A friend with a healthy interest in news and current affairs said, when he returned from six months or so in the Antipodes, that one of the most interesting things about the experience was the different perspective it gave on news values. In the UK, we perhaps flatter ourselves that we take a fairly international perspective. What was striking down under, apparently, was that what we regard as 'international' news hardly ever featured - walk-outs in France, corruption in Italy, that kind of thing. Instead, there was far more of the day-to-day news from Indonesia, Malaysia, and so forth - places that only ever feature in the UK in the event of a coup or natural disaster or similar. The point being, the news one gets in a given country is filtered by proximity; us first, neighbours second, distant places last.
The US media, of course, are notoriously parochial, and in fact don't quite follow that model. It's more like: USA first; other countries that the US is currently interested in fighting/bullying/making peace with/being sucked up to by second; everyone else, a remote third. You can watch the national networks for a week without Canada or Mexico being mentioned, except perhaps the the latter in an immigration debate. Iran and Iraq figure, in predictable terms; France got a mention recently following Sarkozy's nauseating visit to Congress. Other than that, it's interminable coverage of presidential primaries and forensic analysis of the latest fall from grace of a sportsman, celebrity, or congressman. Same with the newspapers; only the NY Times seems to have anything like an internationalist outlook.
But, as I'm constantly being told in many contexts, Miami is very different from the rest of the States, and looking at the news values here is one way of getting a handle on dissimilarity. The main local papers are the Miami Herald, a daily of vaguely liberal tendencies, and the Miami New Times, a weekly free sheet with slightly more overt pinko sympathies. Both often feature international news prominently. The Herald - which also publishes a Spanish language edition - has had more than one front page article on Venezuela in the last week or so. The New Times, which concentrates more on 'colour' pieces than hard news, last week ran long stories about the new wave of Venezuelan immigrants to Miami, and the plight of Haitian boat people.
This focus is in some sense more international than that of the national media, but viewed through a different lens, it's also just as parochial. One of the things that makes Miami so different is its status as the destination of choice for political refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean; and the international element of the local news is almost exclusively concerned with whichever countries in those areas are tending most towards the Left at the moment, hence the recent interest in Venezuela. Cuba, naturally, is a constant. The New Times piece on the Haitian immigrants was an exception, a provocative article questioning why the 100 or so dirt poor migrants fleeing persecution who washed up on the beaches of South Florida recently are treated so differently from their Cuban counterparts.
The answer is precedent and protocol. So far as Cuba goes, America's antipathy is firmly established, and the route from Havana to here has been well-trodden since the 1959 revolution. The first wave of immigrants mostly consisted in the rich who stood to lose most in Castro's country. Subsequent immigration, which has waxed and waned, has been from all social classes. The most famous influx was the Mariel boatlift in 1980; 125 000 Cubans, mostly economic rather than political refugees, were allowed to leave by Cuba and promised sanctuary by the US. The majority ended up in or near Miami. Still today, a Cuban of whatever status arriving in Miami is almost guaranteed the right to remain, in part for fear of upsetting the vocal community here who regard all Cuban expats as brothers and braves in the struggle against Castro.
Venezuelans are in a similar situation. Although there has been no mass migration on the scale of Mariel, since Chavez took over there Miami has seen a steady stream of mostly political exiles; middle-class journalists, army officers, and of course the rich. Since America is so openly hostile to Chavez, it can't help but offer asylum to all these people if its policy is to seem consistent. This is the difference between the Venezuelans and the Haitians; since the US is officially friendly with Haiti, no such laissez faire attitude to immigration from there exists. It's also been noted that the Haitian refugees tend to be poor and black.
All this highlights two factors in Miami's make-up. The first is the massive and continuing influence of waves of Latin American immigration. Initially through proximity to Cuba, Miami is the place to be for Hispanic exiles. And, because of the peculiar position the US has on Cuba and other countries, these Latins aren't illegal migrants like the Mexicans in the West; they're full members of society.
