'Silence is Death'

Thanks to my friend Elizabeth I found out about an amazing project called City of Asylum that tries to help writers around the world who are persecuted or endangered, so that "they can continue to write and their voices are not silenced."

It's an international network, but there are three American contributing centres: Las Vegas, Pittsburgh and Ithaca, NY. They help authors gain visas that allow them to live and work in the USA, and even provide stipends and short term help with housing. The Pittsburgh iteration currently supports exiled writers-in-residence from Burma, China, El Salvador and Venezuela.

It's a brilliant idea, one that deserves more resources and a greater profile. Amongst the best of America are the ideals of freedom of expression and freedom from fear - this project pursues both for the good of all of us.

Outsiders

Today I learned that I didn't actually know anything about the Unabomber. It's a word I heard a lot on the radio here during the last week. It rang a bell, in a mid-90s, America-is-all-the-way-over-there sort of a way, but it wasn't until I looked it up just now that I discovered that this case was entirely new to me. Not only that, but it is a staggering story.

Living in a foreign country brings lots of problems and differences to navigate although, being British, the USA is a deceptively easy place to be. But there's no substitute for growing up somewhere and acquiring the instinctive understanding of how past events are woven in to the national fabric. I just don't have that here, probably never will, and so comparatively recent stories like that of Ted Kaczynski or the Tylenol Murders (which are, quite rightly, referenced by US media without further explanation) will always jar. And discovering them becomes an unlooked-for reminder of my own alien status.

The History of Rap

Today I learned that I really do like Jimmy Fallon.

I don't watch much US television. Although there are individual shows that I love to bits (West Wing, 30 Rock, Mad Men, just off the top of my head), and plenty of others that I'll happily sit through, I still don't know my way around the vast landscape of channels, networks and suppliers. To me, calibrated from my earliest years by the beautiful monolith of the BBC, US telly is a big ol' confusing mess. Watching a programme live, in real time, hardly ever happens.

But occasionally I do catch something by chance, and that thing is usually late night comedy chat shows. Partly I'm drawn to it because I can appreciate the lineage: whether it's Leno or Letterman,  this is a tradition that reaches back through Johnny Carson into the bedrock of American TV - to me, raised on Blue Peter, Doctor Who, Panorama and Match of the Day, this is a good thing. But partly, it's because at a certain time of day these shows become ubiquitous.

There are countless iterations of these shows, all sharing the same format, differentiated only by the presenter, the band and some minor tweaks. But as I've dipped in and out - the most casual of viewers - I've slowly come to realise that Jimmy Fallon is the best of them all. He's funny and likeable, luminescent with energy, and his rapport with his guests feels winningly genuine. Best of all, his show is ridiculously, joyously silly.  

This is from last night's show (albeit a repeat from March):

E Pluribus Unum

Today I learned more about an ongoing dynamic in America, the tension between the individual and the collective. We see it all the time, throughout this country's history. Sometimes it's in national consequences that arise from an individual's actions, sometimes it's in a conflict between the rights of a citizen and the requirements of a shared society, or the ancient arguments between States and Union. It's even expressed on the Presidential Seal.

Right now, as I type, the full powers of the government are being brought to bear in order to find one man who, so far, eludes capture. Now's not the time to write more about that. We won't know for a long time where these events have come from, let alone where they are heading. But today, and the events earlier in the week, have shown us a more positive relationship between individual and country.

Take the people who, in Boston and West, TX, ran towards the flames in order to help those around them.

It is a good thing to be reminded that each of us is one of the many.

Late to the Party

Sometimes you don't realise you're late until you turn up.

The first time I arrived in New Orleans, at six o'clock on a Friday night, the party was already in full swing and I was perhaps just a little too sober to feel like I was going to have as much fun as everybody else. Despite my best efforts I remained that little bit too sober throughout the weekend and it only slowly dawned on me, weeks later, that arriving a few hours earlier would not have made any difference: I should have got there fifteen years ago.

