Finsbury Square Information Tent

For the last fortnight I have been wearing earplugs. The drilling in the adjacent building starts around 730am and is perceived by some as a direct provocation. It is ok for me though- the rat-a-tat-tat penetrates the earplugs in a way that the london buses, taxis, sirens, diesel generator and chatter of my fellow campers does not. And by now my subconscious knows it is time to wake up, dragging me out of whatever dream I might be meandering in and opening my eyes to judge the weather by the shade of blue on the tent canvas.

Because for the last two weeks I have been camping here, Finsbury Square, slap bang in the heart of London's financial district - the place that, much more than the puppet-filled place they call westminster further down the Thames, is controlling and suppressing the lives of people in our country and around the world.

I had initially been sceptical of the Occupy London idea - The little media that came out of Occupy Wall Street sounded amazing, and it was great to see Americans turning up the heat a little bit, especially as (as we have seen) their police state is a whole lot more hardcore than our police state - but it felt like a 'solidarity camp' wouldn't have much staying power. And initially, on the first day as the camp set itself up outside St. Paul’s (after being denied access to the London Stock Exchange, the original target), I thought I had been proven right- the amount of people was uninspiring, the rhetoric very similar to what we have had for a long while now, the police slowly kettling us. Friends of mine from SOAS, who had been deeply involved in the tornado that was last year's student demos, were openly critical. So after we had played some hot samba I got on my bike and went home.

But over the next week- I visited every couple of days- things began to get somewhat inspiring. The camp grew. The church came out in tacit support. The chef in the kitchen was an Italian with an emotional bent. Tent City University- a kind of free school set up on the camp- began a series of really interesting talks and debates. The SWP were unable to co-opt the movement. There was always a great guitar player on the steps to jam out with. Check out this video to get a feel for it http://vimeo.com/31905080

And then the following Saturday a 'tour of corporate greed' led us to Finsbury Square, where we found a girl on a tripod, half a dozen people putting up tents, and one beautiful opportunity being pegged into the ground. I decided to put my life on a momentary hold and get involved.

And so now my days are spent here, long days, sharpening my arguments with bankers, hearing stories of old Greenham Common protesters, eating great food, assuaging drunks, accepting donations, but most of all chatting, listening and figuring out SOLUTIONS.

And it is solutions that everyone wants - solutions that some members of the public practically beg us for. Trouble is - as the Daily Hate Mail media keep reminding us - we don't have one that can be summed up in a sentence. We do, though, have several short term alternatives (ending offshore tax havens, a tax on financial transactions, separating retail banking from investment banking, curtailing the powers of lobbyists in parliament, putting an upper limit on individual donations to political parties), and several long term alternatives (moving to a resource based, rather than debt based, economy; getting rid of the stock exchange; creating alternative currencies; re-organising our democracies so everyone can actually take part in decision making; un-privatising Education, transport etc.) that at the very least would redistribute some wealth and at most have the power to create the (r)evolution that is rarely talked about on camp, but that still seems like the only wholesale way out of this mess.

Because- get this- many people in the camp, perhaps the majority, believe that reforming the current system is the most desirable way of changing things. This is the reason why many of my friends- ones that are active on a whole host of different projects and who all see the need to completely rid ourselves of the current 'capitalist' system- are not participating. And the reason why we have recently taken down the 'Capitalism isn't working' banner from the front of the site.

But I digress. After 2 weeks standing at the info tent, talking to all and sundry, let me here repeat and distill down some of the conversations I have been having, so that you can comment on them, discuss with your friends and perhaps move the debate forward. This movement- the Occupy movement- will stand or fall on whether those people that don't, for whatever reason, want to camp and get directly involved, take these debates and ideas to their/your own communities, so as things in the world get even more crazy we are that little bit more prepared to articulate and action solutions.........

A man approaches...

“What are you rabble doing here creating an eyesore where I normally have my lunch?

“We are here for two reasons- Firstly, to create a platform for discussion and debate both physically here as well as in the media, homes, schools and workplaces across the country. Secondly, we are here to create an example of an alternative society based on equality, pragmatism and inclusivity. A Domocracy, if you will.

But you are a magnet for homeless people, drunks, layabouts. You can't tell me they are here fighting for a better world!

It is true that by creating a safe space, with good food, understanding people and comfy sofas, people who have otherwise been marginalised from society come to spend their time. Wouldn't you? Let's blow off the media smokescreen and look at reasons for homelessness- 10% of homeless people are army veterans. Up to 20% of homeless people carry with them mental illness, 48% have drink or drug problems*.. All of them have been failed by the 7th richest society in the world, where our famous welfare state has been systematically eroded over 50 years to a shell of its former self. Society- especially this nauseatingly phrased 'Big Society'- needs to confront these problems rather than ignoring them. In our struggle at Finsbury Square and St Paul’s to be as inclusive as possible, we are doing just that.

Ah, it's alright for you to sit here smoking rollies and reeling off sob stories, but I am paying your taxes!

Many of us here work and pay taxes too, or have been made redundant by government cuts. If we hadn't spent all that money on bailing out the banks and subsequently made such deep cuts in public services, many would still have our jobs and not be reliant on benefits. So, in truth, we are fighting to get our jobs back so we don't have to be here anymore. Furthermore, we are here not for a jolly, but because we believe there are ways for us- the 99% that are not responsible for the current crisis- to have better lives, day to day.

But if we didn't bailout the banks the whole system might have collapsed!

Well, yes.

But then what would we have? ANARCHY?

Rather Anarchy than chaos. Perhaps if the banks had collapsed we would have actually had to face the causes of what had happened, and would have created a monetary system that doesn't rely on debt, rather than continuing to duct tape up our sinking boat in this, the End of Certainty (http://theendofcertainty.wordpress.com/).

As it is, many of us are still only clinging on to the life raft. A few figures: 2.62million unemployed in the UK. 21% of UK children living on or below the poverty line. 4 million people in fuel poverty (spend more than 10% of their income on heating and cooking). Average household debt (excluding morgages)£8,002** . Anti-depressants. Double dip recession. Teenagers rioting. Students rioting. Teachers striking. NHS privatising. EDL rising. Belief in the current democratic process vanishing.

And these are just the figures that can be quantified. Many people feel trapped (work, eat, TV, sleep, work, get wasted, sleep) isolated and voiceless, but worse than this, they think there is nothing that can be done! This is the biggest trick of all.

A trick? Mark my words young man, capitalism may not be perfect, but look at what happened in Russia during communism!

Calling for 'systemic change towards global equality'- the first point of Occupy London’s initial statement (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/17/occupy-london-stock-exchange-occupylsx) does not mean we all need to go and live on collective farms. The strength of this movement is that there are many viewpoints and many different ideas of alternatives ways of trading and living together. This is why, at Finsbury square, we have a big 'alternatives' board that the camp and the public have been adding to. You can find it http://benoverthere.blogspot.com/2011/11/finsbury-squares-actionable-ideas-for.html

But you are- or at least claim to be- a musician. How can you critique these complex economic and sociological problems?

I am not an economist, but I have some ideas. By speaking to people right here in the city of London I hope to develop those ideas. Our Tent City University http://tentcityuniversity.occupylsx.org/ has all sorts of experts sharing their ideas, all geared towards developing alternatives.

So you are saying you don't have any alternatives?

As a matter of fact I do. In the short term, as individuals we could, for example

• Take our money out of banks and put them in building societies or credit unions.

• Consume less and enjoy what we do consume more.

• Educate ourselves (youtube is great starting point) and our young people about the financial system and the power structures in our world.

• Speak openly to our family, friends and colleagues about these issues, and take their criticisms not as insults, but as points to research further.

• Put our time and skills into local campaigns so we see the positive and powerful effect we have when we get together.

But that's not going to bring down the banks, is it?

Not by itself. These ideas are tools to begin to realise the power we have as both producers and consumers, as both independent minds and members of our community. However, the people who control the land, natural resources, means of production and media (the '1%', though in reality it is more like 0.0001%) are not going to be persuaded to hand that over to the 99% by consensus decision making. It is doubtful even Jesus- never mind the Archbishop of Canterbury- could persuade them that happiness lies outside their air-conditioned Bentleys. The institutions that make up their web- the central banks, the IMF, the stock-exchange, international law mechanisms, our 'representative' democracy- these are rotten to the core and need to be taken apart in totality. The strength of the current capitalist system is that it is supremely flexible, with no one 'head' that can be chopped off in order to change it. We have to go for the heart. It will require some masks, and it will not be pretty.

Well, that new Thatcher film does look a bit grim... maybe you are right. But I just don't believe you can actually change anything.

History is stuffed full of seemingly unconquerable empires. Every one, save those currently tottering on the edge, has fallen. The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and the independence struggle in India teach us three things. First, that a 1% ruling over the 99% is not sustainable and will inevitably, despite the firepower of the former, fall. Secondly, these things take time, sometimes generations, and the light at the end of the tunnel is not always apparent until you get very close to it. Thirdly, it takes a small group of people putting their head above the parapet and making enough of a stink that the framing of the debate is changed, and people start seeing that, actually, there IS an alternative. Perhaps Autumn 2011 is not going to be remembered as the time that we brought down our own imperialist rulers from the inside, but it is fact that this is the next step in a global movement gathering momentum, educating itself, fortifying itself. And I sure as hell want to be a part of it.

