Ricky V the V.I.P. (Very Insubstantial Poster)

It is the peak of Dresden’s Spring and in the bar of one of the city’s higher-end hotels, drinking the closest thing to English tea you can find out here, I am sat with Jan Vogler. The name may not ring a bell for all, but those in the classical music ‘know’ will recognise Vogler as one of the world’s leading world cellists (player of the cello - kinda like a big violin or a small double bass), handpicked as part of the New York Philharmonic and Intendent (a mixture between compere, organiser and poster boy – think Bob Geldof for Band Aid but with better manners and looking less altogether ‘smelly’) of the Dresden Music Festival, with this year’s instalment set to run from the 11^th of May to the 2^nd of June.

With passion and precision, Vogler spends the next half an hour describing what classical music means to him, what it can mean to newcomers such as myself and its place in contemporary lifestyle. Donning a floral shirt – which I can tell you, is an extremely rare flash of colour and flamboyance for Dresden – supporting a red sweater draped over his shoulders, just brushing the base of well-kept, floppy hair, this man is clearly an individual who knows his culture. And when his fringe begins to dance across his forehead, you become fully aware that he is passionately making a point. Jan saves the first dance for the discussion of the origin of the festival.

“The festival was born in the 70s as a way to show the west how ‘open’ East Germany was, which is a very curious idea. So they invited the best musicians in the world, but all the journalists just couldn’t get over the fact that everyone needed bodyguards! It wasn’t seen as genuine, and so it couldn’t ever really become one of the great festivals of the world because of this anchor.” He continues to describe how the festival fell into the back of people’s minds and subsequently entered the doldrums in the 80s and 90s after the wall finally fell (“people had other things in mind like enjoying freedom!”). As a performer in Dresden during these times, it is clear that this festival is not only a symbol of East German freedom, but of huge personal significance to Vogler.

When offered the opportunity to take over the festival’s organisational reigns, he leapt. “I remember I just thought ‘this really is a big task to bring it back to its old glory.’” Eventually, the biggest names began to return to the bill, a factor that Vogler puts down to the festival’s unique resource: Dresden. “We invited the absolute top league of artists and we let them perform in some of the most beautiful locations in Dresden. In Germany, in fact.”

In his organisation of the festival’s 2013 programme, Vogler has been keen to utilise the breadth of Dresden’s assets. From performances in the baroque postcard-piece, the historical opera house the Semperoper, to under the stars in the grounds of the city’s largest public park, Vogler sees the entire city as a stage. A stage which he is tasked with populating. And here lies the art of deciding which acts are best suited to different locales.

“We’re using the Gläsernemanufaktur (Volkswagen’s famous glass-fronted factory) and though it may not have that sophisticated acoustics, it still brings something to performances. So we’ve put a kind of cross-over performance in there and we have got VW providing parts to use as instruments. We don’t just want to do what’s expected. So take the Semperoper. If we put an artist like the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in those surroundings, it may be really sexy.”

Dresden’s venues also hold a resonance for the festival’s 2013 theme of ‘Empire’. Showcasing how the British and other empires have influenced the music of colonised lands, of specific interest is the idea of failed Empires - such as that of the Germans, “thankfully”, as Jan points out. Here, the unique setting of Dresden is epitomised. “We have the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra performing the British-composed ‘War Requiem’ in the Frauenkirche. The Frauenkirche: a site destroyed by British bombs! Here, you have a message of reconciliation and of spirituality and a real anti-war message. Just from the location of a performance!” With his fringe now flicking in a satisfyingly violent manner, it is clear the healing and further power that Vogler believes music can hold for all. A power that his infectious persuasion is keen to showcase to me.

After explaining my stance as a relative newcomer to classical music and a full novice of live performances, Jan provides me with some advice regarding how to best engage with the genre. “You have to go for concerts with a bigger message than just the music – like the Frauenkirche performance. Don’t feel obliged to go with the aim understand anything in particular. Just go to something with a message you like and then it’s all up to your experience of the music”, he articulates through a knowing smile.

He goes on to explain how the selection of a performance suitable to you can be made incredibly simple. With most classical music mostly born a few centuries ago, it is inextricably linked to the time. “I mean the ‘superstars; of composition – we are talking Bach and Beethoven here – simply sound-tracked history. Bach was portraying the protestant movement in his music. And Beethoven? Beethoven essentially composed the sounds of the French Revolution. In almost every piece you can just hear the incredible excitement of the people of no longer being dependent on their King”. Jan’s advice is, if you are struggling for a place to start, choose a piece from a time and a place of interest to you.

Our conversation meanders around the intricacies of classical performances – “there’s this big black animal up there – a piano – and there will just be this guy totally conquering it” – and taxi drivers’ love for classical music – “they need to be calmed down rather than ripped up” – before settling on a discussion considering why classical music often fails to engage a young audience? Jan explains how the first experiences of younger audiences are often one-off, involuntary attendances. “They go and they forget. But then, 30 years later, someone invites them to the same performance and they realise they’d like to try it again and, now, it means more. It’s gaining a familiarity with the music that is often not as easy to achieve as with pop music”. When I point out this was similar to me moving to Germany and experiencing a lot of techno he smiles. When I mention Kraftwerk his smile widens - “now that really can sound alien when you first hear it” - and he continues to stress how exposure is the issue not age or any other factors.

“I now think that the difference between ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ music is not really there anymore” he states. We discuss the role of the internet in the proliferation of access to all genres so readily before Jan further contemplates where classical music fits in the modern world. “I must say that sometimes I do peek and see what people listen to on the subway (in New York, where Jan splits his time with Dresden) and I remember I saw this very tall black man on the subway and he was huge. He must have gone to the gym twice a day. And I expected to see on his iPod some music I have never heard of and I look and it was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons! With my friend performing! And so I just don’t think the same barrier between genres exist anymore.”