It seemed to me to be the place a young man could pleasantly do himself some serious liver damage, if he had the time to spare. The problem was that I was no longer that young man and the gaudy revels of Bourbon Street did not appeal to me any more than the ever-present concoction of scents that followed me along its length: a sickly, putrescent perfume of too-sweet alcohol, vomit and bleach. Stately, prim America, the country that, God help it, had once banned alcohol, seemed to need a place where excessive, outrageous behaviour would be tolerated, where folk could act up and get the craziness out of their system before returning to their respectable day-to-day lives. I come from a country with a strong tradition of weekly binge-drinking, but I saw things in the French Quarter that would have shocked me on a Saturday night after a Wales home game in Cardiff: tourists slumped insensible in doorways at nine o'clock in the evening, vomit plastered across the sidewalk, strip bars open for business in the afternoon sunshine as parents and children sauntered by. I'm no prude, but America surely is - and such sights only made it clearer that New Orleans was somehow culturally beyond the reach of the rest of the United States.

And yet, at the same time, this is just one street. Move one block above or below Bourbon and the licentiousness, the neon, the raucous noise that passes for blues music, it all but disappears. By night, the rest of the Vieux Carré is darkness and quiet, secrets and shadow. Amongst the stream of tourists in sports shirts, there is another crowd, another clientele, as different to them as Oberon to Bottom. The men are tall and greying, immaculate and cool in suit and tie despite the languid heat; the women, beautiful and discretely bejewelled. They slip through the darkened streets, into private courtyards on Dauphine St or Saint Phillip, they drink at the Pelican Club and they leave nothing but their evident sophistication behind them. I admit, I tried to follow but, rather like Bilbo chasing faerie rings in Mirkwood, I stumbled in the darkness as they vanished before me.

It was tantalising. These people, I decided, were a link back into the past, to a long lost zenith because this is, without doubt, a city that was once wonderful. Much like my first view of New Orleans, seemingly floating on the surface of Lake Pontchartrain, it reminded me of Venice - both were once important, wealthy, centres of culture. Now they are largely populated by the people that come to gawp at the remains. Whilst Venice is literally kept afloat by tourism, New Orleans (or at least the French Quarter) seems to be an undead corpse, reanimated by the daily influx of new blood. 

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that not even fifteen years would have made much difference. I should have come to New Orleans two hundred, two hundred and fifty years ago, when the party was at its height. I became worried that I would never be able to enjoy the city, always feeling that I had missed out on either its heyday or my own; forever late to the party.

Needless to say, I went back there just this week and had a completely different experience.

For a start, I took my wife and kids: there wasn't any reason why we should wander the length of Bourbon Street. What's more, the clemency of March is different to the humidity of September - and a cool rainstorm had forced the worst of the drunks and vomit off of the sidewalks the night we arrived. We did different things. We took the street car up towards the zoo, along Charles St and back along Magazine and Camp, through the Garden District and the antebellum houses, which eschew both the colonial stylings of the French Quarter and the dreadful concrete drabness of the modern city. Back in the Vieux Carré, Jackson Square and the cathedral were Disney bright.

We all had a lovely couple of days. We ate good food and enjoyed a drink or two. For my part I think I benefited from lower expectations; but something else happened to me - happens to me - in New Orleans. These two short visits have revealed it to be a place of countless opportunity. There's something about the French Quarter, again it's something that reminds me of Venice: as if historic versions of the same city were piled upon each other through multiple invisible dimensions, intersecting through time, like a boozy French-American Narnia.

It means that it will always be worth coming back, because each time it will be a different experience. The party just rolls along and all we can do is dip in and out.

I feel it keenly throughout this return visit: just as I am seeing the city differently, it is seeing me differently. Multiple versions of me walk these streets beside me, unseen, accompanied by friends and acquaintances, people I've known forever and not yet met. School mates and old girlfriends, colleagues, family, friends, grown-up children, grandchildren of mine, they all link arms and pull me around the unchanging corners of New Orleans. Sometimes we're a crowd, cackling at our own jokes, sometimes just a pair of friends or lovers, hand in hand, threading through the languorous shadows. Whoever you are, whoever we're with, I can see how the city wraps itself about us, mysterious, mischievous, playful, always pregnant with booze.

It could be any time. Satchmo might be playing as we drink; the steamers and showboats might be plying their trade on the river as we wait in line for beignets at Café du Monde; it could be last week, one, two, three hundred years ago, or tomorrow. You and I, we drink, we laugh, we dine. The lights twinkle in the galleries and balconies as we slip amongst the tourists and disappear into secret courtyards on Dauphine St or Saint Phillip, closing shutters against a mortal storm that threatens, but never arrives - always the justification for another drink and never the end of the party.

