"At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities."

- Jean Houston (b. 10 May 1937, New York City)

Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

I did not for one moment take for granted that performing before me - full-belt, alive and present; giving his heart, his craft, his music - was Ustad Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Glorious was the word, and really there are not many words that can begin to capture it. This blog post will be short.

I smiled throughout, felt expanded and became one step closer to my own dreams and destinies.

Kitty&Kitty loved the evening - and what a fabulous and apt way to spend the turning of the spring equinox. The equinox arrived at 5.30pm and by 7pm we were in our seats. As the evening gathered pace, and the songs layer on layer worked to their ecstacy (as happens also within many of the individual songs) we were in raptures and enraptured.

Rahat did not interrupt his music with chat. He didn't need to. A quiet air of ease on his plump red and gold cushion, and a voice that belted to the Gods. It is hard to believe he is just 35 years old.

The evening was a mix of Bollywood and Qawwali. Last autumn he was in London for his Remembering Nusrat tour. That seemed a project in establishing himself as heir-apparent to the Nusrat legacy, and this year he is back to establish brand Rahat.

His version of Akhiyan Udeek Diyan was the one that really lifted the roof. It injected new energy, and was the turning point of the performance and evening. From the Bollywoods, I loved O Re Piya. After the roof-lifting, Dam Mast Qalandar (Ali! Ali!) and Afreen Afreen were just terrific too.

Afreen was the encore, which delighted me a lot as this is a song I have discovered through repeated listenings. I have a Nusrat MP3 bought for 45Rs (about 60p) in an Indian bazaar (actually I have several!) - it contains 20hours of tracks and on the digital display all are unnamed... it really is Nusrat by number! I have learned over time that if I go to track #3 in the section after the one totalling 17 songs, I get uplifted with Afreen Afreen. This is one of a number of tracks that I locate in this way. And so I heard it again at the spring equinox and Nusrat by number is fleshed out a little more.

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(Rahat Fateh Ali Khan @ Royal Festival Hall, London - 20 March 2010)

back from Wonderland!

(Alice in Wonderland @ The IMAX)

Behind the giant 3D glasses my fidget nature was set free! It's a bit like going to a masque ball perhaps: you become something different.

Everyone encased in their own goggled worlds, I was set free from convention of sitting still and behaving well (I wriggled, rustled my sweets and my head roved in giant wonder at the screen). And as Alice ran from the party - from the dreadful marriage proposal and the crowd - I thought again about Ben Okri's uncomplicated yet powerful message. >Every day is a challenge in navigating and overcoming the fears and limitations placed on us, and which ultimately we place on ourselves.

I felt too a glimmer of what it might've been like attending the first Talkies or when black&white film shifted into techniclour. "It talks!" ... "It's in colour! - like the real world, like us!"... And now: "It has dimension!"

After Alice had returned from Wonderland and set out for the far East, this army of bugs took off their glasses and left the auditorium. The IMAX exit, as it is - is a level below the street and in the middle of a roundabout, with various tunnels leading up to the surface. You can see the street high above and sense the traffic moving in orbital. My friends said our goodbyes. "Which way are you going Caroline?" I pointed abstractly upwards, towards the street. "My bike... my bike is up there somewhere... on the railings... I just have to get to the surface and I will see." I felt like Alice, trying to exit through a rabbit hole!

Change your view, and the world transmutes too!

This morning I found myself on a "Rail-Replacement Bus". Yes, ardent cyclist djinn Kitty left her bike at home in respect of heading off for an evening of merriment after work.

Already running a bit late, she was in a dash and then tripped up (momentarily) when she found the local train station has been closed for some days now, and would not reopen until - June! It was an ultra-sunny morning, and she was soon atop the double-decker bus. What a different perspective! The bus travelled through an area of very smart Georgian housing just near to her beloved neighbourhood (never-a-dull-moment Dalston broadway). She reflected if she was ever in the market for real estate and home 'ownership' (i.e. the type involving title deeds) this would be an excellent place to begin her search. A new area! But it wasn't - corners from her cycle route angled into vision; it just looked different.

She admired the flat rooves and flat frontages of these graceful terraces; saw a gnome sunning himself on a window sill; handsome vintage lamp-posts; a grown woman gliding along on a child's scooter; another woman in sari hanging washing on her balcony. Then there was a lady walking up an avenue. Only her back was in view, her black coat, and she wondered at her unusual walk - her body was straight upright but inclined, with one shoulder and one foot ahead of the other, as though slicing a headwind - like she was trying to get through an invisible narrow door. One belonging to a gnome, perhaps.