The second is the gulf between the rich and poor here, which is truly astonishing. The first Cuban exiles, and those from other Latin American countries since, were rich, often enormously so, and contributed to the millionaire's playground element of the city. They also brought a particular political culture in which money can buy influence, and this is now part of the fabric of South Florida life. Subsequent immigrants, though, have often tended towards the poor, dirt-poor; and enormous influxes like the Mariel boatlift have put tremendous strain on public finances and services. A Republican Congressman from Colorado got in trouble a year ago for calling Miami a 'third world country', but many feel he had a point. There's that same ridiculous disparity of wealth, shocking slums rubbing up against glittering high rises, that one associates with such places; and the same sense that the rich run the place in their favour. Joan Didion's book 'Miami', which I read just before coming here, is in some ways outdated; it's a mid-eighties piece of journalism, and some of the contemporary references are now hopelessly obscure. But the picture it paints of of the city, seething with barely submerged undercurrents of shady deals, horrible disparity, and pervasive, murky links to the politics of countries far from here, is as accurate now as it was then.
Saturday, 8 December 2007
Thursday, 6 December 2007
Christmas travel
A quick note to inform of my travel plans at Christmas:
Dec 19: Arrive at Heathrow at 6:20am and make my weary jetlagged way across London and up to Durham. Hang around there complaining about the cold until:
Dec 28: Fly from Newcastle to Amsterdam and then train to Rotterdam, to spend a few days with some friends there.
Jan 1: Fly back to Newcastle. That is not going to be a fun flight.
Jan 6: Take a train down to London and stay there overnight, in preparation for
Jan 7: Heathrow again, and back to MIA.
I've no plans for the periods Dec 20 -27 (apart from the obvious) and Jan 2-5, so I'm somewhat open to suggestion; but I'm unlikely to want, or be able to afford, to spend much of that time traipsing up and down the country. Summer, I think, is going to be better for seeing people... More light, you see. Anyway, I hope I'll see at least some of you soon.
Dec 19: Arrive at Heathrow at 6:20am and make my weary jetlagged way across London and up to Durham. Hang around there complaining about the cold until:
Dec 28: Fly from Newcastle to Amsterdam and then train to Rotterdam, to spend a few days with some friends there.
Jan 1: Fly back to Newcastle. That is not going to be a fun flight.
Jan 6: Take a train down to London and stay there overnight, in preparation for
Jan 7: Heathrow again, and back to MIA.
I've no plans for the periods Dec 20 -27 (apart from the obvious) and Jan 2-5, so I'm somewhat open to suggestion; but I'm unlikely to want, or be able to afford, to spend much of that time traipsing up and down the country. Summer, I think, is going to be better for seeing people... More light, you see. Anyway, I hope I'll see at least some of you soon.
Friday, 23 November 2007
Black steel
There's two reasons why my posts here have become less frequent. One is that I am working very, very hard, and so are most of my friends. So the supply of interesting events to relate has dried up somewhat. I've done some fun things in the last couple of weeks or so; but I don't think anyone would benefit from my amateur criticism of an exhibition of Goya drawings, and there's only so much you can say about occasional drinking.
The other reason is that, without exactly getting used to the place, I'm gradually reaching a kind of accommodation with Miami. Though it still regularly strikes me as deeply alien - the palm trees, the alligators in the university lake, the November sun that warms the bones rather than warning of frost - I've lost the wide-eyed sense of wonder that encouraged me, at first, to write about everything I saw.
Every now and then, though, something occurs that reminds me what a thoroughly strange and unfamiliar country, state, city this is. Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Even were I American, I think I would be ambivalent about the day. What, exactly, are thanks been given for? The survival of some of the early colonies; and, by extension, the subjugation of the indigenous population and establishment of the good old USA. Hmmmm. Leaving aside that perhaps ungraceful point, a compulsory family gathering within a month of Christmas seems particularly cruel. I dodged two invitations to spend the day with large extended families and spent it
hiding in the philosophy grad 'work room' - a poky space, apparently once a small apartment, that makes the eleventh floor of Sheffield's arts tower seem well-appointed.
Only a cynic would say that the day after Thanksgiving is a more apposite expression of the American way of life. Today is 'Black Friday'. The name has nothing to do with stock market crashes, massacres, or the like. Instead, it's (probably incorrectly, but very nicely) said to derive from the fact that it's first day of the financial year on which the figures on the retailers' bottom lines can be penned in black rather than red (The American fiscal year begins on Oct 1). The discounts are, apparently, massive, and the queues enormous; the whole nation hits the shops and does their bit for the national economy.
