Commas and comas

La Torre de Dalt is in the hills above Girona in Spain. We are less than 20 kilometres from Figueres, Salvador Dali's hometown, and this gathering is as wonderful as his paintings. Thirty friends and relatives from diverse backgrounds are here and last night Teo Krilic played guitar for us. He opened with Na klepeci Naunulama – my favourite traditional Bosnian sevdah song. The words are those of a daughter hearing the clogs of her dead mother on the stairs. We all remember our missing dead and some of us our missing living as well. There are still a few writers here. They move around together and we have named them the 'murmuration of writers'. In the evenings they read their work and last night invited Oha Maslo to join them. He laughed and apologised for turning down the invitation: “As soon a I see the first comma I go into a coma.” I write looking across at the Cap de Creus above Cadaqués where Dali had his summer home. Some of my guests are going to visit his museum in Figueres this week, but they don't need to go there to experience the weirdly wonderful. It's right here. And I think I am going to have to write another chapter for 'Left Field'. Its title?  'Commas and comas'.

Grappaling with the music

Just finished Anne Aylor's 6th novel writing course at La Torre, Spain. Here she is cooling down with some of her students after an exhausting week for her. Now for a very different week with not a book in sight! Over 30 people have arrived to celebrate my first 70 years. I am happy to see them all and honoured that they are here. Most of all my two 'Mostar sons' - Oha and Teo - who drove for over 16 hours to be here. Oha came with his  homemade grappa and Teo with his guitar. One guest asked if there was going to be a a fiesta. The grappa has all gone this morning and I am listening to Manu Chao. Teo is going to perform sevdah songs for us today. The fiesta has started. (You can read about Oha and Teo in Left Field' - they have a chapter to themselves. And about Anne and her courses here)

Naïve art

Naïve artists work without formal technical qualifications and with a remarkable indifference to perspective. Uninfluenced by art traditions, they paint pictures mirroring their memories, desires and dreams. When most people think of naïve art, the names that come to mind are Henri Rousseau and Grandma Moses, but southeast Europe has produced many of these painters. Among the best known, the peasant, Ivan Generalić; the postman, Ivan Lacković and the carpenter, Ivan Rabuzin.  Rabuzin's buyers included Yul Brynner and Woody Allen - you can see one in Annie Hall. His pastel-coloured silk screen prints sold well in the Far East and he was known in Germany, France, Italy and Japan, but his reputation had never been established in Britain. My job was to find a London gallery which would represent him … There were only two possibilities, the Portal Gallery, who represented Beryl Cook, and the Rona Gallery. The Portal weren't interested, but the Rona was. A regular visitor there was Mervyn Levy: writer, artist and art critic who’d been a childhood friend of Dylan Thomas. Mervyn was a small, dapper man with a moustache and neatly-clipped white beard. We planned to write a play together about Dylan, based on Mervyn’s memories, and he would invite me to the Chelsea Arts Club to discuss our project. We never got far after the first bottle of wine. Read more about my years in the art world at Left Field. 

Pic. Ivan Rabuzin

Dogs are our link to paradise

I am excited that Russell Mills will design the book cover for 'Left Field'. He is well known for his record covers - Michael Nyman, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails amongst many others. His book covers include Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Samuel Beckett and Don DeLillo. I like this from DeLillo: “I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes. There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down. I've come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.” I try to follow Becket's, “Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” But having just written a new chapter for my book on the dogs of war, I love this from Milan Kundera: “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing is not boring--it is peace.” Watch this space for news on Left Field's progress to publication and buy the book here

Spirit of the music

Doing final edits on Left Field, I came across Pay-Uun Hiu's amazing article in de Volkskrant from December 1997. Writing about the opening of the Pavarotti Music centre, she had this to say about Eugene Skeef: "Born in South Africa and former co-worker of Steve Biko in the Seventies, Skeef is a phenomenal drummer and has an equally phenomenal gift for music communication. In the small room, with a view of the strip of land where an aromatic herb garden is planned to bloom, it is impossible not to hear the forceful call of Skeef’s djembe. With Skeef there is no place for quasi-serious or quasi-creative playing. “Focus,” he demands, while rolling his dreadlocks into a ponytail. “Do not play before I ask you to! Concentrate! Watch each other. We want to get into the spirit of the music.” Gradually the workshop takes on the air of an almost magical ritual. Every single player gets into the rhythm of his own rhythmic pattern which corresponds with the rhythmical pattern of the djembe trio formed by Skeef, Oha and Peter Vilk, a young English drummer and music psychologist. Through repetition of the pattern not a single part of the body is left unaffected by the sound. The lower djembe tones go right through your diaphragm and with their long waves provide a feeling of stability and calmness. The higher tones in the faster patterns work directly on the muscles and absorb all the concentration until everybody’s attention is solely focused on the music. When this level of concentration has been reached, Skeef increases the intensity and complexity. He not only increases the tempo, but also the difficult rhythmic combinations and the tempo in which the patterns change. With extreme precision he moves every participant just a tiny bit over their limits, while stimulating them with his djembe. His voice has become like a hurricane: 'power, power, man! Keep going! Keep watching.' Hands no longer feel pain, legs and feet are moving by themselves. Then Skeef lets his drummers go. The rhythms slow down and the drummers become kids again. 'Relax, relax. That was real power energy, man,' he says." 

STOP PRESS

Russell Mills has agreed to design the book cover. He has produced record covers for Michael Nyman, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails and book covers for authors such as Milan Kundera. Left Field will be published in March 2016. 

Writing in Spain

I am back at La Torre de Dalt in Spain to help Anne Aylor run her annual creative writing course. This is now in its 6^th year and I am looking forward to this week, including G&Ts in Banyoles where this pic is taken. The work is not too onerous, her students are lovely and our chef, Lee Pennington, is amazing. Not just for his food, but his radical Manchester humour. I have learned a lot about cooking from my time in the kitchen with him. And after the course (pardon the pun) we are staying for a further week with over 30 family and friends to celebrate my 70^th! My two Mostar 'sons', Oha and Teo, are coming from Bosnia so there will be a lot of drinking and music. I am not able to drink any more so will have to play guitar! You can read more about Anne, Oha, Teo, and my family in 'Left Field'

Pavarotti dips into wall art

Writing my last blog about street art reminded me of the opening of the Pavarotti Music Centre. Weeks before the tenor arrived, children had decorated the art room with their hand prints. This gave us the idea to have Pavarotti and the other guests place theirs under the tablet we had made to commemorate the opening. We arranged for trays of paint to be prepared for this. When Pavarotti’s head of security saw two children standing at the side with the trays, he told me that the last time this had happened was at an Italian school and paint had ended up on Pavarotti’s clothes. I was about to order the graffiti exercise cancelled when, to my horror, the children stepped through the crowd just as Pavarotti, Bono and Brian Eno were unveiling the memorial. Pavarotti gleefully covered his hands with poster paint, followed by the others. No one’s clothes were splashed. More on this opening at 'Left Field'.