Thirteen

Five years ago I set out at 3am for Heathrow airport to catch the early morning flight to Madrid. There I connected with a flight to Quito in Ecuador. The previous days and weeks had been fraught with worry about whether I was doing the right thing. Did I get the right vaccinations? Would I have enough money? Would I cope with all that travel? Was I coming back? What was I going to do with all my stuff?

Picking up where I left off at Machu Picchu, we headed down into Aguas Calientes (trans. “hot waters”) by coach and by the time we got there it was torrenting down with rain. So much for exploration. We waited out the downpour in a pizza place and deliberated over whether to buy souvenier snaps from the tour guides. Ironically for a town named after hot waters, it was bitterly cold. One of those places where the sound of running water follows you wherever you go, the best thing about it was the huge trains that ran down the middle of street - big clanking hulks pulling huge passenger trains.

In a tour full of highlights, Christmas week of 2013 was nonetheless one of the greatest weeks of my life. I may have moaned, groaned, and got completely soaked, but it was worth it to see Machu Picchu in the sunshine.

Arequipa and Cusco -- the two cities that are the subject of this post -- are probably the two cities in Peru that are most amenable to travellers (though Lima certainly has a lot to offer too). For me they should have been punctuated with a trip to Colca canyon, one of the deepest canyons in the world and twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, I got really sick on the second day in Arequipa as my attempts at keeping my tummy bug at bay finally failed. (Even so, I didn't actually seek any proper medical help till the second day in Cusco, I was pretty boneheaded about it.)

Next up was a piecemeal section of the trip that took in a varied set of sights and helped us get to know the new passengers who joined in Lima. On the first day we took a boat trip out to the Ballestas Islands, a nature reserve that is informally known as “the poor man’s galapagos”. Living there are penguins, sea birds, sea lions and seals. The speed boat out was a little wet and wild (and in fact the return trip was even wetter and wilder) so we all got soaked (twice) but the microclimate around the islands themselves was calm and warm, and we all got good value out of our cameras (if they still worked that is). We even saw a pelican get taken down by a sea-lion which was an interesting if not altogether pleasant display of nature red in tooth and claw. Also, who knew that guano was so valuable?!?

From Punta Sal we took a long driving down to Huanchaco, via a stop off at the Lord of Saipan museum. The lord of Saipan is a Moche mummy found dressed in all manner of gold and surrounded by artefacts and other sacrifices (including other humans and decapitated llamas). The tour took a while to get going (our guide was late) but the exhibition was so amazing (the pieces were painstakingly restored in Germany) that it was hugely enjoyable. The diorama at the end featuring moving animatronic waxworks of Moche people was extremely weird though.

After Cuenca we set off for the Peruvian border. One of the great advantages of having a UK passport in South America is that you don't need any visas. If you're Australian or Canadian it's a different story. Nevertheless we all got over the border with very little trouble (the third ever land border crossing of my life) apart from the bits where they seem to make you wait in a queue just for the sake of making you wait in a queue.

After Baños, we set off for Cuenca, which is a town in the south of Ecuador. Being a long drive, the journey was broken up with our first excursion to some inca ruins, a large complex at Ingapirca with a sun temple. It was built on an earlier site that dated back to about the 9th century and the Inca then conquered the area and built on top of it, as they tended to while their empire was expanding out from Peru to the south in the 11th and 12th centuries.

We left Misahualli for Baños via an hour in nearby Tena to get something for the truck fixed. After that the drive to Banos was pretty short - or at least it seemed that way as I alternated between dozing off, snapping the scenery and... well... dozing off some more. We arrived at a campsite about twenty minutes taxi ride from Banos and this was it, the thing I'd feared most about this trip: the camping. Fortunately, as an odd boy, I managed to secure my own tent - the gadget palace that you can see in my selfie! Getting the tent up was straightforward and all my assorted camping gear seemed to live up to requirements! It chucked it down with rain in the night, so it was good that the fly sheet did it's job too. It was great fun to lie there listening to the rain, nice and warm and dry. More importantly, I also managed to get some sleep.