Another strange thing happened recently. I can't resist the quotation: I got a letter from the government the other day, I opened and read it, it said they were suckers. They wanted me for their army or whatever. Imagine me giving a damn, I said never.
Yes, I was informed by mail that I had been registered for the Selective Service System. This is a compulsory scheme under which every male between the ages of 18 and 30 are registered so that, if a military draft is deemed necessary, the process can be conducted fairly, efficiently, and quickly. I was briefly worried, given that the American military is so far short of its recruitment targets that conscription is being seriously mooted by some. Luckily, my registration is an administrative error, an automatically produced document linked to my registration for a social security number. As a 'resident alien', I can de-register easily. No Arabian nights for me any time soon.
So, dubious holidays, rampant consumerism, and worrying intimations of military service. It's the American way, and it's still, reassuringly, very peculiar indeed.
The other reason is that, without exactly getting used to the place, I'm gradually reaching a kind of accommodation with Miami. Though it still regularly strikes me as deeply alien - the palm trees, the alligators in the university lake, the November sun that warms the bones rather than warning of frost - I've lost the wide-eyed sense of wonder that encouraged me, at first, to write about everything I saw.
Every now and then, though, something occurs that reminds me what a thoroughly strange and unfamiliar country, state, city this is. Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Even were I American, I think I would be ambivalent about the day. What, exactly, are thanks been given for? The survival of some of the early colonies; and, by extension, the subjugation of the indigenous population and establishment of the good old USA. Hmmmm. Leaving aside that perhaps ungraceful point, a compulsory family gathering within a month of Christmas seems particularly cruel. I dodged two invitations to spend the day with large extended families and spent it
hiding in the philosophy grad 'work room' - a poky space, apparently once a small apartment, that makes the eleventh floor of Sheffield's arts tower seem well-appointed.
Only a cynic would say that the day after Thanksgiving is a more apposite expression of the American way of life. Today is 'Black Friday'. The name has nothing to do with stock market crashes, massacres, or the like. Instead, it's (probably incorrectly, but very nicely) said to derive from the fact that it's first day of the financial year on which the figures on the retailers' bottom lines can be penned in black rather than red (The American fiscal year begins on Oct 1). The discounts are, apparently, massive, and the queues enormous; the whole nation hits the shops and does their bit for the national economy.
Another strange thing happened recently. I can't resist the quotation: I got a letter from the government the other day, I opened and read it, it said they were suckers. They wanted me for their army or whatever. Imagine me giving a damn, I said never.
Yes, I was informed by mail that I had been registered for the Selective Service System. This is a compulsory scheme under which every male between the ages of 18 and 30 are registered so that, if a military draft is deemed necessary, the process can be conducted fairly, efficiently, and quickly. I was briefly worried, given that the American military is so far short of its recruitment targets that conscription is being seriously mooted by some. Luckily, my registration is an administrative error, an automatically produced document linked to my registration for a social security number. As a 'resident alien', I can de-register easily. No Arabian nights for me any time soon.
So, dubious holidays, rampant consumerism, and worrying intimations of military service. It's the American way, and it's still, reassuringly, very peculiar indeed.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
mergers of acquisitions
With South Florida cowering before tropical storm Noel (could they not have given it a more aggressive name?), I thought I ought to post some kind of valedictory message before I'm blown in to the mid-Atlantic. Now, the reason things on here have been a bit quiet is that I've been - brace yourselves - working hard, very hard, and so have all the other grads. This means that I've been spending enough time in front of computers already, and also that I've been doing very little fun to report about.
The hard work seems set to continue for at least the next fortnight, but I have a new and welcome distraction. I managed, finally, a couple of weeks ago, to get a second hand mixer and pair of decks for a decent price. [Warning: slightly geeky tech speak for next 50 wds). Technics 1200M3D, Allen and Heath Xone32. The decks are in sparkly condition, even the 45 adaptors are there. The mixer is a handsome beastie, and has a built-in filter unit - so I can add LFO wobble to anything insufficiently squelchy. Only complaint: would it have been so hard to put a sharp cut on the crossfader curve control, given that they've put one on at all? Makes scratching a little less easy than it might be.
