29 Jan, 2009 With The Grace of God
January whizzed past in a blur thankfully, awash in colours and smells that can only be found in a tropical forest during the rainy season. Trekking by day and then lying barely comatose for much of the time I got some thinking done.
Actually I don’t even want to say that I have been on holiday, fearing the brunt of envy directed from all angles. These are hard times and it would not be good to be seen to be showing off, would it now? So instead I will say that I have spent the last few weeks working. Working on myself that is!
Rejuvenated, it is now back to London and I am looking forward to the various meeting due to take place and relating to the release of our fifteenth studio album entitled? Details of which and so much more – as they always like to say – will be announced right here at simpleminds.com in the not too distant future.
But it is not only events in north London that will take over my thoughts during the dying embers of what is not the prettiest month of the year in our hemisphere.
Not at all, and with all credit to the Jakarta Post, (Indonesia’s finest!) the chances are that I will be thinking about Beit Lahiya primary school in Gaza. And how in particular this past Saturday, the first day of school since the recent cease fire, the local children, or at least those who have survived the atrocities that confronted them, came swarming into their wide playground, noisily running everywhere while playing beneath an upper story classroom so recently scorched by shell fire.
Their school/compound was struck alight over a week ago, sparking panic among the 1.600 people who had gone seeking shelter. Two local boys, five and seven years old, were killed while a dozen others were wounded, including the mother of the boys who had her legs cut off. A merciless act of war in which 1, 300 were killed nearly a third of them children. Yes, I will say that again. Nearly a third of them were children.
Surely we all have a responsibility in finding a way of making our voice heard to those with the power to stop this shamefulness while bringing to account those directly responsible. Is that too much to ask?
In a time that I need more than ever to escape from, the best way that I know of doing that is through the work of artists and writers who entertain so fully that their effect transports us into a different world entirely. In a way I suppose this is exactly what those shamen and shape changers from ancient cultures offered and why they were so valuable to those communities both in the past and even currently. Check ‘Different World’ from Black and White 050505
We instead now look to our ‘Stars’ to lead the way – and on that then there is a lady that you should definitely try to see. She is a diva! A true star of the old school type (The only school really!) and the music she makes is both as cool as it comes and as stylish as any released in the last thirty years or so. That pattern continues with her recent album release ‘Hurricane’
Grace Jones is on tour and it is to her that I refer, go see her! I did and I don’t recall the last time that I was that impressed. Not rock and roll by any means, it is much more than merely that. A Jamaican Queen she is, but last night she was also a Zen master in giving every breath and dedicating every precious movement of her body – which is an art instillation alone.
On top of all of that, lets not forget that the girl can also really sing. Too often overlooked but suddenly so apparent as she makes the classic that is La Vie En Rose belong to her only.
Thoughtfully someone arranged for me to be given an after show pass. It remained unused. Sure, it would have been nice to tell Miss Jones how highly I rated her show. But firstly I was not dressed for the occasion. And in any case that was never going to happen on the grounds that she was so good that I was rendered speechless.
Jim Kerr