All right, if you insist on visiting New Orleans in the present day, and without me, book a table at Sylvain before you get there. And when you do, drink their Dominique's Departure cocktail. And then, or some other time, head on over to Frenchman Street and drop by the Three Muses. Eat whatever you like, it's all good.

But that time you and I went there? We drank The Muse - don't laugh, you chose it and I reluctantly agreed that it was perfect. It looked ridiculous, do you remember? But elated, full of food and shining with gin, we stepped outside afterwards into the night, jazz trumpet all around us. The stars glittered in the death-black sky. I looked at you, something profound on my mind, but you just smiled, an insane grin, and I clean forgot what I was going to say.

It's that sort of a place.

New York, New York, New York...

My life is pretty great. Occasionally, for example, I get taken to New York. My wife has to go there for work often enough that I get to tag along, sneaked on as hand baggage, maybe as often as once a year. A perfect storm of air miles, baby-sitters and opera commitments hit last weekend with the upshot that I found myself in Manhattan with a whole Sunday to waste as I saw fit.

The problem, at least for someone who occasionally blogs about travelling, is that the more often I visit somewhere like New York, the less remarkable it is. I'm past the initial shock, but still many years away from Proustian remembrances. I'll never be cool enough to be blasé about Manhattan, but I am beginning to accept that it is a real place that I can walk around and explore. Given one free day by myself, I'm not swamped with the frenzied pressure of a tourist, desperate to see as much as he can before he leaves. It's a nice position to be in. But I wouldn't have thought to write about it: a sign I might be starting to take it for granted.

I began with breakfast with my wife at Doughnut Plant on W 23rd Street. This place must be amazing because I don't even really like doughnuts that much. It was her recommendation and (not unusually) she was very right. At 8am on a Sunday, the place was beautifully quiet and the Meyer Lemon Yeast doughnut was absolutely delicious: the perfect glaze cracked as I took a bite, like paper-thin ice on a half-frozen pond. The dough was light and sweet and, to my relief, I realised it was a 'made with' not a 'made from' situation with regard to the yeast. I'm not the greatest coffee-drinker in the world either, but I was able to gulp down their Valrhona Mocha effortlessly, like it was spring water. Not a bad way to start the day.

And then she had to go to work (oh dear) and I had to while away the day until she would be finished. I had made a rough plan which I quickly threw out of the window. Very slowly I made my way to the USS Intrepid, moored at Pier 86, 12th Avenue and 46th Street. It's a WWII aircraft carrier that served at (possibly) the biggest sea battle ever: Leyte Gulf. Today it houses all sorts of military aircraft, as well as a Concorde and the space shuttle Enterprise. There's also a Cold War submarine, USS Growler, that was armed with nuclear cruise missiles and told to sit off the coast of the USSR. I viewed stopping here as tidying up - my boys had already seen it all without me on a previous visit so I had the perfect excuse to whiz around for an hour by myself.

Aircraft carriers are impressive things but I think I enjoyed the submarine most of all. America is good for subs: we've seen the USS Pampanito in San Francisco, HA.19 in Fredericksburg, and U-505 in Chicago. This one was very good: full of old school dials and switches, things that have been designed to go demonstrably 'clunk' when they are pressed - quite an important feature when one is messing about with nuclear missiles. The thing I really liked about Growler was that it provided a technological snapshot. Intrepid served for decades and was refitted again and again, masking her original capabilities, whereas Growler, commissioned in '58 and out of service by '64, was made obsolete almost immediately by the advent of Polaris missiles.

Enterprise, the first space shuttle (built for atmospheric test flights only) is still under wraps following Hurricane Sandy, but we've seen her already at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center) back in 2010. (Washington now has Discovery, whilst Mission Control Houston only gets a dodgy mock up handed down from the Kennedy Space Center, which has Atlantis. Don't get me started.) And then Concorde. I had never seen one up close before. Certainly never flown on one. (Let's be honest, the closest I've got is this.) It's a beautiful machine, surprisingly small and delicate but with incredible, alien-looking sweeps and flourishes. It still looks futuristic, like something Derrick Meddings would have dreamed up for Gerry Anderson. On another day, with more (or less) time to spare, I'd have poked my nose around inside, but I was keen to move on.

