Anas’s Blog

I really fucking don’t. Everytime it seems as if I’ve got a bit of a foothold, turns out to be just an illusion. Oh well I suppose there’s joy in recognising that at least

Joy is brief
Sorrow and grief are endless.
– Kabir

Here’s a really good article on the Pakistani authorities’ neglect of Lahore – a neglect that borders on contempt for that truly venerable city and its innumerable treasures — by Simon Jenkins of the Guardian. Jenkins manages to touch on the many layers of Pakistan’s history (pre-Islamic, Mogul, British Raj) that have bequeathed countless impressive, often dazzling, monuments and relics, to the modern day city of Lahore. Only, that is, for Pakistan’s current totalitarian regime to allow them to fall derelict or to demolish them for short term profit in a society where corruption is the norm. Of course this has to be understood in the context of a country where the treatment of most human beings and the low cost placed on their lives and wellbeing is the greatest outrage. That understood, I have to confess that being of Pakistani origin myself I am angry at the thought that so much of my heritage (and not just in Lahore, where it is most tragically apparent) is being wiped out as a result of greed and carelessness. I was in Lahore in 2005 and was absolutely amazed at how beautiful it was, and that a city with such an illustrious past, a past still visible in the streets and boulevards, within the Walled City, was practically unknown here in the West where we continually exalt places like Paris, Rome, and Venice — who knew dirty little Pakistan held such a jewel? 

I guess a part of it is selfishishness: being Pakistani (well of Pakistani-origin anyway) I’d much rather for my own sense of self-esteem that Pakistan were known for the exquisite mogul architecture of Lahore and the stupendous beauty of the Karkorams, things like that, than as a hotbed of terrorism and fundamentalism, whose people are eminently expendable and whose only real worth is strategic in the war against (some) terror. And this is because no matter how hard I try to convince myself otherwise, to rid myself of this habit of thought, I do identify myself with that Godforsaken country — it’s in the blood. 

Happy new year! If 2007 was a bit shit, I hope 2008 is a bit less so.

(I know it’s a bit early but I don’t have computer access again until 2008.)

Here are some of my favourite books, CDs and films from the past year. Now, the criteria for anything to appear here is both that I really liked it and that *I* discovered it this year – not that it was published/released this year or anything like that. I’m reasonably behind the times so the list is anything but up to date.

Books:

This was the year I discovered the great F Scott Fitzgerald, who I now rate as my favourite author (in the English language, anyway). And so my two favourite books of the year are Tender is the Night and the Great Gatsby with their beautifully trippy and masterful descriptions of reality.

I also managed to read Richard Brautigan’s An Unfortunate Woman and A Confederate General in Big Sur, both of which I enjoyed a lot and I’m proud to say that I’m now a great admirer of Brautigan’s idiosyncratic prose.  Oh yeah and I finished Dostoevsky’s the Devils, but I wrote about that in another blog entry & I’ve run out of things to say about it.

Nelson Algren’s A Walk on the Wild Side which I finished a few weeks back, is a very good novel but deeply grim. Also Algren’s often ornate style has a tendency to become confusing and his writing hard to follow — but when it works it flows beautifully. And his empathy and compassion for the down and outs, whores, drunks, pimps — the outsiders that society has cast out – whose lives he details is deeply touching. 

I’ve also become a big fan of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendo(u)r comic series. I have to admit, for me, a lot of the enjoyment comes from recognising a lot of myself in Pekar’s neuroses and doubts. But Pekar has undoubtedly been instrumental in pushing the limits of what can be done with the format.

