This is a photo i took of the bust of the Emperor Augustus in the Ephasus Museaum this afternoon. He was quite a guy. He ruled during the time that Jesus Christ was born but he died before Jesus got really going. At Ephesus, he was the subject of a cult, which transferred love and affection from the official state gods to heads of state. You can see how that can happen. But there is something really interesting about this bust. Carved into the Emperors forehead is a cross. It is a result of the Christians getting their comeuppance on …
We’ve moved from the splendour and imperial regency of Istanbul to the remote and incredible Cappadocia. This is a place of unreal geography and living history. I love the way ruins here aren’t preserved, but rather used as the basis for building new things. The region is known for the thousands of ancient cave settlements, built as long as 4000 years ago from the soft volcanic rock. Nowadays parts of those ancient caves are incorporated into modern buildings, and form the basis for themed hotels like the beautiful Esbeli Evi, in which we are staying. Cappadocia is also a cradle …
In this article, stringing together some obersvations about Louis CK and Mary Halvorson, Seth Colter Walls touches on the wellspring of collaboration. He writes a little of the play that replaces rehearsal for true improvisers, of finding outlets of artistic practice where “no one person is responsible for all the tunes–if tunes are even the order of the day. Such groups aren’t the ones that players use as reputational tent-poles; they’re the ones that successful artists keep going in order to keep the channel for new sounds open. It’s the jazz-world equivalent of Zach Galifianakis’s avant-chat Web-show “Between Two Ferns,” …
Istanbul is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and it’s not surprising why. The city holds so much history of importance to both Europe and Asia that people come from all over to touch it and see it. Although there are lots of Europeans and some North Americans wandering around the Sultanahmet district where we are staying, there are also lots of tourists from Central Asia and Turkey itself visiting during Ramadan. So of course staying in the tourist district it’s hard sometimes to glimpse the important things to local people, but two stood out yesterday. …
I think it’s fair to say that the expression “I’m writing from a rooftop terrace in the old part of Istanbul” has a certain romantic appeal to it. And this is where I am, having travelled on a short red eye flight from Copenhagen last night, to arrive with my family in a lovely hotel in the centre of Istanbul’s most ancient downtown, in the shadow of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, and with the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara in front of me. It’s a quiet Sunday morning, and the family are all sleeping. We’ve …