Knowing When to Stop

I have discovered a new integral quality a good musician, and an artist for that matter, needs to have -- knowing when to stop! I just came back from a jazz performance at the hip London Dalston borough, at a hip London jazz club, as part of the hip London Jazz Festival. Well, dare a I say it, this perversion of a music was one "hip" to many for old humble me. The words "fucking weird" spring to mind. Immediately. Admittedly less rough methaphors were at the forefront at mine, and my friend Othman's who came with me, mind during the performance. Call it inspiration. "A swan just died in Hyde Park," Othman pointed observantly. " It feels like watching Becket's Waiting for Godot in Swedish, I replied. I suppose reading existentialist literature to the soundtracks of a duck being gang raped would be an appropriate midgroung between our sentiments for the musical event.

I tried to look for the thorn in my own eye, I really did. I thought that my genuine amusement might be similar to how the Spanish Infanta might have felt if, after just having been painted by Velazquez, she had seen a late Picasso or Dali. Artist with established reputation today, I reasoned, would have startled the masses back in the day, much in the same way I was started when the pianist started to pluck the strings of her grand piano with a drumming stick. Except the void between my painful craving for melody at this performance and the musicians resolute decision to not give me four notes in a row that made sense was on the scale of the Paleolithic era and the year 3000. And I wouldn't go as far as calling myself a musical caveman.

In case you are wondering what "knowing when to stop" means, this is when:

Daily Awesomes: August

13.08.2010
Jogging in the rain and finding yourself the only person on the road.
14.08.2010
"When are you coming home, I'm cooking dinner?" phone calls.
15.08.2010
Watching a rerun of a favorite show and realizing you've actually never seen that episode.
16.08.2010
Making it to the food market just as stands are closing and everything is half off, "just for you."
17.08.2010
Thinking how smart your coffee date is as you sip from the cup
18.08.2010
Finding out you are actually not out of chocolate.
19.08.2010
Oldie, but goodie: Illegal afternoon naps.

New Rubric: Daily Awesomes!

It's just past midnight on a Friday night. I've alerted all sources -- I'm staying in and working on my dissertation. It's a lie. Clearly. Instead, I just found the 1000 Awesome Things Project (check out blog roll) and I am shamelessly stealing and modifying the idea. I will write one feel good thing I did today, and will try to keep the effort going tomorrow. Feel free to join in at any time.

Writer's Block

Summer. City. Cloudy English beaches. Roadtrips'n'laughs. The ultimate 20 questions word: TASSLE. Barbecues. World Cup. Sad Brazilians. Rediscovering favorite people over Janelle Monae. Middle eastern news that make your hands shake. Go Dutch! Michiel de Ruyter. Navy barracks and bad pop music. IDEAs. Debates. On a point of information, sir, do you mind the sweatshop where your sneakers are made? A Greece-Bulgaria-Romania new energy deal. Hummus and marshal arts. I saw the Starry Night, you saw the frame... New job. Old schoolwork. The FSA has reputation problems, do you? Мерси, че се отбихте.

Where the Electoral Trump Cards Go?

