London: a tribute
[Correction*: the quiet American among the Brits. She didn't ask for it, but it should be here, for she was, this tragic day.]
My thoughts and heart go out to people in London and around the islands across the Channel who won't be sleeping tonight, their lives stolen or made hell by the bombs in the British capital.
My brother Jon says he's "trapped". The double-decker bus explosion, right outside, "blew open the door while I was sitting on the loo."
His son Tristam was cycling past an underground station when the horror hit. Assessing the calm and efficient response of civilians and security and rescue services to the attacks, Tristam's Swedish girlfriend later said: "This makes me proud to be ... British."
Jon and his wife Louise are "trapped" -- we kept the call short because lines have to stay free -- behind "at least seven police cordons" found when he went out to see what could be done.
He was asked please to return home and stay there, wait it out for as long as required for emergency services and then the police work.
Since some colleagues read this log, let me warmly thank everybody who works for the Factory in Africa and heeded the day's message, dropping hassles that beset us sometimes to leave the rest of the English news service alone and do a good job as a team without argument.
It worked, guys. It worked very well.
Thank you.
We'll do the same in the morning, OK?
The other stuff can wait.
You know I'd normally never put such words on the log; today's different and I didn't get a chance to say it to everybody sending me stories to edit for the world. If others learn that even we can manage it when required, so much the better: the old saw that "journalists couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery" is proved wrong once more.
It's unusual the Paris "English Desk" at our international news agency, known as such only for our common language, is staffed exclusively by Brits. But it was for much of the day, *I apologise to Nancy, who was so quiet and concentrated she was left out of the count when I thought back.
Many people will be focused on London tonight (AFP as I post this).
I'll say little more of the story that exploded so callously and horribly soon after the start of a shift by a woman who would blush if I singled her out for staying on as long as she did.
Do others need to know this? Not really, but it's here, along with answers to one question put this afternoon as the telly gave us a press briefing by police and emergency services doing their own jobs: "Why do journalists ask such stupid questions?"
Somebody muttered this. Quite right -- superficially.
First, obviously because some can be idiots; secondly, it's part of the job, on behalf of the public, to ask what the security authorities will reveal of "terrorist" intelligence they may have, knowing we won't get a straight answer; last, since such questions must and will come ... later.
What happened today was simply proof you can, and we should, question "the rules" all we want. That's a right it's up to every one of us to exercise.
Sometimes those rules -- though I often like standing them on their heads -- are the right ones and we know them so well that on occasions it's vitally important, enough people come together, setting aside doubts and questions, to get on with the job, and it brings out the best in everybody.
It won't last, why should it?
When it happens, though, it's worth rejoicing in our shared humanity, everything we know how to do together, setting our selfish egos aside for the sake of what's right.
To know we have that freedom from ourselves and in ourselves to be a team, paying tribute where it's due, is an experience worth keeping as knowledge and wisdom for some other day when we have time to be petty.
I prefer merely to know this debate means almost nothing and that when it's indispensable and right, if it's to be done, most of us can.
We should take pride, without complacency, when we get it together.
What of the rules?
Every day brings its terrible tragedies, its great joys and it's only too human to be stupid. Later, there will be a meeting to sort out the problems and inevitable misunderstandings that beset some of AFP's Africa coverage; that's now a promise -- it's on the cards, put there by you people.
The daily word -- don't tolerate mischief from others -- holds good, if we all remember the other side of it, playing fair with the rules, and above all: you must never hasten to judge them. None of us know the whole story.
 Here are some lyrics:
"Who made up all the rules
We follow them like fools
Believe them to be true
Don't care to think them through
And I'm sorry so sorry
I'm sorry it's like this
I'm sorry so sorry
I'm sorry we do this
And it's ironic too
Coz what we tend to do
Is act on what they say
And then it is that way
but be swift to judge others"
Tonight I heard those words again. Jem's 'Finally Woken' was my head's way of leaving the Factory behind until the morning and it opens with them in the song 'They'. In one word: yummy!
The combination of a fine VoW -- Jem happens to be Welsh -- with an outgoing, life-enriching mind and musicianship to back it that can shift in an instant as swift as the mood of an hour's work from airy and laid-back to hard-kick industrial force appeals to me enormously.
Jem's head is screwed on well: she understand rules, she understands freedom.
She makes sense and will tell you what it is to be grateful for each day as it comes, more harmoniously than I do.
Listen!
I don't mean listen to me. Simply listen. My days start with silence and have done so for months. No radio. No babble (unless I'm talking to the cat or the pigeons). I take in noises from outside. I'm learning to listen. Then I'll head off to work or wherever with music. Like most, I far prefer harmony to discord, but without the latter we can't know the former.