I'm a bit behind in my posts about the trip and this post interrupts the sequence of events somewhat, just because I've not felt that well and that has dominated my thoughts about what to write. Basically for a week or two I've had varying degrees of bellyache and it's not been fun. Instead of feeling the gratitude and excitement I've felt since being here, I've spent a lot of time wanting to curl up in the corner and just be... well... somewhere else.

Otavalo

By the time this goes up, I will be at least a week in to my South American tour. I flew out to Ecuador last Thursday (the 21st) and ended up being awake for more than twenty four hours. My flight left London early and I had a three hour stopover in Madrid, then a twelve hour flight onward to Quito. My bag didn't leave Madrid though, so we were separated for about twenty four nerve-racking hours. Luckily, I'd packed a change of clothes and so I was still able to explore Quito with Lee and Miriam (fellow Tucan travellers) the next day without too much discomfort.

Four great albums this month for the last album digest in a while.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I baked a chocolate cake the other day and it was a great success. Here is the recipe, which is a trivial modification of one that appears in Nigel Slater's "Real Food" (Amazon links: UK, US). "Real Food" is a cookbook that I genuinely treasure. The modification I have made for this recipe is to omit the espresso but I will point out where it should be added, in case you want to give that a try.

I have mixed feelings about this show. On the one hand, I like that there are depictions of working class Britain on display and I feel that it is right that these paintings are considered part of the British cultural canon. I also like that a lot of these paintings represent large gatherings of people, which are absent from a lot of what we might call the mainstream of art.

Previously on...

Today I went with a friend to see Tate Britain's "Art Under Attack" show. It's an interesting, if uneven, affair that entertains but doesn't quite succeed in everything it attempts to do. The big word that you learn is iconoclasm: the act of attacking an object believed to represent particular beliefs. The show splits into two parts: ideological acts of iconoclasm committed against works of art in Britain and the work of British artists who embrace iconoclasm as a means for making art. The first half (comprising more than half of the show - because I lump together two of the shows sections "Religion" and "Politics" into this half) is more interesting and successful than the second ("Aesthetics").

After a few false starts I managed to finish "High-Rise", the next in my collection of JG Ballard novels. For a book that I had trouble getting into, it turned out to be a pretty good read - even if it was also a pretty unpleasant one. Published in 1975, "High-Rise" is perhaps ahead of its time in exploring the effects of social breakdown in stylised and artificial situations where people are in close contact. You might think the plot, about a luxury high-rise that goes to hell, is in some way political or sociological but it really isn't. It's just a big playground in which Ballard throws around some of his most twisted ideas, all the while remarking on the very artifice of the situation.

A nice diverse selection of albums this month:

The single biggest fact of life is that you are always going to be alone, you just might not realise it. Listening to The Cardigans' excellent 2003 "Long Gone Before Daylight" will help you see that all our relationships are essentially screwed -- but at least it sounds great while it does so.

Ellen Gallagher is an American artist and her "AxME" show recently finished at the Tate Modern. I went along a few weeks ago and have only now had a bit of time to write up my thoughts.

For reasons that will become apparent, there will be a short period soon where I will not be writing album digests. Until then, I'm clearing a backlog of some albums that I've been listening to but haven't had enough time or motivation to write about. Only one of this month's albums was released this month, something that's not that uncommon at this time of the year as it is not the best time to release things. Here's the list:

Motivation and Lies

In 2005, towards the end of the second year of my PhD I presented a poster at a conference in Dresden, Germany. My eccentric colleagues and I stayed on a huge canal boat moored on the Elbe for no discernible reason other than it seemed like a laugh at the time. In reality I was the second worst snorer of the three of us and it also turned out that our room was right underneath the gang-plank and every morning at six the person who made breakfast would stomp across it.

It's so good that I paid to see it twice! There, that's the review done.

