Sunday Night with Amel Larrieux

Soul singers seem to dig Oakland. Something about the city's vibe resonates with them. Their appreciation is always reciprocated and audiences move rapidly from laidback contemplation to active engagement. Somehow I managed to catch Amel Larrieux and her five piece band last Sunday night in performance at Yoshi's in Oakland. Thus I can share a few notes on a comfort suite...

An electric bass guitar begins warbling, sounding something like an ethereal sitar by the time Amel walks on stage. She hums and launches into a warm acoustic rendition of Morning, the title track of her most focused album. Right out of the gate her voice grabs you as if to say "Pay attention. Get ready for some soul music". She doesn't intend to leave anything on the stage.

Trouble, is done Latin style with, as is typical in her live performances, an impromptu ending in which she starts scatting with abandon. "Louis Armstrong", she later explains, "All those years trying to be like you". She adds, "Lena Horne too". Well she's a singer's singer, it stands to reason that she has impeccable taste.

Giving Something Up is a bassy funk groove overlaid with increasingly abstract vocal stylings as it progresses, the arrangement is a mixture of jazz, soul and hip hop. Then almost improbably she breaks into Amazing Grace - a song that has never been done in this mode, urgent futuristic blues. How, the listener wonders, can a song contains such multitudes, rendered so seamlessly?

All I Got is an effortless follow up, a march reflecting on our condition. The refrain is all about the set upon (when she sings the passing lyric "slapped down a racist fool", those darker than blue in the Oakland audience respond knowingly). It's about standing strong and living without expecting any big bailout or "helping hand" as she sings: "this is all I got" indeed. As she riffs on the economic climate, "we're thoroughly spent... our credit's jacked up", there is complete empathy with the five piece band. They follow her on that the long walk with those worn shoes.

She gives a stately take on Magic and the zingers are fired rapidly: "still paying for your education when you're sixty six". Again the chorus is revelatory: "stress level's high and the morale's low". It's a blues for our time done with minimalist instrumentation. She ends with a turn as a choir director enlisting the audience in three part harmony. This kind of crowd participation is fun: we all need to "tap into that magic" to overcome our subprime present. Indeed that has been the theme of the whole concert, acknowledging what is going on in the world and finding humour to deal with it. Amel is an unpretentious artist, she makes everyone feel at home. It doesn't hurt that she's very easy to look at, the word chic describes her clothes and the long hair is doing all the right things.

A cheer of recognition greets the start of For Real, the ballad being one of the perennial fan favourites. With deft piano playing in the background, she floats into the upper registers displaying her Minnie Riperton credentials. After welcoming a a few bars from a guest soprano in the audience, she takes over. Her vocal control is breathtaking. Game, set and match, I'd say. To top it off she provides three or four different takes of the song - live remixes on stage. I'm always interested in the way singers manage to keep their trademark songs alive; somehow Amel always comes up with new arrangements subscribing to the jazz improvisation aesthetic. The jazz inclination will keep her in good stead with her audience.

We Can Be New is a warm poem, a melodious ballad very beautifully sung and ends with a reggae tinge. It must be the band's trademark to provide full glimpses of her range and musical comfort zone.

She debuts a new song, Have You?, a lover's lament peppered with humourous lyrics "I've mixed denim with whites, have you?". By this stage we are all spellbound. The elements of her appeal are simple: sympathetic piano, the light accents of her backup singer (Amira) and a singer at her peak. Amel is in full effect.

Then I almost died of joy: she sang Gills and Tails - my favourite song, the very definition of virtuosity. The vocal performance is wonderful; what the professionals would call her cry is a thing to behold. It's emotional, it's cerebral, it's quietly devastating. It's everything I like in soul music.

Wild is the Wind from her album of standards, shrewdly titled Lovely Standards, is done as a homage to Nina Simone. It's just her and the piano player; she has got the audience clinging to her every note. As the song starts to wind down she brings in the rest of the band and they add a dance groove - whoa, she can do house music, what can't she do? - the groove then morphs into Dear to me. House music man, just for the heck of it. She took a jazz standard, did it with flair and, just to show how fearless she is, she gives you some house. I give up, I'm joining the street team, Amel.

As if she read my mind, she then covers Prince's Pop Life, it's a party pure and simple - she reminisces about the Purple Rain to Parade Revolution era of His Royal Badness (she notes that she even digs Tambourine! claiming by this revelation membership in that purple secret society) and talks about the rush she got performing Take Me With You with Kamal the Abstract a couple of weeks ago.

She closes with two crowd favourites: Get up, the monster club hit from Bravebird and Tell Me (from her Groove Theory beginnings). We're all dancing and singing along. It's a celebration. There's a community feeling. We'll be holding our head high in the weeks to come, smiling on Manic Mondays and Black Tuesdays, lifted above the fray, fortified by some soul music, a soundtrack to our struggles, "this great Mountain of When". This is her thing, this is what she does best: two ninety minute sets, three nights in a row in an intimate jazz venue. Every show sold out, the audience in the palm of her hand, the soul singer performs. Amel Larrieux has done it again.

File under: music, soul, review, concert, live, jazz, virtuosity, Amel Larrieux, toli

A Seminal Lunacy

No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of the free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals. The latter were not led to the slaughter. They were impelled to it by the seminal lunacy which has always seized people who are seized in turn with the notion that they can become very rich.

— The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith

I was reading Galbraith's tome last summer in an attempt to clear my thinking about bubbles and their typical aftermath. Later in his life Galbraith would cover financial euphoria more closely, but here it was all about its counterpart: the crash. He surely had a twinkle in his eye as he made his felicitous coinage of "seminal lunacy", lowering the reader's guard before proceeding to skewer at will. The book was a tonic for him to write and it is accordingly a tonic to read.

News headlines are replete with mantras about sound fundamentals, healthy economies that are resilient, innovations that are safe, disruptions that are contained and so forth. On this trend he had some cutting observations:

By affirming solemnly that prosperity will continue, it is believed that one can help insure that prosperity will in fact continue. Especially among businessmen the faith in the efficiency of such incantation is very great.

Stated another way, this is merely a tactic for dealing with ignorance.

That much of what was repeated about the market - then as now - bore no relation to reality is important, but not remarkable. Between human beings there is a type of intercourse which proceeds not from knowledge, or even from lack of knowledge, but from failure to know what isn't known. This was true of much of the discourse on the market.

It is often effective.

We are a polite and cautious people, and we avoid unpleasantness.

Social beasts that we are, we follow the herd.

Others pointed out that the prospects for business were good and that the stock market debacle would not make them any less favorable. No one knew, but it cannot be stressed too frequently, that for effective incantation knowledge is neither necessary nor assumed.

There is perhaps an echo of Walter Bagehot's observation in Lombard Street

Every great crisis reveals the excessive speculations of many houses which no one before suspected.

We have the spectre of bemused and gray suited serious technocrats making pronoucements with great alacrity. And a wary public begins to ask whither regulation. But that is by the by

One of the oldest puzzles in politics is who is to regulate the regulators. But an equally baffling problem, which has never received the attention it deserves, is who is to make wise those who are required to have wisdom.

The great crash, like other seminal lunacies, caused much revision of the conventional wisdom.