**http://www.creditaction.org.uk/helpful-resources/debt-statistics.html

home

i sat on a bench behind the town hall on an evening when the sun sets late and the 8pm sky, with just a touch of pink, can be nothing but melancholy.

my eyes were still those of a traveller and i saw scarborough's calm, rippling sea, with the calm patches towards the harbour, the cliffs jutting out as fingers veering south to filey and flamborough, and the whirling, whorling seagulls tiny but significant against the sky. it was as beautiful as anything i had seen in 9 months, 17 countries and any number of stunning sunsets and sunrises.

and today i swam in the sea PROPERLY, not just the experimental diving and jumping against menacing, foamed north sea waves of yesterday.

so i am home, and it feels, well, pretty good, if a bit nervy if i look a bit deeply into myself.

i have plans, mostly a day to day plan, when i go back to london in september. one that involves lots of practicing, cooking of stews and (new one) getting the rapidly increasing homeless population interested in squatting.

but this post is a short one, just to say really

thank you

and

this is not goodbye

thank you to all the truly amazing people i have met on my way and who may or may not be reading this blog. i have learnt so much and been under the spell of so many kind and wise souls and i can only express gratitude.

and

this is not goodbye because, well, i am just a child and my journey is still in it's infancy... well maybe it's adolescence, and i hope to fill this blog with more and better in the future.

but for now i am going to stop writing for a bit, because what is going to be on my mind in the next months isn't necessarily going to be very interesting for the casual reader. however, i do intend to write this and that, so if you want to me to indulge myself and send you some different things (maybe some stories) then you can email me at clarinetmoves a t gmail dot com

or check back here in a year or two :)

Guatemala

Guatemala was a journey of four quarters, which together did not make the whole picture that let me see under the skin of this diverse and, in many ways, troubled country (an ex-army general who happily admits to extra-judicial killings is way ahead in the polls for the presidential election as he is seen as a man able to tackle the drug cartels, even though he is clearly in their employment). As such i will give you snippets:


Äre those army boots?¨

My boots had been passed back from the front of the turista minibus and the muscular guy infront clearly hoped they were indeed from the military. In that moment my train of thought joined up with the mainline and made it´s way into the central station: i had met a whole load of israeli young people in the previous week or two and despite a large effort on my part not to judge them based on the war crimes and apartheid-creating tendencies of their government, I had not been able to shake off the impression that the majority- though not all- of the maybe 2 or 3 dozen israelis that i had interacted with, were aloof, insular and often bordering on rude. this had been reinforced in some conversations with guatemalan barmen and tuktuk drivers; they stay together in groups, rarely mix with other travellers (for example, in two of the places i visited they had their own hostels) and, i was told, could be really condescending to the locals.

but then i realised- some, probably the majority, of these people were fresh out of the IDF- Isreali ´defence´force- and had been told time and again that the world had an irrational bias towards the palestinians and that they might have a hard time on the road. probably why these guys had picked a place as far removed, geographically and politically, from the whole issue as possible. and, knowing that the question ´what do you do where you come from?´is part of any good getting-to-know-you travelling conversation, and knowing that ´well, i used to be in the IDF´would cause plenty of consternation amongst us right-on, left-leaning travelling types, they probably thought ´well, why bother when i can just hang out with people who Understand?´...
and would there be any point taking up the issues- the settlements, the blockade, the water and land rights, the future´- with these young, touchy and at least partially brain-washed travelling buddies? as we hiked down to the gobsmackingly beautiful fresh water pools at semuc champey behind two ex-IDF officers, i refined and re-refined what i would say to them if they asked my opinions about the whole thing. i wanted to be clear and for what i said to be useful. ´stop building settlements... stop all restrictions on goods entering gaza... bring down the wall... stop thinking of palestinians as inferior to isrealis... accept that there will never be peace whilst israel is a state based on one religion... yes i am against zionism... no it isn´t anti-semetic to be anti-zionist... we need to bring down the governments of both america and iran before there will be a solution to this issue... no that isn´t a colonialist thing to say...´and i could see the whole conversation rolling out infront of me, with my friend´s jaw slowly tightening as he either clammed up or let his fury loose. so when we sat in the cool of the pool and he told me about his experiences in the idf i said nothing, just listened. and when he told me i should ´follow my dreams while i can´and be a musician , i did not ask him when the people of gaza, 45 percent of whom are unemployed, would be able to follow their dreams... what would have been the point? if we had become actual friends, perhaps drank some whisky together, and his respect of my thoughts was high enough and his social barriers were low enough to actually maybe listen and absorb, maybe that would have been the time...

----------

Turkey

I have concluded that the best moments of travelling happen in the in between bits, the examples of the proverb ´life is in the journey´. it is the people that take you in for a meal or for the night when you are stuck in the middle of nowhere. sharing a knowing look with a old lady on a hot day as you walk down the street. trying a new fruit bought through window of a bus.

and it was with this in mind that i began to walk around lake atitlan in the western highlands of guatemala.

after the first days hike i ended up in something between a town and a village. as i walked in a guy that turned out to be the village idiot accosted me and in turns insulted me and asked me for money. i shook him off when someone else asked me what my calabash was. for the umpteenth time i pulled it off my back, fixed the mbira in it and began to play. nhemamusasa. after about a minute i looked up to see a sea- perhaps 20- mayan women, all in exactly the same traditional dress- blue with multicoloured trim, crowding around, their small stature giving the impressiom that i was in the middle of a slowly swaying sea of egg shaped blue domes. i stopped, they laughed and passed the mbira around as i asked if anyone knew anywhere i could stay. one of the women took me down some back alleys to her house, populated by three angry dogs, a load of chickens and two MASSIVE turkeys. i laid down my things, went down to the dock of the bay and played mbira in the company of two small children, one in a barcelona shirt (there are so many barcalona shirts here- after the champions league final they let off fire crackers in the small town i was in) and watched a massive storm slowly roll in.

and then it hit and the rain sheeted down as i ran up the hill to the nearest cover- the local church. and, as i half read woodie guthrie´s autobiography (an amazing book; everyone should read it) and half listened to the (at times ear splitting) church rock band soundcheck, the church slowly filled up with maybe 100 people, all the women in beautiful traditional dress.

and afterward the best chicken and chips i have ever tasted, then the next morning i sat and played more mbira as i watched my host make fresh tortillas to go with the boiled egg and beans that were my breakfast. lovely stuff. totally random, unplannable, and what i travel for.

______

birthday in the jungle

this time last year i was trying to smooth over the rude cracks in the SOAS end of year party at Club Egg in London. There were awards to be given out (and accusations of bias to be slighted), queues and bouncers to assuage, bands to soundcheck, DJ´s egos to manage, cleanliness and sobriety to be maintained and smalltalk to be chewed out. As I rode/wobbled home at 4 in the morning, job done, with mari on the back of my bike, i vaguely thought that whatever i happened to be doing on my birthday the following year, it would be siginificantly less stressful than the night i had just had.

and, lo, june 7th 2011 was as mellow, interesting and special as all the days in my life seem to be on this road, though most of today happened to be spent on a minibus, squashed on all 4 sides by rigid guatemalan men.

We- me and shelley- were heading into the jungle. The minibus took us to a trailhead and then an 8km hike took us from the road, though fields full of cows with huge floppy ears, and into the jungle proper. The ancient mayan people built huge structures that attached to cities all over what is now guatemala, but apart from the big tourist attractions many are wholly or partly buried under the ever-returning jungle. This was one such place- silver/black stone structures prodded out of the ground, some a few feet, some 10 or 20 metres high. One would be walking along a trail and realise the steps one was walking on were clearly the original mayan steps.

But for me, just as impressive was the natural architecture: tree roots like the sprawling limbs of a giant forming natural sets of steps. Thin but immensely strong tree creepers plunging down to the ground from unseen branches above, rooted in the soil. Extended families of mushrooms colonising the forest floor and fallen trunks. Ants making 6 inch wide paths that stretch for dozens of metres in the grass between their nests and particularly tasty trees (the overall effect of this from above was like seeing a superhighway system and cemented my (and alan merriam´s) belief that ants will be the new humans once humans die out). Monkeys in the trees howling like at the dawn of creation and then, as we tracked their cries and found the trees the were in, they became silent and just hung there and looked at us, looking at them, looking at us. And down a long, winding path a big old river and a young lady slowly paddling a canoe, with her husband slinging his net.