When arriving to meet Jan I feared I may struggle to hold a conversation with him. Overhearing the snippets of the interview prior to mine I heard Tchaikovsky’s name being batted about frequently and this, frankly, did little to quash my fears. But I was still keen to speak to him and to attend the Dresden Music Festival almost as an adventure into the unknown world of classical music. Having spoken with Jan, this exploration seems far less exotic but more exciting. The music and experiences to be found at the festival, if chosen correctly and approached positively, may not be too far from what I already know and hold vast potential for wonderment.

And if a newcomer, such as myself, is ever in doubt? “Just got for Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony. Definitely. Listen to it! It’s basically rock music”.

Jan’s highlights of the Dresden Music Festival for a ‘newbie’:

• Rufus Wainwright w/ full orchestra, Albertinium (Classical gallery). Sun 2^nd June.
• The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, The Frauenkirche. Sat 1^st June.
• The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, The Semperoper. Sun 26^th May.
• New York Philharmonic, Gläserne Manufaktur (Volkswagen Factory). Tue 14^th May.

For more information on the Dresden Music Festival, visit: www.musikfestspiele.com

For more information on Jan Vogler, visit: www.janvogler.com

Way back when I started this blog, I had envisaged it as an output for my thoughts and ideas, no matter how stupid or deep they may be (and trust me, there has been some bilge on here). However, way back in February 2010, I strayed from this vision for the first time, posted a piece from someone else’s pen that’d had such a profound affect on me.

The piece was ‘I Will Forever Remain Faithful’ by Dave Ramsey. From his own blog, the piece chronicled his experiences as a new, white teacher in post-Katrina New Orleans, expressed through the medium of Lil’ Wayne. It really is as an extraordinary piece as it sounds.

Recently, as a Flood Risk Management student, I have undertaken a project on the social failures of the Katrina floods in New Orleans and it got me thinking about this article again. However, the link that I originally posted no longer exists and, this was something that really upset me, as I genuinely felt like I was missing out through the inability to re-read this article. Having researched Katrina and, especially, the failure of the African-American community by the New Orleans government, re-reading the article  would provide a new and increasingly meaningful insight.

However, the article seems to have disappeared from the internet. This greatly saddened me, as I feel the world is better for it’s existence. But I managed to do some delving and find a version of the article that, I think, is complete and, after a bit of format editing (it was a mess), I gained access to a full version. It is compiled from a series of blog posts, which explains its broken nature, but I feel it sits best as an entire piece as intended.

Please read this article if you have a spare ten minutes. If it provokes half the number of thoughts it does for me, you’ll feel greatly rewarded.

So, here, I will provide you with the full article. I would like to reiterate that this is in NO WAY my intellectual property. This was written by Dave Ramsey and if he has a problem with it being written here, please get in touch. And if you don’t have a problem get in touch anyway, I’d love to chat to you about it all.

Enjoy what I am not afraid to label as one of my favourite pieces of journalism that I have ever read.:

I Will Forever Remain Faithful

by Dave Ramsey

~ . ~

Complex magazine: What do you listen to these days?

Lil Wayne: Me! All day, all me.

~ . ~

“Like a white person, with blue veins”

In my first few weeks teaching in New Orleans’ Recovery School District, these were the questions I heard the most from my students:

1) “I gotta use it.” (This one might sound like a statement, but it’s a request—May I use the bathroom?)

2) “You got an ol’ lady?” (the penultimate vowel stretched, lasciviously, as far as it’ll go).

3) “Where you from?”

4) “You listen to that Weezy?”

I knew that third question was coming. Like many RSD teachers, I was new, and white, and from out of town. It was the fourth question, however, that seemed to interest my students the most. Dwayne Carter, aka Lil Wayne, aka Weezy F. Baby, was in the midst of becoming the year’s biggest rapper, and among the black teenagers that made up my student population, fandom had reached a near-Beatlemania pitch. More than ninety percent of my students cited Lil Wayne on the “Favorite Music” question on the survey I gave them; about half of them repeated the answer on “Favorite Things to Do.”

For some of my students, the questions Where are you from? and Do you listen to Lil Wayne? were close to interchangeable. Their shared currency—as much as neighborhoods or food or slang or trauma—was the stoned musings of Weezy F. Baby.

The answer was, sometimes, yes, I did listen to Lil Wayne. Despite his ubiquitous success, my students were shocked.

“Do you have the mix tapes?” asked Michael, a sixteen-year-old ninth grader. “It’s all about the mix tapes.”

The following day, he had a stack of CDs for me. Version this, volume that, or no label at all.

And that’s just about all I listened to for the rest of the year.

~ . ~

“My picture should be in the dictionary next to the definition of definition”

Lil Wayne slurs, hollers, sings, sighs, bellows, whines, croons, wheezes, coughs, stutters, shouts. He reminds me, in different moments, of two dozen other rappers. In a genre that often demands keeping it real via being repetitive, Lil Wayne is a chameleon, rapping in different octaves, paces, and inflections. Sometimes he sounds like a bluesman, sometimes he sounds like a Muppet baby.

Lil Wayne does his share of gangsta posturing, but half the time he starts chuckling before he gets through a line. He’s a ham. He is heavy on pretense, and thank God. Like Dylan, theatricality trumps authenticity.

And yet—even as he tries on a new style for every other song, it is always unmistakably him. I think of Elvis’s famous boast, “I don’t sound like nobody.” I imagine Wayne would flip it: “Don’t nobody sound like me.”

~ . ~

Every few weeks, Michael or another student—for this piece, the names of my students have been changed—would have a new burned CD that was supposedly Tha Carter III, Lil Wayne’s long-anticipated sixth studio album. “This one’s official,” they would say. I learned to be skeptical even as I enjoyed the new tracks. Nothing “official” would come around until school was out for summer, but Lil Wayne created hundreds of new songs in 2007 and the first half of 2008. Vibe magazine took the time to rank his best seventy-seven songs of 2007, and that was not a comprehensive list. These songs would end up on the Internet, which downloaders could snag for free. He also appeared for guest verses on dozens of other rappers’ tracks. He thusly managed to rate as the “Hottest MC in the Game” (according to MTV) and the “Best MC” (according to Rolling Stone), despite offering nothing new at the record store.

