Book #21: Brazil - The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Round the World Wednesday! Is it still Wednesday anywhere in the world? No? Oh well. Today is Honorary Wednesday.

The Summer Prince is another of those books that evokes a place so viscerally that you think I want to go there, even if the 'there' is a few hundred years in the future, a parallel world or some undefined historical time. So, I'd like to go to Brazil now. I want to see Palmares Três, the jewel on the bay, the pyramid city of lights. Though possibly not with the bloodshed that goes with it.

The book is set in Brazil at least four hundred years in the future, where everything is life and death, love and hate, moving forward and holding back. The main character, June, is a young artist in a city ruled by grande women, where anyone below the age of thirty is not taken seriously. Every five years, the populace elects a king, and after a year of his rule, he chooses the next queen and is sacrificed. The system is quite logical, really - someone who is about to die is less likely to be swayed by politics.

It's an election year, but not just any election year. This year the king will be a waka, under thirty, and his sacrifice will serve only to continue the reign of the incumbent queen. He will have no true power to choose another queen, but for a year he will be the most priveleged of the youth of Palmares Três.

June votes for Enki, and is ecstatic when he wins. She's already half in love with him, but Enki falls in love with her best friend Gil and she's not quite sure where she stands. She throws herself into making Art, recognising that Enki is as much an artist as she with the way he moves and influences the crowds. They become collaborators on sensational projects, and Art is at its best when it creates a sensation. Or a revolution.

Enki is hurtling headlong towards death, but he is the most vital character in all senses of the word. He helps June understand what's important, and the reader along with her.

Palmares Três is most desperately, incredibly alive, with its dancing wakas and ritual sacrifice. I love the way Johnson communicates that, with the blocos and the graffiti and the secret ninja art projects. I also love the way she weaves Portuguese into the text, making it clear that English is a foreign language to her characters.


Any books you know and love that are set in Brazil?

Zombies, Silent Disco and the Science Museum

I'm getting rather late with my posts. But there's so much to do! Packing, seeing everyone, eating very strange meals to use up all the food I have in my cupboard... On Wednesday a group of us went to the Late Night at the Science Museum, which was zombie themed. I was held up and late, so from South Kensington tube station I ran through the subway and up the stairs to the Science Museum. There were lots of people milling around and a sort of queue, but it was a very haphazard queue and I wasn't sure if it was really a queue or just people coming down the road. I wandered through the doors and got a pamphlet from a lady, then texted people to see where they were.

It turned out the queue really was a queue. Tricky Ricky had waited for half an hour and Twitterboy and his friend were still in line outside. And I, oblivious antipodean that I am, walked straight in.

They had actors shuffling around dressed as zombies, and lots of zombie-themed activities including zombie-rights picket lines. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any that didn't involve waiting for an hour, so we retreated to the silent disco and claimed headphones.

Silent discos are awesome. Everyone has wireless headphones with three channels, and they have at least two djs working at a time. This means that whenever you get bored of a song you can switch channels and hear something else. You can see what channel other people are listening to because the headphones have lights that glow different colours according to the channel. We had two channels going, and it's amazing how fast the crowd can shift between mostly listening to one song and then mostly to another. At one point YMCA came on, and almost immediately everyone was doing the actions.

And if you don't like either of the songs, it's a surreal experience to take off your headphones and hear people singing along to two different songs at once, with no backing music.

One of the things I will be leaving behind in the UK is my unlimited movie card. It seems like there are so many movies coming out on February 8 that I want to see, and now I'll have to pay for them individually! One, Warm Bodies (a zombie movie from the zombie's point of view) doesn't come out in NZ until April, and I was bemoaning the necessity of waiting for it. But then I noticed the advanced viewing at the Science Museum IMAX - this is zombie month after all.

So on Sunday I went back across London to see the movie. The cinema was completely full, with a few extra zombies who moaned and groaned at the screen through the credits and looked generally worrying to sit next to. I enjoyed the movie, though I think I would have liked it better if they'd had an extra line near the end explaining where the main characters were running to (or maybe it was there and I missed it). It's a good movie otherwise, with lots of jokes and ironic musings on life.

At this moment I am on a train to Stafford - my last UK trip for a while. The sun is out and shining into the carriage and all the fields are spring green.

 

Lincoln and Burns Night

Why is it, whenever I try to catch a train, the buses and tubes unite against me and deliver me to the train station with breathless seconds to spare? I have not yet missed a train (touch wood), but pretty much all of them I've almost missed.