Anyway, those secured, the next task was to get some records, and here's how I've done:
70-odd 7" singles by completely obscure American artists on utterly recherche labels. Bought for buttons from Ebay. Still going through them: about half country of various degrees of nuttiness, one quarter sixties-style surf-pop, and one quarter soul gems.
20 assorted jazz LPS. Ebay, again. who doesn't need 8 Herbie Hancock albums? How did I manage without? I bought 14 records from the same guy, again for buttons, and he kindly threw in six extra. I'm grateful for the Billy Cobham, and slightly scared of the John Klemmer. Never heard of him, but it looks awful. Mind, Joe Zawinul's hardly less alarming on the sleeve of 'Heavy Weather'.
The cherry-picked highlights of a massive collection I rifled through on Saturday. I answered a classified ad that mentioned a record collection for sale and a few artists from the mid-90s Rawkus golden age, secured the necessary lift, and on arrival, was greeted with 20 crates of vinyl. Deep breath, send my chauffeur to read a book in the car ('this could take me a while'), dive in. I was very restrained and selective, and resisted the temptation to get copies of things I already had in the UK, but still came away with two boxes, mostly of hip hop 12"s and LPs, a few other bits and pieces mixed in - couple of Portishead LPs, some Femi Kuti, and so on. The crates were a goldmine of hip hop from the mid 90s to the present, a mix of the indie and the commercial, and I got loads of good stuff, including some things I've tried in vain to track down ( in a slightly obsessive manner) in the past - like a 12" of the original version of 'Grindin'', rather than the easy-to-find-but-rubbish 12" with the Sean Paul remix. Yes, it was released back in the days when the coolest thing to do with your remix was to get SP to phone in 16 bars of priapic patois-lite.
So I'm now all set up to distract myself mixing all my new purchases into a tasty musical stew. Of course, all this is a bit stupid, for two reasons. First, the tentative offers I've had for DJ work have been for dubstep mixing; so really, my record budget should be going on dubstep records, not Kool Keith LPs. Second, a few years from now, I'm going to have to face a horrible decision: bankrupt myself shipping my US collection back to Britain, or wave goodbye to all my precious acquisitions? I'm dreading that day already.
The hard work seems set to continue for at least the next fortnight, but I have a new and welcome distraction. I managed, finally, a couple of weeks ago, to get a second hand mixer and pair of decks for a decent price. [Warning: slightly geeky tech speak for next 50 wds). Technics 1200M3D, Allen and Heath Xone32. The decks are in sparkly condition, even the 45 adaptors are there. The mixer is a handsome beastie, and has a built-in filter unit - so I can add LFO wobble to anything insufficiently squelchy. Only complaint: would it have been so hard to put a sharp cut on the crossfader curve control, given that they've put one on at all? Makes scratching a little less easy than it might be.
Anyway, those secured, the next task was to get some records, and here's how I've done:
70-odd 7" singles by completely obscure American artists on utterly recherche labels. Bought for buttons from Ebay. Still going through them: about half country of various degrees of nuttiness, one quarter sixties-style surf-pop, and one quarter soul gems.
20 assorted jazz LPS. Ebay, again. who doesn't need 8 Herbie Hancock albums? How did I manage without? I bought 14 records from the same guy, again for buttons, and he kindly threw in six extra. I'm grateful for the Billy Cobham, and slightly scared of the John Klemmer. Never heard of him, but it looks awful. Mind, Joe Zawinul's hardly less alarming on the sleeve of 'Heavy Weather'.
The cherry-picked highlights of a massive collection I rifled through on Saturday. I answered a classified ad that mentioned a record collection for sale and a few artists from the mid-90s Rawkus golden age, secured the necessary lift, and on arrival, was greeted with 20 crates of vinyl. Deep breath, send my chauffeur to read a book in the car ('this could take me a while'), dive in. I was very restrained and selective, and resisted the temptation to get copies of things I already had in the UK, but still came away with two boxes, mostly of hip hop 12"s and LPs, a few other bits and pieces mixed in - couple of Portishead LPs, some Femi Kuti, and so on. The crates were a goldmine of hip hop from the mid 90s to the present, a mix of the indie and the commercial, and I got loads of good stuff, including some things I've tried in vain to track down ( in a slightly obsessive manner) in the past - like a 12" of the original version of 'Grindin'', rather than the easy-to-find-but-rubbish 12" with the Sean Paul remix. Yes, it was released back in the days when the coolest thing to do with your remix was to get SP to phone in 16 bars of priapic patois-lite.