While Wayne claimed to do every song “at the same ability or hype,” the quality varied widely. He wrote nothing down (he was simply too stoned, he explained), rapping off the top of his head every time the spirit moved him, which was pretty much all the time. The results were sometimes tremendous and sometimes awkward, but that was half the fun. His oeuvre ended up being a sort of unedited reality show of his wily subconscious.

~ . ~

“Ain’t ’bout to pick today to start running”

During the first few days of school, Darius, one of my homeroom students, kept getting in trouble for leaving classes without permission. At the end of the second day, he pulled me aside to tell me why he kept having to use the bathroom: he had been shot in the leg three times and had a colostomy bag.

When I visited him in the hospital a few weeks later—he was there for follow-up surgery—he told me about the dealers who shot him. Darius’s speaking voice is a dead ringer for Lil Wayne’s old-man rasp. “I told them, Do what you need to do, you heard me? I ain’t scared, you heard me?”

Then he leaned over and pointed, laughing, to Sponge Bob on the television.

~ . ~

Lil Wayne, rumor has it, briefly went to the pre-Katrina version of our school. Same name and location, but back then it was a neighborhood high school. The building was wrecked in the storm. Our school, a charter school, is housed in modulars (my students hate this euphemism—they’re trailers) in the lot in back. Sometimes I went and peeked in the windows of the old building, and it looked to me like no one had cleaned or gutted it since the storm. It was like a museum set piece. There was still a poster up announcing an open house, coming September 2005.

~ . ~

I taught fifth-grade social studies, eighth-grade writing, ninth-grade social studies. Sometimes I felt inspired, sometimes deflated.

One time, a black student vehemently defended his one Arab classmate during a discussion about the Jena 6: “If you call him a terrorist, that’s like what a cop thinks about us.” Another day, when I was introducing new material about Africa, a student interrupted me—“I heard them niggas have AIDS!”

~ . ~

“Pain, since I’ve lost you—I’m lost too”

Our students are afraid of rain. A heavy morning shower can cut attendance in half. I once had a student write an essay about her experience in the Superdome. She wrote, without explanation, that she lost her memory when she lost her grandmother in the storm. I was supposed to correct the grammar, so that she would be prepared for state testing in the spring.

~ . ~

“Keep your mouth closed and let your eyes listen”

Lil Wayne is five-foot-six and wiry, sleepy-eyed, covered in tattoos, including teardrops under his eyes. His two camera poses are a cool tilt of the head and a sneer. He means to look sinister, I think, but there is something actually huggable about him. He looks like he could be one of my students—and some of my students like to think they look like him.

The other day, I saw Cornel West on television say that Lil Wayne’s physical body bears witness to tragedy. I don’t even know what that means, but I do think that Wayne’s artistic persona is a testament to damage.

~ . ~

One of my favorite Lil Wayne hooks is the chorus on a Playaz Circle song called “Duffle Bag Boy.” In the past year, he started singing more, and this was his best turn. He sounds a little like the neighborhood drunk at first as he warbles his way up and down the tune, but his singing voice has an organically exultant quality that seems to carry him to emotional delirium. After a while, he’s belting out instructions to a drug courier with the breathy urgency of a Baptist hymn. By the end of the song, the standard-order macho boast, “I ain’t never ran from a nigga and I damn sure ain’t ’bout to pick today to start running,” has been turned by Lil Wayne into a plea, a soul lament.

~ . ~

On New Orleans radio, it seems like nearly every song features Lil Wayne. My kids sang his songs in class, in the hallways, before school, after school. I had a student who would rap a Lil Wayne line if he didn’t know the answer to a question.

An eighth grader wrote his Persuasive Essay on the topic “Lil Wayne is the best rapper alive.” Main ideas for three body paragraphs: Wayne has the most tracks and most hits, best metaphors and similes, competition is fake.

~ . ~

“My flow is art, unique—my flow can part a sea”

Once I witnessed a group of students huddled around a speaker listening to Lil Wayne. They had heard these songs before, but were nonetheless gushing and guffawing over nearly every line. One of them, bored and quiet in my classroom, was enthusiastically, if vaguely, parsing each lyric for his classmates: “You hear that? Cleaner than a virgin in detergent. Think on that.”

Pulling out the go-to insult of high schoolers everywhere, a girl nearby questioned their sexuality. “Y’all be in to Lil Wayne so much you sound like girls,” she said.

They just kept listening. Then one of the boys was simply overtaken by a lyrical turn. He stood up, threw up his hands, and began hollering. “I don’t care!” he shouted. “No homo, no homo, but that boy is cute!”

~ . ~

Lil Wayne on making it: “When you’re really rich, then asparagus is yummy.”

Lil Wayne on safe sex: “Better wear a latex, cause you don’t want that late text, that ‘I think I’m late’ text.”

Lil Wayne on possibly less safe sex: “How come there is two women, but ain’t no two Waynes?”

~ . ~

Okay, but it’s not any one line, it’s that voice. Just the way he says “car in park” in his cameo on Mario’s “Crying Out for Me” remix; it’s a soft growl from another planet. It sounds like a threat and a comfort and a come-on all at once.

~ . ~

“I am just a Martian, ain’t nobody else on this planet”

Right before you become a teacher, you are told by all manner of folks that it will be 1) the hardest thing you’ve ever done, and 2) the best thing you’ve ever done. That seems like a recipe for recruiting wannabe martyrs. In any case, high stakes can blind you to the best moments. One day, I was stressing over what I imagined was my one-man quest to keep Darius in school and out of jail, and missed that a heated dispute between two fifth graders was escalating. Finally, I asked them what was wrong.

“Mr. Ramsey,” one of the boys pleaded, “will you please tell him that if you go into space for a year and come back to Earth that all your family will be dead because time moves slower in space?”

