Up there in that list of 'superb' was being introduced to the music of Elbow.
Thank you, Teresa. Not just for being the kindest most generous hostess but for this music too.
Tim Finn, Bush Hall, London ... YES, Really!!
Sunday night and I was there, at Bush Hall in London, enjoying a New Zealand musician I've spent most of my life listening to. Teresa Walsh, my friend and hostess during these crazy beautiful days here in London, organised a most magical evening.
Tim Finn is a New Zealand icon. I decided this as I stood there enjoying his voice, his piano and guitar-playing skills, his stamina ... himself. It was hot there in Bush Hall. Really hot. But nothing mattered really.
Then he told the story of my favourite song ... Parihaka. I was rapt. He has so many songs but he performed the one I love best. It was magical.
The evening was lovely for all kinds of other reasons too. We sat next to a lovely Welsh guy at dinner, before the concert. A fan we knew ... he was wearing the tee-shirt. Then just before we headed out, a lovely Australian family sat down on the other side and we chatted. Then there was the English man I was standing next to at the concert. He'd first seen Tim perform back in the 70s.
It was a divine evening. Magical. Delicious.
You know ...
Today has been a busy day and all I had in my head was Parihaka.
Missy Higgins, Everyone's Waiting.
Did I ever mention how much I love this song?
I remember the sea ... Brighton Beach, Dunedin, New Zealand. So many good memories of swimming there.
And another, of startling my dog one day ... Long Beach, Dunedin. That day I ran into the surf, fully-clothed, and that dog of mine followed, quite startled.
Pippa, laughing, of course.
Sweet Spring Rain, Antwerp
Today a storm passed through, reversed/returned or swirled back on itself and crashed and over the city again ... a storm so powerful that, for now, the air is clean and sweet-smelling. It's reminds me of New Zealand ... where I know almost all of the scents that you will find in the South Island air.
The thyme-filled Central Otago air, the rainforest lake air of Te Anau, the merging of beech forest and ocean spray down at Tautuku - photographed at the end of this link to another rain post. Then there's the glacial rock and ice scent, mixing with the huge forests on the wild west coast, and jasmine-scented harbour air on the verandah of my Broad Bay house back in Dunedin ...
And that's me, the woman sitting next to my open window here in Antwerp while Spring rain continues to splatter nosily down. The rain is so juicy and sweet-smelling that I am compelled to stop and open the other side of the window occasionally, undoing all of the good that the insect screen does, just to lean out and inhale the delicious scent of wet vegetation ... created by a garden so lush that the smell of it reaches my first floor window here.
For years now, this song has been one of my favourite songs. On Paul Kelly's cd version of Midnight Rain, he opens with the sound of heavy rain ...
Microguagua - street power Reggae!
These guys.
I was in awe of the high-energy, joy-filled street performance of the Reggae band called Microguagua.
I bought one of their cds because I wanted their music back in Belgium.
They're brilliant. Seeing them perform live made me smile. Perhaps I caught a sense of them here but honestly, their music makes you smile.
I found them out in Via San Lorenzo, in Genova. I had to stop for some photographs.
Home ...
Life is different in Italy. Different to any place that I know.
Then again, I could say the same of New Zealand, and of Istanbul.
I know I find points of intersection in each place I go, as well as individual features that make me love those people, or that view.
There are the things that seem familiar and take me home. And the views that fill me with longing for places I've known ...
Home is a thing I've been trying to define forever. Is it inside of me or back in that place where I was born and raised. 'My' country or those places where I've felt most welcome. Or that place where I felt a deep (and inexplicable) sense of recognition and would have liked to have stayed a while, just to see because I feel like I'm still looking.
Some places engage me, so deeply, that I could spend years just attempting to photograph the feeling of them. The moods, the light, the people ...
Genova's like that for me.
Anyway ... I'm listening to this particular song by Sting as I work here. On repeat, as I do sometimes.
