Unconventional

An unconventional night at the Mean Fiddler on Saturday, with Breed 77 and Apocalyptica. The former combined flamenco beats with heavy metal into something I had never seen before. Apparently they hate Radio1 because Radio1 claims they've gone soft and jazz. Few people seemed to like Radio1 that evening anyway. And then came Finnish Apocalyptica, bringing cellos to metal. The mix of audience was interesting, from boring middle class hip lovers to the metal crowd I usually hang out with, but with relatively few kids (obviously, as it's not an easy listen). Far too many people had come with the sole idea of taking pix (please exclude me from the equation) and not to enjoy themselves. The mosh pit brutes were slightly confused for a while, but still managed to thrash about a couple times.

After a remake of My Chemical Romance & Taking Back Sunday on Friday at the Brixton Academy, this was breath of fresh air. But I'll be going to Rammstein later this week, wanted to experience it once at least.

I, at death's door

There is nothing more profoundly alien to the experience of life than death. It assails the very fabric of our being and directly opposes our most basic instincts of survival. It is something which none of us enjoy discussing and yet it holds an incredible fascination. All of us are preoccupied, to one degree or another, by the knowledge of our own impending death.

Death has to be somewhat of a surprise and a very humbling experience. As the last of our strength and power fades away all that is left are the final moments of our intellect. Surely, in the final seconds one would wonder what the future holds if anything. And as the fear of a final threshold swells up inside, one might spend his or her final moments pondering the past. With a life that was once taken so much for granted slipping away, a new view towards this precious commodity would almost certainly arise. The question might become; "What will I miss most?" And the answers might come as a surprise.

The view from death's door very likely provides a whole new perspective on life and what's really important. Things we devoted much of our daily energy to might seem somehow unimportant while some of what we always took for granted could suddenly takes on new meaning. We will likely miss the simple things like a pond or the shade of a tree on a warm day. The laughter of children may echo in or minds as we contemplate a lifetime of lost opportunities. Untold missed chances for happiness, joy and fulfillment.

Death is likely a very freighting and sobering experience. It is a lonely path we must all travel with only ourselves to comfort us. No matter how much we may have fooled ourselves with our beliefs in life they likely won't provide much comfort in the end. We will only have the truth of ourselves and our lives to account for. And as we regret and criticize our mistakes even that will likely become somehow unimportant as we finally accept our fate. And as we take our last breath perhaps we will feel a sense of enormous peace as we are humbled by the insignificance of what was our life.

The belief that life does not end at death is an idea that was born into humanity millions of years ago. If one stops and considers the elements that make us who and what we are, they would soon realize that when one dies those elements cease to exist. The memories of all our past experiences are contained within the biological informational storage media we call the brain. When this storage media is destroyed, the information that made us who and what we were is lost forever. Our memories, our likes and dislikes, the associations of a lifetime cease to exist. We will never again speak to a loved one. We will never feel the warmth of sunshine on our face. We will never again see the world through the eyes that once served us so well. We will never again respond to the sound of our name. Once death occurs, all that is ended.

Some people believe that when you die you will be reincarnated and come back to earth in another form. If there is any truth to this belief, it is of no consequence to the entity we are today and does not change the reality of our eventual death. If who and what I am today was once someone or something I have no memory of then technically, that existence ended in death even if there was an element of that existence that continued on. I am only what I know myself to be and if there is an element to my existence beyond what I know then it is of no consequence to the entity that makes me what I am today. I am the accumulative experiences of my life. Once that information ceases to exist, so will I. If there is anything after, it will be under a new name and whatever it is, it will not be me.

Some people believe that when our life ends in death, the essence of our being is flooded with the light of all the truth and knowledge of the universe. The belief is that this new understanding makes the struggle of our lives pale in the light of the truth of our existence. Perhaps we are judged after we die against some standard related to the decisions we made in life. Perhaps as a result of that judgment we then go on to heaven or hell. In any case, the entity we were will cease to exist and our life will be ended.

Death is as final and unchangeable as was the event of our birth. Death is the end of our existence. It is the final chapter in the book of life. It is irrevocable and at present inescapable, at least until our technology enables us to circumvent this biological reality. Our ability to accept and understand the concept that our lives will end someday in death and the relevance this understanding has to our lives is something we may better understand when we learn more about life. Perhaps when we come to realize the essence of who and what we are is informational in nature then we will be better able to understand the reality of death. Perhaps when we begin to create the same essence of life that exists within our brains between the layers of silicone chips, we will begin to understand more about the beginnings and ends of our own existence. (logicalreality.com)

Today on Titan

Huygens is landing, and radio signals are looking good! (Have been waiting for this day since February)

God's gift to femalekind

If you can guess what my cousin was talking about when he made this comment, I owe you a Cohiba cigar. But in the mean time, let's talk about how God painted Iapetus, the Saturn moon that has a strange ridge 13km high all around its circumference (BBC article). The Cassini spacecraft's flyby is uncovering these bizarre twin features of our solar system, which we hope to be solving in the near future. The pictures are stunning.

