What Is Art?

Radha's Graduation

After a 3-year course in film/video technique,my daughter Radha has graduated with a 1st-class degree. Here she is looking contented with the outcome


















Of course, in her father's mind, she will always look like:

Dennis Potter's Summation

Dennis Potter, best known to most as the writer of The Singing Detective and Pennies From Heaven, learned of his impending death from cancer a few months ahead, and in the short time left managed to complete his final series of television plays, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus. What he says in this remarkable interview from that time will certainly resonate with anyone with the slightest interest in writing, television, and of course Life and Death. Witty, courageous, and in no way heavy, it is extraordinarily intelligent, wise and prescient. Among his observations:

• How the vivid awareness of his own mortality sharpens his sense of beauty
• How religion is the wound and not the bandage
• How the English character was in the mid-20th century
• How it's easier to pull a gun than a cigarette from ones pocket in America
• How his relation with his father (long deceased) continues to improve. (cf. Atonement)
• Why Rupert Murdoch is the one man he would shoot, given the chance.
• Why people in his plays suddenly burst into lip-synched song (How life is like karaoke)

.and much more...

It's in 6 ten minute sections, and it's well worth your giving your attention to the last hour of this brilliant writer's public discourse.

Fiddling with the keyboard

At a recent small musical gathering, a friend recorded some of my piano improvising, unbeknownst to me. Here are a couple of tracks (full of mistakes) which came out sort of OK...please make allowances for the fact that I never had piano lessons...

It needs some bass boost, and perhaps a bit of treble boost.

Any Comments would be appreciated..

RISING HIGHEST (DJ CHRIS Mix)

If you like Old School trance, here's a mix of my favourite tracks from the classic Rising High label, known for its quality once described as "astral melancholy"