Van Morrison and Sinead OConnor

From studying Have I told you lately that I love you here I would think that Van Morrison loves Sinead OConnor very very much, and you can't blame him for doing so. I think she is terrified of him, very very much, and you can't blame her for that either.

I love the preceding song with Van Morrison and Sinead OConnor, Van at his peak of redoing one of his most deeply beautiful songs with beautiful lyrics and then, half way through interpolation, instead of the lovely words, he comes in with 'blub blub blub blub blub blub'... the man is magical. He doesn't care...

I still recall him singing a beautiful Scottish ballad and then just cutting in with the most tangential rhythms and tones...make everything new, even if not as good, but new, always.  'I will build my love a bower by some clear crystal fountain, and on it I will place all the flowers of the mountain, will ye go, lassie, go'...if one has any love for the original, and I do, it is very very hard to listen to what Van Morrison does to it..but then, he was just practicing, on stage, just doing something different for the moment, just folding everything over and re-making it as he liked...and then this bizarre and yet wonderful 'blah blur blur blah' of scat coming in. Magical. The one and only.He's a great and unique artist in that he just does whatever takes his fancy, having created a great entrainment of sounds that echo in the heart.

this is fascinating too...Van Morrison and Sinead OConner and the Chieftains...Have I told you lately that I love you.

Caledonia Soul Music, to by-pass time altogether

Moto Guzzi Le Mans Vll, cold start, the Beautiful Racket

Bangkok a few years ago

 

I'm not sure which newspaper took this picture taken just down the road from our home in Bangkok.

"Excuse me, Captain can I get to the shop from here? Just the corner shop there...' 'Sure' he said 'take it easy.'

It would have most likely to have been either the Bangkok Post or The Nation, but I think it is a great piece of photo-journalism that highlighted the general tension in the city with frequent sniper shots throughout the streets and buildings as each side vied for position and sought to 'take out' various important people, and often succeeded in doing so.

There were firebombs here and there, RPGs, clatter of fire, bomb-disposal crews at the bus stop defusing something right there as you got on the bus...etc.

At the same time, life in the city went on and apart from the streets blocked by either supporters or the Army with their sonic-cannons playing Imagine by John Lennon before they turned up the amps... etc, life went on the same, people shopping, working, stepping out at lunchtime to pray at the street shrines and buying swimming goggles for the tear-gas from market vendors.

The nature of Thai people remains, for me, so individual and remarkable. One example was that when the rebels took over Parliament House they brought with them rented porta-loos and bus loads of masseurs. Radio stations ran sms competitions about who was winning etc and the prizes for getting it right were new Toyota Corollas.

It was a terrible time for Bangkok and for the people, for sure, but it was also amazing to experience that Thai calmness, and even some familiar smiling happening. The Thais did work that issue through pretty well without losing too much that was most important.

38th Parallel North

'dialogue and understanding' does not really include the USA doing Stealth Nuclear Bombing practices along the artificial border ever April. That's not how you do reconciliation...no one does reconciliation that way.

The only players with any rights of being there in the re-unification are North and South Korea and they need to do this with each other.

They can't do it when there's 20,000 US soldiers ready and eager and waiting to take back the North for America. That's crazy.

The US has no business there, morally, at all. The time of the 'temporary trustees' has passed decades ago. They are the lingering force stopping dialogue and understanding every day and especially every April. So many wasted years.