peru negro

 after yesterday's post, here's this. fabulous. if you've an afternoon to burn you could do far worse than have a browse through the history of music in peru 

manha de carnaval

 i was having myself a luiz bonfa moment so here's the popular vocal arrangement and a more recent and rather lovely instrumental version 

                               

movement

after yesterday's post this. altho i do precious little now, i love boxing training more than just about anything because it's just so physical. sure you'll see people banging away at at  bag but that's just (bad) punching, boxing is all about movement and lightness which is why this guy is just a joy. he has lots of simple looking, largely equipment free drills. oh yes, they look so easy! lol 

yes, i know, some of you may not like boxing for many reasons. i advise you to look at the activity rather than your perception but, if you can't, here's my bendy yoga post from last year

making a steelpan drum

 i know almost nothing about steelpans but a pan drum has been high up on my list of instruments for the house for a while so i was loving this

languages and setting goals

i was out and about the other day when i bumped into a swedish girl in a shop. but that's brilliant, i said (in swedish. i speak a bit of swedish. and off we went. comprehension was a major stress for me when i lived in sweden, in large part i think because i thought 'mastering' the language would help me live there (as it turned out it wouldn't have mattered if id been born there - an issue for many in itself - i wouldn't be making a living in sweden!) and latterly this became a real problem. in the interim i've really chilled out about it but, having left the country, my swedish has eroded exponentially because there's no one to speak it to.

along the way i lost contact with my spanish friends and, while there's a lot more people working in shops, there's little scope for an actual conversation - annoying as my spanish is better than it's ever been. that it's important was the feeling i had when i'd finished speaking to the swedish girl - as if a pressure valve had been released, that just for five minutes i didn't have to exist in english.

and i think that's the key. i love english. i love its history, its utility, its playfulness. but i also love to be able to manifest myself through a different filter and that's just not possible in a country as obdurately monolingual as this. i could then, as i did in sweden, get very stressy about it all, or i could just accept the fact that i live where i live and it is the way it is. i need to pay more attention to my swedish, take care of it a bit, make more of an effort. the others likewise, amybe less time, maybe less duo, but set decent targets.

i'm not a social media creature and covid killed any desire to speak to anyone online ever again but that's my choice. my target will be to be able to read, be able to listen and i'll just need to accept speaking badly!

things i've listened to recently that have been of use - 

i haven't looked at easy spanish in ages but it's a really nice trip down memory lane. most spanish tv i can watch with spanish subtitles now and this i can pretty much do without but it's lovely for nice clear speech.

i still like listening to the swedish news when i finish a shift in the morning while i'm waiting to hand over to the day team. this was at its best as an app but, as is their way, it's being made less and less available. the yt channel continues tho 

and i listened to an outstanding episode of the allusionist re brazilian portuguese recently 

my targets for language tho? with the exception of swedish it's really all about the cycling. if i can watch my races etc i'll be happy. simple things!

literally. starving

 

this guy's videos are an absolute joy. and, as ever, why we should spend more attention on what we eat!

sufis

 

way back in the day when i briefly studied a tiny bit of islamic history i kept bumping up against these sufi poet guys and, even at that age, i really liked what i read. over the years i kept coming across them and they still number against the poets i'm most intrigued by. i say intrigued as i can't speak or read any of the languages they're actually written in so the issue of translation is a real one. coleman barks, it seems, is taken as a particular offender in this respect. i don't know enough to give an informed opinion but i note on his wiki pages his work is described as 'interpretations' rather than translations. as for their treatment of islam, again as a european anglophone reader, it's impossible for me to say but i did read sholeh wolpe's conference of the birds recently which was utterly, beautifully, rooted in the idea of faith, so much so that, reading it, i kept saying to myself that, in the original, as a believer, this must be fantastic.

anyway, i'm happy aeon came up with the goods in my feed over the weekend with a discussion of sufism and the video above

the poetic edda

 

just come across this open source dual language version of the poetic edda. wow!

tom waits

 if you only watch one tom waits cover version with puppets today.... 

chrysal - the adventures of a guinea

when i was a little kid i used to love these little stories about different body parts and i never lost that affection whether it was turning up in film in the likes of lord of war or fight club, or in the rather fabulous podcast that is everything is alive. of course it's not new, nor is it even as popular as it once was, evidenced when public domain drew my attention to charles johnstone's adventures of a guinea. you can read more about the it-narrative here or here

*full text of i am joe's body, courtesy of the internet archive, here. still in print!

 

hidari

japanese samurai films of a certain vintage? insane stop motion? got that base covered!