But as beautiful as this was, the mosquitos were relentless and the heat pressed in like an overbearing auntie and sucked away energy and enthusiasm and for the first time i think ever i dreamed of the joys of a dreary scarborough afternoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ2v1Sl1nbc

I am having many amazing musical moments; this one happened to be recorded. San Christobal, Chiapas, Mexico, in one of the buildings the Zapatistas occupied in 1994... if you are in the 3 minute attention span category of listener, skip it forward to 4mins 30seconds :)

A History- Belgrade Road Part 1

ofcourse people have been squatting in london for a long time. england's seemingly unique squatting laws were an effort to give servicemen returning from the 1st world war who had lost their homes the ability to live in empty ones left by their expired comrades. in the 70s and 80s they were the base of the civil and gay rights movements and alternative scenes in the capital- whole streets in north, east and south london were squatted, and some of our elders reminisce about that time with dewy eyed glee.

these days, for a person who sees the folly of the capitalist system and the work-survive-work-die ethos that it necessitates, squatting is one method, along with skipping, hitchiking and other creative means of living outside the system, of both ignoring and subverting this state of affairs, of living according to ones ethics and supporting the local community.

a squatted space is much more than a place to find shelter and cook food (though it can be just this too). it is a space in which a collective of individuals, lovers and sometimes families can forge a safe and creative space that is free from the stigmas and rules that have been honed over decades to make us dependent on an overarching fear that seems to pervade all the rhetoric of the mass media- fear of failure, fear of being different, fear of the 'other'. Beyond this, squatting opens up a plethora of super cool shit to be done, skills to be learnt and ideas to share. In just two years living in, visiting and partying in such places in london, i have learnt more about electrics (how to make a building safe, how to make electricity free), woodwork (how to build a room out of scrap wood) and the law (when to tell the police to fuck off; when to grab my shit and go) than i would ever have the time or the need to learn if i were renting. I have learnt how to resolve disputes in non-violent ways, how to live with people on the edge of sanity and, moreover, learn from them, how to swear in several european languages (because there are many, many italian, polish, spanish etc squatters). I have learnt the minimum of my requirments for personal space, possessions and cleanliness, and to respect that others' requirements are different and that that is cool too.

I had some inkling of these intricacies, though non of hte experience of them, when I finished university and, along with a crew of mostly fellow newly-graduated, began to walk and cycle the streets of north london looking for empty buildings.

We had a copy of the (excellent) Squatters' Handbook (available from Freedom Bookshop in whitechapel and, i think, online), but there was no book, and no up to date lists, of empty buildings to be liberated (people I know have got such lists off local councils, but for some reason we never got round to doing that). Our crew was nebulous and squat-virgin. We knew more about foucault than faucets (and i knew nothing of either), and could wax lyrical all day about the revolutionary necessity of squatting without ever having sat up all night by candlelight knowing that our only defence against the police, baliffs or indeed anyone was a plank of wood jammed between door and staircase.

But, considering all this and looking back, I think we did pretty well.

Squat 1- an empty shop with house above on a busy street in islington. Massive paintings of drunken santa claus's and upside-down jesus's denoted a former temporary christmas art squat space. We were extremely excited for all of 5 days until 6 beefy polish guys showed up in the middle of one sunday night and began crowbarring down the door. We called the police (we had the theoretical law on our side). They came, chatted with the poles, made some jokes and left. The door (and it's plank), were almost finished. They gave us an ultimatum through the letterbox with their crowbars in their hands. We left. A clever owner of a squatted building will realise that it is much quicker and more cost effective to hire some heavies to illegally evict than to go through the courts and do it legally. This, it can only be assumed, was one of those cases. The shop is now a spot to buy some polish pottery (not a joke).

squat 2- The Arundale Arms- a pub behind Dalston Kingsland that was big enough to hold our entire crew, but dark enough (all of the windows on the lower two floors had been covered with the squatter's mortal enemy- cytex) and dirty enough to drive away three or four of our original group, one of them later telling a friend 'i just don't know how people can live like that'. We cleaned the hell out of that place, including scraping pidgeon shit from the entire top floor. I had a tiny and beautiful room on the top floor of that place, just big enough for a raised bed from which one could wriggle out of the window and sit on the ledge smoking and feeling like the king of all dalston.

Then at work one day I got a phonecall, and cycled hard to find all of our things on the street, getting soaked in a light drizzle, with a couple of police vans, and my friends looking pretty shaken. The owners had come, and when we refused to leave, called the police, stating that we have caused criminal damage (a lie). This was all the police needed to get out their huge battering ram and, when they couldn't get through the front door (our wooden wedges held strong) had punched a whole straight through the back wall. Bastards. There were lots of us and we had the help of NELSN, the north east london squatters network, who recorded the whole thing (always good to have a camera incase there is any police violence or unlawful arrests) and allowed us to stay at their place up the road, an old solicitors' place, whilst we looked for somewhere else.

Squat 3- It was deep into winter by now, and we were basically couchsurfing. The cats who had been in the place up until then were really nice an accomodating, but there were many of us and we were pretty bummed out, chainsmoking and cold, and after a while it became clear we needed to leave. Along with 5 others (give or take), I slept on the ground floor, a former office with no windows, in two sleeping bags huddled next to a friend. It took a huge mental effort to get up in the mornings but, on the plus side, our hosts were skippers extraordinaire and we ate like kings.

Squat 4- Things seemed a bit desperate now and our party had shrunk somewhat, and everywhere we looked was either decrepid, unenterable or full of smackheads. And believe me we looked. All over north east london on bikes. Lists of properties made, late night excursions executed, nothing promising. We eventually ended up in a 2 room flat near manor house, squashed in and actually (for me at least) having quite a nice time being bunched up like sardines. Maybe the group at that time was special and particularly loving, but i do remember feeling a bit like being in a liferaft after a storm with the solidarity and penchant for heavy drinking that that would create.

Squat 5- A most beautiful of houses in highbury, with no sound of traffic and a huge oak tree holding firm and majestic out of my back window. The walls had beautiful murals on them painted by previous squatters and the water in the bath was hot and powerful.

But I am getting way too sidetracked. this is a post about 2a Belgrade Road.

We lasted at the Highbury place a couple of weeks with an eviction date from the previous squatters fast approaching. We had a list of buildings, prioritised according to their potential, and had been systematically checking them out- a former meat packing house near smithfields market that was the first place to really scare me as Bob climbed up a metal ladder to the electric box and prodded around, me with a fist in my mouth, shitting myself he would electricute himself. Terrace houses with neighbours calling the police. Town houses with concrete poured down the toilets (to ward off scum like us)... the last place on our list was a warehouse-looking building just off Dalston high street, with a big gate shrouding a huge metal door. Late one night three of us with our best jedi robes uttered the magic words and the big, black door opened to reveal a big room, the size of a 5-a-side football pitch, a bright lamp still lit, illuminating a floor filled with miscelannious crap- videos, speakers, a monopoly set, shopping trolleys, empty cans, furniture- all over the floor, as if the former residents had had a little 'throwing things around' spree before they left. The walls were covered in pretty artistic graffiti, dominated by a capitaled, iron-coloured sign with each letter as big as a big man- 'DIY OR DIE'. We ventured quickly up the dark staircase to the second floor, and found a similarly sized open plan room with a similar mix of crap all over the place. Another staircase led higher, but this was not the moment for surveys, and we popped on our D-lock and reported to base.

It was November 2008. We were so happy to find somewhere, anywhere,to stay that the full potential of the space did not dawn on us immediately. We sat in a small room off the big one on the ground floor, keeping warm and considering how to put in a new lock on the steel door. Soon enough though, our excitement of the possibilities of that place was piqued. We learnt (i can't remember how) that the previous squatters, mostly spanish, had got an eviction notice and left in a hurry. Their legacy was the mess, a big ass stash of needles that had apparently been used to mainline ketamine btu that had been put neatly in a sharp box, the graffiti, some rotting food in the fridge and, on the top floor that we had not initially explored, a patchwork of plywood, struts and bits of huge material that made up around 6 rooms- some complete, some collapsing, some just mounds of wood, that together gave the top floor the appearance of something between a shanty town and an extended treehouse. It was {beautiful}.

The sign on the wall read '100 flowers cultural centre' and we found many documents about various liberation struggles in turkey and kurdestan. the 100 flowers was a phrase coined by mao during the cultural revolution, and had been taken on by the PKK and, in this deeply turkish area of dalston, had it`s share of revolutionary history, though most of our crew thought that the maoist connotations and the , er, flowery name meant we should disgard the namesake and the place became known simply as 2a belgrade road. one day, however, an old woman died down the street and her belongings, which included over 100 plastic flowers, were donated to us. someone tied 100 of them to our gates.