~ . ~

“And to the kids: drugs kill. I’m acknowledging that. But when I’m on the drugs, I don’t have a problem with that.”

On one of his best songs, the super-catchy “I Feel Like Dying,” Lil Wayne barely exists. He always sounds high, but on this song he sounds as though he has already passed out.

A lot of the alarmism about pop music sending the wrong message to impressionable youth seems mostly overwrought to me, but I’ll cop to feeling taken aback at ten-year-olds singing, “Only once the drugs are done, do I feel like dying, I feel like dying.”

First time I heard a fifth grader singing this in falsetto, I said: “What did you say?”

He said: “Mr. Ramsey, you know you be listening to that song. Why you tripping?”

My students always ask me why I’m tripping at precisely the moments when the answer seems incredibly obvious to me.

~ . ~

After Michael cussed at our vice principal, I did a home visit. Michael was one of the biggest drug dealers in his neighborhood, and also one of my best students.

His mother was roused from bed. She looked half-gone, dazed. Then she started crying, and hugged me, pulled my head into her body. “No one’s ever cared like this,” she said. “Bless you. Thank you.”

Michael smiled shyly. “I just want to get in my right grade,” he told me.

“We’ll find a way to make that happen,” I told him.

A few weeks later, I gave him a copy of a New Yorker piece on Lil Wayne.

“Actually, that was good,” he said, later. “You teach me to write like that?”

~ . ~

“Born in New Orleans, raised in New Orleans…”

You live here as a newcomer and locals are fond of saying “this is New Orleans” or “welcome to New Orleans” by way of explanation. They use it to explain absurdity, inefficiency, arbitrary disaster, and transcendent fun. Enormous holes in the middle of major streets, say, or a drunken man dressed as an insect in line behind you at the convenience store.

Our challenge in the schools is to try to reform a broken system (the “recovery” in Recovery School District doesn’t refer to the storm—the district was created before Katrina, when the state took over the city’s failing schools) amidst a beautiful culture that is sometimes committed to cutting folks a little slack.

I have heard the following things speciously defended or excused by New Orleans culture: truancy, low test scores, drug and alcohol addiction, extended families showing up within the hour to settle minor school-boy scuffles, inept bureaucracy, lazy teachers, students showing up hungover the day after Mother’s Day….

~ . ~

Once, a girl’s older sister looked askance at one of my best students after school, and about five minutes later there was a full-on brawl in the parking lot. I lost my grip on the student I was holding back and she jumped on top of another student’s mother and started pounding.

On the pavement in front of me was a weave and a little bit of blood. One of my ninth graders was watching the chaos gleefully while I tried to figure out how to make myself useful. He was as happy as I’ve ever seen him. He shrugged beatifically. “This is New Orleans!” he shouted, to me, to himself, to anyone who might be listening.

~ . ~

Sometimes my students tell me they are sick of talking about the storm. Sometimes it’s all they want to talk about. Might be the same student. Some students have told me it ruined their lives, some students have told me it saved their lives. Again, sometimes the same student will say both.

~ . ~

From an interview in early 2006:

AllHipHop.com: “On the album, did you ever contemplate doing a whole track dedicated to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy?”

Lil Wayne: “No, because I’m from New Orleans, brother. Our main focus is to move ahead and move on. You guys are not from New Orleans and keep throwing it in our face, like, ‘Well, how do you feel about Hurricane Katrina?’ I f—king feel f—ked up. I have no f—king city or home to go to. My mother has no home, her people have no home, and their people have no home. Every f—king body has no home. So do I want to dedicate something to Hurricane Katrina? Yeah, tell that b—h to suck my d—k. That is my dedication.”

~ . ~

“I am the beast! Feed me rappers or feed me beats”

Lil Wayne mentions Katrina in his songs from time to time. He has a track that rails against Bush for his response to the storm. But, to his credit, he doesn’t wallow in his city’s famous tragedy.

The world needs to be told, and reminded, of what happened here. But New Orleans is bigger and more spirited than the storm. So its favorite son can be forgiven for refusing to let it define him. For my students, Lil Wayne is good times and good memories, and enduring hometown pride. All they ask of him is to keep making rhymes, as triumphant and strange as the city itself.

~ . ~

“Ever since I was little, I lived life numb”

Michael stopped coming to school. His mother told me, “He’s a man now. There’s nothing more I can do.”

Darius got kicked out for physically attacking a teacher.

I have lots of happy stories, so I don’t mean to dwell on these two, but I guess that’s just what teachers do in the summer months, replay the ones that got away.

~ . ~

I read over this, and I got it all wrong. I fetishize disaster. I live in the best city in the world and all I can write about is hurricanes and dropouts.

~ . ~

One time, after they finished a big test I gave them last period, my students started happily singing Lil Wayne’s “La La La” on their way outside.

“Come on, Ramsey, sing along, you know it.”

And so I did. “Born in New Orleans, raised in New Orleans, I will forever remain faithful New Orleans….”

That I wasn’t from New Orleans didn’t much matter, so long as I was game to clap and dance and sing. It was a clear and sunny day, Lil Wayne was the greatest rapper alive, and school was out. It was time to have fun.

Living in a village has its swings and roundabouts. Regardless of moving to a string of leading European cities (ok, well just Barcelona), economic powerhouses (ok, well just Barcelona, if they decided to ditch the siestas) and capital cities (ok, just Barcelona - maybe in 2014 - and Ljubljana), village life still follows me. Happily, though, it isn’t the hassle of getting a £40 taxi home from a night out that has reared its head in Slovenia. It was the intimate relationship with our local postman.

Brian, the long-serving and top-Royal-Mail-lad, brings a lovely personal touch to the service of delivery. I remember at the age of 16 ordering Reading Festival tickets which, invariably, arrived in the post a week or so before the festival itself, which required a signature as receipt of delivery. These tickets arrived midweek on a school day and, as such, most of my friends missed the tickets and had to expel a lot of time and energy to arrange re-delivery. However, good old Brian just scrawled a fake signature and slid them through the door.

