Music/ Art and Money

Brilliant John Peel lecture by Iggy Pop.

Some of my favourite bits

Money as a symbol of love.

“The best way to survive the death or change of an industry is too transcend its form. You are better of with an identity of your own. Better yet a few of them.

It’s interesting that capital investment for all its posturing never really leads. It follows. 

Be yourself in a consistent way, follow your nose.

Dream! Be generous.

Money, it kills everything and fails to reflect its own image.

Try hard to diversify your skills and your interests.”

Your perfect productive day Fast Company

http://www.fastcompany.com/embed/7e80a69083404?rel=1&src=embed&veggiemode=1

Find your calling

Response to “what kind of black are you?”

My response to this brilliant article by Joel Leon on Medium

What kind of black am I?

I’m the kind of black who was born in Nigeria, grew up in multicultural London and now lives in Scotland. I’m the kind of black who since starting university is often the only black person in the room. I’m the kind of black who deals everyday with and loves the multi-facets of my Nigerian (Idoma and Igbo, Lagosian) and British (Londoner, Glaswegian) sides of my identity.

I’m the kind of black whose dark complexion and height brings a range of reactions. From the midwife who announced ‘its a shame a girl would look so much like her Dad,’ to the mixed race boy in school who told the class “she would be pretty if she was light skinned”, to growing up and being called beautiful or you look like a (insert African tribe) queen/ warrior, to going back to Nigeria where the majority of women bleach to be lighter and being told “you’re pretty but too dark” and confusion because my tribe isn’t evident in my features, to stop in your track wide-eyed stares in Cambodia where most women use skin lightning products from creams to deodorants, to grown men to literally jumping back or filming me in Austria, to teenagers in China wanting photos because they think I’m american, to Americans to thinking I’m from an Island. To deciding to feel beautiful and proud of my identity regardless of reaction….

If the world were 100 People

 

Wagenia/ Wagenya Fishermen

Wagenia/ Wagenya Fishermen

The Wagenya (Enya ethnic group) live in Kisangani, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. They are known and famous for their fishing technique. Fishing and the Congo river are a central part of Wagenya life. Wagenya boys undergo circumcision around the age of 12, the ritual is done on the banks of the Congo river and the foreskin is thrown into the river after the ceremony has concluded. The Wagenya say the Congo river is the river of their ancestors, legends states that a Wagenya can never die in the river because their ancestors’ village is located under the falls and it protects them. Fishing is part of Wagenya culture, the knowledge of how to build tolimo-s is passed down father to son. The tolimo-s are a collective symbol of Wagenya culture and identity. This tradition has existed hundreds of years before Henry Morton Stanley first observed them in 1877.

[Images by: Ghassen Marzouki, Pascal Maitre and  Andrew McConnell]

Reblogged from Angry African Girls United tumblr

Nicholas Winton: An amazing human

The Secret War Crime

This is the of the toughest most heartbreaking thing I’ve read in a long time, The Secret War Crime.

Rape in war is as old as war itself. But the intimate nature of sexual assault means that the horrors often go undocumented, sanitized out of history books and glossed over in news accounts that focus on casualties and refugee numbers. Yet that mass rape is so common in wartime only makes it more corrosive. It spreads disease. Its stigma destroys families and breaks down society. It leaves unwanted children who serve as constant reminders of the worst day of their mother’s life. “Rape is a weapon even more powerful than a bomb or a bullet,” says Jeanna Mukuninwa, a 28-year-old woman from Shabunda, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “At least with a bullet, you die. But if you have been raped, you appear to the community like someone who is cursed. After rape, no one will talk to you; no man will see you. It’s a living death.”

Why I love Scootering

I got my scooter a couple of weeks ago and it’s been absolutely brilliant. I’ve been whizzing all around town.

• It’s faster than walking (I’ve cut a 35 min walk to a 20 min scoot)
• It’s a great way to see the city
• You are present the whole journey
• It’s a great workout (lots of lunges)
• It’s fun (I feel like a kid on it, a cautious kid)

Making a difference

I was talking to a friend about the people that made a real difference for me while I was in undergrad. They weren’t the tutors but the support staff;

The security guy Dom, who knew everyones names, a few sentences in their language and would spot when you weren’t feeling great or hadn’t been in the studio for a while.

The technicians Abi and Bim. Abi would give you a tutorial when you wanted to make something but weren’t sure (he saved so many projects). He’d help you design something so beautiful and ingenious, then you’d take it to Bim to look at how you could actually make it. He’d simplify it.

They were the people that gave people hope and put smiles on their faces everyday, and they didn’t need to get recognition to do that.

You can make a difference whatever your role :).