"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!

"We can wake to the power of our voice"

My meeting with writer Ben Okri this week has shaken me. And I suspect it will continue to for a long time to come. His message and his art is powerful, clear - perceptive to the core. This guy has gravitas, is tough and is inspiring. From my front-row seat I spent one and a half hours sitting 2metres from him, and I spoke briefly with him afterwards. But it was not this proximity that moved me so much: he had exceptional presence, personality and poise that could reach far to (and beyond) the back of the room.

He talked about freedom - freedom of the mind. "There is nothing we can do/If we don't begin to think anew." If we are not free in our minds, he said, we are not going to be free anywhere else. Every day is a challenge in navigating and overcoming the limitations and fears placed on us, and which ultimately we place on our ourselves. And this is true. We can let our fears govern us - or we can be governed by our dreams. He talked about self-realisation - about striving for and becoming the best possible version of ourselves that we can be. It sounds so simple, and in principle it is. But it could also be our greatest challenge. The power is within, but how many of us "wake to the [full] power of our own voice", and, in turn, what of our voices - the collective human voice? This voice, this shining, this gold - has to come from within, no one can do it for us. Ultimately, he said, "people have to wake themselves up, and shake the world, shake the world." Every word he delivered was of resounding value and thought. These words were delivered like the beat of a drum, connected to the earth's heartbeat itself. - Or, how the world's heart should and could be beating. Ben Okri is a human metronome for all of us.

Ben Okri is currently tweeting a poem, line by line - one line a day. I share some lines with you here, and urge you to follow it. (twitter/benokri.com) (you can also follow on his Facebook page)

We ought to use time

Like emporers of the mind:

Do magic things that the future,

Surprised, will find.

[...]

We can wake to the power of our voice

Change the world with the power of our choice.

But there is nothing we can do

If we don't begin to think anew.

We are not much more than what we think; in our minds we swim or sink.

If there is one secret I'd like to share It's what we are what we dream Or what we fear.

So dream a good dream today

And keep it going in every way.

Let each moment of our life [...]

Ben Okri was 'In Conversation' @ Richmix, Shoreditch/East London.

the urban_djinn's GUIDE TO CYCLING IN THE SNOW

1. WEAR your woolly hat underneath your helmet. This will keep your ears warm and stop your hair getting in a catastrophic wet mess.
2. WEAR your best trekking boots, lest you get caught in a snow drift!
3. You are gonna have to compromise today and TAKE THE MAIN ROADS. Resist the usual snickets, cuts and routes that stop you having to talk to the big bad traffic. The snow will stick to the side roads and may conceal deadly black ice which will make you slip on your arse&wheels ... !
4. Since you will have to talk to the vehicular traffic today and work with its rhythm, sorry but you cannot wear your iPod today.
5. Use the red lights to your advantage - after careful checking take the chance here to get ahead of the traffic.
6. BE CHEERFUL!
7. DO NOT ride up anyone's rear end - your brakes will not be so nifty today due to the wet surfaces.
8. On arrival to the office, BREW fresh coffee and EAT Belgian chocolates! :-)
9. Good luck & enjoy!