Belgrade Road Part 2

The rooms were slowly colonised, though the interior walls- if you can call them that- only rose about 10ft off the ground, leaving a huge gap between the high vaulted ceiling, allowing sounds, lights and inanimate objects of all varieties to pass over them. it was a lesson in the meaning of 'privacy'. I set about building my room out of the wood and plastic sheeting lying around the house- possibly the only time in my life i will be able to build my own room. after christmas i nailed the branches of the christmas tree to one wall, and smelt the pine sap each night as i watched the leaves slowly turn brown over 6 months.

the 9 or so months in that place were wondrous in so many ways. our communal skipping missions yielded treasures- one night we dined at 2am on 2 roast ducks with all the trimmings, fresh from the bins of waitrose behind old street. the bottom floor filled itself with bikes (and, by the end, a motorbike and arcade game) and tuesday morning was bike workshop morning. the english teacher, who we used to engage the local immigrant community to learn english, stole one of them one day and was never seen again. 2 or 3 bands practiced there using max's drum kit. we began to hold benefit nights, stretching the borrowed PAs with all types of live music. the only gig of my unnamed dream band was played out there. local activist groups held workshops and meetings there.

and, oh, the people that passed through! from every place, for every reason, they were all given a bed, a rolly, and invited to outline their lives and loves in the many and various sofas that swallowed people, stories, days... there was italien lorenzo, who came with his girlfriend and brother and claimed he was writing a book, even though he couldn't have been more than 21 (the book, in italian, later arrived and featured a potted history of the space). A whole gang of australians slept on our floor, got arrested for graffiti and went to prison, came out and recolonised the floor. our friends and lovers popped in and stayed for weeks, sometimes months. another italiean, this time an old man, came to a party one night and then just kept being there, not saying much but passing round a little top quality hashish every night- apparently he was escaping the rainy season in some far off land. seed-banker mohit, chinese-medicine graeme, silent piotr, lizzie, sebilio, jah steve... pretty much everyone who needed to stay cut a pair of keys, found the lightswitch in the toilet and stayed.

_____

And then, after maybe 9 months, inevitably, we got the eviction notice. from a Mr Lamb, who live in surrey and wanted us out not because he wanted to do anything with the property but because, allegedly, he couldn't insure the place against fire whilst we were in it. We sent him a letter with photos of how nice we had made them place. he ignored it. we went to court and lost, but the solicitor indicated there was a potential for us to pay a nominal rent in exchange for living there. the arguments for and against are clear- for: an amazing place to live for a nominal rent. against: buying into the system of owner/occupier and therefore implying that it is ok for someone to have a piece of paper saying he owns a house without actually living in it and thus make a profit. our camp was split, but the decision was made pretty swiftly- our morals held out and we did not contact lamby. whilst i would have contacted him and at least found out his offer, even at that time i could see that some of the belgrade magic was wearing off- the parties were becoming less benefit parties and more profit-driven raves full of coked up shoreditch twats who thought that squats were places to be disrespectful and chaotic, rather than other other way round. some of our core members had already left, and others were talking about finding somewhere quieter. on the day the baliffs were due to come around 30 of us stood outside the gates. the look on the baliff's face as he checked the address on his piece of paper and realised that the building he wanted to evict was the same building as the one with all the scruffy hippies outside was priceless. he left without talking to us.

but we knew that was only a temporary victory and a small crew of us found a beautiful new spot a few streets away and moved out shit out of there.

The place quickly refilled. The ground floor was dominated by a gang of australians and their friends, whose signature was the intense smell of spray paint as they (very unartistically) painted over all the beautiful graffiti on the bottom floor. The middle and top floor was a mix of some who had remained and a load of freshmen and women from SOAS, with great intentions but not necessarily the practical experience of maintaining a community. We heard vicariously that a gulf had opened between the residents, that there were no meetings (ours had been infrequent but had happened and had been democratic), that people were stealing each other's, and the neighbours' stuff. Greg took it upon himself one day to take the cooker out of the kitchen and give it to a friend, ripping the heart out of the house and pissing many of us off royally. A couple of people increased the frequency and mashed-upness of the parties there- they were raves by now- killing off any of the sympathy that our neighbours may have had for us (at the last party there one of the neighbours threw and egg at me as i walked in). Things were falling apart in a most unedifying manner.

And then the second eviction notice came, for 7am on a tuesday. some of the people who lived there at that time asked some of us old residents to be part of a meeting to strategise a resistance, but they came home frustrated that people just didn't seem that bothered about resisting.

But there was no way that we could let belgrade road be evicted without a fight. we sent a text around that said something like 'tomorrow 7am attempted eviction of belgrade road. tonight 7pm free dahl, live music and resistance building. bring a sleeping bag'. celeste and skye made a big old pot of food and i found musicians happy and willing to play... we gathered and played-(myspace.com/emilyfchurchill , myspace.com/louisajones myspace.com/theobard were some of them) drank, argued about the wording of the banners and ate until almost dawn. it was a magical night.

photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/occluded/sets/72157623252138162/

and at dawn we found the baliffs waiting for us at the gate. we streamed out bleary eyed, holding coffees and hangovers. i watched the baliff try not to look alarmed as more and more of us streamed out of the house, maybe 30 in total, and then the gates were abrutply slammed shut and locked.

it was a cold morning. a few police arrived, were briefed by the baliffs, shown the high court order and looked up at our banners. more police arrived. some of us were still in the building, hanging out of the window. 'how many of you are there in there?' the police asked '3000!' our friends replied from inside. more police vans arrived. those of us who didn't want to or couldn't be near the police stood on the other side of kingsland road and kept watch, agitatedly. we played some music. the police gave us their final warming/plea- if we didn't move now, the riot police would come. as a unit we laughed at them and they got on their walkie talkies. the road was blocked off. a stream of police vans and cars arrived- 14 in total. from round the corner came around 20 riot police, the ones with circular shields, forming a line directly in front of us (at this point dougal, the guy taking the photos, was taken away by the police.). more police took up positions on the adjacent roofs. our banners flapped in the wind. the police gave us one last ultimatum. we catcalled. the riot police moved in and we linked arms, some sat down, others braced themselves against the gate.

it was all over in a couple of minutes. they pulled us away, detained a couple, and used the biggest pair of lock cutters i have ever seen on the gate. we watched as they failed to break through our reinforced steel gate, and instead smashed a hole in the wall, just like at the arundale arms. we then watched as another group of riot pice, these ones with riot shields that streched from head to toe, went into the house, clearing the washing machines and fridges that lay on the stairs as they went.

the last and perhaps best scene of that day, perhaps the whole time at belgrade road, was photograped by mast. it shows several pairs of legs under duvets, cups of tea on the table, and 10 or so riot police, looking alien and ridiculous, lined up against our back wall with some of the life drawing photos- us naked in various poses- behind them. it is beautiful. apparently the first cop had run into the room but got his shield stuck in the door frame and had had to turn to the side and shuffle in... a few weeks later the last of the plastic flowers had disappeared from the gates.

so that is the story of belgrade road, which i don't think it would be overegging the pudding to say represented a great deal to a lot of people and helped the activist community in london in many ways (the shopping trolley pirate ship of the 2009 G8 protests was assembled and set sail from belgrade road). Ed told me i should write down a little of what happened in that place and that time, and so here it is.

What I did not do

After some less than edifying experiences in Honduras I started this blog entry in a deep groove of railing against the unsmiling, sunglasses wearing, laptop carrying, ego-based bargaining, extreme-story dropping, 'humerous' tshirt-wearing, lonely planet-sticking, skin-showing young people from europe and north america that call themselves 'backpackers'. But, after lunch, i realise that 1. i probably would do aspects of this if i wasn't so self-concious about being a stereotypical traveller 2. it isn't very helpful and 3. if you know what i am taking about, well you already know exactly what my qualms are and if you don't then, well, lucky you.

Suffice to say 2 days on a bus took me from the amazingly creative, wise, hard dancing, hard-hustling, mexican-centric travelling folks of san christobal straight into a hostel full of north americans and europeans (and the most english people i have been with in one place since i left) that didn't say hello to each other unlike EVERYONE does in mexico, that spent their evenings watching films on their computers with headphones (some, not all), and spent lots and lots of time talking about how much they paid for taxi and bus rides to various places. it was pretty dire, but i tried to see it as a test of my character and ability to see the good in people (and obviously all of those people are, fundamentally, good people, except the ones that are likely heading into investment banking once they get their photos of the jungle up on facebook) and also keep telling myself it was worth it....

... because i was hooking up with nick- the duffman- so-called because of his love for the California Redwood duff, which is the fallen down leaves and general detritus that gathers on the forest floor and is AMAZING to sleep on (and get spider bites in). We had met 'in the duff', so to speak, in santa cruz shortly after i had moved into the forest, hung out in the kresge communal kitchen cooking, and had then gone on a hitching trip south to big sur together. i had last seen him hastily saying goodbye as i caught a ride with a swiss couple going south in... must have been june 2007.

...

and the only changes i saw as he walked through the hostel door and gave me a big hug were his now goatee and more refined muscle set. but he told me the crazy story of his life in the time we had spent apart- getting run over by a 12 wheeler articulated lorry (thats a 'semi' for my american audience), having a few hours in which he knew there was a good chance he was going to die (and in a fuck load of pain) and then a slow and (typically for him) deeply introspective healing process that is ongoing, and that involved lots of ayuasca, lots of time bushwacking in various forests (at first on crutches!!!) and a (set of) polyamorous relationship(s) in ashville, north carolina, apparently something akin to the santa cruz of the east coast. and what did i have in reply to that??

so we were two friends on the road together after both being 'alone', at least in theory, for many months each (he had come up from nicaragua to meet me). But the town was not a welcoming place. It is known as the 'party capital' of honduras, and i don't know anyone whose house is the 'party house' for a long period of time that doesn't get jaded after a while (look at belgrade road). The (for the most part) stand-offish approach of the locals probably had something to do with this. So did the man who ran across the road and pretended to pull a gun on us in a most disturbing way. So did the numerous people who tried to rip us off a little or sell us drugs... when I was in India with lauren we ran into two typically private school, well built young men who were nursing huge wounds and lumps to the head. turns out they had got wasted the night before and had been trying to chat up the local girls as though they were in soho on a friday night and in the end the local boys had tied them down and driven motorbikes over them... it was this sort of attitude from both sides that, i guess, prevailed in la ceiba that and many other friday nights.

but the next morning we were off to the island of utila, home of part of the second biggest coral reef in the world and some of the cheapest diving certification courses. Cue a week of daily diving- eagle rays, huge eels poking their heads out of caves in the coral; coral and fish of every luminous colour and tesselating pattern imaginable; vaguely swimming into shoals of fish around a wreck 30metres below sea level, angel fish, trumpet fish, a lone seahorse chewing a little plant in a sandy bed... marvellous stuff. and would you believe it- my hair turns red underwater!!!

and then yesterday, travelling back through to guatemala, an old man and a young boy presented me with two very not straightforward moral dilemmas.

