Croatia

The island of Brac is a 45-minute ferry ride from the city of Split. I'm sitting in my hotel room looking at Split and the towering granite cliffs above it from across the Adriatic. The Adriatic is a stunning blue, but now reflects the hazy clouds that sit above it. It's pleasantly warm, the hotel is comfortable enough (although garishly mediterranean) and I'm glowing from the sun - not quite tanned, but glowing.

Supetar is the main town on the island. It is, like most mediterranean ports, all about tourism. The hotels, the souvenir shops, the restaurants all cater towards the flip flop and sarong-wearing throngs of people. There is a surprisingly similarity to everything - one can find the same hats, towels, beach mats, souvenirs up and down the Dalmatian coast. There is very little uniqueness to the place. Every restaurant (even the 'authentic' konobas) sell the same food: spaghetti, seafood salads, grilled meats and chips. The only unique food item I've seen are what the Greeks would call koftes, but what the Croatians call cevapcici, 'meat fingers.' It's good food, but dull in its repetitiveness.

Most of the c, s, and z should have a small circonflex or v-shaped accent, but I've no idea how to do so in HTML. The language, full of consonants and accents is a mystery to me, but every now and then one sees a latin root to a word and can associate its meaning, even if one has no idea how it's pronounced.

The terrain (and I saw a lot of it yesterday in a 10 hour drive up and down the Dalmatian coast to Dubrovnik) is rocky. Growths of pine and fig trees keep it green, but there is a light rock everywhere. In Brac, this rock, a type of granite, is famous for it's white purity. So much so that some of it was used in the American White House and stone carvers from Brac (which has an accent mark and is pronounced 'Brach') were sent to Washington.

The people are lovely. The hosts of the hotel have been very welcoming. The tourists seem to come from all over and the European cliches apply (pasty Anglos, sun worshipping Italians, Germans in too small speedos.) But everyone is jolly enough.

I'm lazing about. Yesterday was a 16 hour schlep to and from Dubrovnik so I'm wiped out and am sitting on the balcony dozing. I'm going to continue to do so while I can.

Loving London Bridge

Moody and dark, the pictures, that is.

I once bought a book because of the cover. And it was one of the best books I've ever read. So there.

A very long slide into autumn

We are not just not going to have any sort of summer, are we...

Dhafer Youssef at the ROH Voices of the World Festival

This is an oud. It's an Arabic lute that Tunisian composer and singer Dhafer Youssef strums, picks, attacks like a rock guitar, pounds like a drum, even sings into to produce a looped echo. He opened the Royal Opera House's Voices Across the World festival last night along with Armenian doudouk master Lévon Minassian and Japanese percussionist Satoshi Takeishi for an evening of haunting and timelessly modern music. Can't get much more world music than that. I highly recommend his album Divine Shadows which also highlights his amazing voice (a deep plaintive wail that can climb to a pure falsetto he produces through his nostrils.)

Lest you think I'm more worldly than I am, it was Tim's initiative to go.

I can't recall the last time I spent a Sunday evening swaying in a gentle breeze in the courtyard of a 16th century mansion watching a Scottish band play sweet pop songs two decades old whilst the seagulls cried overhead and the stagelights cast colourful shadows on the old architecture.



As an early bday present, Tim and I saw the Blue Nile last night at Somerset House. Matt Hale (aka Aqualung and shockingly fresh-faced for a 34 year old) stood in front of us. We saw Will Mellor at dinner. But the highlight was still Paul Buchanan's pleading voice singing 'Downtown Lights'.



And I didn't wake up a year older.

Collision

Alex Ross writes about two of my current interests: China and classical music, in this brilliant New Yorker article.