It’s definitely an acceptable price to pay for him walking over our garden/flowerbed rather than taking the path to shave 20 seconds of his route. 

And, recently, he’s saved my ass feet by intercepting some ordered shoes that nobody was home to sign for. He was in the post office, saw our name and took the shoes, brought them to my Mum in her work and sorted us out. Top guy. He went that extra mile and, for that, I salute you.

Things are meant to have a conclusion and moral aren’t they? Well, I guess, it pays to get to know your postman/local service providers, form a relationship and reap the benefits.

Ok, so I know how most people out there are a bit on the fence over ‘technology’. “Is it really going to catch on?” “What’s in it for me?”

These views were equally common as they were appropriate. Until today.

To finally place suitable worth in technology, simply follow the below steps.

When I was a 13 year old every Friday night my Dad would go to the pub religiously. From 7pm to 8pm (no earlier, no later) my Dad would pop over the road to the Fox and Hounds in Tugby, the mid-life playground for the locals to chat about their respective weeks at work, sports, Phillips screwdrivers and whatever else Dads talk about. During this hour, the Vause household, itself, would be noticeably quieter and it was in this weekly parent-less hour (Mum would be busy preparing a meal in front of Gardener’s World or the like) that I would embark on a teenage rite of passage:

Nope not that. No really not that. Stop thinking about that.

I would mirror my Dad’s behaviour, minus the alcohol, from 7pm to 8pm (no earlier, no later) on the teenager’s virtual playground: MSN Messenger. I would spend that hour talking to my friends from school, regaling what had happened literally only hours earlier or sharing humorous images, maybe over the soundtrack of a mixtape (literally, a tape) that I had made from recordings from my CDs. It was the perfect way to learn, explore and experiment with the social norms of our age group.

It is therefore with genuine sadness that I today read that MSN Messenger is set to be shut down on the 15th of March. In the face of declining users (up to a 48% year-on-year drop in the USA alone), Microsoft has decided to scrap the Messenger service (now title ‘Windows Live Messenger’) and focus its energy and funding into the recently-acquired Skype service. To the modern user this may not seem much of a loss and, on paper, it isn’t. But paper has never truly considered sentiment and emotion (unless you have found my stash of poems and short songs circa 2002) and it is for this reason I am sad.

I can still remember the thrill of going online solely for MSN (as we young dudes called it, dropping the adjudged superfluous ’Messenger’ tagline) chats. Many of you the same age as me (23) reading this may be thinking “Why were you only online for one hour a week? I used to be on all the time during the day, the evening, weekends. Man, it was such fun”. Well, man, I would have looked upon you with envy. Due to the Vause household laying in a rural village, Broadband was not available to us and it was good old dial-up and pay-as-you go internet until I was 16. And due to parents from Yorkshire, we were not happy to spend such money. Therefore it was one hour a week. Maybe a few more under special occasions such as the need to discuss ‘homework’.

But irrespective of this constraint, I look back at the giddy thrills from MSN fondly. I will always remember practising my flirting through that beautiful forum where, if disaster struck, one could blame that the lack of context in messages as a source of my message being misconstrued. Phew. I remember the rumours that would spread through MSN - “so-and-so-1 flashed so-and-so-2 on MSN and apprantly so-and-so-3 has a screenshot…”. I remember spending hours (offline) trying to think of a witty tagline to put as your username (after having already spent days, if not weeks thinking of a hilarious hotmail address). I remember swapping email addresses at school mid-week, the first real address book I owned. Writing all this, I am actually amazed at how vivid these memories are, even the thrill in my stomach I would feel logging on.

These were times that I will cherish and it is for these reasons I am exceptionally sad to see the death of MSN. Hopefully future generations can garner as much fun from the new and improved Skype as we did. I just hope that Chat Roulette and the horrors now associated with webcams do not ruin that experience.

RickyVtheVIP has signed out.

For those of you unaware of my current nomadicy, the time has come and passed for me to leave Spain and it is onwards to Ljubljana (that’s in Slovenia). The time for cultural assessments will come later, probably, but for now, let me share a tale from one of my computing classes.

As a Geographer in a previous life, my concerns are often focussed on the spatial (all you historians with your ‘temporal’ can do one). This interest has continued into ‘the man’s’ current attempts to turn me into an engineermachine and, as such, I am enjoying following a course in ‘Spatial Planning and Floods’ (or the delightful acronym SPAF). In this course, we have computing classes where we have been assigned a region of Slovenia (don’t all jump at once) to create a spatial plan for. All very good.

Within this work we have been handed regions randomly and I was lucky/unlucky/impartially-lucky [delete as appropriate] to receive the region of Črnomelj in the south of Slovenia, bordering Croatia. And, so, there I was plodding through my work when what do I see? Like the angels of immaturity shining down on me in the middle of a humdrum activity, there it was. The village of my dreams:

Fučkovci

Yep, thats Fučkovci. Fučk-ov-ci. Fučk-off-see.

To be honest, I think that my time in Slovenia is already complete. But if you want anymore information about the existence of this place, well, it is a city based of the common Slovenia surname of Fučko.

Fučko. Fučk-o. A person name Fučk-o. Frederick Fučk-o.

Accordingly, the village is actually Fučko’s village. A village of Fučko’, like a terrible town Ash would visit in Pokemon. The sort that wouldn’t have a Pokemon Gym. Would just have really annoying people telling you about how they ‘collect acorns as they are cool’, when acorns have no real relevancy to your quest to become the best. Bloody Fučkos.

Man, Slovenia is a funny country.*

And if any of you punks reading this think that I have got lazy and that this is just a weak excuse to ‘kinda write a rude word without actually writing it’, well you are massively accurate. But you can all take a one way hike to Fučkovci: population YOU.