God's gift to femalekind could also be the movie Turtles Can Fly from Kurdish Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, which I saw at the ICA a few days ago. In the film, maimed children defuse land mines to stay alive, peddling them to a middleman who, in turn, profits by selling them to the U.N. It is shot on location in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Turkish border and depicts the struggle for survival just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Dedicated according to the Kurdish Ghobadi "to all the innocent children in the world - the casualties of the policies of dictators and fascists", Turtles Can Fly vividly immerses the viewer in the nightmarish realities of daily existence in this makeshift community that's located within a forbidding natural landscape. There's no running water or electricity, the fear of gas attacks is palpable, and kids use their bare-hands to defuse land mines in the surrounding fields, which they then trade for machine guns at a market. (BBC Review)

The girl who was raped by soldiers and can't stand to have to carry the son that she was forced to bear drowns him in a pool and then jumps off a cliff. Her armless brother walks away in agony after being unable to stop his sister. Their friend has jumped on a mine, trying to rescue the baby boy that the girl was trying to abandon. The US army arrives and patrols the area. The end, credits.

After leaving the theatre, I walked to the Burger King on West End and enjoyed the abundant bland food paid for from the bundle of cash I like to carry around. I ate with both hands, no fingers missing. How cool.

Enough lies. Now when can I go there to actually help out and do something... instead of doing like for South Asia? Buy holidays, you rich western tourist! In so doing you'll help the locals rebuild their destroyed homes. Be sure to buy plenty of souvenirs.

Asia's devastation

I am struggling to understand. Why is this devastation suddenly more important than any other? Why is there so much pressure in the public opinion to buy donations online with your credit card, to read the tragic stories of destroyed families in the Metro free newspaper, to stand in silence with crossed hands for 3 minutes before going to lunch? Morally, everybody is feeling righteous about the need to help, to stand in silence without looking at one's watch, and how my country is giving more than your country and how bad America was about not giving enough and how now America is trying to use this crisis to rebuild its reputation in the Muslim world ("This aid is a gift to from the American people").

Instant worldwide coverage with videophones and handheld cameras allows journalists to report how bad rotting corpses smell (tonight on CNN), how terrible the sound of mothers grieving their dead children is, how generous those local people are, having lost everything, and who are helping foreigners locate their relatives. All these journalists competing for the most tear-wrenching story and the most emotionally charged picture, have galvanising public opinion today with a fake story of a white child's abduction at a hospital.

What about the daily slaughters in Darfur? What about poverty, death and war elsewhere in the world, every single day of the year? Why today, why only this crisis? If Sudan had been affected, would we have given aid only to the quake victims and not to the victims of war? What if that child had died from a bullet, would his picture still have been plastered all over the Western press?

I have given money - and have encouraged other to do so as well. I, too, have stood in silence. I have watched the news trying to grasp the magnitude of this tragedy. But my feelings have been stolen, I was told what to feel.

2004 highlights/lowlights

A few events from 2004

 ▪ Graduated from St. Gallen University in March
 ▪ My grandmother died in January
 ▪ Had heart-to-heart, night-long chats with Jon in Cam on jobs/careers
 ▪ Started working in London shortly afterwards
 ▪ Went to see Muse at the Paleo
 ▪ Helped my parents buy a house, then helped them back out
 ▪ Went to an obscene number of rock gigs, including Reading Festival
 ▪ Bought an iPod mini
 ▪ Made friends with great people from Central Asia, with plans to visit
 ▪ Destroyed my 14yo cousin's computer (and bought her a new one)
 ▪ Found a Russian barber's right by my office
 ▪ Finished Half Life 2 after playing through the night
 ▪ Found a photography book by Larry Clark
 ▪ Listened to Malik Saidullaev, candidate to the Chechen presidency
 ▪ My cousin won the French bow shooting championship
 ▪ Escorted my cousins on a day-long mad trip through Geneva
 ▪ Gradually lost contact with them over the following months

Don't mess with me

           
Jon is not a monkey.                            A turtle eating pepperoni.


A gecko scrutinises your photographer at the Bristol zoo.

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