So I'm now all set up to distract myself mixing all my new purchases into a tasty musical stew. Of course, all this is a bit stupid, for two reasons. First, the tentative offers I've had for DJ work have been for dubstep mixing; so really, my record budget should be going on dubstep records, not Kool Keith LPs. Second, a few years from now, I'm going to have to face a horrible decision: bankrupt myself shipping my US collection back to Britain, or wave goodbye to all my precious acquisitions? I'm dreading that day already.
Sunday, 14 October 2007
photos
The Facebook links that previously appeared in this post were apparently misbehaving, so instead, I've spread my digital self a little more thinly and created a Flickr account. Go
see, if you' couldn't before. Even if you could, there are new pictures of lizards and rain.
I'll try to add photos fairly regularly. As a preview, here is a nice picture of the sky and some flags.
see, if you' couldn't before. Even if you could, there are new pictures of lizards and rain.
I'll try to add photos fairly regularly. As a preview, here is a nice picture of the sky and some flags.
You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think
OK, so I've been here a couple of months now. I've seen some alligators, been on a beach, massively increased my chances of skin cancer - the list of Miami cliche activities is being ticked off. One cliche I hadn't investigated till this weekend, though, was the city's reputation as having less culture than the average Brie. It turns out to be half true, half not (take that, bivalent logicians).
A dig around the internet and the local listings mags reveals a few art galleries, theatres and the like, as you'd hope in a city of two million people. As with everything, access to most venues is a problem for anyone who doesn't drive, but on Friday, I managed to get to the Carnival Centre by public transport easily.
The Carnival Centre is an enormous performing arts complex North of downtown, in the middle of pretty much nothing -it's surrounded by building sites, and seems to be the vanguard of an attempt to reinvigorate the Omni district. In the best tradition of big public projects, the Centre was built at a cost hugely in excess of the original budget, and is currently facing big running cost overspends, exacerbated by smaller audiences than was expected. It seems they might not come even if you build it. So it was good to see the auditorium almost full for the Classical Theatre of Harlem 's production of Romeo and Juliet.
As you might guess from the name of the company, this was a version of the play set in modern times, with hiphop playing in the party scene, gunfights instead of swordsmanship, and so forth. The language was unchanged, apart from a few extra anachronistic exclamations (Nurse: 'scurvy knave!' Mercutio: 'ya mama!'). It worked fairly well, but ran foul on the problem that afflicts most productions of R&J; Romeo is such an idiot, such an unsympathetic dithering twit, that attempts to emphasise, say, the tragedy of the main story or the theme of warring families are stymied by his presence as the main catalyst for events. Another of those superficially heroic, but actually quite unpleasant, main characters Shakespeare did so well (cf Antonio in Merchant).
Saturday, and back relying on lifts, the Miami phil dept foreign legion (four of us) took a trip to the Bass Art Museum on South Beach. A relatively small museum with a much larger collection than in can show, and plans to expand, the Bass has three galleries for its collection and one for transient shows. The collection galleries do a lot with little space; in particular, the gallery of Renaissance and Baroque art gave an excellent overview of the period despite only displaying a handful of paintings. The touring exhibition this time was by a Cuban-American artist, and included an installation that was the first I've seen, I think, to include smells as part of the art.
On the way out, the volunteer (I think) at the entrance desk stopped us and gave us each a lovely book documenting a previous show at the museum, and chatted to us about the Miami art scene, giving us some tips about events, places to go and so on. This could have been kindness to foreigners, or it could have been a reward for (my) attentive listening on the way in to his tales of his trip to 'your wonderful country' and his adventures in 'Edinboro' and Parsons Green.
Or it could simply have been because, on a Saturday afternoon, we were four out of only six people to visit the gallery in an hour and a half. And that seems to be the true part of the Miami culture cliche; the infrastructure's there, but persuading the residents to partake is hard when there's all that tanning to do...