* Please note, this is exclusively my only experience with Slovenia being a funny country. Unless you classify calling ‘Aldi’ ‘Hofer’, in which case, ‘hah-de-Fučkovci-hah’. *

I’ve been in Barcelona for encroaching on two months now which, quite frankly, is terrifying considering I’m only here for three months. I have yet to really do any real academic work which not only tells you a lot about the outlook of the academic system here (‘relaxed’ is an understatement, as is ‘shockingly disinterested in work’) but informs you that we have had a lot of time to explore the fun side of one of the cultural hearts of Europe.

Regardless of whether you are a fan of sports including spherical balls and feet or not,  the city of Barcelona is synonymous with Football Club Barcelona (who take their name from the sport and the city itself, respectively) (often shortened just to FC Barcelona) (or sometimes FC Barca) (or FCB) (But mostly FC Barca).

Accordingly, it is almost a pre-requisite for a resident or visitor of Barcelona to attend a game at the city’s famous Camp Nou stadium. So when the fixture against Glasgow Celtic came along last week, it seemed the perfect opportunity to finally attend a game, support a British team in their sporting endeavours and have a few bevs. After spending four of my most formative years in Scotland, I feel an association with Celtic as tight as the SFA does and, with their rich history of stealing some of my Leicester City’s finest players and managers, this was a team I wanted to see play.

As a Champion’s League game, the ticket allocation to Celtic was very limited and far outstripped by demand, so to attend the game would require the purchasing of a ticket from the Barcelona ticket office. Easy, I thought, I live a (long) stones throw from the stadium so I can pop along and just grab a ticket.

Well, yes on paper. But before I go further let me bring those of you unfamiliar up to speed with Glasgow Celtic’s Irish connection. In the 1800s when Celtic was founded, it was by a Catholic Irish priest in an attempt to raise money for local impoverished children and , ever since, Celtic have been as well supported in the Catholic community in Ireland. Add in the traditionally protestant support  of Celtic’s Glasgow arch rivals Rangers (or what used to be Glasgow Rangers until recently, but that’s a different matter) and the two Glasgow teams have become a modern parallel for the religious split in the Irish Isle. As a result, there are probably as many Irish as Scottish Celtic fans. This is important for the next part of the story. So are you up to speed? Good.

So when attempting to purchase a ticket for the game in my charming strong accent, I was informed by the attendant, after consultation with a map, that I could not purchase a ticket because I was from England and fans of the away side can not purchase tickets in the home ends. After explaining the difference between Scotland and England (maybe this description was two years too early), no dice. Then my (non-British) friend asked if she could buy a ticket for me, to which the system was apparently open to. Despite me being stood right there. Awesome. Now, to add insult to injury, this friend was Irish. The whole system designed to prevent supporters of Celtic entering the Barca end had just crumbled. The irony (I think that’s irony. I notoriously have real trouble with the concept of irony) of it all.

Upon actual attendance of the game, I was sat in the middle of a big group of Irish lads. The system works. They were the perfect accompaniment to watch a brilliantly tight game in a wondrous stadium. There wasn’t a bad view in the place and, despite being four rows from the very furthest edge, it was a phenomenal view, if not slightly vertigo-inducing. From here, me and my new Irish mates (I just had to mention a few pieces of Celtic banter about Martin O’Neill and Steve Guppy) had the perfect view to see the dizzying highs of Celtic’s opening goal and the soul-destroying last minute winner from Barcelona.

But what an experience. A truly fantastic stadium full of such passionate, but extremely friendly, Barca supporters, getting behind their team fully. Except for a dude wearing a full suit who got an appropriate amount of abuse. As far as pro-Catalonian sporting events go, in global sporting theatres go, it was everything it said on the tin.

As part of my Masters course in Flood Risk Management, we have frequently been exposed to the ‘science’ (used intentionally loosely) of flood risk prediction. By its very nature, this is a field based on the probability of a certain event occurring, because it can never be truly known how large a flood event will be and, even, if one will occur. Due to the complex interactions between rainfall (how large will a precipitation event be?), runoff (to what degree will this rain infiltrate and be stored in soil? How much will enter rivers?), even the route floods take (will they impact populations or will the route bypass settlements?) and numerous other factors - any certainty is most often misguided. It is for this reason that the field of uncertainty is a subject that we encounter in the vast majority of our course – how does a flood risk manager represent the uncertainty of predictions? For a ‘prediction’ will never exist as a set number (e.g. a flood of 1 metre depth), but as a range of values with a probability (e.g. a flood between 0.5-1.5m depth having a 90% chance of occurring). This is a major area of contemporary research and, so, forgive me for this oversimplification of the phenomena.

Taking this into account, a news story from today caught my eye as of interest and as a concern. In Italy, a number of Earthquake scientists have been found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to jail for six years for failing to predict the arrival of an earthquake in the L’Aquila region in 2009. Firstly, before any misunderstanding is reached, I don’t think anybody (including the earthquake scientists defending themselves in court) is trying to argue that the 309 deaths from the 6.3 magnitude earthquakes were anything less than a tragedy. But there is contention in the air concerning whether it is fair to convict those responsible for predicting earthquakes for failing to do so. Is it, in fact, more accurately science that is being put on trial?

“There are no certainties in this game” David Rothery of the Open University, referring to the science of earthquake prediction

As we have found with flooding, the prediction of earthquakes is notoriously difficult to understand and, accordingly, very hard to prove accurate. In fact, flooding at least has the more easily monitored and predicted trigger of precipitation events, rather than the less observable geotechnical movements that control earthquakes. But despite the accepted difficulty in earthquake prediction, those sentenced today were found guilty of issuing a falsely reassuring statement of earthquake security. The issue was stated not to be about the power of prediction but the inaccurate phrasing and representation of the risk. But, in reality, are these two not inextricably linked?

But what does this sentencing mean for the future? It is hard to say. Firstly, a huge number of scientists are sitting in support of the convicted seismologists, with over 5000 leading scientists having signed a petition showing their disagreement with the trial even being held. Therefore, it can be hoped that in other nations, such legal action would not be taken. However, let us assume for the sake of argument that this is the dawn of a new precedence. What would be the affect?