Today I am off to Lincoln. I've only got a few more weeks in the UK (I will return in September, if all goes well) and I've been squeezing as much as I can into them. This morning I was trying to make my room presentable for potential new flatmates, but I still left in good-ish time.

If only the bus had come when it said it was going to, not ten minutes later (they're supposed to come every five to eight minutes). If only I hadn't just missed the Jubilee train and had to wait four minutes for the next one (I've got used to tube trains every 1-2 minutes). If only the train hadn't been held at Canary Wharf to 'regulate the service'. If only I hadn't chosen the wrong door, adding precious seconds to my change at London Bridge. If only I hadn't missed the Northern Line train by five seconds, and had to wait five minutes for the next one. If only the driver of the Northern Line train hadn't decided to wait stupidly long at every station. By the time I got to Angel, I was convinced I was going to miss the train, so much so that I was a bit relieved I wouldn't have to run through the warren of King's Cross at high speed in my coat and backpack. There were four minutes until the train left, and I still had Euston to go before we got to King's Cross.

Or... not.

I'd mixed up King's Cross and Euston. King's Cross comes first. I sprinted off the train, trying not to collide with too many people, up the escalators, and the next escalators, and the next escalators. As I was reaching the top, the lady on the loudspeaker said that the next train to leave from platform 3 would be the 10.08 East Coast Service to Newark North Gate. My train! At least now I knew which platform, which is one of the things that takes up time to figure out.

I still only had about a minute left, and hadn't collected my tickets. I ran for a ticket machine, stabbed in my code and almost ran off with half my tickets before I remembered there were more to come. I followed the signs to platform 3, ran through the barriers (they were open, no need to figure out which ticket I had to stick in them! Hallelujah!) and skidded down the platform to the first open door (first class). I was on the train!

I was only 30s late, but the train was later. If it had been on time, I wouldn't have been able to catch it. Now we're speeding through snowy countryside with fields blanketed in white. In central London the snow has disappeared, but out here it's still a way from melting. Very pretty. And there are bunnies in the snowy white fields!

I stayed with my lovely hosts in a village a little outside Lincoln, beside a Roman archaeological dig. The smaller roads were very icy and we slid a bit at one point. Someone had tried to build an igloo using an umbrella as scaffolding, though it was only half-done.

Friday was Burns Night, when much of Scotland celebrates the life of Rabbie Burns and eats haggis. Though Lincoln is in England, my hosts have Scottish connections and were celebrating too. I had a great night, with Scottish smoked salmon, proper sheep's stomach haggis, neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes). Though we didn't have a bagpiper, we had an iPod to pipe the haggis in, and the Ode to a Haggis (great chieftan o' the Puddin-race). To finish, there was cranachan and clootie pudding, and whisky, of course.

On Saturday we went for a turn around Lincoln. Lincoln Cathedral is one of the largest (if not the largest?) Norman cathedrals, and is set high on a hill looking over everything. It's fantastic coming across the low hills towards it in a car, and it must have been incredible to be a pilgrim in the medieval times, approaching this colossal building on foot. The inside of the cathedral has beautiful vaulted ceilings and high windows. Footsteps echo and you can hear the stillness.

Right outside the cathedral is the castle, which was once used as a prison, and is in fact where the court house still is. It's having renovations at the moment, but when it's not you can walk all the way around the tops of the walls. Instead we walked some of the way down Steep Hill, an old medieval street with original buildings stepping down the hill. The shops along here are wonderful little boutiquey things with crafty jewellery and clothes and knickknacks that you could spend hours and hours in. We peered in a few, then went down into the main town for coffee in a half-timbered café on a bridge that has been open for business for about five hundred years. The beamed ceilings were low, the casement windows glinting in the light, and if you squinted a bit and imagined folk in doublets and hose you could almost believe you were in the sixteenth century.

There was a lovely winter barbeque for dinner, and soon it was time to get the train back to London. The rain had come in the night, and the fields were a patchwork of greens and browns, very different from the white landscape of Friday.

 

Two decades of Number One Singles. And a broken foot.

Update on the foot: I have a new shoe thingy that's supposed to take pressure off my toe but I don't think it does. My other foot and knee are feeling the pressure, as well as my hands. Two weeks on crutches is not advisable, for those of you who were thinking you might try it. Four weeks to go, I guess...