Britain's allegedly most unpredictable and close election in ages didn't actually yield that revolutionary of a result. While the Lib Dems do hold the key to a likely ruling coalition, Clegg's stellar performance in the TV debates and evident affinity for the campaign trail did not work the miracles they were expected to work according to the last polls before the election. Cameron's call for change did not part the sea either. With less than 50 seats ahead of Labour as of the moment, seems that the Broken Britain he depicted did not come running for a Torry repair work after all. It seems that the one man who managed to pull an ace of his sleeve was the one least expected to do so. Camera-unfriendly, charisma-deprived, gaffe-making Brown still has got some game. Now, heading a party who took the country to five overseas conflicts and is leaving it with a budget deficit the size of Mouth Olympus, Greek pun intended, you would wonder why.
Couple of reasons spring to mind. Firstly, Brits, the progressive, debate loving nation they are, are really not that at edge with the Establishment. That is, while traditional bi-polar politics split the country with dividing lines, faith in the present political class prevails. This is exactly what a Lib Dem party would generally fear. Lib Dems don't usually have sizable core lobbies. They don't appeal to extreme constituencies, like the very rich or the very poor, they require people to think. Their rhetoric has less room for populism. People are rarely born in Lib Dem families, they usually chose to vote so when they have the educational background to make political choices. So the only air that a Lib Dem party can get under its wings is one, a charismatic leader and two, dissatisfaction with the current political elite.
Arguably, Nick Clegg gave the UK Lib Dems the first. His dominance in the first TV debate is admitted by Fleet street, left, right and center. But the second ingredient of the recipe appears to be in shortage. If you compare what is happening in the UK now to when the Lib Dems, lead by the former monarch, won a landslide victory in Bulgaria in 2004, you would see where I'm coming from. Now, their's was a lesson into how you come from behind the scenes, capture a nation's thirst for change by decent rhetoric (albeit populist) and manipulate it to the complete fulfillment of your political agenda.
On a more pragmatic note, I also wonder how does a third party win seats in a country who's media has such strong bi-polar political affiliations (except, of course, one notable independent Independent). You think Italian media is biased? You should have seen the Sun yesterday. It had an Obamanized image of Cameron and a slogan "Britain's Only Hope." The FT today attributed Clegg's dazzling rise to the TV debates. Imagine what he could have done if he has some media backing as well.
And lastly, and I do mean lastly in terms of impact on campaign politics, come the good old party manifestos and whether or not the parties who are winning and losing did actually have a good plan to lead the UK out of recession. With the one camp propelling the nanny state and the other wanting schools to run themselves, there was so much room left for a mid ground policies. What was on offer, however, didn't add up on all counts, and some last minute voters might have caught up on their reading and figured it out.

The Power of None

I find one of the most unfortunate paradoxes of student lifestyle to be that, while the very design of our endeavour mandates us to engage our minds in the heights of academic debate, thinking thoughts with various degree of real life applicability, that same occupational design forces us to fight the most mundane of battles. In other words, intellectual rigor is not yet purchasing power, and I for one have found my rights as a consumer violated on a number of occasions chiefly because my pattern of consumption, saving, spending, or rent-paying evidently does not tickle the relevant service providers sufficiently for them to care about the quality of their product. The particular disturbance I find myself entrapped by, and the bizzare fuel for my attention deficit vis-a-vis academia, is that my landlord has undertaken a, as of the moment, two month long repair work of my terrace, rending it inaccessible, failing to complete the work on time or provide adequate compensation for the inconvenience caused. What could I possibly leverage in this dispute? My Financial Regulation essay? My knowledge of market based regulation? My ability to express my utter aggravation with a number of synonyms and metaphors? None of these would work, that is certain. My intuitive decision to assess whether the UK housing market has a built in safety net helpful in my situation led me to the advice to contact a solicitor. A banal advice which, again, brings my monetary predicament to the forefront, not to mention my distaste for wasting time at the moment. Oh dear.

I won !!!

I freakin' won the Bernard Levin award. I am just going to use this platform to brag, since it's pretty much only darling Aleks Giga who reads my blog, I think ... I will be going an internship at the Daily Mail this summer and fingers crossed find a way to stay in jounralism. So here's the entire winning essay. The award presented said it was "un-put-downable"!