Another four albums for you this month. Sometimes the problem is not finding albums to listen to but actually finding time to listen to them! Often it is not because I don't have time but because I have already found some great albums this month and I am busy listening to those instead. As a result, a couple of these albums are ones that I have only listened to for a week or so, but they are interesting enough to write about. Here are the four albums I am going to write about this month:

"The Ocean At The End Of The Lane" is the new novel by Neil Gaiman. I was so intrigued by it that I bought the hardcover, which is unusual for me because I prefer paperbacks. I'd been excited by reading the first chapter online at the Guardian website and from reading a blog post about the novel written by the author's wife Amanda Palmer. I'd not read any of his novels before but they had long been on that "to read" list that is typically as long as your arm. I also enjoyed the movie adaptation of "Stardust" though I have no way (yet!) of knowing whether the film is as good as the original book.

I want to see a TV show about great mathematicians of the past on a channel like BBC Four. Programmes about mathematics tend to be rather condescending, at least to anyone who has a bit of mathematical knowledge. Perhaps a way around this is to delve into the social and historical circumstances of the great mathematicians and how that along with their personality produced the mathematical results for which they are famous.

Ibrahim El-Salahi is a modernist artist from Sudan. I believe this exhibition is a first for an African artist at the Tate Modern. Much like the Choucair show (which is still on everyone!), it's an engaging but too short introduction to an interesting artist that you have probably never heard of.

There were no mornings or afternoons. It was one seamless day, every day, until the sun began to arc and fade, mountains emerging from their silhouettes. This is when we sat and watched in silence.

This week I read “Skios” by Michael Frayn (who was born in Mill Hill). It’s another book from now customary pile of books that tends to develop around this time of year. "Hawksmoor" and "The Marriage Plot" were on the same ever-increasing pile. “Skios” is something of a change from what I normally read: it’s a comedic farce about stolen identities set on the (fictional) titular Greek island. Amusingly, the wikipedia page for the novel currently reads “Praise for Skios was entirely misplaced”, probably thanks to some curmudgeon who doesn't like the novel. Cue a ‘misplaced’ blog post about it, something that most people would consider to be business as usual for my blog.

Just two albums this month as I am still enjoying last month's albums so much (and I spent loads of time getting reacquainted with Boards Of Canada at the start of the month). I listened to a few more albums but not often enough to write loads about them so there is an "honourable mention" section at the end of the post that briefly discusses a few more albums.

Peter Ackroyd's "Hawksmoor" was first published in 1985. I bought a recent reissue that forms part of Penguin's decades collection whilst on a spree in Waterstone's. It appealed to me as I recently realised that despite growing up in the eighties and nineties, I had read very novels that were either written or set in the eighties. Happily "Hawksmoor" is both of these, sort of. It also appealed to me because it is (again, sort of) a detective story and I've found myself getting into those lately. John Squire's excellent artwork for the cover and the nice binding also helped to seal the deal: you don't get that with an iPad or a Kindle.

I have written a lot in these posts about how music gets indelibly tied up with places, events and feelings. For me this album by Fanfarlo is tied up with all three of these. It makes me happy and sad at the same time in memory of great times that are now gone but are fondly remembered. I am aware that this is the youngest album on the list so far and so it might be a bit early to endow classic status upon it, but "Reservoir" is a fine album and to my ears it stands up really well. Listening to it again in the course of writing this post I found that I remembered every note and musical phrase, and yet somehow I also managed to delight in hearing new features in the production that I'd not noticed before.

Today I went to see the new Superman reboot Man of Steel with friends. I really enjoyed it, particularly the more reflective take on the superhero myth. Starting out with the fate of the planet Krypton, Man of Steel approximately fuses the events of both the first two original Superman movies. We get to see Superman's arrival and childhood on earth and then the arrival of Zod, a maniac bent on replacing the earth and everyone on it with a new race of Kryptonians.

Lilacs & Champagne Danish & Blue

Today I went to see "George Bellows 1882-1925 Modern American Life" at the Royal Academy of Arts. It's the first time I've been to the RA but I was emboldened by my art pass and the fact that Bellows was a contemporary of Edward Hopper, a painter whom I admire greatly. This is the first major retrospective of Bellows' work in the UK and taking in his wonderful paintings this afternoon, I felt a little embarrassed that I hadn't seen anything of his before.

Yesterday I went to see the Saloua Raouda Choucair show at the Tate Modern. As it was quite small, I went to see the Lichtenstein show again as well.

