak. I think that a film, or a book can be considered a good one, only when after some time, you can still remember the story, the name of the main characters or maybe some dialogue lines. Books or films which you have recently seen can lead you into confusion: You need to take your time in order to ground an opinion on them.

Call me a fool, but I named myself after a book I have recently read. It's probably too soon to say, but this book is one of the best ones I have read within the last few years (along with the second part: 'The Black Book').

The book tells the story of a man, who is incredibly rich. Rich enough to buy things that nobody else could pay, and to keep being the richest man on Earth. He has the money to start the most extravagant collections that you can imagine, to travel the world without a destination and to arrange interviews with the most influential personalities in the 20th century (see picture).

If I only said that, nobody would probably believe that a book including fictitious interviews could be a good one. If you think that, you should read some biography about Giovanni Papini. He was probably the last humanist, and one of the greatest readers of all times.
Some people say he didn't succeded writing a novel which would have given him a popularity through the years, but the works he wrote are good enough to take him in consideration.

I don't know if in a few years I'll regard this work with so much passion as I do today, but, this book is really in its way to became a personal cult book. It proposes a big thema to talk about in each chapter, and gives an opinion on it. I'd recomend this book to people who enjoy very much comparing, debating or just hearing different opinions on topics, we all already have thought about.

I'll leave here this quote by Papini, so I'll be able to find it easily next time.

"If it's true that in each friend there's a potential enemy, Why can't it be, that behind each enemy, is hidden a friend, waiting for his turn?"

Viva Roger

21 Feb 2007, Media City, Dubai. The concert was going to start at 8:30 pm, but we were there from 4:30 pm to take the front lines of the standing area. Everybody spoke Persian there, in that time of the day, no other nationality intended so soon for the concert, but for the Persians it was very different. I had heard that some of them were there since 10 am that morning, just wishing to be in the front line. It was probably the only opportunity for Iranian fans to see Roger, because that was his last world tour, and for many of us, it was the first time attending a rock concert or even going abroad, so it seemed natural to be so greedy about the standing situation.

There were two entrances to the venue and since we had ITN tickets the security guided us to the western entrance. The arena was a fenced area with a thick green canvas, so the only thing we need to do was following the fence across the southern street, where we passed the VIP entrance section to find the other box and there was it in the west. I gave my confirmation email print and got our 3 tickets, and the first thing to do was to kiss them firmly!

The security took our tickets and let us in, we thought that we entered the arena directly and rushed in but there were one more level to it. There were another line there beside a long bar table with phillipinas behind it, normally you can see them everywhere in Dubai, serving beverages and sandwiches. They were also selling t-shirts and hats of the tour, in a very poor quality, each for 100 Dirhams (1 dirham = 0.22 euro at the time), and I didn't want to pay it through the nose, so we just sat down chatting with some other Persians who were quite the same age and older than us, in contrast with the eastern entrance which were full of young and teenage Persian girls and boys.

The first surprise and the first lesson was that, as our tour guide in hotel had warned us about not taking any kind of camera to the venue, we left everything in hotel, but some people there had their cameras with themselves, it seemed the security wasn't very tough about the rules. And that was the lesson I had learned in the military service before but had forgotten it: Take the risk god damn it and don't obey everything you're told! Most of the time no bad things happen. So we should pass the time drinking, chatting, reclining on the ground...



It was about 5:30 pm that suddenly we heard the sound of a guitar from the inside, and that was enough for the crowd to shout and scream their passion. They were equalizing the instruments, and unexpectedly, the Dm chords of Another Brick In The Wall started and God, he was Roger singing: "We don't need no education..." everybody jumped like a spark cheering and whistling I started to scream too. We were hearing Roger live, and then the intro of Shine On you Crazy Diamond started to play, and that was when I couldn't keep myself up anymore and started to explode my dizzy happiness into tears. Mani said, shame on you, it's bad! don't cry! and I stopped pouring out my feelings, what we all have learned to do professionally in Iran: to keep our feelings deep inside.

Around 6:00 pm they gave us our bracelets, in a silly way. They asked everybody in the line to come to another table to take the bracelets, so suddenly there were no lines, so if you had come sooner, you weren't the first entering the arena, everything got disordered and everybody tried to get back in his own place in the line, but it was impossible.



10 minutes later they opened the way to the arena, there we were! A not very big steep ground, with VIP seats in the highest place in the south and we were rushing down towards the stage in the north. We could take a good place to stand. Right in the middle of the stage about ten meters far from it.


So we should pass another 2 hours waiting there. First we sat on the ground but as people entered the arena, the crowd pressure increased so we had to stand up to not to get squeezed by them. And that was when I started to communicate directly in English with people around coming form everywhere, Lebannon, Portugal, Belgium, Canada, Malaysia, Brazil,... gathering there for one thing. Bruno was a young Portuguese software engineer coming there with his friends, we had a great time, and I'll never forget the way he was speaking about unpleasant political situation, drunk, happy, easy, he spit in my face as he spoke and how he was astonished when we told him that we have two armies in Iran!

People were very good and kind to each other, everybody was joking and having fun and enjoying their time, even Persians that rarely you can see them being so kind to each other inside Iran, now they were really supporting each other. Some kind of unity and friendship that I had never seen before. People who had one single intention at the time, one single common reason to be there.

The screen during these two hours was showing a table with and old radio on it, a bottle of liquor and a glass, and an ashtray filtered with a sepia light seemed like an old piece of movie. The radio was playing soft rock music but I didn't recognise none of the songs. A hand came to the frame filling the glass and taking shots of it and sometimes changing the channel to another song. What a nice idea!