I mentioned last week that I'd worked my way through all the number one singles since the year I was born. It was an educational experience. In the first few years, I didn't recognise too many of the songs, and was somewhat horrified by a few (there was actually a number one that included rap and yodelling). I made rules: I was not allowed to skip any if they were terrible, but if I couldn't find a particular song I could listen to a different version or skip it. If a song came up twice, i only had to listen to it once (this was especially good with things like Crazy Frog).

It was interesting to slowly move through the years and come to a point at which I began to recognise a lot of the songs, or be able to link them to a certain event in my life - a dance concert, a school disco, playing cassettes in the car. Music is very good at capturing the feeling of a particular time, and listening was like taking a journey through my life.

I was surprised at how some songs hadn't dated at all, and how others were so clearly from a particular era (eighties/early nineties) that it made me cringe. I found one song that I really like except for one repeated line in the chorus, which marks it as a product of the early nineties. They should rerelease it, without that bit. Am I conditioned to dislike songs that came out before I was properly listening to music, or is the music just bad? I'm not sure.

Closer to the present day, I found myself astonished at how many years had passed since a particular song was number one. Time should not move so quickly. You could also see the rise of particular types of music, and I enjoyed things like listening to Cher's first artistic use of auto tune, and then hearing all the number one songs that have used it in the last ten years.

Some of the music was bad, as number ones sometimes seem to be. Some of it was pretty good. The whole thing took me about a week and a half, and I'm not sure I'd do it again, but it was a good experience. Maybe I'll go through all the number two singles that weren't number ones next, though that might be harder to figure out.

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All hail the Paralympics! And Wicked!

Hello again! I trust you've all finished reading my holiday blog posts and are ready for some new ones? I continue to be slack after holidays - must be something about trying to write every little detail of a week and still actually holiday-make at the same time. Now I will attempt to write the details of two weeks into this post. Wish me luck.

Rundown of the post: Paralympic Opening Ceremony, Paralympic Swimming, Wickedness, Paralympic Athletics.

There looks to be a theme going on here.

The Paralympics opened on a clear Wednesday night in London, under a buttery gibbous moon. I hadn't realised that it clashed with my writing meeting on Wednesdays, but that only meant I was still in town at 8.30 for the start of the ceremony. I went down to Trafalgar Square with another writer, to sit in the crowd and watch the big screens. The square was filled with people sitting on the concrete, on the steps, and standing to the sides (you got shouted at if you stood in the middle and blocked the view from the stairs).

They started the count-down. Everyone yelled and cheered along with the screen. And then the Paralympics had officially started!

There was Ian McKellen reading from The Tempest, and many people, abled and disabled, who descended from the sky on wires and flew around the stadium. There were eyelash things that were like bendy poles with people tied on top and bouncing around, and dancing with umbrellas, and drums. Lots and lots of drums.

After the first part of the show, the athletes began to come out. I wished for the second time that New Zealand had officially changed its name to Aotearoa. It was getting late. I decided to stay until New Zealand appeared and then go and watch the rest at home, much closer to bed than Trafalgar Square and much warmer too.

I joined the Kiwi cheering, then ran for the Trafalgar Square Underground entrance (it was open! This is the first time I have seen it open! It's always been under refurbishment). I got home just as the speeches were finishing, and was able to watch the rest on the sofa with a blanket with my flatmates. Good thing, too, because it didn't finished until half past midnight.

I had tickets on Sunday night to the swimming finals, right in the Olympic Park. This was the first time I'd been to the Park, and I coasted along with the crowd from the tube station, past the giant mall and around to one of the main entrances. One of the games-makers was sitting on a high chair with a megaphone at the corner of the roadway, and made the observation that, if it were dark, it would be like the zombie apocalypse, with so many people shuffling towards him. Through the security (I forgot about that, and had worn lots of jewellery I had to take off) and into the Park.

I'd planned to do a quick walk around before my session, but a look at the signs told me that wasn't going to be possible. It was half an hour's walk to the other end of the park. That's how big it is. Instead I did a quick running-tour of the area between the stadium and the aquatic centre and joined the queue to get in.

My seat was up in one of the wings of the pool, so that I couldn't actually see the seats on the other side because the roof of the pool was in the way. It's a pretty good design, really - the two wings are temporary and will come down when there isn't a demand for a swimming pool with thousands upon thousands of spectator seats. I had a good view of the pool and the entrance for the athletes, though, which was great. It's very strange to see something so many times on a television screen and then to actually be there in person.

