Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
I took the photo at 8.54 pm on 04 May 2024.
At that time my vantage point – an entertainment barge – was loud and lively, as the preceding several posts have illustrated.
However, if one looked out across the waters of Dal Lake – and up to the ridge overlooking its southern shore – the scene appeared utterly serene, unruffled, “silent”.
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As we slowly glided our way out of the “Toorak/Peppermint Grove” end of the houseboats-fringed section of Dal Lake, the musicians were tuning up, plugging in, preparing.
Leave a CommentOn 19 July the world lost one of its most eloquent instrumentalists..
Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate was 58; he died after a short illness.
He was not the only great kora player, but he was, unquestionably, the kora’s most prominent and most influential exponent; Toumani Diabate turned it into a “concert” instrument.
At age 22 he recorded Kaira – the world’s first absolutely solo kora album.
(oft-misdescribed as an African “harp”, the kora is in fact a harp-lute)
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This post’s image does not at all resemble #30’s shot of a “Silk Road” remnant.
Its vantage point, however, was only a few footsteps distant from #30’s; #31’s photo was taken less than a minute later, from the same side of the Karakoram Highway, whilst en route from Gilgit to the Hunza Valley.
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Presumably, the living lizard had no sense of the pictured circumstance’s synchronicity, let alone any awareness that a human passer-by might find it quirky or amusing.
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This post’s subtitle owes an apology to Wendy Carlos.
(Wendy, who was originally named Walter, is most famous for her 1968 LP “Switched-on Bach”).
This post includes a musical bonus; like the featured image, it involves Tibetan Buddhism…but not J.S. Bach.
Comments closedThis post’s musical bonus really is astounding, I think.
November 4 2022, at Okonjima, was one of the most rewarding days of our lives.
The immediately-preceding post’s leopard encounter was its most electrifying moment, but we also saw another leopard, giraffes galore, cheetahs, many other animals, and some beautiful country.
Circa 7 pm, we adjourned to a hilltop, to enjoy “sundowners”…and/or the actual sundown.
I took the featured photo at 7.06 pm.
The other images, below, are in chronological order.
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Khowarib Gorge is one of very few Namibian places through which water flows, visibly, “permanently”.
This post’s (Tunisian) musical bonus was doubtless inspired by larger waves, dancing somewhere else entirely, but Anouar Brahem’s Dance With Waves dances well with a desert river’s rippling.
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Day becoming night – or vice versa – is especially beautiful in an arid or semi-arid region where edifices and artificial lighting are nowhere visible, or barely present.
Namibia has a great many such places.
One CommentUnsurprisingly, a deal of Perth’s abundant street art celebrates Western Australia’s own extraordinary flora and fauna.
Thanks to sculptors and muralists, you can see kangaroos in the CBD’s main thoroughfare, endangered cockatoos vividly adorn more than a few walls and fences, and oversized orchids, kangaroo paws and banksias “bloom” on others.
Near to the South Perth foreshore’s colossal frill-necked lizard and numbat, proudly stands a singular, much more elaborate metal sculpture.
It was made in the WA wheatbelt, but depicts – anatomically correctly – an “iconic” African animal.
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