Posted on Mar 30, 2003
The skies roared with thunder and the earth heaved,
Then came darkness and a stillness like death.
Lightening smashed the ground and fires blazed out;
Death flooded from the skies.
When the heat died and the fires went out,
The plains had turned to ash.
A translation of part of tablet IV of the 4000 year old epic tale of Gilgamesh – King of Uruk, Babylonia (Uruk being the biblical Erech, known today as Warka in Iraq).
This tale, well worth reading (or viewing), is from one of the cradles of civilisation, famous for some of the earliest developments in writing, agriculture, irrigation as well as storytelling.
Shame it’s being bombed back into the stone age.
Posted on Mar 29, 2003
A play called ‘Time After Time’ by Frank Bramwell, (a playwright based here in the Midlands), was performed in a church just around the corner from me. Jaimie and I had been commisioned to film it and that’s what we did yesterday evening. Did you know that standing in one spot, squinting through an eye-peice for three hours is surprisingly tiring? No? Trust me, it is!
Bizzarrely, Jaimie turned up with a mohawk haircut and I could tell that some of the good folk of Edgbaston were a little disconcerted by the site of a Travis Bickle lookalike filming this play about Shakespeare’s Dreams. I’ve noticed that when I’m actually filming anything I can’t concentrate on what’s being said but I have no doubt that I’ll know what the play was about in the hours/days/weeks ahead of editing. I must be a glutton for punishment because I’m going back tonight in order to get some cutaway shots, so in total, there’ll be nearly 9 hours of footage to log, digitise and edit.
And talking about punishment, tommorow I can look forward to a Carlton/ScreenWM FirstCut shoot in a Fetish club in Wolverhampton! I wonder if my mom will want to go?
Posted on Mar 27, 2003
I had a phone call from my bank this morning, the spotty little number cruncher, (…no I’ve never seen him but I could tell), asked me if there was anything he could do to help! Well it’s obviously one of those synchronicities I love so much because today Gordon Brown said that he’s going to liberate over ??3billion for the war effort. Now that works out to be ??50 per person in this pikey little island of ours.
So all the lovely profits I virtually made from the Haliburton investments just prior to the start of this great adventure have virtually been dashed, (darn it!). Well I guess I can’t blame Gordon, clearly it’s all Al-Jazeera’s fault. I mean just ‘cos they get booted out of the NY Stock Exchange did that mean they had to show all those pictures of collaterally damaged Iraqi children with their brains uraniumally depleted. And running that ‘Meet the POW’ reality TV show of theirs didn’t win them any Oscars I can tell you, or get them back onto the NY Stock exchange. I hear that the double de-capitated cappucino is particularly good in the embed coffee shop there.
Anyway, I asked my spotty little banker if he’d lend me some money for an Arab language cable news subscription – he hung up.
Posted on Mar 26, 2003
Today is the 32nd anniversary of the start of the Bangladesh Liberation war of 1971. I only know this because my mom told me! I was at her house this afternoon and she had the Bangla TV cable channel on, as per usual. As I was munching my way through some chicken and chips, not paying much attention to what was on TV I gradually became aware that there was something a little unusual about the Bangla music blaring out of the TV. Typically, the music is in the bangla sangeet style but this time there was a certain martial beat to it.
I managed to tear my attention away from my rapidly diminishing pile of chips and saw a pretty Bangla woman singing with great gusto whilst standing in front of a rather large field gun! Now for those who may not frequent the outer reaches of the cable spectrum upon which Bangla TV finds itself, I need to stress that such a spectacle is not it’s usual fare. On any [other] given day, you would see the pretty Bangla women singing their sweet, (almost east asian sounding), songs while walking in palm thronged beaches, pathchwork quilt paddy fields or flower filled parks. But not today!
I asked my mom what was it all about and she explained that today was Shadinota Dibosh. The war to Liberate Bangladesh was a brutal affair by any standard and many hundreds of thousands, (many say millions), died as a result of this war at the hands of a particularly brutal Pakistani army of occupation. Anyway Bangla TV was commemorating this event with a programme of shows that consisted of music, song and dance, (popular opera like), depicting the heroic struggle of the mukhti bahini (freedom fighters). I think that this is wonderfully Bangla – remembering momentous events with song and music.
A lot of people in the world felt deeply about what was happening during those 9 months of war; George Harrison, inspired by Ravi Shanker, organised a Concert for Bangladesh, which was the template for future such concerts like Live Aid and Joan Baez wrote:
The story of Bangladesh
Is an ancient one again made fresh
By blind men who carry out commands
Which flow out of the laws upon which nations stand
Which say to sacrifice a people for a land
–Joan Baez (Song of Bangladesh)
Sentiments which sadly, (in another context), are still apt today.
Posted on Mar 25, 2003
Fukuyama said that we’re at the end of history, surely he knows that there is no end to a circle…
In September 1191 and after a sweeping campaign in the Holy Lands, Richard the Lionheart sent a message to his foe, Saladin,
Men of ours and of yours have died, the country is in ruins, and events have escaped anyone’s control. Do you not believe that it is enough? As far as we are concerned, there are only three subjects of discord: Jerusalem, the True Cross, and territory. As for Jerusalem, it is our place of worship, and we will never agree to renounce it, even if we have to fight to the last man. As territory, all we want is that the land west of Jordan be ceded to us. As for the Cross, for you it is merely a piece of wood, whereas for us its value is inestimable. Let the sultan give it to us, and let us put an end to this exhausting struggle
Saladin replied,
The city is as holy to us as it is to you; it is even more important for us, because it was there that our Prophet made his miraculous nocturnal journey, and it is there that our community will be reunited on judgement day. It is therefore out of the question for us to abandon it. The Muslims would never accept it. As for territory, this land has always been ours, and your occupation is only transitory. You were able to settle in it because of the weakness of the Muslims who then peopled it, but so long as there is war, we will not allow you to enjoy your possessions. As for the Cross, it is a great trump in our hands, and we will surrender it only in return for some important concession on behalf of Islam.
Incidentally, although Richard was king of England, he was born in France, lived there most of his life and spoke mostly in French. Saladin was the Sultan of Cairo, the conquerer of Jerusalem, defender of the Arab lands and was Kurdish!.
Richard never did conquer Jerusalem but it took the Muslims another 100 years to remove the invaders completely.