Well, if the issue in the Italy example lay in the insufficient representation of risk, is it not worth scientists responsible for predicting such events to simply overpredict every event to play it safe? But, inevitably, this brings the repercussion of reduced attempts for accuracy and frequent instances of ‘the boy who cried wolf’ – will the over frequent mismatch between prediction and reality not negate any impact of a prediction? Or, if those scientists choosing to dedicate their careers to the management of hazards in an attempt to save lives are simply vilified and imprisoned, why continue? Is this not taking a negative attitude to the whole field of science? There is the distinct possibility that this could be a step toward the end of such predictions in the l’Aquila region – an affect that could be at risk of spreading.

I, for one, feel that this is a low for the scientific community and, specifically, the disaster risk management field into which we now study. Does this reduce my incentive to pursue a career in such a field? Probably not, but a few more similar rulings closer to home and it would be hard to sacrifice so much for a career in such a field. Let us all hope that this does not become the norm.

So after six months, sadly, as of yet-unblogged due to my own gross ineptitude, in the lovely Delft as part of my Erasmus Mundus Masters, I have arrived in the headline slot: three and a bit months in Barcelona!

After arriving I managed to avoid a repeat of hostelgate as in Dresden and find a flat with two of my wicked coursemates in Barcelona. Phew. With that milestone out of the way, I was free to start enjoying my time here and the cultural hotspot I have found myself in! Oh and study or something.

I’m not sure if you have heard of Barcelona, but it is a city in Spain. Spain is in the south-west of Europe. In general, the rain falls on or near the plain. Within Spain, there are many historical districts and Barcelona lies in one of the proudest in the nation, if not Europe: Catalonia (Catalunya in Catalan).

Having pride in Catalonia is the norm out here, with residents all extremely proud of their catalan heritage. In fact, this is part of the reason for the popularity of FC Barcelona. Back in the dictator Franco’s wacky regime of terror, it was banned to speak any regional dialects or show any allegience to seperatist causes. With Catalonia such a place with mass desire for seperation, it was seen as too risky to join a pro-Catalan independence group and, as such, people who held this view would join FC Barcelona - membership of which was far less risky whilst still portraying the same message. In fact, El Clasico (the match between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid) is seen as so important to the nation of Spain because it is a modern parrallel for the civil war - the sectarian Catalonian-based Barca vs. the pro-state, capital-based Real. Hence the Barcelona club motto ‘More than a club’.

Essentially, though, Barcelona is a city very proud of it’s Catalan heritage, with many of it’s population keen for independence for Catalonia from Spain. Everywhere you go you see the red and yellow striped flags of Catalonia hanging from the endless apartments. Within the flag displays, seperatists can be identified by their flags of yellow and red with a white star on a blue background, as shown below.

The pride in Catalonia in Barcelona is everywhere. Once a year, however, it is literally inescapable in a festival of Catalan pride and independence ‘La Diada Nacional de Catalunya’ (The national day of Catalonia). This festival sees the residents of Catalonia take to the streets during the day to march and then, in the evenings, party like the Spanish know best.

This year’s event was one of the largest on record, with 1.5million people taking to the streets of Barcelona to march. 1.5 million people. 1point5. Million. Wow! With One-Direction-esque screaming and more flags than you can shake a stick at, it was an impressive sight.

It was a brilliant festival of independence with no violence or negative energy, just a celebration of cultural indivuality. All very positive (as demonstrated by the quite adorable sign below) and a great big party! With such positive emotion, it’s hard not to get behind the Catalan cause. I feel that a similar event back home would invariably turn to violence or some sort of trouble.

Within the mass crowds there is a Catalan tradition called Castells - human towers built by local people, climbing up each other to create a human summit. They are truly incredible and there seems to be a channel on the local television devoted purely to showing the best towers from this year’s celebrations. Including the falls, which are nasty! One of the greatest craziest parts of it is that the very top of the towers, often 5 people high, are formed by little children in little helmets! Those kids have more guts than I could ever hope to muster together! It’s an activity that brings together the whole community and they were doing it all over Barcelona.

In the evening, the city put on a massive free concert of purely Catalonia acts. There were a few bands, the highlight of which was a band called Pastora. I think that’s what they are called, but I’m keeping an eye out for my new favourite Catalan band! The gig was massively well attended by 300,000+ locals, and included some impromptu Castells - below you can see my friend grabbing a grope whilst ‘helping’ in the construction process. The party-Castells were defintely a highlight of the parties, only rivalled by the presence of people who walk around with carrier bags of cold beers, walking through the crowds selling their wares. It may not be service with a smile, but I enjoy the presence of beer on my doorstep (which seems to happen ALL over the city at anytime post-sunset!).

All in all, this time in Barcelona is a fantastic opportunity to not only absorb some sun (read: avoid burning my pasty white skin), but to gain some insight into a new Catalonian culture. So roll on the Catalan - now I’ve celebrated it’s existence I should maybe try and become part of it for three months!

We’ve all been there. You are slightly younger than the rest of your family (perhaps they are your parents, grandparents and the like - these people have a tendency to be older than you) and, as a result, you are the sole saviour in their battle with anything new. Music, the remake of the Sweeney and, the old faithful, technology.

I’m sure most of us have had to set-up a new phone, reset a router or teach someone how to use the internet. I still remember when I had to leave home for university and, as the youngest child, this left my parents at home with a computer they weren’t the biggest fans of. Especially my Mum. I recall having to phone her from university in Edinburgh whilst she had a piece of A4 paper out and write out step-by-step instructions about how to turn-on the computer (amazingly, the first step was turn on the plug, stipulating which one was for the computer and which for the printer-scanner combo), get onto the internet and read her emails - so that she could read the email I had sent her. Whilst we were on the phone. I’m not sure this is what the world meant by multi-platform communication.