In The Flesh

Evevrybody was getting bored. It was 8:30 and the band wasn't on the stage. The air was filled with heavy smoke of cigarettes and joints the people were using. It was making me annoyed a lot. 8:40 pm. At last they came. There in back Harry Waters with a cowboy hat, the girls Carol Kenyon (the girl in Live8), Katie Kissoon and P.P Arnold, then Jon Carin and Andy Fairweather-Low (how old he had become, he has a new pair of glasses and beard and moustache!), followed by Ian Ritchie (the sax player) then David Kilminster and Snowy White, and finally, my old man came on the stage, smiling and waving to the audience, my heart beat got faster and blood rushed to my head I was just screaming, and couldn't believe I was there, I had dreamed Roger three times I think and now he was standing there shading his eyes from the spotlights watching the crowd who were unconsiously screaming to the great charisma he brought with him on the stage. Ro...ger, Ro...ger people cried.
He went for his bass and: EINS.. ZWEI.. DREI.. ALLEEEE! it had started!

Katie Kissoon performing Mother

I was kind of hypnotised for the whole concert. It was a strange feeling I had never experienced. Song after song came and I couldn't even recall what the last one was, I couldn't keep them in my mind. It was like you are living in the present moment. There was no past or future. There was just Roger and his brilliant music I had lived with it for about 10 years. Now it was playing live in front of me. What should I say, how can I believe it was real? But it was.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun

Snowy White, playing the haunting intro of Shine on you crazy diamond

Have a cigar

Wish you were here

Southampton dock/Fletcher memorial home

Perfect sense

Leaving Beirut

Andy Fairweather-Low performing Leaving Beirut

The songs played in the first part were:

1. In the Flesh
2. Mother
3. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
4. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts II - V) (abridged)
5. Have a Cigar
6. Wish You Were Here
7. Southampton Dock
8. The Fletcher Memorial Home
9. Perfect Sense, Parts 1 and 2
10. Leaving Beirut
11. Sheep

The first part finished so fast, the only thing that remained in my mind was the surprise of the explosion during Perfect sense, when I was watching Roger doing his pantomime in the left of the stage, the submarine missile hit the oil facility in the screen and BANG! and the hot wave completed my warm thrill of confusion. And they didn't have any pig but who cares?

One problem that I had in that close distance was watch-who and watch-what! If you watched Roger, you could lose the new clips on the screen, or if you watched the clip you missed beautiful solos Kilminster and Snowy were playing! And I should say, the songs performed quite better than I had seen in In The Flesh DVD in 2000, Kilminster exactly had the mood and feeling of David Gilmour in playing, I could say I was listening to the original album!

After the first part they went for a 15 minutes break, the screen showed a picture of the moon becoming larger and larger during the time. The second part strated in darkness with "I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years..." Magnificent.

During the second part



Probably during Time



Money




Us and them



Any colour you like



End of part 2 and goodbye

We decided to get back in the second part to listen better to the songs, people were very loud and crazy in the front. We did it during The Great Gig In The Sky, and now in the back we had more focus on the music, the sound quality was much better and there were less noisy people.

The second part was the whole everlasting album of all times, Dark Side of The Moon:

1. Speak to Me
2. Breathe
3. On the Run
4. Time
5. Breathe (Reprise)
6. The Great Gig in the Sky
7. Money
8. Us and Them
9. Any Colour You Like
10. Brain Damage
11. Eclipse

It also passed so fast, what a shame, and the band gathered together and waved goodbye, but we knew there will be an encore part, so they did come back, Roger said: "You want more?" YEEEESSS, crowd said. "Ok, here we go" Roger said.

So the encore came with songs from The Wall:

1. The Happiest Days of Our Lives

2. Another Brick In The Wall (Part 1

3. Vera

4. Bring The Boys Back Home (what a glorious performance)

5. Comfortably Numb

And it was over. Roger thanked the audience and said he had a great reception from the audience and it was a great finish of the first part of his 2007 tour, and they'll go to South America and goodnight!

I couldn't believe it was over. Perplexed and sad we made our way back to the place we had arranged for the hotel taxi.

P.s. Special thanks to Ian Ritchie, Mani, Ehssan, and Mr. Reza Vaezpour for his great pictures and great favour to share them with me.

Exhortative Essence of Summer

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

IMDB

Directed by: Robert Mulligan

My Rate: 5/5

Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a lawyer having two trouble making kids as his wife is dead some years ago. As he deals with the adult's world, accepting to defend an innocent black guy accused for raping a white farmer's daughter, in the racist atmosphere of 20s, he is observered curiously from his kids point of view as their hero father.


The last time I felt the childhood so close and touching was in the first or second year of the university, when I watched one of Dariush Mehrjui's masterworks, The Pear Tree. It was about an intellectual man in his middle age going back to his home town in his father's now old vacant house to have a peaceful time and location to finish his book. But his past memories of the house and people living there rush into his mind and he sees his lovely childhood, his relatives and his growing up and turning to a political activist and opposition against monarchy. He finds what he really has lost taking all those days for granted: His childhood. That house and all those childish games seemed exactly copied from my own childhood.

And after all these years I found that childhood again watching this great film, To Kill A Mockingbird. Being a 6 years old maniac menace little kid wearing short pants, always ambushing to fulfill the insatiable thirst of curiosity and that magic exhortative essence of summer penetrating in our manners, games and feelings of the world around.

That is great you know, but I'm not the nostalgic type (anymore) to tell things like I'd give all my life to live one day in that age again. Instead I'm thinking about how it is possible to keep that feeling of being a 6 years old boy alive to feel rejuvenated always... That's a question.