What six months before had been a brilliant financial maneuver was now a form of fiscal self-immolation. In the last analysis, the purchase by a firm of its own stock is the exact opposite of the sale of stocks. It is by the sale of stock that firms ordinarily grow.

There are likely many contemporary equivalents to the deficiencies pointed out about buying your own stock. Modern finance has been shown to favour opacity over transparency and the consequent costs are mounting.

Looking forward we can expect lots of hearings, meetings and busy work. Politicians shown to have been asleep at the wheel will now demand answers.

The rite of the meeting which is called not to do business but to do no business... one of the oldest, most important - and unhappily, one of the least understood - rites in American life.

Action is the theme of the day

Men meet together for many reasons in the course of business. They need to instruct or persuade each other. They must agree on a course of action. They find thinking in public more productive or less painful than thinking in private. But there are at least as many reasons for meetings to transact no business. Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.

When histories are written about our present disillusionment they will surely read like Galbraith's summary of the reasons behind the crash:

In 1929 the economy was fundamentally unsound...

• the bad distribution of income... highly unequal income distribution meant that the economy was dependent on a high level of investment or a high level of luxury consumer spending or both...
• the bad corporate structure... the vast new structure of holding companies and investment trusts...
• the bad banking structure...
• the dubious state of the foreign balance...
• the poor state of economic intelligence

By harkening to "fundamentally unsound" and ending with a note about "economic intelligence", Galbraith puts the knife in Herbert Hoover and others of his ilk.

It requires neither courage nor prescience to predict disaster. Courage is required of the man who, when things are good, says so. Historians rejoice in crucifying the false prophet of the millenium. The never dwell on the mistake of the man who wrongly predicted Armageddon.

There are lots of emotions when it comes to finance, concern chief among them. During a crash or panic, emotions turn darker and this can be a perilous time.

Despite a flattering supposition to the contrary, people come readily to terms with power. There is little reason to think that the power of the great bankers, while they were assumed to have it, was much resented. But as the ghosts of numerous tyrants, from Julius Caesar to Benito Mussolini will testify, people are very hard on those who, having had power, lose it or are destroyed. Then anger at past arrogance is joined with contempt for present weakness. The victim or his corpse is made to suffer all available indignities.

And a parting warning for those erstwhile masters:

One trouble with being wrong is that it robs the prophet of his audience when he most needs it to explain why.

Shell games do have costs.

A brief soundtrack

• Ralph Tresvant - It's Goin' Down
• Public Enemy - Shut 'Em Down (Pete Rock Mix)
  The best remix ever. Period.
• Abbey Lincoln - Down Here Below
  Abbey sings it best: "the winds of change are blowing through the weary night".

File under: economics, zingers, quotes, observation, culture, bubble, panic, depression, crash, credit, finance, Galbraith, USA, literature, toli

Bite-sized

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

— Saki, The Comments of Moung Ka

It's so convenient when one can tell the truth.

— Graham Greene, Travels with my aunt

Honesty hath no fence against superior cunning.

— Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

It is always a relief to believe what is pleasant, but it is more important to believe what is true.
— Hilaire Belloc, The Silence of the Sea

These clippings from some recent reading were meant to anchor a number of pieces I've been working on. It struck me however that the verbiage that I might have attached didn't add much, and the plain juxtaposition of these bite-sized pearls sufficed. The first two statements, weighing the expedience of honesty, are paradoxically uttered by notorious dissemblers in the context of the stories in which they appear. Saki and Greene's mouthpieces share their author's sense of irony. In contrast Swift and Belloc are more satirical. [Insert disclaimer: we've all learned that honesty is the best policy.]

He was as American as folding money and waging war.

— George Pelecanos, The Night Gardener

He liked his epiphanies American: brief and illusory.

— Colson Whitehead, Apex hides the hurt

These last musings on America, by two of the sharpest and hungriest current wordsmiths, seem a little bleak and capture a certain malaise about the country. In the same book (it's nothing too weighty incidentally, and hopefully his next novel will have a greater impact), Colson Whitehead adds this choice piece of cynicism:

It was a good place to make a bad decision, and in particular, a bad decision that would affect a great many people.

I think I'd call this Blues 2.0 - we might as well add a version number to the sentiment.

Soundtrack: Me'Shell NdegéOcello - Elliptical

Taken from an album with the paradoxical title The world has made me the man of my dreams, this is one of the most fluid musical movements I've heard in the past couple of years.

File under: zingers, quotes, observation, culture, perception, literature, honesty, strategy, toli

Lunchtime Heist

Something didn't look right. There he was on his hands and knees in the corner next to the ATM ten feet inside the burger joint. It gave you a little pause but you thought you'd proceed regardless. Someone at the front table was muttering something to him, the sounds lost amidst his chewing. Your bag got stuck in the doorway and, by the time you got unstuck, he had gotten up, turned around and was now facing you as you entered. 2:15 was later than normal for you, the upside was that you had missed the lunchtime rush: the place was a little empty.

For whatever reason you looked him up and down and took in the rest slowly. It didn't feel right. A gray hat haphazardly lay atop his head. A jacket: not quite a technician's jacket, nor even a UPS jacket, more like a fashion piece. You looked downwards as he stepped towards you. His hand brought up a bag from behind, he was gripping it tightly. You'd seen the money bags that the couriers use - this was the financial district after all, you see the couriers all over downtown San Francisco. This wasn't a regular bag. Puzzling.

And of course there was the sheepish grin that he was sporting. That definitely looked out of place. No gun that you could see... Still you dismissed your impulse to tackle him. "Whatever, you're imagining things." You walked past him towards the counter. He nodded imperceptibly as you crossed - still smiling you noted, and began to walk out.

As you made your way to the front counter, you continued to put it all together. "Must be missing something. Didn't look like a technician, nor a armored car courier... Surely he won't walk out of here just like that. Wasn't holding a gun, but could he? Why the smile? Anyway let me order."

Just in case, you tried to fix his features in your memory, late forties, brown hair beginning to gray, white guy, looked a little like Chevy Chase. You wondered if you'd make a good witness.

"May I take your order please."
"The special. No drinks... Hmm..."

You figured you should vocalize something about your disquiet. "Umm ... The guy..", you gesture. "Umm, the ATM.. the machine. Umm"

You turned and looked back to the front of the restaurant and noticed that the guy had indeed walked out. Oh well. Then the clincher: the ATM didn't quite look right. You turn towards the server and begin again: "Umm... The guy..."

Someone appeared by your side, impatient and loudly put the words out there:

"You know that someone just robbed your ATM machine."

That's it, that's what didn't look right. The bottom half of the ATM had swung out into the lane. The cheek of it, he even left the door open. You gesture. The newcomer repeated his words:

"You know that someone just robbed your ATM machine."

The woman taking your order was a little perplexed at first - perhaps it was the language barrier. She was also a little annoyed. The two men in front of her were departing from her script. You remained tongue-tied but Citizen Alert proceeded to spew out the details. Eventually, as he got no response, he asked, "Call the manager." She gestured to the manager and the other servers and grunted a name. Then:

"May I help who's next?"

You never quite liked that awkward formulation, surely she could have said "whoever's next" but the grammar pedant in you, let alone the intrigued potential crime witness, decided to step aside. Your order would be ready in a few minutes.