The old man was, to put it mildly, going senile. i met him in the no-mans-land between honduras and guatemala, as he rendered two streetwise money changers and a minibus conductor utterly bemused with a combination of deafness, spanish spoken with an unapologetic texan drawl, totally non-sequential statements and not understanding what was going on. it turned out that he thought he was paying for the minibus but actually he was changing money from dollars into quetzals (the local currency, and also the name of the national bird of guatemala). he had a hospital crutch with the bottom bit missing, and walked very slowly. his toes poked out of the front of his shoes. you had to SPEAK VERY LOUDLY AND CLEARLY before he would even notice you were talking to him, never mind apprehend what you were saying, he didn't seem to have any money, he had a hat on saying 'costa rica- pura vida' (pure life), and, he claimed, he was trying to get to reno, california, overland, a trip of around 4000 miles that would take at least 5 or 6 days if you were constantly on buses. it seemed like a totally farcical situation, and the breakfast in the cafe on the border looked amazing (plantain, steak (there had been cattle farms all along our route), eggs, sour cream, rice and beans), but i figured that this guy could do with some help, and after hanging around for a bit while his interactions with the locals became even more disjointed, i decided i would go with him as far as guatemala city and, if he really seemed like he wasn't going to manage to get to where he was going, at least try to get in contact with one of his family members or, in the worst case scenario, the US embassy (it really did seem that bad- he couldn't even break the seal on an unopened bottle of water). I bought him breakfast (he said he hadn't eaten for 2 days) and the fragments of his life began to come out- he owned land in costa rica. his ex-wife owed him $5000, she had sent him a letter that he had unopened in his bag- maybe it had some money in it? could i find it for him? the 'letter' turned out to be a 'get well soon' card, addressed to the something-or-other christian hospital in portland, oregon, signed by many people. so he was not alone in the world, at least. he said he had 17 children, and that the eldest (she) was a professional crook and had just retired age 35.

a big saga involving banks and changing money ensued and finally he gave me 10 US dollars and i bought him a bus ticket, after a lengthy conversation of me explaining that if he wanted to go north to mexico he needed to go to guatemala (which is where we already where), NOT el salvador (which was in the direction we had come from). and he kept forgetting i was english and speaking to me in spanish.

on the bus he engaged similarly bewildered fellow passengers with random statements, but as we drove along i remembered my grandad (who died 12 years ago), who almost certainly knew he was going to die in the weeks leading up to his admittance into hospital and, despite being in lots of pain, sorted out all his papers and things (i still have his amazing collection of classical music taped from radio 3), and then made a doctors appointment which i guess he knew would highlight the cancer that was eating him up. but my grandma, seeing how much pain he was in and doing what she thought was the right and loving thing, called an ambulance the day before and they came and that was that, he died less than a week later (if i remember right). he was pretty pissed off that he hadn't been able to do these last things on his own terms.

and with this in mind, and knowing that if he did make it to california he probably wasn't going to be able to leave again, and knowing (and having observed the guatemalan peoples' behaviour towards him and knowing that both they and mexicans are generally amazing, respectful people) that he looked so vulnerable and pathetic that it would almost be embarrassing to rob or hurt him, i recognised that maybe he knew exactly what he was doing and that this was his last journey. Like the walk that old navajo native americans take into the forest when they realise it is time to pass into the next world. Perhaps if i put my nose and value set into his business i could ruin this for him. of course his family could have been worried sick about him and i could have saved many a sleepless night but, well, i only had my instinct to decide.

so when we got off the bus and he shook my hand and looked me in the eye and said thank you- the most lucid thing he had done the whole time- i told the people who had come to help us/try and sell us things where he wanted to go and that he could use a little extra help. then i headed for the next chicken bus and didn't look back. i am interested to see where he has got to though...

the boy was a different story entirely. in panachajel, a tourist town on the edge of the beautiful lake atitlan that i will begin to walk around tomorrow, i got chatting with one of the multitude of mayan ladies selling beautiful shawls. perhaps we were flirting; my spanish isn't good enough to be sure. i played my mbira, ostensibly for money but really to meet other musicians and let passing children have a go, and then sat with her and a woman selling atole (a delicious drink a bit like watery rice pudding but with maize instead of rice), drank some chocolate atole, and chatted. after a while a boy came over with a little bowl of handicrafts for sale and what seemed like a very intelligent way of being. we chatted more and then i left to go and eat more.

later, as i walked home, he breathlessly caught up to me and asked me, once again, the name of my instrument. then he kept asking questions about this and that not in an annoying way, but like a clever inquisitive youth who has a lot going on in his head. eventually he asked me if he could ask a questiona about 'sexualidad', and whether i thought 'el hombre con un autre hombre' was buen or mal. i told him that there are gay people all over the world and in some places this is accepted and in some places, notably uganda, you can go to prison for a long time and even theoretically be killed for some overconspicuous bumming action. i told him that i believed sexuality was linear, not 'either' 'or', thinking that he might be somewhere in the middle. then he asked me 'how' to have 'asere lo'- to 'do it'. i went back to my room and got my dictionary.

but there was something else on his mind. he kept returning to homosexuality, even though i had asked him if he liked other boys and he said no. he asked me if i thought it was ok to like other boys. a shoeshine joven walked past and he told me that that guy was gay. would i have sex with him if he asked me? no i wouldn't. why not? because i don't like having sex with other men. why not? i don't know, i just don't. do you? he pulled a face. and then he asked me to show him how to masturbate. so i drew him a picture and looked up the word for foreskin- prepucio. and then i really needed my dictionary when he told me that the 20 year old shoe shine kid wanted to play couples with him, a 14 year old, and, well, he kind of wanted to say yes, what should he do?

what would you say to that?

on the one hand, obviously there is massive room for exploitation with him so mentally and physically underdeveloped, it is illegal in guatemala (even though he said it wasn't), if he was caught he could be ostracised by his family and community. one disastrous night- and there are many ways disaster could occur- could fuck him up for a good long while.

but i am not so old as to forget what i felt when i was 14 and thinking about sex and simultaniously craving sex and being really i guess disturbed by the wierd emotions that the whole subject pulled out of somewhere deep and dark inside of me. and if there was an older woman who had been like 'ok ben, lie back and let me show you how it is', well that would have been cool. and if i could have a conversation with myself at that age i would want to reassure and say do what the fuck you like, relax, everything is cool, just don't let yourself be exploited. and i know my 14 year old self would have said back to me 'that's all very well for you to say, you fucking hippie, but i want SPECIFICS and i want PRACTICE and i want them NOW'. and perhaps this 20 year old kid would have been real nice to him and they would have had a really positive time together. is my initial 'no don't do it' answer the answer of someone conditioned by the west and all it's fucked up stuff around sex (sexpowermoneycapitalworthegopridecreation
destructiondaddymummylolaferrarimargaretthatcher)?

then he asked if i could 'teach' him... if he could watch me crack one out. he looked at me embarrassed but resolute. no, i said. why not? he said. images of being lynched by the towns people of panachajel ran through my mind. it's not necessary, i said; just go somewhere private and practice. i told him about my experiences- not having any idea about how to shake the vinegar condiment until one day the good old channel 5 11pm friday night movie just made it happen out of the blue, and i was like 'oh, right'.

but he was insistent. could he not look on the internet? no. was there not someone else he could ask? no. could he not just chill the fuck out and let things run their natural course? again, from my own experience, i knew the answer to that one.

renton in trainspotting tells the story about how he once swapped blowjobs with this guy on the principal that if a sexual act is just a sexual act, who gives a fuck what the gender is of the other person? this would fit into my belief that much of the 'normal' sexual value set that we have is a product of our society (it is well known that the ancient greeks saw the young man as the ultimate symbol of power and beauty and influential hetro men would queue up for the best 'adonis's), and a 14 year old by and large knows what he wants...

what would you have done? assuming you wouldn't have said yes, what would you have said to be of some insight and comfort to him?

in the end, i did not masturbate in front of a 14 year old guatemalan boy. i gave him 5 quetzals and wrote down the names of a couple of free porn sights and outlined the technique of switching between windows on the computer when you think someone might be looking over your shoulder (of course his only access to the internet was in internet cafes). he maintained total dignity, thanked my for my help, picked up his bowl of stuff and walked off. i smoked a cigarette and shook my head at a day that could not be found at a backpackers' hostel.