I've been around the Metropolitan Museum of Art before. Or at least, I've spent some hours inside it and seen some of the enormous and amazing collection. But I knew I hadn't even scratched the surface. I seized the opportunity of a long afternoon to try and get some more of it under my belt. I'm not going to give you a gallery-by-gallery account of everything I saw, but I spent the time well. Even better, there are still rooms and rooms of stuff to go back and see in the future.

I surprised myself by enjoying the period furniture, mainly because the Met does such a good job of contextualising it. They recreate whole rooms and salons, brilliantly evoking the whole culture and not just showing a table or a chest of drawers. I don't know why this should be, but the experience is rather more pleasant here than it is plodding around actual stately piles in England. Perhaps because there is none of that stuffy resentment of a home being made available for viewings, the peasantry being allowed to gawp at how their betters live. Recreated inside a New York art museum, these spaces are appropriated for an international public and largely shorn of the divisive nature of class. The paintings are good too and, being alone, I was able to zoom along, only bothering with the ones that compelled me to stop and stare, which is by far the best way to deal with an enormous collection.

But when I do eventually bring the kids here, the first room I will take them to is the armoury. It's not an intimidatingly large exhibit, but there are some very nice pieces and, although they have a bloodthirsty purpose, they do qualify as works of art in their own right. If you don't believe me, check out the hilts on the rapiers next time you're passing through because they are as swish as you like.

And then, like always, Henry VIII turns up. Twice.

Henry VIII is unavoidable. He is the gouty uxoricidal axle around which English history spins. Every thing that happens before leads to and is neatly drawn together by his reign; every thing that comes after starts with him. So I wasn't surprised to bump into him in Manhattan at all. He materialised in the form of two suits of armour, each made for him at a different point in his life. Before we look at them, let's just spend a moment exploring a long held theory of mine: Henry VIII has a lot in common with Elvis.

Both kings, obviously, and also musicians: Henry was accomplished with the lute, a 'talented player of the virginals' (Frankie Howerd face) and composed tunes, but probably not 'Greensleeves'. Elvis built Graceland and hung out with Richard Nixon; Henry built Hampton Court and Nonsuch and wrestled with the king of France. But there's more - two beautiful-looking young men, full of talent and vitality who let it all go to their heads and their waistlines and became all fat and rubbish.

So this is essentially Henry VIII's '68 Comeback Special suit of armour:

 

And this is his rhinestone onesie, dead-on-a-toilet suit of armour. 

Not convinced? Here's the clincher: Henry's last words were (allegedly) "Monks, monks, monks!". If that doesn't make you think of this, then I don't know what else to say.

Anyway, I have become rather sidetracked. I started writing this because I wanted to mention how nice it was just to be in New York. Nice to be somewhere full of people, mostly young, mostly impossibly fashionable and beautiful, all going about their Sunday in the winter sunshine, either citizens of the world idly gawping at the skyline or native New Yorkers heads down, pacing purposefully. Nice to be somewhere cold too, with everyone wearing hats and coats. I had forgotten, living in Houston as I do, that there is a simple pleasure to be had sitting in a bar or coffee shop and watching people as they step through the door, their skin red and rosy, their frozen faces breaking into smiles as they see their friends, their eyes alive with the anticipation of warmth and comfort and, just maybe, a Meyer Lemon Yeast doughnut.

The Curse of Jiig-Cal

One day, at the end of what used to be called the Third Form, I was called into the office of the Head of Lower School for what turned out to be an exit interview. In just a few short minutes I would no longer be his concern, but there was just time for one last piece of pastoral oversight. Glancing at that year's report he mildly averred that I wasn't too bad a student and that I would probably get into university if I didn't muck everything up. This was an exciting and important revelation - until that very moment I had no idea that university was even hypothetically on the horizon. I was still getting my head around this news when he asked me what I wanted to do beyond higher education, by which he meant that, having just started to dream about a degree, I should already have chosen a career.