"Next."

You shuffled to the side and turned to look again at the front of the restaurant. Those now entering the restaurant all raised their eyebrows as they passed the evidently-open ATM. An alarming sight you assumed. You'd never seen the inside of an ATM before - well perhaps on the way out. A few diners started pointing towards the ATM but on the whole, there there was a lot of apathy in this joint. Perhaps it was the time of day, perhaps everyone needed a siesta. Or maybe it was just the nature of the place. Lee's is a tad above a McDonalds but it isn't quite a gourmet Barneys. Well you get what you pay for. You decided to take things in.

The manager eventually sauntered out from behind the counter and walked towards the front, chatting all the time on his cell phone. The newcomer accosted him, as did a few others: amplifying and explaining their consternation. The manager didn't seem impressed and continued his phone conversation. Minutes passed and a little group formed around the ATM bending down and examining it. One guy kept saying "ATM machine" and this again bothered you: you thought "machine" was redundant given the acronym. Eventually someone decided to call the police.

Your order arrived, you picked it up, thanked the server and walked over to the gathering at the front. You wanted to get a look at the ATM. Well, who knew?

You wondered how the robber managed to open the ATM and how long he'd been fiddling with it. Did he have a key or tools?

You heard someone say "He must have been a technician."

At that you smiled and shook your head. You said to no one in particular, "He just walked out with a bag of money and left the ATM open! Come on now."

You wondered how many other joints the robber would be targeting. It was a pretty brazen heist but it worked. The managers would be like the present one - unconcerned since the ATM had nothing to do with them. The clientèle would likely be as lethargic as today's version and, well, no one would be a hero. Indeed you were one of the few people who noticed anything anomalous or could have even attempted to stop it. Of course you didn't, proving the point.

You wrote your name and number on a sheet of paper and gave it to the manager in case the police cared - you didn't have time to hang around for them. Four or five others claimed to have gotten a good look at the guy and they all looked excited about their brush with notoriety. As you reached the office a few blocks away you started to hear the sirens.

You've been hibernating for the past few months; perhaps you too have been behaving like everyone in the restaurant: quiet and simply minding your own business. You need to get back into things, find your voice again. Don't let others just walk all over you and snatch your soul. Come on now.

You passed by the joint the next day and noticed that the ATM was no longer there. You kicked yourself for not having photographed the open ATM. You went to another lunch place. The sign was still outside however: ATM inside.

Soundtrack for this note

Nas - Thief's Theme File under: life, crime, heist, theft, brazen, apathy, San Francisco, toli

Timepieces

I present the following item from the Remembrance of Rogues Past collection: a campaign watch for the YEAA '98 campaign, namely the Youth Energetically Advocating Abacha shell organization that supposedly was spontaneously formed to campaign for that suffocating, murderous and dictatorial rogue, General Sani Abacha — late, unlamented and so forth.

I'm a avid collector of this kind of historical artifact and you'll sometimes find me bidding for a mint copy of the Franco sings for Mobutu album, to take a recent example and different rogue (quite a good album actually). The Abacha watch, while in the mode of praise singers and sycophants, is not your standard piece of dictator chic, it's much more functional and thus perhaps more insidious. In any case, it's worth some brief notes.

Back in the twilight zone of military rule in Nigeria circa 1998, it appeared that the dictator was feeling some pressure to make gestures towards democracy. The response was of course to think about how to hand over to himself, accordingly he devised lots of gestures. Having outlawed all organized opposition, the general decided to organize two approved political parties, "one a little to the left and the other a little to the right". Manifestos and constitutions were written, ostensible political philosophies were crafted and so forth, all by the military. The remaining question was who would lead these newfangled parties and there were any number of sycophants auditioning for the right to head these organic parties sometime in the future, if indeed elections would ever be held.

This is where the Youth Energetically Advocating Abacha came in.

The first order of business, as if this stage managing wasn't enough, was to start a whisper campaign urging both parties to nominate said dictator as their flagbearer. When more than whispers were needed, YEAA was to be the public face of the campaign, ready to whip naysayers into place. The idea was to coronate Abacha and win by acclamation the nomination from both of the parties a little to the left and right. A man of the people, he simply wanted to underlie that the youth wanted him to serve them and, moreover, that they were energetic — an obvious warning to anyone who might oppose the general. The thought was that he would face off with himself in new elections and succeed himself, or something of the sort - the main point was to hold elections.

On the one hand these actions were crude and ridiculous, on the other, they are simply sad. Whenever I look at the watch I think to the whole contingent of lobbyist firms, replete with consultants, who came up with the strategy and the inspirational name (Yeah!), the graphic designers called in to design the logo with the arrow and the wheel mechanism (perhaps fitting, for Nigeria under Abacha was on a road to nowhere), the coinage of the snappy slogan, the time spent uploading artwork and discussing typography with the design firm in California, the negotiations with Singapore factories for the production of watches and other insignia (for there were many containers worth of this stuff produced, T-shirts, key tags etc.), the shipments to Nigeria, the distribution of this largess around the country... The watch is like an open wound in the Nigerian body politic, testimony to the workings of a global criminal enterprise.

No one advocated for Abacha unless they were paid. Youth Energetically Advocating Abacha is a simple byword for coercion, cynicism and an illustration of the lengths to which people can go when in the grip of greed. The depressing thing is the sheer energy of this huhudious regime and the scale of the graft (billions of dollars were stolen for sure) — one wonders how many millions were spent on similar minor accoutrements. What a waste but perhaps such is the world of riches.

From all accounts Nigeria is much changed these days and a few of the victims of the regime are even (belatedly) getting their day in court. Perhaps it's best to move on and call this ancient history, perhaps one's outrage should be curtailed; let's leave it for the historians.

For the record, the battery never worked.

II. Measuring Time

Helon Habila in his second novel Measuring Time continues to make a claim for prominence in the roster of young lions in African literature. Instead of the claustrophobia of Waiting for an Angel (which I recently discussed) he stretches his shoulders and decides to take on entire decades of African history.

His writes in a deceptively simple style and focuses on storytelling. There's no overt lyricism; he'd claim that he is simply channeling the many stories that come to him. Still his is an ambitious agenda and he covers a lot of territory, after all his subject is modernity in Africa and all that means.

The options available to the two twins who tell the story of Measuring Time is a simple statement about Nigerian society. On the one hand, there is life as a mercenary soldier following warlords like Charles Taylor from Chad and Libya to the messy Liberian civil war. For a political junkie like me, this would be enough to focus on for an entire novel, for Habila this is merely interstitial.

On the other hand, the bulk of the book and the other twin's story is about stagnation and making do at home. There is lots of striving but precious little light. Yet the stories of the past need to be told, the politics need be engaged in - however programmatic they may be, the youth need to be taught, we all need to fall in love. There's no time to dance or to succumb to navel gazing. Life has to be lived in full.

In his populist writing mode Helon Habila is perhaps heir to Cyprian Ekwensi whose favourite subject was city life. Like Ekwensi he has a talent for empathy with his characters and draws you in with detailed portraits. He really knows how to capture moments in time. I am also reminded in this novel of another ambitious second novel that packed a lot of ideas albeit in a different genre, Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days. But perhaps we shouldn't tie a talent like Habila to others. He's writing delicate novels of ideas disguised as unvarnished, personal stories of Nigeria; the whole world is his.