Music:

No contest. For me the best thing I heard all year was Shack’s Waterpistol which was only reissued properly in2007. Really it belongs to the 1990s, or would have if by a tortuous series of accidents it hadn’t become a ”lost” album, like that other masterpiece Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers. The highlight from Waterpistol for me is the haunted jangling glittery misery of Undecided; a love song dedicated to heroin, and the high that lets you be somebody, also the sweetest song about addiction I’ve ever heard. I also listened to a bit of Indian classical music, the ultra-influential 60s piece Call of the Valley as well as to  Debashish Bhattacharya, the Calcutta Hendrix, and found it utterly exhilirating. Oh yeah, I also really got into Congregation and Gentlemen by the Afghan Whigs this year. Both are pretty soulful records, the latter is more polished, but their power derives from Greg Dulli’s soul-baring honesty — or at least he plays that role convincingly enough. Shockingly I only got to hear Joni’ Mitchell’s Blue for the first time in 2007, but it helped get me through some heavy times.

Films:

Favourite film is Jodorowsky’s El Topo which I caught at the GFT just before my move to that shithole Nottingham. A disconcerting and powerful series of mystically derived visual symbols combined with a number of the most common motifs, themes and cliches from Spaghetti Westerns and a lot of lithe, attractive nude women (I’m talking about El Topo not Nottingham here) , all somehow put together to make what is obviously a complete masterpiece of world cinema — a  bit sleazy, a bit cheesy, and even a bit profound. I also enjoyed the Lives of Others which I saw with my pal Natalie also at the GFT.  

Websites:

My favourite this year as it has been for a while now is Mortimer’s Media Underground site, which frustratingly I can’t access through my library account (the only access I have at the mo). It’s usually the first site I click onto when I get online. Myspace has gotten passe, even for someone like me who’s not really with it when it comes to online fads. Facebook is pretty cool, even tho I’ve only 4 friends. I don’t really visit many sites to be honest, the internet isn’t a big part of my life. But I make a point to check out Norman Finkelstein’s site, the excellent Lenin’s Tomb, Jews Sans Frontieres, and Counterpunch when I am online. I also like Zinzin’s new blog and liked his old one before he removed it due to his troubling obsession with the McCann’s (only echoing the general public’s  disturbing obsession however). I hate putting fucking links in, it’s a pain.

2006 has undoubtedly been one of the worst years of my life (so far — and I hope they don’t come much worse),  so I’m more than glad that it’s almost over. I know, I know, it’s nothing more than a change of calendar date, and that thinking of my life in terms of yearlong chunks might well encourage some kind of complacency, but my luck has been more than awful over the past 12 months. My familial relations, my social relations, career prospects, mental and physical wellbeing, etc, have all suffered massively –  I know I won’t have many fond memories of this year – especially the latter half during which I was subjected to many ugly things, and in which I did some ugly things too.  The world outside my little cocoon also become a much shittier place in general, and sometimes when I’m particularly down I switch on the news and it’s reassuring to see other people suffering across the world, to know that it’s not just me– that I’m not completely alone. Like yesterday for example. Something especially upsetting happened yesterday which left me feeling weak and numb and which I still feel very shaken from right now as I type. So, I lay down on the sofa and switched on Channel 4 news which was showing a special report on the carnage in Iraq: the words and pictures relaying in some miniscule measure just how the sheer horrors faced by everyday Iraqis have intensified many-fold in the past 12 months. I felt really perverse for thinking this, but it did make me feel a bit better about what’d happened to me, gave me some morbid perspective. See, at least that’s not happening to me…

Ah, anyway, it’s Christmas soon, and that usually means some good films on the TV. But this year it’s just crap. I mean, where are all the old Carry On films, British sitcom spin-offs, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the 80’s American classics?

To round off,  there were some bright spots to this year, mostly discovering new music, films and books, and losing myself in them. Here are my favourites:

CDs:

Neko Case - Fox Confessor….

Gregory Isaacs - Night Nurse

The Congos - Heart of the Congos

Gram Parsons - Grievous Angel

Books:

Kurt Vonnegurt - Slaughterhouse Five

Charles Dickens - Great Expectations

 Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

…oh my mind’s blanked out at the mo, but I’ll add more.