Oaxaca & Chiapas

La Ceiba, Honduras: hot, Caribbean influenced, filled with fried chicken and American school buses. Thicker tortillas, dustier streets, a special type of mango that is sour and crunchy... I arrived here last night after 38 hours on 7 different buses from Chiapas, Mexico, half totally excited to see my old friend Nick, aka Duffman, but half thinking he might bail on me at some point on his journey up from Nicaragua.

And, it seems, he has. Especially as I left much, and much potential, to come here. I was in San christobal de las casas, in Chiapas, Mexico, the town that sits in an augmented set of hills that was taken over for 3 weeks by the Zapatistas back in 1994. And what a place.

Before that i had been in oaxaca, heading for a hike up in the mountains, but when i got there after a twisting bus ride up the hills, the mist was almost rain and the village at the trailhead had this quality that reminded me distinctly of dharamsala, himachal pradesh, where the dalai llama lives. the whole thing was mystical but also lent itself to loneliness and introspection, a bit like the place before Lyra and Will cross the river in the last throe's of Pullman's dark materials trilogy. I walked around and translated the inspiring mottos on the primary school walls with my dictionary, then unfolded my pack of american spirit on a moist rock, sparked up and almost immediately decided i would sack off the whole idea of hiking and come home the next day. the fact 1. i was hoping to camp but camping for 4 days would have been possible but unpleasant in the rain (cheapest coop hotel was like 10 pound a night) 2.that i had refused to pay for a guide and just had a little map, and had been warned twice that the trails were badly marked, augmented the bad vibes of the rain and so i rented a little wooden hut with a big old fireplace and wrote letters by the firelight and felt like Coleridge.

The next two days i spent readjusting my hat in various old Zapotec ruins... as much as i wanted to, they just didn't do it for me... the food in the cafes on the outside was always much more fun. so i said goodbye to Ben and Kate, two cats who i met in Yelapa with whom i had been kicking it in Oaxaca, and took a bus south to...

San Christobal: Artesans from Mexico City, Guadelajara and Veracruz stand shoulder to head with the indigenous mayan people that make up the majority of the population of the surrounding hills. A huge market with the most delicious fruit and most beautiful jewellery, clothes, fake DVDs... in the evenings live music in most of the bars and in at least two hidden away social centres- and we are not talking the breathless, over-debated, under populated social centres that can be common in england; everything was done so well- excellent food, art; a clean and orderly swap shop, inside smoking, cool and cheap stuff for sale, live music... people just couldn't not come, and they did. that for the red in me and for the green, a beautiful, tranquil meditation and yoga space run by real solid men men who played tabla (though not raga), sang kirtan and generally exuded calm. In the time i was there, at different spaces around town, there was a 5 day contact dance course, 2 day intro to meditation, two independant cinemas showing great films every evening, PANIC theatre, puppet shows... all the good shit that you find in london, LA etc but condensed down into a town of around 100,000 and with none of the ego that can be found in those other places.

i arrived at midnight last saturday night, a day before i was meant to, and called my couchsurfing host, valerio, hoping he wasn't in bed. a long walk getting lost and a short taxi ride getting found and walked into 'cafe revolucion' to find valerio, francesca, two typically beautiful argentinians and a few others dancing to some heavy cumbia. a jug of slightly watery beer later (what is the difference between american beer and sex in a canoe? they are both close to water) and we are in a proper club, the first i had been in in months, squashed in and dancing with abandon. and that was that- we were friends. I spent a whole week with valerio and francesca. two italians doing a Phd on the relationship between fair trade coffee growers in mexico and buyers in europe (i couldn't help but smile in rememberance the sigdon road cafe at soas with the zapatista coffee and the t's posh coffee machine). He said yes to my couch request because of the line on my profile about subverting the capitalist system, and had inbibed some ayuasca a couple of months previously in peru, so you can imagine we got on just fine, with quantic energy sessions and conversations that got to the heart of matters all round.

And so i began to do what i have learnt i like best when arriving in a cool new town- walk around with calabash under one arm and book and water bottle in the other and eat street food, read in parks, climb hills and look at the view, chat with people, sit in churches and look at the pictures... and now and then put the mbira in the calabash, find a piece of the street, put my hat out, start playing and see what happens...

and boy did things happen. first i met bessie, a chiapan with a djembe. she and her friend made a living playing drums and singing songs (one about mole...) in restaurants. i went out with them one night- we would just walk into a restaurant and start playing. she would introduce us over the beat and we would play- two verses, one clarinet solo, two more verses, conversing, and then the guy with the shakers would pass the hat around. i couldn't believe the audacity of it, but it definitely worked. i leant a lot that night. we culminated with an amazing break dancer appearing and jiving with us just as my couchsurfing hosts and their friend showed up to join in the dancing. magic. couchsurfing is, by the way, amazing. check it out- couchsurfing.com - if you aren't familiar with it (we can even be friends there). apart from a free place to stay it gives you an 'in' into wherever you are- you see all the bits that tourists don't necessarily see, you get to cook for people and be cooked for, and there is someone to drink a beer and have a dance with on an evening. so much more convivial than hostels. and all couchsurfing hosts, like pretty much all pickers-up of hitchhikers, are totally sound people who Get It, and much can be learnt.

But anyway, the next afternoon i met and played with two amazing argentinian marimba/balafon and talking drum player. we immediately found the groove. these guys were young- 19- and had never been to africa, but they could play, sing and improvise with the best of them. we would play and gather crowds around us, something that is really hard to do for me alone on the mbira, and in between would sit and smoke and talk. one of them was just so full of life and dreams and a thirst for knowledge- so refreshing! his biggest dream was to go to west africa and learn from the masters. i told him to just go and do it, and i think he will. we culminated playing in a big domed room with mayan kids running and playing around and a superb acoustic. francesca recorded it and i hope to have it posted up here soon enough.

and when returning down a steep path from a venture up into the hills around chiapas i saw two men, said hello, and carried on. vbut a moment later i felt someone behind me and turned around just as they kind of tried to hide themselves behind a tree. hen they saw that i had seen them they whisted then came at a kind of jog towards me. and it turned out they were not two but like 15, perhaps half the men of the village, from boys to elderly, returning from whatever work they had in the town. 'what are you doing here? what is your work?' they were suspicious. i realised that, comical though it was (they were all very short and i couldn't uite take their angry faces seriously), i was a stranger and potentially a threat and they had come to check me out. as soon as i picked up the mbira though they crowded round and whistled through their teeth in appreciation, then when i had finished shook my hand in gratitude for the song and, without another word, all turned around in unison and disappeared into the bush.

Next stop: Scuba Diving in Honduras

Yelapa - Oaxaca

i sit down to send this on the day the US government kill bin laden. does it strike anyone else as odd that they had a live twitter feed of, basically, an execution? why, then, was the US so up in arms when someone leaked the video of saddam getting hanged? because murdoch didn't own the rights to the DVD? if there was technical difficulties would they have waited a while? was bin laden's mum watching live on the same video link? when the revolution comes, will it be morally ok to allow dear barak to watch his own summary end live and uncensored as it happens? anyway, on with the blog...

It is hot. The man i am sharing the shade of the tree with repairs a worn television and turns up the radio as 'Zombie' comes on and rages the still air. I am in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico (where all the taxis are white and blue VW beetles!), waiting for a bus to take me to the mountain hiking trails and revolutionary posturing of Oaxaca. A day of hitchiking in the Mexican May sun yesterday has taught me that the heat here can overwhelm you if you choose to try and ignore it. So, as I now watch the TV repair man barter over the purchase of 2 more TVs from a passing man-with-a-cart, I sweat even as I sit in the shade, but it is ok.

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(some of this written post-acapulco)

I am on the move again. My stay in Yelapa (see the last post) kept extending itself as i fell deeper into the forest canopy of all the things i love to do... literally. The list of things that I LOVE DOING goes something like this: jamming with thoughtful and enthused musicians, playing gigs, swimming in the sea, looking at the sea, cooking with sharp knives and fresh, local produce, waking up to birdsong, massages, the sun, hanging around wise, positive people, having space to think about things, trees, girls with multi-coloured eyes, friendly strangers, having lunch whilst listening to a podcast of From our Own Correspondent, making a little money here and there doing things i enjoy (like carrying peoples' bags) sleeping in hammocks... yelapa had ALL THAT in ABUNDANCE. can you believe such a place exists? if you don't, go there and see for yourself. there were several 'doesn't get better than this' moments, my favourite being my first experience of KAYAKING TO A GIG with my clarinet in a waterproof bag and the calabash wrapped round my back. being paid for said gig in margharitas and chilli shrimp. reading the tao tse ching in a hammock on top of a hill eating fresh guacamole with no pants on (hummingbird buzzing around in the background)... In the last 4 days I played 2 gigs with a couple of great musicians from Mexico City; we took turns on clarinets, saxophones, guitars, cuatros (mexican 4 stringed guitar), percussion and voice, and had I stayed we really could have boiled the lid off the pot.