A dig around the internet and the local listings mags reveals a few art galleries, theatres and the like, as you'd hope in a city of two million people. As with everything, access to most venues is a problem for anyone who doesn't drive, but on Friday, I managed to get to the Carnival Centre by public transport easily.
The Carnival Centre is an enormous performing arts complex North of downtown, in the middle of pretty much nothing -it's surrounded by building sites, and seems to be the vanguard of an attempt to reinvigorate the Omni district. In the best tradition of big public projects, the Centre was built at a cost hugely in excess of the original budget, and is currently facing big running cost overspends, exacerbated by smaller audiences than was expected. It seems they might not come even if you build it. So it was good to see the auditorium almost full for the Classical Theatre of Harlem 's production of Romeo and Juliet.
As you might guess from the name of the company, this was a version of the play set in modern times, with hiphop playing in the party scene, gunfights instead of swordsmanship, and so forth. The language was unchanged, apart from a few extra anachronistic exclamations (Nurse: 'scurvy knave!' Mercutio: 'ya mama!'). It worked fairly well, but ran foul on the problem that afflicts most productions of R&J; Romeo is such an idiot, such an unsympathetic dithering twit, that attempts to emphasise, say, the tragedy of the main story or the theme of warring families are stymied by his presence as the main catalyst for events. Another of those superficially heroic, but actually quite unpleasant, main characters Shakespeare did so well (cf Antonio in Merchant).
Saturday, and back relying on lifts, the Miami phil dept foreign legion (four of us) took a trip to the Bass Art Museum on South Beach. A relatively small museum with a much larger collection than in can show, and plans to expand, the Bass has three galleries for its collection and one for transient shows. The collection galleries do a lot with little space; in particular, the gallery of Renaissance and Baroque art gave an excellent overview of the period despite only displaying a handful of paintings. The touring exhibition this time was by a Cuban-American artist, and included an installation that was the first I've seen, I think, to include smells as part of the art.
On the way out, the volunteer (I think) at the entrance desk stopped us and gave us each a lovely book documenting a previous show at the museum, and chatted to us about the Miami art scene, giving us some tips about events, places to go and so on. This could have been kindness to foreigners, or it could have been a reward for (my) attentive listening on the way in to his tales of his trip to 'your wonderful country' and his adventures in 'Edinboro' and Parsons Green.
Or it could simply have been because, on a Saturday afternoon, we were four out of only six people to visit the gallery in an hour and a half. And that seems to be the true part of the Miami culture cliche; the infrastructure's there, but persuading the residents to partake is hard when there's all that tanning to do...
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
A few thousand words' worth
I've spent the last couple of days trying, and failing, to write something perceptive about McGinn's theory that consciousness is matter without committing the cardinal sin of calling the theory bunk. So I'm no mood to write much. Fortunately, I bought a camera last week, so I can show you some pictures instead. Unfortunately, it's been raining in Miami for much of the last week, so I can't show you any pictures of the city in refulgent splendour. If I take enough goodies, I'll perhaps start an online gallery of some kind. In the meantime:
Here's the view towards downtown from the university metro station....
Here's the view towards downtown from the philosophy department....
Here's a view of part of campus from the philosophy department...
And here's the view I've mostly been enjoying this week when not in the philosophy department.
If you click on the pictures, they go all bigger and stuff. If anyone has any particular things which they'd like to see, let me know. Or anything they'd like me to write about. Though bear in mind my mother reads this (hi Mum).
Might also be worth mentioning I'm now Skype-equipped. If you are, you should be able to find me if you can spell my surname, and then you can audit my accent for any americanisms.
Here's the view towards downtown from the university metro station....
Here's the view towards downtown from the philosophy department....
Here's a view of part of campus from the philosophy department...
And here's the view I've mostly been enjoying this week when not in the philosophy department.
If you click on the pictures, they go all bigger and stuff. If anyone has any particular things which they'd like to see, let me know. Or anything they'd like me to write about. Though bear in mind my mother reads this (hi Mum).
Might also be worth mentioning I'm now Skype-equipped. If you are, you should be able to find me if you can spell my surname, and then you can audit my accent for any americanisms.
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