III. Wasted Time (a soundtrack)

Me'Shell NdegeOcello - Wasted Time

Wasted Time, my favourite song from her appropriately-titled album, Bitter, finds Me'Shell in a suitably bitter mood. She has an unerring way of capturing an atmosphere in song. Bitterness is a transient emotion but one that is intense when one is in its grip. It's the only vaguely uptempo song of the album, building up the groove slowly as she reflects on a break-up. It's not quite a lament and she hasn't yet resolved the episode. It is a raw meditation on wasted effort. Fittingly the song cuts off abruptly, unsettling the listener. Wasted time never to be recovered.

Update: A good friend sends along a Cambodian twist for the collection: a Dictator Hun Sen "fashion" watch. He notes, "Never tried wearing it. Battery assumed dead".

File under: Nigeria, rogues, Africa, corruption, politics, history, memory, culture, cynicism, literature, dictator, toli

By Way of Ionesco

It must have been a few months ago, I was heading home after work; it was the usual thing, a perfectly ordinary evening. As usual, I was fumbling with my various bags, headphones and such. As I switched trains at Oakland, my sharp elbows ensured that I obtained a seat; I find it pays to be equipped at rush hour. I settled down, rummaged around and found my book. I opened it and relaxed; there's nothing like getting lost in a good book on the commute. A muffled announcement predicted a delay. Oh well, I settled in for the long haul. After a few moments, I heard someone muttering from across the aisle: "Ionesco" or something.

"Yes, yes", I gestured at the distinctive cover of my book, "Ionesco".

The guy continued talking but I couldn't quite hear him since I was listening to music. As I fumbled around with the controls to the cd player (no ipod as yet), it struck me that I had been speaking in French. What I had actually replied was "Oui. Oui. Ionesco... C'est La Cantatrice Chauve."

As I finally removed my headphones (those tangled wires), I realized that the other guy had also been speaking in French.

Well, no matter. If you're reading a French book on the subway, odds are that a passing Frenchman would notice and engage you. Perhaps you look vaguely francophone. It would stand to reason that you would start to speak in French also. Indeed the reason I had been reading that book was one of my periodic attempts to keep up my French. Still it was uncanny how I had unconsciously slipped into that other language, perhaps a switch had been involuntarily flipped as sometimes happens to polyglots (pdf). I don't get to speak the language much these days - I am awful about keeping up with the part of my family in France. True, every few months or so I dream in French (don't ask, don't tell) but I know that my fluency in conversational speech is at risk.

So anyway, there was a little pause as we both assessed each other. A couple of relatively thin thirtysomethings, hungry engineer types. Not many people chat on the subway, one is always wary about being solicited or otherwise bothered. As the song goes: don't talk to strangers. How often, however, does one find someone interesting on the commute?

Well, the conversation began in earnest. Ionesco it was. His plays, his ideas, the theatre.

What do you know, I was sitting across from someone who had directed four Ionesco plays; a fellow Ionesco afficionado no less. I'd acted in Les Chaises during my brief theatrical career at school. Heck I still sometimes view the world through his jaundiced lens. The guy was clearly a creative type, steeped in the stage. A man after my heart. And he knew his stuff it seemed.

Pretty soon we were getting into the intricacies of Ionesco's world. What we liked: the playfulness of the language, the sense of rhythm, the stacatto effects that leapt from the page. The often startling juxtaposition of mundane minutiae with profundity. The pauses and the fumbling to find meaning and the consequent resort to words that obscure rather than reveal. Heady stuff in other words.

My spoken french is a little rusty and, a couple of times, I too struggled to articulate some of these thoughts. It's one thing to write or read about the intricacies of art and another to verbalize them even forgetting the setting. Still it was coming back slowly: the quintessential abstractions of extinct philosophers. The accent too - I was a scion of la Lorraine, straining my 'ains'. Perhaps the long lamented fluency would be returning soon.

Somehow we got onto the nomadic element in Ionesco's writing and the fact that he was Romanian and first gained fame writing in french in a piece about observing the English. What is it about outsiders being such stylists? Why are they often the best bridges and windows on society? Perhaps the margins provide a good standpoint for cultural observation. But what are the downsides of the lives of exiled souls? Does multi-lingualism or the crossing of linguistic borders sharpen one's outlook? We weighed the evidence. I brought up Nabokov who in later life turned out to be perhaps one of the great stylists of the English language. He wasn't impressed, he felt that Ionesco got closer to the gypsy element of modernity than Nabokov ever did. I demurred, both, I thought, were modern travellers that disdained boundaries and pushed the forms in which they wielded their pens. The response: well Ionesco carried less baggage. Anyway we got back to the plays.

He liked Rhinoceros and Les Chaises for their theatricality but for him La cantatrice chauve was the most playful with the language. We went back and forth on whether it was a play best performed in French. He didn't like the English productions he'd seen and claimed that they got the zaniness all wrong. I thought that so long as you got into the spirit of things, it didn't matter. To him the confusion started with the way the play's title was translated: he preferred The Bald Prima Donna to The Bald Soprano. Thus we found ourselves seriously arguing away in French about which English translation of a nonsensical phrase a Romanian playwright had promulgated was truer to the essence of the play. I can't imagine how we must have sounded to the rest of the train car: flurries of French intermittently interupted by English exclamations: "The Bald Soprano" or "Mais non. The Bald Prima Donna". C'est ridicule, n'est-ce pas?

Funnily enough we never actually mentioned the word absurd although the theatre of the absurd was our ostensible subject. Nor indeed did we get to Beckett who looms large in such matters. To my mind, Ionesco is the more formidable pillar of that theatre, if only because his conceptions weren't as arch as those of Godot's father. The discongruities of modern life are presented simply and with wit. I love Beckett to death yet his edifices were intricate constructions. Ionesco makes the absurd more mundane, it is through almost imperceptible distortions that you find yourself in the realm of the improbable. Each step on that road makes sense.

There was a brief diversion onto Sartre - we discussed Huis clos, and judged him impractical. More to the point, his dilemmas weren't weren't of the everyday variety nor indeed did they work on the stage. No, not quite.

I hipped him to the show I'd seen in Boston a couple of years ago, Ionesco not Ionesco, three rarely performed plays. The takeaway message: Ionesco as the aspirin for modern day life, the playwright of the fringe, the governor of the borderlands. You are easily underestimated if there is a humour to your approach and many did underestimate the fugitive notions of the man.

I forgot myself for a moment, soaking in the discussion, and looked around. The rest of the car looked utterly bemused at the sight of these young men vigourously discussing French literature in their midst, throwing out existential themes — the left bank transplanted to the subway car, heck all we were missing were the berets. No matter.

It was the week of the French elections and I mentioned the story about those old campaign posters of Mitterand that were being resurrected twenty years later as ironic commentary on the choices facing the French. He liked the idea and applauded the juxtaposition. A François Mitterrand 2007 campaign seemed appropriate for this dark time. We wondered how many votes he would get.

The Cold War deserved a Ionesco. The nuclear age deserved a Ionesco. Gremlins and parasites, thine playwright is Ionesco.

