Here’s one of my favourite things to do with Mayfest shows: pretend that they apply to people from various parts of Bristol. For example, while walking down East Street the other week I wondered how the people walking through there would react to Hook, Skip, Repeat: being invited to use brightly coloured rope and a giant crochet needle, to help weave eye-catching spider’s web-like creations. It’s free.
How about Turning the Page, to who would this be most suited?
Imagine if your well-thumbed, outdated guidebook could talk. Think of the stories it would tell about the places it’s been, the characters encountered and narrow escapes along the way.
Through this intimate installation you are invited to investigate a series of clues hidden within a guidebook that magically come to life as you turn the pages.How do books act as repositories of treasures and triggers of memories? When we read a book, do we leave something of ourselves in and on its pages?
I imagine that it would be magical for everyone although I may be a little biased as it is taking place in the library.
There’s something about some art installations or plays that make me think that it’s all designed for white middle-class audiences and then I read their program and realise that I am more than white and middle class.
Without trying to sound pompous (and failing), the human experience beyond labels is what the artists find as well and it was Brand New Ancients I thought of I as walked passed betting shops
The gods are in the betting shops, the gods are in the café,
The gods can’t afford the deposit on their flat …
Winged sandals tearing up the pavement,
Me, you, everyone, Brand New Ancients.
(Kate Tempest
Friday 17 – Saturday 18)
There’s also one where you are advised to only sign up if you are not afraid of heights and don’t have a heart condition. Goodness.
Mayfest runs from May 16 to 26 and there are many things to do – see Programme.
If there is to be peace in the world, Lao-Tze
If there is to be peace in the world,
there must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
there must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
there must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
there must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
there must be peace in the heart.
– Lao-Tze
I read the above on peace this morning and I didn’t know what to post alongside it. I wasn’t sure what to say about it and didn’t want to promote any practice such as meditation even though this is what I would have instinctively gone for.
I wondered over it as I went about my day and it was on the way home from the playground with my daughter that I remembered about Zakia Zaki and being killed alongside her daughter. We were crossing the road and it was empty but I imagined some motorcycle riding up on the sidewalk and doing a u-turn and careening into us. “Mother and daughter the unsuspecting victims of crazy rider” is what the papers would have said although that barely sounds like a proper headline and we may not even have made the paper. How many mothers and daughters have died, I thought. Poor Zakia Zaki.
Zakia Zaki, head of Radio Peace in Afghanistan, was shot dead in front of her child in 2007. Some stories say that she was shot while in bed with her 7-month-old son and others say it was in front of her 8-year-old child. She was working for peace and that isn’t necessarily about staying still which is what I usually associate with it.
Zakia Zaki, a prominent female Afghan journalist has been gunned down inside her home near Kabul, the second such slaying in five days. Unidentified gunmen fired seven bullets into Zakia Zaki, head of a local radio station, [in the presence of her eight-year-old] old son last night. She died instantly.
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Posted in 2013, 365, Comment
Tagged Afghanistan, Lao Tze, peace, Zakia Zaki