&

Classical music 0, Soul 1

One and half points. Away victory.

Think I'm going to trawl through Desert Islands and see who picked the incomparable S&D. To paraphrase Otis: feet, do your thing...

But if there was one song by them you'd choose over any other it would be, I guess, 'Don't knock it'.

~~~

Is it permitted for Muslims to listen to music? The thing that really got on my wick when I wrote a few articles for the Guardian (CiF) or commented was always something that went like this: 'you represent the voice of liberal Islam'. Of course, you weren't interested in 'representing' anyone (not even yourself) and the whole notion of  a 'muslim voice' or a liberal voice seemed quite odd. More to the point, why should you be associated with any group whatsoever?

The whole idea of belonging...I'm too Jewish for that.

Not 'the individual' or 'the community but..& or sometimes neither and therefore simply ignore.

And where were you from?

"Originally?"
--Carol A. Duffy.

~~~

The need for roots? Not so sure any more. Perhaps it's more like the need for a nostalgic view of place or rootedness? In any case, what matters is a particular house/home/people and not anything as abstract as 'place'.


Places where you feel at home: The British Library (Mecca), a bookshop at ten o'clock in the morning and no human beings in sight, a Church with no human beings in sight (er...a bit of a pattern developing here), train stations, the National Gallery, the Wallace Collection, Postman's Park, the Wright's Bar outside the LSE (with lots of young and trendy people about!), the South Bank early on Sunday morning...


This wahabi reductionism that rejects all associations. Of course, that leads to fanaticism in many cases. And who knows how you'll turn out. God, please don't make me religious. But belonging? Who or what do we really belong to (gosh, creeping Gnosticism there. Must resist!).

Let us not talk of winning or losing. The Kashmiri solution: don't play the game. Jesus, I wish I was Buddhist.

~~~

Turner, yes. Roxana was right after all. Must go again. And then to Willaim Morris's house. I get this terrible feeling that time is running out but then feel much better with simple things like a grilled cheese on toast sarnie or Jacob's cream crackers with Cheshire cheese. Stock up on books and chocolates (Herbert's Still Life being the best bargain so far...only a fiver). What else? Mascarpone and sun dried tomatoes are my luxury items. Having moved about so many times in your life it really does feel like you're always mentally prepared to move on. To divert your attention from such thoughts you think of which books (if any) to take back from your permanent collection. Perhaps some Peter Brown. Or Rebecca West.

~~~

Bacon: the problem with western man is that he can't sit still in an empty room. Me: the problem with eastern man is that he has an empty room (obviously not something eastern woman would tolerate for long). Not the perennial philosophers, sufism or immortality but,

Let me run, run
and never find.
---Shah Latif.

&...