We wondered who were the heirs to Ionesco's ethos. We decided that there was something to be said for plays even in this TV and film era. That the stage often had the right level of pathos for the strange incongruities of the human condition. As we parted (he gave a card, I told him to google me), we resolved that we should get back to the theatre, support it in whatever way we could. Who knows maybe we'll put together a production some time soon. It need not be Ionesco. Heck we would write our own plays.

...

When a week or so later, I received that secret tape of Negroponte meeting Gaddafi, I was struck by the element of malign play among in their discourse and world views. As I transcribed, I found it was all there: words intended to obscure, words that ostensibly communicate were instead combined into phrases that mangle reality: constructive engagement, collateral damage and so forth.

The playground of misdirection is often dominated by politicians but others too have their niches. The lowly bureaucrat and the well-meaning citizen play their part is adopting the language of bromides. Ionesco would have loved the notion of recent non-specific general threats and the obfuscation of the language of homeland security.

In any case, it stands to reason that I am now being read by folks from both the US Navy Marine Corps and Libyan embassies around the world. I do try to bring people together in my writing. A belated welcome to the toli. Enjoy your stay. Excellent. Excellent discussions.

Salut Alex.

File under: Ionesco, subway, conversation, observation, culture, theatre, literature, language, French, France, absurd, art, life, Bay Area, Things Fall Apart, toli

Conundrum 65: Taxi Driver Braking Style

The burning issue that has been exercising my mind for the past few hours is the way in which taxi drivers apply brakes to their cars. Thus I give you another entry as part of an occasional series, briefly noted...

So. Why do taxi drivers brake the way they do? What accounts for their peculiar relationship with their car's braking system? Why is that taxi drivers never want to idle their cars? And so forth...

When a cab driver sees a red light, she will do one of two things:

1. Accelerate and simply speed through the light - daring oncoming traffic in a game of chicken.
   This behaviour is almost de rigeur if you want to obtain a taxicab medallion - an initiation rite of sorts. When your car is branded as a taxi, it is a signifier, almost a warning signal of recklessness to other drivers, and you can trade on this reputation to bully through most intersections. Such are the fringe benefits of every profession.
2. Slow to a stop at the light if it is obvious that one can't beat the light.
   In this scenario, you'll almost see the subliminal scowl on the driver's face in the mirror and the accompanying sound of disgust under their breath.

It is the manner in which taxi drivers slow to a stop that is the source of today's conundrum.

A taxi driver never simply slows down to a stop like other drivers. There's an eccentricity to the gradual manner in which they apply their brakes. It's a little hard to describe exactly how they brake but it is different enough that I always notice it; let's simply posit for our purposes a Brake Eccentricity Index ™ and assign taxi drivers the maximum value, 10, on an admittedly arbitrary 10 point scale. Still, why do they brake in such an unnatural fashion?

Theory 1: Maximize the fare

I should be a little bit more precise about this, namely that I've mostly observed eccentric braking styles in cities that have metered fares for taxis. Of course correlation is not causation but I've always thought that it was the fact that meter fares are lower when the taxi is idle than when it is moving that drove taxi drivers to this behaviour.

The notion here is that by keeping the taxi moving for as long as possible you will reap fiscal rewards. Amortized over the length of a typical shift, perhaps you can sneak in an extra hour of fares at the higher, mobile rate. If you consider driving a taxi as a purely revenue maximization enterprise then the optimal economic strategy is all about minimizing engine idle time and maximizing the amount of time the car is moving. The braking style then is simply a matter of arbitrage; 5-10% extra revenue will be nothing to sneeze at (handwaving at the exact amount).

One piece of the puzzle however is that I sometimes observe as much even in countries where taxi rides are not metered transactions. What gives?

Some control experiments: presumably there should be increased eccentricity in braking style the larger the difference between moving and idle fares. Drivers in cities with greater idle premiums would exhibit a higher brake eccentricity. Anecdotally New York and Boston are more prone to the phenomenon than San Francisco.

The web being what it is, an armchair economist such as myself can validate such intuition...

Consider this table taken from the San Francisco Taxicab Industry Report 2006 via the invaluable Taxi Library site. It is a survey of rates charged in various US cities.

We'll codify a proxy for our braking eccentricity quotient as the ratio of mileage rate to waiting time rate. In New York, this ratio is 10 (mileage rate per mile is $2.00 and waiting time per minute is $0.20). In San Francisco, the ratio is 5 (mileage rate per mile is $2.25 and waiting time per minute is $0.45). This would confirm the greater propensity of New York cabbies to work the brakes and even assign them 10 on our admittedly arbitrary index.

Out of interest, we have the following results: Chicago at 5.45, Houston at 5.67, Los Angeles at 5.5, Oakland at 6, San Jose at 5.95. In my experience, Oakland taxi drivers are more eccentric than San Francisco cabbies so this seems to be about right. The rate structure of fares provides serious incentives to taxi drivers to do everything possible to keep in motion, it is no wonder that they are irritated at having to wait, idle time literally robs them of revenue.

Theory 2a: Minimize fuel consumption and/or 2b. minimize wear on the car's brakes

Part of the utility function that a taxi driver has to account for is the impact of fuel consumption. With conventional internal combustion engines, the fuel that is used when the engine is idle is pure waste, hence it makes sense to minimize fuel consumption as part of the profit maximization function.

Wear and tear on the brakes is also something drivers need to worry about; perhaps it is indeed easier on the brakes to slow down the way they do. No one tells you that when you learn how to drive so this might well be a trade secret of sorts.

This last theory is counterbalanced by the frantic way brakes are applied when the driver misjudges and almost causes an accident (all too frequently judging by the statistics of road accidents involving taxis). Frequent near misses and even accidents are almost a cost of doing this kind of business and in those cases, brakes are manhandled. So a question for auto engineers, what is the best way to apply brakes? Incidentally I wonder if there is any research on the incidence of heart attacks amongst taxi drivers, but I digress...

Some control experiments:

• hybrid cars are slowly being adopted into taxis fleets, these are cars in which the cost of idling has essentially been eliminated. Minimizing fuel consumption in one's Prius is thus a matter of running for as long as possible on electricity rather than on the conventional gasoline engine. Presumably Prius taxi drivers would not be as prone to brake eccentricity and the new technology might provide an insight into the relative importance of the fuel consumption factor. One should monitor the situation as hybrid adoption rates increase.
• rising petrol prices should increase the fuel consumption premium so there should be increased eccentricity when we have higher prices. Metered fares after all aren't indexed to petrol prices and are only updated episodically. Anecdotally again, I've been noticing more braking shenanigans during the Bush years with the concomitant high oil prices.

With this in mind, perhaps we can add some additional dampening factors to our braking eccentricity index. I welcome your mathematical input.

Exegesis

The obvious thing to resolve this conundrum is to simply ask taxi drivers why indeed they brake the way they do. The thing is that whenever I've observed this behaviour, I've typically been annoyed because I tend to lean towards the first theory, namely that the driver is engaged in an attempt to wring an extra dollar or so out of my inconsiderable wallet. With that at the back of my mind, it will come off adversarial to ask the driver about this, no matter how academic the concern is. Also you might change the behaviour merely by asking and make the driver self-conscious. Moreover, there's always something more pressing to talk about: politics, the economy, real estate, cars, relationships etc. In any case, small things like taxi driver braking styles are appropriate fodder for blog entries. I hope I've made a plausible economic case of cabbies being rational economic actors but of course I may be missing the plot. Perhaps others can come up with better analyses. The floor is yours...

