A musical backdrop to Unreal City: the London of the Lonely Londoners When the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in June 1948 there were a good number of musicians on board. We know that Jamaican musician Delroy Stephens was there because he organized a fundraising concert to pay for the fare for one of the stowaways -Evelyn Wauchope from Jamaica.…
This is not really a book review, although I did re-read, and enjoy The Lonely Londoners as part of the #1956club. It is rather an excuse to pull out some quotations, share some research and images, and post a quite remarkable documentary. Along the way my journey took me deep into the North Kensington of the novel – a part…
We’re happier when we chat to strangers, but our instinct is to ignore them https://t.co/ExmL3GSCWw via @researchdigest — Tina Seelig (@tseelig) July 19, 2018 A tweet from Tina Seelig led to this interesting piece of research: It’s become a truism that humans are “social animals”. And yet, you’ve probably noticed – people on public transport or in waiting rooms seem…
Immigration. Immigrants. Emigrants. Refugees. Travelers across borders. Changing countries by choice or by necessity of survival. Moving from one state of awareness to another. Learning. Growth. Transformation. Going deeper. Looking more closely. The threshold of consciousness. To grow and change. Or not. We have that choice. Here the poet speaks from the other side of the frontier, the border, the…
Home no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger…
Here is a scene of violence and inhumanity that feels torn from the front page of the newspaper or a report on the latest immigration raid outrage. But this is the kind of news that stays news because it keeps happening. Bent to the Earth They had hit Ruben with the high beams, had blinded him so that the van…