Well apparently this episode is not exclusive to older relatives. Apparently this is also true for middle-aged, multi-platinum rappers. Obviously. 

[The studio is set-up with a laptop in centre stage]
[Enter DMX]
The action unfolds… 

“Google make me act a fool! Up in here! Up in here!” *

To see such a famously aggressive rap-maestro humbled by the presence of a search bar.
To observe the ‘actor’, most famed for his role in Romeo Must Die, confused by the absence of a mouse.
To hear ‘The X’ mumble and moan in that same barking voice from some of our most warmly-loved records.
These are three phenomena that I feel I am far richer for experiencing and will allow me to find my peace in later life a lot easier. 

I feel that seeing this side of DMX, now a pastor of the church back in the USA, has only endeared me to him further. He gave it straight to my heart in X Gon’ Giv it to Ya and now, seeing the 41-year old rapper show a truly human and luddite side, the special place in my heart reserved for him is secured.

Because I don’t get enough opportunities to talk about my main man DMX, let’s keep on topic. If you love DMX and/or the XX, please check out this brilliant mash-up of X Gon Give it to Ya and Intro by the ever-fantastic Hood Internet: 

Also, for a step-by-step, blow-by-blow analysis of this situation please check out Grantland blog. It is far betterer than this.

*Yes, I’m aware that same gag is in the title but it is far to strong to only use once. And if you think that gag isn’t strong, this really isn’t the place for you - that’s probably the best I’ve achieved in my time on here.

In Dresden, basketball really is a special sport.

Never go full derp. Never.

Sometimes, only “Oh, snap” will do.

The newest happy resident of L’hotel Arden.

I am proud to be even somewhat loosely linked to the utterly amazing Azealia Banks.

p.s. my old uni flat was 47 Arden Street, Edinburgh. It’s nickname was l’hotel Arden.

p.p.s. if you STILL Hadn’t noticed Azealia is posing in front of 47 Arden Street. See below. That dude in a cap is probably me or something.

After just under a month in Dresden, I have a place to live! This is the big news. After an age of looking for somewhere and seeing a host of flats that would fall at the final curtain (hidden costs, weird issues, etc.), it is nice to be able to finally be sorted. From the 50-year old lady with 4 children under the age of 10, who was looking for economic and emotional support during a ‘financial crisis’ enduced by her Husband running off with another woman by letting out a room illegally (talk about a depressing flat - bless her, though, I wish her the best), to the countless rooms that classified a ‘bed’ as a mattress on a floor, I’m ridiculously pleased that the hunt is over and I appear to have landed on my feet.

My new flat is in the trendy ‘Neustadt’ - home of parties, bars, culture and parties - living with three German people who speak the national language “German”. I am hoping to pick up some ‘German’ in the time that I live there, so this is a definite positive. As is their brilliant English. Another definite positive is just how damn cheap everything is - my room is a good size (in true efficiency you never describe a room descriptively - it is a quantified metre squared measure - mine is 14m²) and also includes, furniture, internet and all bills for just €188 a month (£165.29  on today’s - 28.10.2011 - exchange rate). Pretty crazy, especially for the centre of town.

However, my room is pretty bare as the furniture is yet to arrive:

Kinda resembles a prison cell, with a gay-pride carpet at the moment. The provided furniture is arriving in the nest few days - *phew*. And you may spot the ladder to the left - that’s for my BUNK BED. Yep, it’s kinda the norm here to have an elevated bed (elevated well above my height so at least 2m high - that’s proper elevation) and every night I play the dice with death that is climbing the stairs and trying not to fall out of the barrier-lacking sides of my bunk bed. It’s pretty novel and a childish thrill now, but ask me how I feel after 4 months and a lot of bruises. Hopefully I can keep landing on my feet…

I will miss my hostel for both it’s inspiring architecture…

rman

and it’s painted shed outside which inexplicably has Roger Federer and Jim’s dad from American Pie on them. Oh and I’ll miss Business Deal.

But apart from that, it is nice to be out of that hostel. I’m tired of sharing rooms with men in pants or men without pants. For now, it’s time to make home sweet home, my home.

In an attempt to learn more German I have thrown myself into as many German social groups as possible. The ideal opportunity came with the sports teams that the University offered. After signing up through the most ridiculously over-the-top system, in which each sport had a time at which the spots ‘opened’ up on a first-come-first-served basis in a series of mini-Glastonbury ticket sale-style maddening page refreshing, I found myself in three sports. Football to try and get back into it properly, Frisbee to meet a notoriously friendly bunch and Latinamerikanische und Standard Tanze.

That’s Latin American and Ballroom Dancing auf Englische. Why ballroom is standard I don’t know - I feel that a raised, drunken arm clutching a bottle of stella, a pout and two firmly bobbing knees is much more of a standard dance, but whatever. Regardless of terminology, I thought dancing would be a fun way to meet some German speakers and to improve an area of my life in which I am really enthusiastic, but not very gifted. I’m not the most coordinated at the best of times, but putting my motor skills to the test through formal dance seems a push. But one that I was really willing to throw myself into.

The first lesson was the standard waltz - a dance that I think a lot of Europeans presume I know because I’m British. I quickly set them straight with far too many bumped knees as I slaughtered a classic dance. I felt sorry for my partner who is trained in ballet, jazz and modern dancing and had to get led by Frankenstein’s monster-comes-dancing.

It was, then, to my suprise when I actually started to be ‘ok’ at waltzing. As we incorporated sweeping circles and some tunes I recognised (Simply Red) into the equation, we were suddenly jamming, baby. And then the dance instructor gave me some words I will hold dear forever: “You are doing beautiful”. To which myself and my partner started giggling like schoolgirls. Pros. The instructor later returned and shed some further light on our style, explaining that despite our height difference (about a foot, or 30cm as they say on the continent) causing some troubles, “we were still beautiful to watch dancing”. Wow.

That’s right, I am a beauty to watch dancing. I never thought that these words would be directed at me. Roll on the cha cha cha next week!