On Metering and Automation

Now you might well wonder why indeed I'm spending time and virtual ink on this matter. Well it is in aid of a book of toli. The low end theory posits that one should temper the human factor to encourage adoption. Thus I've been digging around matters of human factors and automation. The obvious case study of the human factor in technology adoption is with taxis and the introduction of metered fares. A little digression and that's all she wrote.

The idea of meters, of standard fares introduced through regulation, meshes with an attempt to eliminate the vagaries of human discretion and bargaining around the negotiation of payment for rides. Prior to their introduction, one was at the mercy of one's skill and knowledge of prevailing rates when discussing fees with cab drivers, and often one would be at a considerable disadvantage in the conversation. The drive towards standardization and automation was almost inevitable in many communities; electronic meters were the technical solution to the legal and cultural problem. By metering you could reduce the amount of price discrimination that taxi drivers could do and gain some amount of consumer satisfaction at not having to bear the mental transaction costs.

Recently also there has been the introduction of GPS-driven radio dispatch into the taxi business in. One virtue is that this might prevent certain dispatchers from rewarding their favourites with the best jobs. I know that in the Boston area, Haitian cab drivers would always curse the often 'native' dispatchers, claiming that they wouldn't give them (the immigrants) jobs even if they were closer to the customers. Presumably technology in the form of location-aware optimization algorithms could add a measure of impartiality to the dispatching process along (potentially) with some extra efficiency. Of course as with all things in which the human factor applies this is not the end of the story. Wherever there is human discretion we will see the usual social and cultural cues and biases assert themselves in one form or another. For one, it all depends on what is coded and who gets to make the decision.

Indeed New York city taxi drivers will be going on strike against GPS devices in coming days:

The Taxi Workers Alliance opposes the installation of high-tech touch-screen video systems that will allow passengers to watch television, make credit-card payments and — using a global-positioning device that tracks the cab - follow their ride on an electronic map.

Some drivers have said that the global-positioning devices and the automated trip recording system are an invasion of privacy, and that the use of credit cards would diminish drivers' incomes, given the card transaction fees.

They also say they will take in less money because the system requires drivers to log on before each fare, and they object to the television noise and the heat from the monitors.

This last case is interesting in the bundling of two technologies, electronic payment systems and location aware devices. In both arenas, the proponents highlight the benefits in terms of consumer convenience: additional payment options and additional information (map data) that can empower the rider in the transaction with the driver. For example, a tourist, able to see a realtime map of their journey, will now be more liable to ask "Why the hell are you going in this roundabout way to my hotel?" and reduce the unscrupulousness of drivers.

Detractors similarly highlight the effects of payments and transaction costs. By introducing credit cards into the billing systems, the authorities are passing on increased costs to drivers, a tax of sorts. A slight digression here: the taxi profession has typically been a cash-is-king affair - hence for example its appeal for the informal sector often the domain of transients and immigrants etc. (e.g. for an extreme case of 'informality' you can read James Ellroy's novels on the appeal of taxi ranks for the Mafia).

Both sides of the debate conflate things. Who really wants to watch television in a cab? That is surely a byword for yet more advertising. And yet that is what Mayor Bloomberg is touting even as the agenda of the authorities is plainly to exert additional control on the profession. On the one hand, the argument about privacy that the drivers advance is probably not the core objection, it is rather the issue of control, about losing discretion in the way they do business and the burden of additional transaction costs (which can even be mental costs).

A few centuries ago, the Quakers brought sanity to the systems of measurement with their reputation for probity in the standards of weights they provided. Eventually, social norms and mores were codified in laws, regulations and sometimes in technological standards. It is interesting that we are seeing lawmakers seeking to impose technological standards to achieve social ends. As we have seen in the case of braking style, there will still be behavioural attempts to game the system — that is the realm of the human factor. In the low end theory framework, the best you can hope for is to temper these things.

This year in Accra, the Accra Metropolitan Authority introduced medallions for taxi cabs and even imposed a dress code on taxi drivers (although from what I understand, the dress code is not that widely adopted). The introduction incidentally lead to an immediate decrease in the typical crime methods where criminals would use cabs for their robberies. By getting control of licensing, the AMA has managed to better understand the scope of the taxi market, the public also can better identify taxis and further norms can be codified. One wonders whether metered fares will be the next regulation to be adopted in Ghana. As anyone would tell you, a large part of the experience of using public transit in Ghana is the bargaining that one must do. Taxi drivers will quote exorbitant fares to those they perceive as well-heeled or unaware of the prevailing rates - and you don't even need to be an obroni to feel cheated at times. Metered fares would have undoubted benefits in reducing this kind of price discrimination and the associated transaction costs but might also remove social and cultural lubricants, those aspects of conversation and market traditions. I wonder if this is a trade-off that should be made. What say you?

I'll close with a further digression... You might have seen me point to this Lion King decorated taxi a couple of weeks ago. The Wife caught it parked next to the zebras and kitsch taxi displayed above. I quite like the serendipity of the photos and the varying images of Africa expressed in taxicabs.

Abercrombie & Kent are merchants of "Inspiring Experiences of Namibia" hence the zebras crossing they use to advertise their escapist travel services. The Lion King of course is pure Disney nostalgia. Such are the types and faces we use on our taxis about Africa that mysterious land. The fantasy of Brand Africa.

A Taxi Driver Soundtrack

A playlist for this note

• Loose Ends - Slow Down
  Apropos braking, we'll start our playlist with Slow Down, the brilliant showpiece of Loose Ends' Zagora album. Classic 80s soul music, eminently danceable and with an infectious chorus. It is often paired with the lead single Stay A Little While Child and the titles are fitting for the laidback theme of the band.
• The La Drivers Union Por Por Group - Trotro Tour Of Ghana
  
  
  
  We'll continue with some music by taxi drivers, some honk horn music from Ghana. It's unlike almost anything you've heard, simply consisting of the horns and drums that you might here on the streets as these drivers vie for your trade and seek to attract your attention. This horn group has a 50 year history amongst other things, wielding their honk horns against the colonial regime. They continue to make music from the most unlikely of instuments.
  
  I quite like 'Driver, Take Me, The Train Has Left Me Behind' and the Kpanlogo Por Por Medley but perhaps it is "Trotro Drivers, We Love You So" that is the best song on the album. You can listen to the slightly more conventional yet still exuberant Trotro Tour of Ghana here.

File under: taxi, economics, observation, markets, billing, transaction, costs, pricing, regulation, culture, conversation, technology, automation, adoption, human factors, price discrimination, toli

Rapid Transit

I. Wide Load Coming Through

A truck loaded with corn is parked on the side of a road in Mogadishu, Somalia. The delapidated city is the capital of the failed Horn of Africa state, where motorists have the choice of driving on the right or left hand side of the road, such is Mogadishu's anarchy. (Reuters). Circa 2004.