The evening was entirely finals, which was very exciting. The first four races all broke world records. I think the total for the night was eight world records and ten Paralympic records. The crowd was amazing, cheering and cheering and going crazy whenever a GB athlete appeared. For future reference, I think the best crowds are to be found in events with a finish line, because you can see in real time exactly what's happening. By the end of the night I was hoarse, but had seen a gold medal from Cameron Leslie and a silver from Mary Fisher. Awesome.

On Monday the One Who Speaks Russian arrived, tired but cheerful after a forty hour journey from New Zealand. I stocked her with supplies of chips and we started the two hour journey across London to my house (London is big).

On Tuesday we went to Wicked, which was absolutely incredible. It is a thought-provoking musical, with themes of prejudice and preconceptions and talking animals. I love the way it interweaves the story of The Wizard of Oz, so that you make connections every so often about characters' fates. The sets included giant cogged screens and a huge time dragon looming over the stage, the costumes reminded us of The Hunger Games (though of course Wicked came first) and the music and lyrics were great - especially the song entitled ’Loathing, Unadulterated Loathing'. I liked the ending too, more than I had in the book.

Thursday was our Paralympics day. We took supplies of chocolate cake, raspberries, popcorn and dinosaur jellies and sat in the stadium, another case of I-am-sitting-in-the-television-ness. The sun was blazing hot (The One Who Speaks Russian got amazing weather while she was here) and the crowds were huge. The most impressive event of the day was the T11 triple jump final for blind athletes. Imagine running at full tilt, then hop-skip-jumping as far as you can without being able to see. The crowd of eighty thousand had to be silent while the athletes completed their jumps, because they ran towards the sound of their coach clapping at the jumping line or the sandpit. The eventual silver-medallist had a show with velcro track pants, whipping them away like a matador as the crowd shouted OLĖ!

A few jumps went awry (an official by the track had to topple backwards twice to get out of the way) but mostly they were pretty spot on. There was also wheelchair racing, restricted sight racing, discus and shotput finals, and general running races. It was a great morning.

Edinburgh Day 6: The Scottish National Museum, Greek Gods and Japanese Imperial Dance Music

I'll try to keep this short.

(ha.)

I started the day with a nice breakfast and a bit of writing at the Elephant House, then went to get a ticket to a Fringe show I'd been eyeing up. Unfortunately it was sold out (for future reference: gotta be in quick) but that meant I could get a ticket to another show it had clashed with: Unmythable.

I still had some time to spare, so I went in search of the Scottish National Museum. I started with the ancient peoples section, thinking that the museum really wasn't that big for a national museum, though very well-designed and modern. It had artwork interspersed with the exhibits, and everything was beautifully presented with enough space and interest so that it didn't all blur together. I finished with the ancient peoples section and went to look for other exhibits, and realised the building I had thought was the entire museum was actually just the smallest wing. The main parts of the museum were still to come, housed around an incredible Victorian atrium. I didn't have enough time left, so I decided to make a return visit.

Unmythable was very good, with three guys playing a multitude of parts and encouraging the audience to join in as Argonauts. I especially liked the scene where two of the actors were staging an argument between Zeus, Demeter, Hades and Persephone, with part-changing almost every sentence. There were songs and free olives.

After another stint at the museum, where I saw Dolly the cloned sheep and some incredible silver ships used to hold cutlery, I went to a book festival talk about writing YA and saw my last Edinburgh International Festival concert: imperial Japanese music and dance.

It was very interesting, with all the musicians still and poised as they played their instruments. Men in beautiful costumes stepped in slow patterns that reminded me of tai chi, and later wore masks and added swords, spears and shields to their costumes. At one point an instrument played a few notes that sounded almost exactly like the beginning of the theme tune to Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I wondered if the Star Trek composers had borrowed the notes.

I went back to the book festival for a bit to hear some audio compositions, and finished my evening just as the fireworks were going off over the castle.

 

Edinburgh Day 4: Walking Tour, Censorship, Beatboxing and Ghosts

(I am writing this in The Elephant House! You know, the JK Rowling cafe! And feeling slightly self-conscious, writing... Out the window you can see the castle on its cliffs and a graveyard and an old school. Hmmm...)

I never really understand what happens to the morning. I wander around, and then suddenly it's time to go to something and it's nearly the afternoon. Yesterday I went to look at the Half Price Hut, where you get Fringe tickets for half-price, got myself a thick magazine book with 375 pages that lists all the Fringe shows (there are that many), and went up to the Royal Mile for a walking tour at 11am.