What a delightful bus trip it was: unearthing already-planted tulips in the urban undergrowth. Change your view, or the point at which you are standing, and the world will transmute too!

"Know, oh seeker, that every man knows his own coast best... but the sea is not peculiar to each region and when you are out of sight of the coasts, you have only your own knowledge of the stars and guides to rely on"

(Ahmad Ibn Majid - writing in the late 1400s)

Happy 300th Birthday Dr Thomas Arne!

On pew, I sit. For the first time I am in St. Mary's Church, Stoke Newington (not far from my East London home) - a building most-glorious in its gothic illumination at night.

It is 6.30pm Sunday, and I am here for the 300th Birthday celebratory concert by Linden Baroque Orchestra.

Dr Thomas Arne, now 300, was the most successful song writer of his day, and produced a sound that today feels regal, gallant, and to many ears "typically English".

Electric connection with this music came for me in Steven Devine's solo in the Harpsichord Concerto (No.5 in G). The notes fell like crystal rain, and I imagined myself pushing aside curtains of beaded glass and entering a palace of fine diamante. Fine diamante?! - djinn kitty, kitty djinn (I inwardly balked) you cannot compare English baroque with that most pedalled ingredient of democratised jewellery!

Yet, I could. In the mid-eighteenth century, Dr Thomas Arne was a most popular and commercially successful feature at London's pleasure gardens - unmissable hubs of cultural entertainment where all of London irrespective of class gathered. At the famous pleasure gardens at Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Marylebone (and others), Londoners delighted in varied and eclectic programmes of song, glee, chorus, sometimes opera, alternating with overtures, symphonies, and concertos. The old mixed with the new, and there was much pastiche. Thomas Arne was central to this pastiche - he prepresented the new, the shiny. His songs often plumped out programmes and drew in the crowds (yet represented a most popular choice of "taste" - that great C18 value). Pleasure-garden gatherers might've enjoyed a solo song by Arne (like 'The Lover's Rencantation' we heard this eve) followed by a symphony. In Thomas Arne we can find a fine, glistening, democratised crystal, that sparkles and sings, and mixes with the party atmosphere and brings pleasure to many. Diamante!

This great and interesting historical music was brought alive by Linden Baroque Orchestra, who specialise in performing Baroque music on period instruments (find them on facebook). The music was accompanied by a programme written with wit and dexterity - the care in fine writing and precision of information added a grace to the proceedings and warmed this damp-cold January evening with a sense that you were somewhere most interesting and special.

UK premiere of 'Kashf' / Q&A with Director Ayesha Khan

(@ the UK's first Himalaya Film Festival, currently on in London)

Kashf - The Lifting of the Veil is a fascinating exploration of questions of destiny, and takes us into the worlds of Sufism (the mystical heart of Islam) and Lollywood dreams.

I especially liked the style of it - it felt very fresh, raw, and all the more so for hearing from director Ayesha Khan of the "guerilla-style" film-making process. Shot in 28 days on a very low budget, the result was a genre-bending fusion of camcorder documentary, Lollywood cinema, and 'conventional' film crew work (although the crew later appear on screen as cinema audience!).

A young man returns to Lahore, the city of his birth, and begins to uncover mystical circumstances around his conception and the promise his mother made to a Sufi Pir, that in adulthood he would take the Sufi path. Meanwhile, his cousin is also being drawn into another established tradition in Lahore's culture as he pursues his calling to be an actor.

With dream sequences and hallucinations, magic realism is a strong element - reality is explored through apparent non-reality, and the physical and metaphysical merge. A most interesting aspect of this upturning and unveiling is Director turns Actor, as Ayesha Khan literally melds onto the screen and becomes a major presence in its landscape.

As the pull on our hero towards his spiritual destination becomes irresistibly and irreversibly stronger, he is told: "you have to acknowledge you're on the path." This film is about facing up to destiny, and meeting it, and is about the quest we each face to find out who we are and why we are here.

I enjoyed that this film took me to the streets and doors, and sometimes behind those doors, of Lahore (the green door is a strong motif in the film). Ayesha was just great too - I admired that she had made the film as an experiment: rather than go to film school, why not just try to make a film? And I admired her a m a z i n g l o n g hair!