Failing LSE

7AM. Vivaldi’s Spring. Lights. And all that jazz. Toothbrush, coffee cup, run for the 243. Monday traffic, newspaper. Oh, look, it’s my Financial Regulation professor in Letters to the Editor again, and the topic for next class on the front page. Who needs a course pack anyway? Aldwych, The Royal Court of Justice. BUS STOPPING. Dash to class. Good morning, Buenos Días, Привет. I can never remember how many times they kiss hello in Chile. 22 classmates, 18 countries, 10 accents, 100 opinions. We are an argumentative bunch. Last Friday we came up with 12 reasons why new policy of the old chairman of the Federal Reserve might be wrong. In the break between two lectures we disagreed on Beckett as well. Professionals go to conferences abroad to discuss change with leading academics and other bright minds. I go to school.
Have you listened to a Rachmaninov concert for piano and orchestra? It usually starts off with a theme played by the string instruments, which later repeats, while the sounds of a grand piano pierce the violin-lead harmony to disturb the unison and leave a mark. Existing in the LSE reality makes me want to be a Rachmaninov piano. The student body would be my string ensemble. I marvel at the thought, energy, and enthusiasm accumulated on Houghton Street. Yet every day, I get reminded, I am not the only piano around. The Union, the street, the classroom, the pub are buzzing with the allegro appassionato solos of young people decisively taking over platforms and championing the causes they hold dear. In discussions on state intervention and entrepreneurship, on racism and freedom of speech, the public-private border is stormed. Private conversations can be as enlightening as public events, making it incredibly difficult to choose between spending Tuesday evening sparring intellectually among the Debate Society or discussing climate change with a Lord. Ultimately, the discourses enrich us more than the conclusions. In the dissonance of melodies, we strive to emerge harmonious, failing gloriously and walking away with more questions than answers. It’s a failure worth every penny.
One of my favorite things about the LSE is that it trivializes exceptionality. Take for example the book I bought this week from the bookshop on campus. It is arguably one of the most up-to-date and well argued books on its subject at the moment. It was Tuesday afternoon, and equipped with my new purchase, a cup of fair-trade mint tea, and a spare hour I sat in the Fourth Floor Café, only to be handed a colorful schedule for this year’s Economics and Finance Society conference. Imagine the pleasant astonishment when among the familiar names of LSE academic champions, I spotted the very author of the book I was holding. Before I knew it, I found myself front row seated, bright light lit, questions scribbling, and talking to a friend who had just interviewed the star panelist for the school newspaper. A nonchalant waltz to the forefronts on knowledge.
I went home that evening and stayed up late finishing the book, going over the issues the writer had raised in her speech, and trying to come up with conclusions of my own. As student tradition requires, my nocturnal musings completely disarmed the frantic sounds of my wake up alarm, forcing me to fast forward my mourning routine and speed off to class. Yawning recollections from last night’s reading collided with the sounds and smells of London in the morning; my affection for living in a dazzling metropolis mildly diluted by the pressing need to make my way through the cultural smorgasbord and get to class on time. Valuing punctuality is generally a good idea. Valuing punctuality was particularly beneficial that day, as the guest lecturer was not only an accomplished professional, but a change maker discussed in that very book bought, by that very writer I met earlier in the week. This lecture was an exceptional opportunity; it was also just another day at the LSE.
7AM. Vivaldi’s Spring. Lights. It is Friday already. As the pages of the calendar turn, I wonder will I ever be surrounded by a group of individuals this diverse, intriguing, witty and challenging, as I have been throughout the year. The chatter of Houghton Street campaigning shakes me off of my introverted retrospect. A line for tickets in front of the Student Union desk. Whose prime minister will be visiting the School next week? E-mail. Will I join few friends for a concert at the Royal Festival Hall next Monday? Of course I will, Rachmaninov is in the program. Glance over the seminar topics for the next lectures. More questions with no clear answers, another discussion to be had in class and continued over mint tea, another chance to learn what I need to learn more about.
LSE’s “motto rerum cognoscere causas” or “to know the causes of things” is a quote from Virgil's Georgics. Virgil's affinity for Epicureanism and the belief that the highest pleasure is achieved through knowledge and friendship suits us well, even if epicurean value of modesty and moderation does not completely fit a student body whose protests kidnapped the British headlines in the 1960s.
Midnight will strike shortly. A question I have been putting off all week lingers on my mind – how to encapsulate LSE’s vigor, where to apply the drive and curiosity the School fosters when the academic year is over? The concern is legitimate, but I am not too worried. Bernard Levin himself was never able to choose between Vietnam and Wagner. After all, to know that the best question is the one with no easy answer or a single answer at all, to be able to fail at being one-dimensional and narrow-minded is what our LSE degrees are really about.