I could go on but i think you get the idea. but, alas, all good things must come to an end and after a month the blossoms had all fallen off the tree and it was time to tighten my contact lens case and head south.

You may have heard about all the dead bodies they keep finding in Mexico, the ones with the heads chopped off and suchlike. Two states below Jalisco, Michoacan and Guerrero, are centres of the narco-traffiking and killing (which, i might add, is in a large part fuelled by wanky coked-up american stockbrokers and ivy-leaguers who i am sure don't give a fuck that their $50 a gram habit is fuelling an economy in guns, blood and despair a few hundred miles south of their parents' condos) and I had been warned by americans and, significantly, other mexicans, just not to go there, and certainly not to hitch there. But the other option was to go through Mexico City, the biggest and most polluted city in the world, something i just didn't fancy. And the coast road was beautiful and slow and i had been on it since Vancouver and shit, why would anyone want to kill me? So i made my sign and thumbed south on a really hot morning last friday. It was slow going, and getting into the afternoon when i hit a market town and was accosted by a muscular drunk guy with a beret. Total stereotype of an ex-army 40-something who used to feel respected and needed and worth something in the army and, since he left his uniform behind, has flailed in a world that doesn't give a fuck who you used to be or what you have done in the past, but just what you have to offer and how much it costs. So he drinks from the morning and by midday the demons are circling.

He spoke good english ('The CIA are monitoring everything i do...') and gave me some 'tips' about where i should hitch, and then moaned for a while about how i was lucky because i was white and would get lifts, but he wouldn't. I moved away and stood in the hot, hot sun thumbing and waiting. eventually i got a ride 40miles down the road and when i got out at a petrol station realised that this drunk had been on the back of the truck the whole time, and now we were in the middle of nowhere together and he was clearly going to squeeze me for what i was worth to him. He wanted to use my white face as a ticket somewhere, anywhere i guess, and it wasn't in the spirit of cameraderie, though he was pretending to be nice.

A couple of years ago i would have bitten my tongue and been super polite and, well, i don't know how i would have got out of the situation, maybe bought him so much alcohol he passed out then run away. but these days (for better or worse) i am more assertive and less concerned about the consequences of being blunt. i told him in my best spanish that there was no way we were going to get a lift standing next to each other on the road, that it was important for me to travel as expediently as possible and, therefore, i wouldn't hitch with him unless he 1. threw away his bottle of mescal and 2.went and sat out of sight in the shade and when i got a ride i would ask if he could come along to. i knew for a fact he wouldn't agree to the first condition, but infact more than that he generally got REALLY FUCKING ANGRY in a drunk out-of-control sort of way, started telling me i was a son of a promiscuous donkey, that this was his country, not mine, and i should fuck off NOW and started getting up in my face, bringing the mango stains in his chin into focus.

for, i think, the first time in my life i didn't show any fear or back off, just stood there and met his stare and told him again that he had a choice: stop drinking and sit and wait for me to get a ride, or leave me alone. i guess we were both weighing up our chances and i think perhaps we both realised if it came to it mine were better: he was clearly strong and taller than me but he was drunk and moved slowly and i was wearing boots and would almost certainly have the support of the petrol station people and the watermelon seller who by now had their full attention on us. he backed off. and went across the road and stared at me and brooded.

i took a deep breath and adjusted my silly-looking panama hat and went and bought some cucumber with salt, lime and chilli and talked to the watermelon man. he was the one closest to us and, though he was old, i think he was ready to weigh on on my side if the shit had hit the fan. when he saw my sign saying 'oaxaca' and noted the direction i was going in he looked at me like i was mad. 'you CANNOT hitch between manzanillo and acapulco' he kept saying 'es de massiado peligroso'- too dangerous. he looked at me in the eye and it wasn't a 'oooh well i wouldn't do that if i was you', it was a 'DON'T DO THAT! DON'T DO THAT!' and then he flagged down a passing flatbed, explained the situation of the drunk guy to the driver and next thing i know i am riding away, more than somewhat relieved.

So i figured if someone helps you out like that you should probably take his advice, and i took a 12 hour bus to acapulco and then another on to puerto angel, where i spent a day and a night finding out whether my 1989 'mexico survival guide''s (the precurser to lonely planet) description of a nearby beach, zipotec as a 'place to do as little as possible, wearing as little as possible, and spending as little as possible' still held true 20 years later. in the shared pick-up truck that passes for public transport here a woman gave me 3 different types of mangoes to try- one sweeter than sweet, another with skin like an avocado. since i have passed a stall selling 9- count em 9- types of mango...

on arrival i found a tired and extremely hot (40 degrees) beach with amazing waves, an extremely strong current, overpriced bodyboard rentals and local kids generally stoned senseless. some guy who seemed really nice took me to the nudist beach at the end of the bay and, over the course of a couple of hours, it slowly dawned on me that this was a gay beach, and the guy i was with wanted to fuck me. (he found a dead fish, said 'hey ben, here is something we can eat tonight' and waggled it around his dick) the culmination of this was when i went into the sea to do some bodysurfing and 4 naked men followed me in. it was... uncomfortable, but shortly after two mexicans with lots of kids came to catch sardines in nets for their supper, and i observed the fascinating scene of these gay guys in the water, the fishermen casting their nets, the kids picking the flapping sardines out of the nets and squealing with delight when their dad's caught a proper big fish, orange crabs moving at lightning speed to pick up the sardines left behind by the waves and carrying them back into their holes, two dogs looking lazy and bemused, the sun arcing down to crest the waves... it was almost worth the wierdness (infact i think it probably was worth it.) A scene full of life.

later i played percussion-based music with some of the various dreadlocked, adonis bodied chilangos (with one random italian), tops off, sweat in runnels down our backs even though we were sitting and it was dark. that night i lay in my tent as moist as a snail, aching for sleep to deliver me out of the heat. it was the hottest night i have ever been through and the decision to leave before i had to do it again was made.

the next morning i walked to the edge of town and, after a couple of hours wait, hitched one ride in a dodge ram 250km over a high almost-mountain pass clear to Oaxaca city.

Floating

27th march

i missed the ferry. perhaps i got too cocky- i was hoping to hitchhike onto a big truck for the passage and thus avoid paying the extortionate price of a foot passenger, and rode around the waiting semis asking if they would take me. unfortunately this particular company charge per passenger, not per car, so none of the very friendly drivers could help me. this was after i had seen 4 trucks parked by a beach, with their drivers passing the time underneath a coconut-palm umbrella, and had sat and kicked it with them for a while, hoping to use their CB radio to ask other trucks if they could pick me up. they were all set up with a little barbeque, a fat tray of beef and chicken and a big box of 'ballenas'- bottles of beer the size of whales. they were chilling. by the time i had finished the meat they presented me with and chewed over the usual subjects of england, the price of cigarettes, how beautiful mexico was and the various assets of mexican chicas, it was past my time to get to the ferry... and when i eventually decided to capitulate and buy a ticket there were none left. so, terrible though it is, i now have to pitch my tent on yet another stunning beach and eat fresh fish until i can eat no more. a hard life.

this is the second bit of 'bad' luck after a huge run of amazing days. after i last wrote i became more and more esconced in la paz ('the peace') life... the group of musicians and lovely people with their gypsy ship that i mentioned before invited me to move onto the boat they had just bought for parts. for the first time in my life i could (but didn't) say 'do you want to come back to my 27 tonne yacht?'. and simultaneously the vague sailboat-hitchiking i had been doing, hanging around on a marina full of american retirees asking people if any of them were sailing to the mainland, had paid off, i think partly to the following poem that i read out on the morning 'net', a participatory broadcast that all the boats in the marina listen to:

a very good morning to you
my name is ben; i'm looking to crew

east or south east to my friend in yelapa
la paz is amazing but i miss her palapa

in exchange you should know
i can cook, clean and sow
or hop on my bike
and give you a tow

just like john steinbeck i don't have a phone
but i'll be sat drinking tea in your club cruseros home

or, if you write with suitable aplomb
my email's clarinetmoves@gmail.com

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people dug that shit. eventually a man from san fransisco, intelligent, solitary and somewhat faecitous, though i couldn't put my finger on why, told me that if the wind held he would sail me all the way to yelapa (some 350 miles in a boat that sails at 5mph) the following monday. BINGO. so to pass the days in the most beautiful way possible i decided to hitch with one of the Karaka (the gypsy boat) crew, an aussie named jamie who has been travelling for no less than 4 years, 150 miles south to a national park that contains the only coral reef in north america. we made it there in a day, hitching with more retired gringos who had escaped america for their own slice of cheap paradise south of the border, and in the back of farmers' trucks with hay and bits of wood. cue two nights of building fires and sharing ideas, knowledge and, at times robust, debate about the process of becoming self-aware and facing who we are and becoming what we want to be.