What do we do? As in all musics, we have rules. There's something odd about those rules. As in music, the less you think about them, the more they seem to come naturally. They seem naturally right.
At the right moment, there's nothing wrong with discord and dissonance. Ask any musician! As people sometimes we get cross. Soon I'll tell you about something that made me angry this week, mad enough to say: "Blasted Apple! They've done it again."
I won't call this "righteous anger", but it's okay to say your time is valuable, like anyone's, and it would be wiser while we're alive and have got it, not to waste it.
Tomorrow? Who knows?
[Modified on July 9 with a thought to share.]
Many remarkable woman are wearing pretty much, with or without navel decorations, the kind of casual looks that make travelling through town a great visual pleasure right now.
So's Aimee Mann, as some Italians saw her and is she is now, but I'm moving that picture to the next entry. Aren't you lucky?
Aimee used to keep the hair short. And ''til Tuesday' this week, with the music she did up front with that band, followed by a whole bunch of songs from her later albums, I did fine, a whole evening's listening, with a musical hole in my head filled by Lauren.
 One Aimee ticket for tonight has gone to somebody as a birthday gift. The woman it was intended for can't make it. A second who wanted it called belatedly with a "problem" that wasn't one: "I'm ever so sorry, but ... I don't like the music."
You see, I lent Olya two albums. I warned they weren't what she usually likes. The concert had much more to it. The "birthday girl" speaks good English and must have relished the banter.
But Olya found Aimee's latest too different from her quiet tastes, so instead of opening her mind to anything coming, I lent her a snapshot that closed it. Next time, for Olya and others who don't have the Net, I'll say: "Look, here's a print-out of what the woman likes -- is this up your street?"
It's there for the doing. Aimee has done it for Amazon US.
Loretta Lynn is a name to me, an unknown, on my back burner after reviews last year since her thing didn't seem to be mine straight away. I bet Olya likes Loretta's kind of music, so the new picture is for her.
Nobody here's dressing like her these weeks.
The first two replies I got to a last-minute spare ticket offer were quick but impractical. Both were "I'd love to!" Both were from Africa.
Whether I go with the birthday woman grows out of what happens tomorrow. I could well be late, depending on the day's news. I'll be fine at work, but afterwards ... can mind over matter achieve what I know how to do with time?
With patience, or by skipping, you're welcome to a few coming words about having time for things. Someone thought they were mine. They are now taken into me, but I didn't write them.
Better than ever I've been able to do this, with my science and theoretical approach to how I make time, rather than find it, Sarah Fimm, in her journal, suggests exactly what to do.
I copied Sarah's thoughts for one friend and when I read them to another, she told me they were so wise, as I find them myself, I should blog them, share them and say, if you like them, go to the source, where you'll probably enjoy plenty more.
"'Til Tuesday came as a big surprise to many when they emerged as passionate, entertaining, intelligent and stylish," wrote Mike Thorne in an interesting piece on making the 'Voices Carry' album in 1999 for the Stereo Society. "The lead singer, Aimee Mann, had shown clear songwriting insight even when leading her rather more arty previous band, Baby Snakes. The others were accomplished musicians, each with their own distinctive sound."
These days -- though I'm sure she will on Friday -- 'Aimee Mann won't play nice for others,' (Bankrate). Good on her!
For Bankrate, she told Larry Getlen why not. She explains how she and Michael Penn, the bloke she married, joined with others to form a music collective.
The "harsh realities of the music business" they chat about understate what I've been learning in the past months. And United Musicians? Still going strong -- as are other companies and collectives like them.
When speed backfires, Macs go haywire
If Apple were equally sensible, combining hard heads with outgoing hearts, you'd have had more this week from my music files. But Steve Job's outfit has, once again, seriously screwed up, trying to be to clever by half.
What cost so much of my time was rushing to install iTunes 4.9. The aim, Apple said, was to go on giving you the digital music revolution. To give you "podcasting", something I don't plan to discuss.
 After at least eight hours of repairs, I replaced iTunes 4.9 with 4.7.1, the last "safe" version -- perhaps no longer if Apple have corrected their latest blunder of releasing a software programme without making sure it won't wreck your Mac.
Tonight, no long story. My Mac's happy but won't play nice with the iPod.
Different things went very badly wrong, as usual at such times, for different people. If you're in real trouble yourself, check out MacFixit and other places where it's discussed.