I've always wondered about this clipping, taken a few years ago, that The Wife used to have on her wall. At first I thought the scene was staged and that no one could possibly load a truck in this manner except to get the attention of foreign journalists. But it struck me that Somalia has indeed been party to this kind of nonsense for a generation or more thus anything goes - not to mention that this scene is only a matter of degree away from what I've witnessed in my own country, Ghana. It is the very definition of absurd.

II. A Heavy Load

A relatively famous scene from the Libyan desert circa 1978 (actually isn't Libya mostly desert?), fodder for picturesque postcards... I find the image interesting for the wide variety of bags that are attached to the truck. As you might know bags are my kind of thing.

III. Rural Concerns

credit: Robin.Elaine

credit: Johanne, licence: CC

A few months ago, there was lots of discussion about the transport of cattle in Africa. When you have mostly agrarian economies, you use whatever is expedient to transport goods, hence the sight of cattle on roads or on our trucks is nothing special. In the West per contra, you almost never see the animals from which your food is derived. Agribusiness is the rule rather than the exception. You receive your cold cuts of meat in the sanitized glass displays of your grocery store. The network of cattle cars, hog "finishers", meat renderers are an afterthought. Even the word butcher seems to be coming into disfavour such is the alienation from the practice; blood is taboo and it's simply the "meat department" in the grocery store.

The last few centuries have seen a sharp decrease in the segment of humanity that has to deal with food production. In the developed world we are reaching neglible percentages and in recent decades, especially in China and India, millions are trading in rural areas for urban slums. We are slowly losing the folk memory of agrarian past. Yet when it comes to food, we still have the visceral connection to the means of production in our ancestral past. That is why it is still theatrical when, every few summers, the French farmers go on strike and bring cattle into town to protest in front of city halls. The strength of the farm lobby will remain undiminished since they can always call on that hard-wired cultural connection.

IV. Infrastructure

credit: ellaroo

Ever since the troubles in Cote d'Ivoire started, there has been a massive increase in the road traffic in Ghana as the landlocked countries of West Africa, Mali and Burkina Faso chief among them, have been forced to divert their essential trade routes through Ghana. Even after the past few months of stability, it is a case of once bitten, twice shy - the Ivoriens may have blown it for good. The result has been that Ghanaian ports and roads have been struggling to cope with the extra flows.

Thus such scenes are a commonplace on the roads from the coast to the north: the heavily loaded trucks and the boys hitching a ride wherever they can. "Man Sit Down" is the slogan, fasten your seatbelts, you want to say.

For 30 years in Ghana and much of Africa, we were told by the traditional donors that there was no point to build dual carriageways and that our economies wouldn't support it. Apparently the great infrastructure buildout that separates the developed world from the developing world wasn't on the agenda. Instead we needed to open our markets, lower trade barriers, do structural adjustment and so forth in order to be good global citizens. Now our aid partners are changing their tune and well, those unfussy Chinese have had 15 years of slowly building up expertise doing infrastructure in Africa. They'll be the ones getting the contracts. Now even the DFID (England's development agency) is thinking about sanctioning major infrastructure as opposed to the small scale and NGO-focused approach that has been in vogue... We may even get a West African highway and the long-overdue regional integration out of this situation... Incidentally, only the Chinese seem to be interested in funding railways and it has been a very lonely 6 years for our Minister of Railways and transportation.

African leaders didn't inspire much confidence in the past but the messy business of development is all about infrastructure. The hope is that with the renewed focus on infrastructure in Africa we'll eventually have decent roads and transportation options and the rest will follow: cars that are roadworthy, drivers that are car-worthy and so forth. Baby steps...

Soundtrack for this note

Portishead - Roads

I've been thinking about Portishead - the band that is, and have been trying to find a way to weave them into the fabric of the blog. Roads, a deeply personal song seems apt as a soundtrack for mass transit. I still remember hearing their debut album, Dummy, for the first time. It was a promo cd lying around the radio station (WHRB) on a pile presumably to be discarded. I threw it in the player and was frankly stunned when I listened to it.

The first element of their appeal was a voice that seemed slight, ethereal and perhaps pained (or at the very least emotional). The lyrics come from some kind of turmoil deep inside Beth Gibbons. The drums are in the hip-hop vein, yet laidback and lazy. Geoff Barrows added all sorts of sonic niceties that befit a Bristol crew - samples of film dialogue, Isaac Hayes snippets, scratches, guitars and moog keyboards that made you feel you were in an old-fashioned movie theatre screening a film noir.

Of course we know that this became a "genre" and record companies quickly labeled works of this type "trip hop" that was a subplot to the 90s and indeed Portishead's music would be picked up in movies.

There wasn't a cover booklet with the cd which meant that it took some investigation to figure out the other ingredient that had so tickled my ear. The secret ingredient, the secret sauce, of the group was the theremin: it appears on perhaps a third of their songs - hence the cinematic connection.

Listening to Portishead play Mysterons or Roads is unnerving. You can hear the audience reaction on the Live: Roseland NYC album. The music is well, how to put it, haunting, mournful and more. It's the essence of the noir aesthetic - mood and cinematography translated to sound.

To me the theremin (or its Moog substitute) straddles worlds, creeping up on you and drawing your attention to something that lurks beneath, or that dwells in the shadows. I find comfort in the shadows of this music.

Oh, and I still don't have the dust jacket of that first Portishead album.

Obligatory video links: Roads, Mysterons

Alternate soundtrack: Fela - He Miss Road. Well, that's the African take on things...

File under: humour, photography, image, Africa, transportation, truck, bus, infrastructure, development, observation, music, Portishead, toli

Wist

We the people, having survived for so long on so little, and done so much for so long, are now qualified to do anything... for nothing.

I found the above musing in an old notebook of writings circa 1992. Spring cleaning, even if delayed until summer, does turn up the occasional nugget. It put me in mind of wist, hence some further musings on indigo moods.

The above painting reminded me of the following photo from the African Futurist of fishwives in the morning in Elmina, Ghana.

The stories they have to tell, the perspectives they could share. I want to have a conversation with them, simply sit with them in the middle of the day - in the brief moment before they get back to the important things on their plate. We the people indeed.

It also brought to mind the women who were dyeing cloths in those courtyards in Bamako, Abderrahmane Sissako's film that is, while the World Bank and international institutions were being put on mock trial in the foreground. The women and their work were meant to be the background and yet, from my standpoint, their stories and experiences were the foreground.

Wist is perhaps the attitude that best suits these unsettled times, we are all holding our breath and tightening our belts, bracing ourselves for who knows what.

In the USA especially, I sense a lot of wist in the air. Conveniently timed gut feelings abound all round, we have banned liquids and have to resort to zip-loc containers and long lines. Americans now need visa stamps and even passports. Heck, you can't even get out of the country if you want to without bribing passport expeditors or calling your congressman. When you take that trip to Brazil, you'll need to give up your biometric data, the reciprocal wages of bureaucracy and inconvenience, just like those visitors to the States have had to since it became a matter of Homelands and Security. If you stay in the country who knows who will be watching you or listening to your conversations. When you're on the subway, you need to be mindful of recent non-specific general threats. Suspicious people are everywhere - they could even be (gasp) next door! I think a lot of wist is in order.