I was fourteen years old. I had not been thinking about career choices. I had been spending most of my time trying to work out who should have been High King of the Noldor following the Ruin of Beleriand and, no, that isn't a euphemism. So I prevaricated.

"Medicine, or law?" I said, but vagueness was something I was not going to be allowed to take with me to Middle School apparently. This was the time to make Decisions.

"Which is it?" he pressed. I flipped a coin in my head. 

"Soliciting," I said firmly. 

The Head of Lower School might have raised an eyebrow at that, but I didn't notice. "Good," he said, gently washing his hands of me. "I'm sure you'll do very well at that."

That was the second and least helpful piece of careers advice I had received. Much more useful had been a conversation I had had with my mother when I was six. She had firmly told me that no, I did not want to become a spy because if the Chinese caught me they would rip out my fingernails. I was immediately persuaded and that's why I am not a spy today.

Then in the Sixth Form the school made a final attempt to help me choose a career. We were made to answer questionnaires that were fed into a computer and then, just many weeks later, we got back a dot-matrix print out with a list of suitable jobs. This was a Jiig-Cal test. It looks like it's a little more sophisticated now than it was back in 1993. At the time it was a little underwhelming. 

The results came back: a list of jobs that could be summarised as 'indoor work, no heavy lifting'. I think the highest matches were librarian, journalist, teacher, but none of it was very revelatory or inspiring. It wasn't until many years later that I realised that I had wanted something very different from this test. It had given me a list of jobs that overlapped with the sort of tasks I did well at school. What it hadn't done, what it would never be able to do, was unlock the dreams and desires I didn't know I had, to show me potential paths that I still had time to take.

Today I have the best job in the world but I do, occasionally, get sudden insights into careers I might have pursued had I but known they existed.

Five Jobs I Would Have Loved, Had I But Known

1. Marine Archaeologist. To be honest, what with the Mary Rose and For Your Eyes Only, this was staring me in the face the whole time and I just didn't see it. All I can do now is gnash my teeth at the missed opportunity. Okay, I can barely swim and I have a potentially crippling fear of deep water, but I am convinced that I could have overcome these if I had but realised such a job existed. I may, even now, have only a sketchy idea of what being a marine archaeologist actually entails, but I imagine it's mainly spending summers splashing about the Mediterranean, hoovering sand away from amphorae, which would be brilliant. My prospects might have suffered when I refused to explore the abyssal wrecks of the Atlantic or the chilly waters of the North Sea but, on the other hand, I might have discovered something like the Antikythera mechanism. And whenever people asked me what I did, I'd get to say "I'm a marine archaeologist," which would be just so cool that the very thought of it makes me all excited.

2. Nail Varnish Shade Describer. It never occurred to me this was a job until just the other day when I went to the shop to pick up some nail varnish for my wife. This made me slightly stressed. Firstly, it is impossible to resist the suspicion that the women in the nail varnish aisle think you are buying it for yourself. Which would, obviously, be fine, but I'm not and there's no way to casually announce that I'm not without turning into a sitcom character (not Ross from Friends, a different one.) Secondly, the labelling is appalling. How am I supposed to find the one particular shade? The rows aren't labelled, the bottles are all mixed up and so the only way to search through them is to pick them all up one at a time and find the name which is helpfully printed on the bottom. Of course, this merely compounds the first problem, because now it looks like I am browsing for a colour I like rather than assiduously hunting down the one out for which I have been sent. 

Anyway, it was as a result of all this that I discovered the joy of nail varnish shade descriptions. I don't know if it's true for all makes, but the particular nail varnish my wife was after is made by OPI and they have some wonderfully silly ones. Some are dull and some are awful, but many are delightful; my favourites: 'I'm Not Really a Waitress', 'Catherine the Grape', 'Bastille My Heart', 'Mrs O'Leary's BBQ' and 'Melon of Troy'. After a while a very clear picture emerges. It is a picture of a room full of clever men and women brainstorming puns, wordplay and terrible jokes with which to describe the colours of nail varnish. This is their job, the lucky so-and-sos, and I would have loved to have done that. 