If at the weekend, I find a fix that suits everybody, I'll pass on the link. For now, I'm just glad I've acquired the technical expertise that enabled me to mend a hard disk damaged, according to a message I refused to believe being experienced enough to know it was wrong, "beyond repair".
I had no reason to panic, have long since found you must have and keep regular back-ups and got my whole music library up and working. The iPod works too. Together they're a disaster, but some people have had it far worse!
They've lost data, sometimes music, for good. Or rather, bad; I presume this would include music they bought from Apple's store! I don't know...
Why was I livid?
I never was, but felt a damned fool for rushing when I know better, and I'll unleash my percussion on Apple's top brass for the simple reason that I'll bet you the other Aimee Mann ticket that, again as usual, they won't say "Sorry, we blew it."
No. MacFixit and other sites report that, on the contrary, they "pulled" iTunes 4.8, it vanished. No words. There's a funny thing. I thought the idea had been to add video and stuff like that. It seemed good.
But oh. Why's the artwork on my iPod going wonky? I didn't worry about it much.
I think it's fine to get it wrong. Everyone does. But when you do, you don't hide it. I imagine the poor guys on expensive Mac hotlines have been saying "sorry" and maybe even "I dunno"! I haven't thrown the money after the time.
Apple likes lawyers. I've had reason to tell people that before. Usually I like Apple. I'm not calling them liars, not for telling me they're giving us a digital revolution. I'm just saying that the buck for incompetence stops at the top. With you, Steve.
If you should happen to apologise for the misery a premature software release caused people, many of them lacking my confidence and competence to undo a good part of the damage myself, it cuts both ways, mate:
Voices carry!
Get that right.
Simply Sarah
Regardless of such words, I find being nasty to people, in a world where teaching is merely a sharing process, an increasingly pointless and boring exercise. My own "teachers" are of all ages, children and the elderly.
When some people want to be nasty to me, of late they've used my friendships as a novel means of attack. Because I generally get on so well with the opposite sex and tend sometimes to think as they do, those I annoy have decided and say I keep a "harem"!
It's so absurd, especially since I'm neither into ownership nor a Don Juan by any stretch of the wildest imagination, I occasionally find it funny. But it's true that most of the people who have become my most valued teachers and some of them great friends, are women.
From Sarah Fimm, I'm learning a prodigious amount. She finds the words for stuff I know but have more trouble expressing clearly. Tonight's closing section needs two word's subbing, no more. When she has a stream of ideas, it's not for me to break the flow of a woman who says so much to me in just three words: "Be like water."
I meditate on them every day.
For the rest, I have no illustration or quote marks apart from her own. From that journal, open to all, the rest is pure Sarah from here:
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005 7:59 AM EST
Today I am sick with too many thoughts. I am ill from the amount of times I have heard strangers in passing use the word "dreamer" as some kind of derogatory term. Either to refer to their friend who has no job, or their child who refuses to pay attention to them, or an animal that will not respond to their calls.
Dreamer Identifications:
Do you like stare into the sun even though it hurts and causes spots in your vision?
Do you like to make the dinner rolls into feet on the legs of forks, like Charlie Chaplin?
Do you use your imagination?
This last bit is the most important. Since we all use our energy to manifest the thoughts of our imagination, I conclude that we are all dreamers and that my friends, is a beautiful thing. Just look up every so often, listen, and gaze into the clouds.
Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 8:33 AM EST
Yesterday someone very special said to me, "Time always goes by too fast, I feel I cannot have relationships with certain people because they will not help with my career or my life, and so what is the point? It seems better to be with people whom I have more in common with, who will be able to help me. That way it will be more productive." I decided to address this here, because I have heard quite a few of you say things like this to me. My honest answer is,
We can alter the passage of time if we utilize the strength of our minds. That self-imposed productivity we put on ourselves to "do things" does not seem to bring happiness to anyone I am aware of. It seems to me that happiness comes from simplicity, awareness and a fundamental understanding of our environment. Becoming a lens, and trying to focus to become fully acquainted with the space of the moment you are in, at a particular time and place. The amount of things you can do becomes more like a fever or sickness, that will only continue to displace you from what is actually happening at this moment. If you are preoccupied with the scattered minutiae of your mind, in random unfocused or selfish thoughs, nothing fresh, nothing new and beautiful will come to you, because you are not allowing it to. As much of a struggle as it can seem, it is so important to let go of this clutter, and just live. Remember that there is an underlying harmony in all things, and this is what we must reach, and we must grow with it, outward and inward, expanding and learning all the time. That is all I have to say about it.
12:08:03 AM link 
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