in a whole mash of amazing travelling people such as there was in la paz, it is sometimes hard to pick the individual personalities out of the group and really get deep down into things. it was brilliant to get away from that melee and have good, long campfire conversations with someone. i think jamie and i are really very similar and have trodden similar paths in a way, so we could go into the finer details of things. i am enough into the travelling zone now to see myself do this (travelling about just for kicks) again and again, perhaps indefinitely for a while, and i could ask questions to her like 'are you running away from something or searching for something?' and 'what do you do when you crave a home?' and 'how do you get money?'... she was couchsurfing south on a similar route to me when she met the guys on the boat, and through a serious of turns is now gearing up to sail to australia with them! never doubt the power of couchsurfing (there was a party last night in a house where 15 couchsurfers were staying!)... the boat itself, named karaka, was bought for 1 US dollar by a frenchman who was my age at the time, in hong kong. he repaired it and created a beautiful ship, with a full wooden interior, space for 5 people to live easily, a fat barbeque, a fatter sound system and a collection of instruments gathered from the ship's slow trip around the coasts of the world. it is a magical thing. then he met kim, a young australian full of ideas and recipes who exudes strength but, if you look at her out of the corner of your eye, seems super fragile at the same time. together they began playing music in each of the ports they went into (she violin, he accordion) and told of some amazing moments- 20 haitians jammed in the boat singing and drumming 3 days after the earthquake. 20 more madagascan djembe makers crammed into the boat at the end of a djembe festival. being tied up and robbed down to the last morsel as they entered port in colombia. ever heard the phrase 'worse things happen at sea'? but after their Australian trip they said they wanted to go from port to port doing music workshops and sharing music and food and ideas. they invited me to join them and, well, something like that isn't far off a dream for me, so we shall see.

back in the coral reef we saw fish of all colours and attitudes- blue with yellow rims, black fish with crazy white tessalations on them, rainbow fish... and a solitary, old turtle swimming slowly and deliberately below me. gorgeous.

and then we came back and this morning i went and found out that there is no wind and my captain didn't think we would be able to get where we were going. he said that sailing was all about accepting that things were out of your hands, and added 'and you will sure as hell understand your powerlessness when you find out you have cancer'... and thus his aloof solitude was explained.

Beaches, VWs, La Paz Diary

(about 10 days ago)
Things have spun in a new direction. A hundred miles after i last wrote i had a day feeling a bit fed up, lonely i think, and with my mind only on getting to la paz as fast as possible, past a stretch of coast notorious for its paradise-like beaches and scallops lining the ocean floor for the chasing. And past two offers of floor space- an ageing couple from santa cruz, she a yoga teacher, he a musician, and a couple of english guys with kayaks on the back of their truck- who i could have stayed with and had a lovely time. I decided i needed some company before i went to sleep and decided to cycle the 89 miles to the santa cruz couple. I missioned hard but the sun was setting and it would have been hard to find their place in the dark. then an old, scruffily hand painted VW lovewagon (the original type) drove past waving at me and beeping their horn. i waved and shouted like a mad man and they stopped. an intense italian ex-sports teacher running from the madness of europe (i have met a few europeans doing the same) and his punky mexican chica, an artist and a jewellrey maker, heading to cabo san lucas to make some dollars.

two days and an increasing friendship later and they are building the fire as i watch the afternoon shadow slowly climb up the cactus-clad islands across an azure-blue bay, sitting in a hammock writing this.

I am fortunate to have been travelling a while now and am able to have an instant easiness with people who are doing the same. they instantly offered to drive me to la paz, and thought god had sent me when i produced a bottle of strong cane-sugar liqour and the makings of a single spliff out of my bag by the firelight yesterday. it looks likely that i will swap my bike for their digital camera (it will be my 4th of the trip; they are so fragile)... money is only important if you haven't got any.

I am about 300 miles short of my fairly arbitrary goal of la paz, but i think i have cycled around 750 miles pretty much solidly from LA, and over 1200 from santa cruz. so i am happy. one thing i have learnt on this trip is, where possible, to just figure out what i WANT to do and do it, rather than thinking too much about pride or what people will think. and of course what i want, like 99% of people in the world, is to have a happy community around me, so it fits the whole revolution thing perfectly.

and so for the next few days i am going wherever these cats in the VW go until we reach la paz, which is pretty beach orientated and is fine by me. i am remembering all the projects i am doing that got sidelined by 8 hours of cycling a day- relearning all my mbira tunes with the correct timings, being proactive with the espanyol, doing somersaults underwater and startling little fishies.

Wish you were here

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Two days later

At the end of a 30 mile dirt road at the bottom of the Bahia Conception (bay of conception) we were expecting our paradise. Instead we found someone else's paradis-' big american houses around a beach with powerboats and a feeling like we weren't welcome. Nico, the italian who had just performed a series of miracles driving the 25 year old VW van over terrain a Hummer would have had trouble with, was visibly furious. Fortunately the man in the single fishermans hut set back from the beach pointed to the next bay north, and here we found what we were looking for- a beach deserted enough to be teeming with wildlife. Dozens, if not hundreds, of pelicans screaming and diving like spitfires, making the most of the itinerant squid, who are in turn feeding on the shrimp that are, apparently, in season. Shells of lobsters, sea urchins, spiked puffer fish and all manner of beautiful crustaceans litter the beach. And it is HOT.

Nico and Erica have swept me up into their own trip around Mexico, at least as far as la paz, and I ask no questions as we drive from beach to beach.

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A few days (is it a week?) later, La Paz

We reached la paz after a few more white beaches and complete, full spectrum sunrises and a big drama about 70 miles away between the couple that involved Erica storming out of the VW and walking along for a while claiming she was leaving. Gandhi said not to judge people's bad points, just to learn from them, and i learnt that listening is a very important part of communication. We also spent a night in the VW outside an amazing little restaurant made entirely of stone (very unusual here) and i gave an impromptu mbira concert to the family that ran the place, which was really really nice. They had a big collection of National Geographic special books from the 80s and 90s- a special on the american railroads, one on gypsies around the world. filled with pictures representing other worlds. a fascinating insight into the fascinating insights people have in the more remote folds of the world.

I was expecting la paz to be a port/administrative town, but what i found was a really amazing, bustling town about the size of scarborough -which straight away made me feel at home- with a great mash of mexican and western influences ( it was colonised 3 times by various spaniards who couldn't handle the heat); a cool arts-music scene running through things (last night i went to a concert at the music institute' a mozart piano concerto, lizst and all sorts of original pieces), super friendly people and, at the south end of the bay, a big old marina filled with americans and new zealanders who could potentially give me a ride across to the mainland.

I am attempting the next level of hitchiking' that of hitching on boats. The last few days i have been opened up to a whole new world- groups of people my age learning how to work with boats, getting some cash together to get a boat, and then living basically for free (except food) as the boat is both ones house and transport, and the wind is the fuel. Life becomes one big conversation about boats and projects, followed by a party. The first day, whilst hanging out at the marina vaguely asking people if they knew anyone going to the mainland i met a few of these guys who have a big black sailboat anchored out of the harbour. They are 6, aged 25'30ish, a french captain, his beautiful australian girlfriend, a santa cruzian (they get everywhere...), a tree climber from arcadia and a guy build like a brick shithouse from oklahoma. we bonded over woodie guthrie and that night, under an almost full moon, i took a kayak from the beach and paddled out, clarinet and calabash on my back, to their boat for a big old jam session, greased with both white and brown rum... my first night in la paz and i could not have asked for anything more.

i woke up the next morning to find that the boat's radio, which i was going to use during the morning 'net', to radio all the boats telling them what a hard worker i was and could they please take me to mazatlan, was not working, and had to kayak hard to someone else's boat to use their radio, which i managed. i was dead funny having to do a cold'sale of myself on the radio to around 50 boats full of people, but i think i did ok.

The rest of the day, and the day after i just sat in the kind of communal spot, literally just sat, and read and kicked it with the sailing people passing through. The most chilled hitchiking i have ever, ever, done. There are some stereotypical rich republicans with loud voices, but by and large everyone on the marina is really cool. one guy with a Slayer cap told me that he had been backpacking for years and then realised that sailing was actually just glorified backpacking, just as cheap (if you know how to maintain boats), with a guarenteed soft bed and cooker, and almost always in beautiful places. My mind swirls like a ferrero rocher advert with the possibilities.

No ride has been forthcoming though, having said all that. Apprently it is the wrong time of year and people are coming TO la paz, not leaving it. I will give it a few more days and, if nothing is forthcoming, try and get onto a big lorry with my bike and hitchike onto the ferry that way. I think i am going to try and keep my bike for a while-it makes so much difference in a built up area having a bike- i have seen so much of la paz so quickly on the bike, and an afternoon of cycling and looking around allows you to figure out where the necessary stuff is and also get further away from the tourist areas and into the 'real' town.

and it is fiesta time here also. jesus (pronounced 'hey zeus' en espanyol) did something important this week a long time ago (i was going to say it is Ascencion but thinking about it it can't be) and there is free live music, church bells and families in their finest walking along the seafront at dusk. at one such concert i think i was re'baptised' or at least somethign similar' by some very passionate people who had english mastered only slightly better than my spanish, but when they put their hands on my head and almost wept i got the message. one of them said 'welcome to the family' and i said 'thank you very much'. Then i went busking and made 60 pesos in half an hour, and felt blessed :)