It was quite hard to choose an 808 State album for the understated classics series for two reasons. The first is that I was introduced to 808 State quite late through a friend's sister's cassette copy of The Shamen's En-Tact (the original version recorded from vinyl that had a thirteen minute version of "Evil Is Eden") that also had -- to fill out the C90 -- the full length sweary version of "What Time Is Love?" by The KLF and four tracks: "Cubik", "Pacific", "Olympic" (I think...), and "In Yer Face".

This was a show that I had put off going to see for quite a while now. Looking online at the pictures featured in the show did not really excite me enough to get out and see it. I'd seen Whaam! before in isolation (it's part of the Tate collection and will no doubt return once the retrospective show is over) and it didn't really grab me, arresting as it is. However, with plenty of free time this week it was an ideal time to go see it and I was happy to be proved wrong.

"The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides is a novel about love and growing up set in the privileged world of US academia in the early eighties. The main plot concerns a love triangle involving two guys and a girl. Madeline Hanna, the girl at the apex of the love triangle, is the main focus of the novel and the majority of the novel is told from her standpoint. I think her sections are incredibly well written but I'd love the thoughts of a female reader, in case it is actually all a horribly male way of seeing through a young woman's eyes. In love with Madeline (and the guy that we meet first) is Mitchell Grammaticus, an overly deep guy who is terribly concerned about whether he is doing the right thing in the world. He thinks that religious studies is for him but later finds that it is harder to live up to your ideals than you first imagine.

I saw Star Trek: Into Darkness last night in 3D at the IMAX in Waterloo. I am going to have to separate this into a review into two parts, a review of the film and a review of the viewing experience. I am not completely happy with how the film experience is changed by the 3D and the super big screen and I will try to explain what I mean.

Some great albums this month by the Flaming Lips, Wire, James Blake, and The Knife!

I was fifteen when I first read "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac and recently, after twice as much lifetime lived, I was able to watch the film version directed by Walter Salles.

Just the David Bowie album this month as it’s pretty much the only new music that I’ve listened to.

A while back, I decided I was going to write about the Iain M. Banks sci-fi-novels (mainly as a respite from having to read and write about J. G. Ballard novels, but I only got as fas as writing about the excellent “Against A Dark Barkground” and re-reading the first of the Culture novels “Consider Phlebas”. WARNING: Some plot spoilers follow (but not too many).

“Walking With Thee” is the second album by Liverpool band Clinic. It was released in 2002, which seems like an age ago now. Even longer ago they released the single “The Return of Evil Bill”, which was got me interested in them in the first place.

I have had a lot of ideas for posts swirling around in my head in recent days. This is because I have actually done quite a lot of cool things in that time, and because I have hung out with some great people who make me think, and because I always have a whole load of things bouncing around in there anyway - space junk of the mind. I was thinking about how to put together these thoughts I have been having about art and about stories and yes, about love too. It all kind of got muddled up and then I saw it.

Most Februaries are quite quiet when it comes to albums (though this was not the case back in 2011) and although only the Foals album is a major release, I was quite surprised to find myself with four decent albums to write about. They are:

The existence, or impending existence, of a new novel by Thomas Pynchon was announced today. I have all his previous books (seven written over a period of about fifty years, a pace that I definitely approve of), though he’s a hard author to get close to: I’ve only finished three and started four up till now. The unfinished one is, of course, Gravity’s Rainbow (GR) and somewhat perversely, I have two copies of the thing. Of the three unstarted, both Mason & Dixon (MD) and Against The Day (ATD) seem too dense and intimidating, while Vineland just begs me to read The Crying Of Lot 49 (L49) or Inherent Vice (IV) one more time.

The other weekend, beset by insomnia, I decided to follow my own advice and get up to do something instead of wallowing unable to sleep. I pulled my emergency jigsaw out of the cupboard and set to it. I should stress that I mean a jigsaw puzzle and not an actually jigsaw: DIY at 2am is not such a good idea!

Only one of this month three albums was actually released this month. Nelly Furtado's Mi plan was actually released over three years ago - I only discovered it last year when I wrote the September album digest following the release of "The Spirit Indestructible", or it might have been when I wrote about "Folklore" at around the same time.