3. Run My Own Opera House. This is obviously a lie. I couldn't do this at all, and I probably couldn't even imagine half the things one has to do in order to keep such an organisation intact on a daily basis. But I do know a load of people who could work together to run an opera house for me whilst I had very long lunches and, every so often, planned out a season's worth of unworkable and unpopular shows. I may be talking myself out of a job, but I feel I must admit that opera and I are often at cross-purposes with each other. For example if ever there was an opera which deserved a swash-buckling heroic victory at the last minute, it is Tosca. (Oddly, I have the opposite reaction with Rodelinda where I fully expect the drippy royals to get it in the neck and SPOILERS they don't.) Instead, the sudden final tragedy of Tosca leaves me with a strong desire to cut the third act completely. Or, even better, Tosca jumps and then a splash of water appears over the ramparts and she calls out 'Fortuna meglio la prossima volta, perdenti!'. How would that not be brilliant? 

It is with a Calvinesque sigh that I realise that, when it comes to opera, I probably shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a position of responsibility. Anyway, video games are much better: in Assassin's Creed, your character can sneak into the Castel Sant'Angelo, kill the big baddy, fight all the guards and then leap from the battlements wearing a parachute given to you by your friend Leonardo da flippin' Vinci. Puccini really missed a trick there.  

4. Duke of Norfolk. I went around Arundel Castle in the Summer and good fun it was too. Many British castles are crumbling ruins. They may be atmospheric and beautiful, but nevertheless they are merely ghosts of buildings, rent and wrecked by sieges and long abandoned by whatever ancient lords and ladies were once ensconced there. Arundel is the other kind of castle. It is immaculate, luxurious and not conserved but maintained: those ancient lords are still living there, nine hundred years later, and for roughly half that time it has been the home of the Dukes of Norfolk. Not metaphorically either: even today it is their actual home. 

Now pay attention because the aristocracy are tricksy and confusing. For a start they never live where they should do. The Earls of Pembroke lived in Wiltshire, the Duke of Devonshire's house is in Derbyshire and Arundel is in Sussex, not Norfolk. But the Dukes of Norfolk are also the Earls of Arundel so this, at least, makes some kind of sense. The current one, Edward Fitzalan-Howard, is styled the 18th Duke of Norfolk (although he's actually the 25th man to hold the title) and, as well as being the 36th Earl of Arundel (or the 17th depending on how you count it), he is also the 16th (or 36th) Earl of Norfolk, the Earl of Surrey, Baron Beaumont, Baron Maltravers, Baron FitzAlan, Baron Clun, Baron Oswaldestre, Baron Howard of Glossop, the Earl Marshall, the Hereditary Marshall of England and, according to some, the Chief Butler of England. 

Walking about Arundel, two things occurred to me. Firstly, there seemed to be an awful lot of overlap here. Given the current rates of unemployment, was it fair for one man to do all these jobs at once? Couldn't some of these titles be shared out amongst the jobless? Don't Surrey and Norfolk suffer from having to share an Earl? And secondly, I realised that I never will be a duke of any kind. The realisation came like a slap across the face, and it depresses me more than you can know. I can't play football, paint or invent things; I could never be a millionaire businessman, or a statesman, or an actor. These things require not only talent but furiously hard work. On the other hand, I know I've got what it takes to be a bloody great duke. I would be brilliant. I'd knock it out of the park. The best ever. Sadly, it won't ever happen. 

5. Pope. I understand there's a vacancy and, let's face it, I'd be a wonderful pope. Even though I'm not a woman, I still think that I could bring the fresh-thinking and unexpected qualities that any moribund two-thousand year old institution desperately needs. And if for some CRAZY reason you consider my atheism a drawback (it's not, it's what would make me a bold and brilliant choice and allow the Church to move in a new, modern direction) then I'm still eminently qualified. Not only do I have grade B GCSE Latin, but I also have a passion for travelling around the world telling people how to live their lives. 

I'd have to negotiate terms quite carefully, though. I'm happy to work all Easter (it's literally just another weekend to me) but I would need Christmas off, obviously. And if Benedict XVI can invoke centuries-old precedents then so can I, which means that my marriage and vow of non-celibacy shouldn't be a problem. The good news is that, even were I to fail to persuade the Conclave of my suitability, I could just call myself Pope anyway like this guy. 

So there we are. Five rather nice jobs that I won't ever get to do, for reasons that still remain unclear to me. At least I still have all my fingernails.