There is a danger however: when wist devolves into nostalgia it becomes reactionary. Too much wist and you start dwelling on those good old days that never really were. Your thinking will get woolly and, without moderation, you are liable to be bamboozled into who knows what and then be left picking up the pieces, singing the inflation calypso as the chickens come home to roost. You really don't want your entire society to start behaving like actors in B-movies. The director may not cut the scene.

Hold on to wist I say. Wist is clear-eyed and lyrical. Wist is wary, wist is weary, yet while being realistic, wist embraces the here and now, the tense present and a better tomorrow. At heart then, wist is an optimistic sentiment.

The dictionaries present the word wist as obsolete and would direct us to its adjectival compere, wistful. Of the latter I prefer the meditative, pensive and forlorn senses, but of the former, it is that still small voice of wist that attracts me, that quiet and attentive outlook.

In my book, wist is stoic and, at its best, eschews melancholy. When wistful, one is pragmatic yet hopeful. The British and the French know a lot about wist as their empires have seen better days. Others however are still seeking the black gold of the sun. Would they take a moment to be wistful? Wist is about humility, about acknowledging the small steps towards the wonders that are still to come.

Wist presents an opportunity for resolve, it is a brief respite in that moment as you gather yourself up for the next task, the next struggle. Wist is a flight to quality, a premium bond for these subprime times. Wist is soul insurance that actually pays you back when you file your later claims.

I'll prognosticate here. Those in the developing world are actually at an advantage in these wistful times. Of necessity, we are aficionados of wist, world-weariness has long been our lot. A lifetime of almost always expecting the blows coming your way will leave you better equipped to deal with this harsh world. The school of hard knocks is our neighbourhood and our response is communal not unilateral. Sissoko would say "we are all responsible". One shouldn't strike out on one's own just because one can, rather we find strength in community. Burning Spear would add: social living is the best.

A Wistful Soundtrack

A playlist full of wist

Musically, the quality of wist is a step up from the blues however the blues tend to get more love since they are more dramatic and keenly felt - wist is merely transitional. In compiling a wistful playlist for this note, I initially thought to songs about holding on. To "hold on" is indeed the most resolute response to wist and I have many songs on that theme (Lisa Stansfield, Dennis Brown, Ann Nesby, Dwele and others can school you for a good hour about holding on). Shuffle serendipity struck however and instead I found my wistfulness encapsulated in the following songs.

• Sam Cooke - A Change is Gonna Come
  This song is perhaps the definition of soul music - the point at which the genre coalesced and departed from gospel and the blues. It is fitting that wist was the first vein in which Sam Cooke made out his soulful sound. There is both a spiritual and a bluesy feel to the song. Watching Talk to Me last night, that wonderful film about the life of Petey Greene, that ex-convict turned radio disc jockey, it was no surprise that A change is gonna come was the song that he played to sooth the soul on the airwaves in Washington D.C. that night after Martin Luther King Jnr. was assassinated. It speaks about optimism even in the face of setbacks. The vocal performance is one that few can equal although many have tried. A few sublime minutes of yearning and longing.
• Duke Ellington - Mood Indigo
  The Indigos album is one of my favourites in the Ellington catalog, featuring wistful tunes throughout. The only vocal track on the album is of course Autumn Leaves that paragon of remembrance (see also the autumn soundtrack). Prelude to a Kiss is all about the lyricism of Johnny Hodges, as is the old faithful, Solitude. The song I'll highlight however is the title track, Mood Indigo. An economy of emotion, it features a perfect trumpet solo full of whimsy and reflection by Shorty Baker. That wondrous portion when the rest of the band join in is ecstatic. An earlier performance is on youtube with Jimmy Hamilton Willie Cook (see corrections) doing the deed on trumpet and with a more prominent piano solo by Ellington. Indigos are not quite the blues and the Duke's band prove that indigo is the colour of wist.
  You can listen to the mp3 for the next week: Duke Ellington - Mood Indigo
• D'Angelo - The Line
  The crown prince of soul put it on the line seven years ago. The elements of the song are simple: Questlove's steady drums, James Poyser and D'Angelo's keyboards and Rhodes, a little boom bap from the bassist and above all the vocals. I hear Sam Cooke, I hear Al Green, I hear Prince, Curtis, Donnie, Marvin and more. It is a tour of the sounds of his favourite vocalists wrapped in his own stylings. It's the moment of truth, the stakes are high ("Will I fall off or will it be banging?"), he steels himself: "all I got to do is hold on". He'll stick to his guns, resolute to the challenge ahead.
• James Carter - The Intimacy of My Woman's Beautiful Eyes
  Perhaps the hungriest of the young lions of jazz, James Carter can also be the most tender when he want to. The musical scion of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster, he isn't afraid to engage in matters of the heart, albeit with a wink and a certain swagger. Hence this song is a study in contrasts: the wistful tone of the music set against the premise of the overwrought title. After a fairly subdued opening solo, the piano takes over and the bassist prods him along and what a piano solo. When Carter's saxophone returns wailing, or rather growling, the notes are urgent, longing and attentive — wistful in short. One hopes his woman forgave his missteps, the music is a plea for a renewed intimacy.
• Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins - Mood Indigo
  Apropos tenor saxophonists, there is another version of Mood Indigo that I'm very fond of: this intimate meeting of jazz giants. Ellington introduces the theme on piano and the band step in smooth as usual. After a while Coleman Hawkins steps up and delivers the goods. His solo is discursive, breathy and virtuosic. This is someone who has lived body and soul. Duke's accompaniment is subtle, encouraging Bean to find the emotional depth in the melody. Simply magic.
• Charles Mingus - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
  Mingus recorded Mood Indigo twice, recognizing as he did, the genius of Ellington's composition. Each occasion elicited typically sensitive bass solos from him. I'll focus here on his own composition, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, his tribute to Lester Young, written right after he learned of Pres's death. It captures the mournful and elegiac tone of loss, Mingus' great band remembering the arch tones and oblique art of their friend who paved the way for them. In the hip-hop vein, I suppose the closest would be Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth's They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) although that arguably leans more towards nostalgia than wist.
• Amel Larrieux - Weary
  The lead single of last year's opus, Morning, this song takes on the notion of hard experience in life. She takes her time to warm up as the song progresses and only really starts letting her hair down vocally at the midpoint. She's in control throughout observing the vagaries of the mood, a midtempo soul excursion. Watching the video (slightly lower quality on youtube), you see that she has a lot on her mind ("A woman is getting weary"). Ultimately she finds comfort around her friends and family as it should be. The song ends as it starts with Amel walking down the road. Perhaps the weariness has been lifted, in any cases she has given us music for a long walk.
• Cannonball Adderley Quintet - Walk Tall
  Like the country preacher declaimed:

  The most important thing of all is that no matter how dreary the situation is, and how difficult it may be, that the song really doesn't matter until the song begins to get you down.
  
  So our advice to you, the message that the Cannonball Adderley Quintet brings to us, is that it's rough and tough in this ghetto, a lot of funny stuff going down. But you've got to walk tall.
  
  Walk tall. Walk tall.

Wist, the ineffable sentiment for our times.

See also: Indigos, a playlist

Next: Resisting Nostalgia

File under: wist, mood, colour, language, emotion, indigo, observation, culture, music, jazz, soul, life, Ghana, Africa, nostalgia, art, Social Living, Things Fall Apart, toli