The walking tour was pretty good, going around a few closes on the Mile and explaining such things as punishment for small crimes in the middle ages (nailing your ear to a post), gardyloo (watch out, there's nasty stuff a-coming out the window) and the national animal of Scotland (a unicorn. No one mentioned you were allowed mythical creatures!). Some of these stories I'd heard before, but it was much more real when you could look up at the windows and stare at the ear-post and think that's where they did that.

We also walked through Greyfriar's Graveyard with the memorial to Greyfriar's Bobby (little dog who never left his master's side) and heard about the names on gravestones that appear in Harry Potter. I went back later and found McGonnagal, Black and Thomas Riddell, but couldn't find Crookshanks.

At 3pm I had a talk about censorship at the Book Festival. It was incredibly interesting, with Chika Unigwe as the chair and Patrick Ness as the keynote speaker talking about how, today in a Western society, we more often self-censor than are externally censored. He put this down to fear of consequences and offending people, but also talked about freedom of speech and the courage to say something that might offend someone, but that needs to be said.

Then the floor was opened up to discussion from the audience, at least half of whom were authors at the Edinburgh Writer's Conference. People kept standing up and introducing themselves as China Miéville or Melvin Burgess (well, only those two did. No impersonators) and saying what they thought. It was a bit disjointed at times, with so many people wanting to air their views and not really reply to the previous question, but I think the general idea that came out of it was that people have the right not to be punished for saying stuff, but that everyone should always be arguing about what you should say. Another interesting point was that the backlash against political-correctness is often a way for prejudice and 'repugnant' views to sneak back in.

I hadn't realised that the event would last two hours, so by the time it was finished I had fifteen minutes to get right across town. Google told me it would take twenty-four minutes. I ran all the way, round the bottom of the castle cliffs and up along to my first Fringe show: the Vocal Orchestra.

I was a bit late, but they let me in anyway. The Vocal Orchestra are beatboxers and singers - beatboxing is where you make noises into a microphone that sound like music or drums (for those who've never come across it). If it's really good, it can sound almost exactly the same as the original music, but it's all done with voice.

The Vocal Orchestra are really good.

Among other things, they did Teardrop by Massive Attack, got stuck in a time machine and came out in 1723 (Vivaldi), had duels both musical and physical, and used the audience as an instrument (we had to sing notes according to our section). It was great.

I stopped back at the hostel to drop my bag off, and went to meet the ghost tour on the Royal Mile. We heard about the curse of the North Bridge, went up to Calton Hill where witches meet in front of the unfinished Parthenon, wandered through a graveyard with a very scary headstone (weathered to look like someone screaming) and took lots of photos to examine for supernatural apparitions. I got lots of 'orbs', but that was most likely dust caught by the flash. It's amazing how wandering around a graveyard in the dark can make you jump at everything.

 

Edinburgh Day 3: Arthur's Seat, the Tron and Kathak Dance

I am sitting in front of a ruined chapel on Arthur's Seat, looking out over a lake in Holyrood Park out towards the Firth of Forth (Arthur's Seat is a hill and the Firth of Forth is the wide mouth of the Forth River [I think I have that the right way round...], opening out into the sea. It pretty much is the sea). I'm waiting for the ball to drop in the tower beside Edinburgh's Folly, the unfinished Parthenon on one of the hills near the city, which will mean it's one o'clock.

I still haven't gone proper grocery shopping and forgot to get anything for breakfast last night, so I went out to find breakfast this morning, after which I was going to climb Arthur's Seat. After much walking I found a Sainsbury's and got myself some blueberries and Scotch pancakes (a.k.a. pikelets), as well as a pair of sunglasses - I hadn't realised I would need them in Scotland. Now I just had to get to Arthur's Seat, which you can see from most parts of the city with its crags and rocky head.

I found some tour buses and reasoned I must be getting close, stared through the bars at Holyrood Palace and walked past the Scottish Parliament, then found a track. It was a very steep track, paved by convicts in the mid-nineteenth century, and runs up below the Salisbury Crags, which are still quite high up and give an awesome view of the old town, the castle and the sea. I originally thought this was Arthur's Seat, but it turned out to be the larger hill in behind. A bit more walking up very steep paths and rock-faces masquerading as paths, and I was at the top, along with at least fifty other people.

The view is incredible. It's the highest point of the city and you can see in all directions, out to the Forth Bridge, over the Old and New Towns, out to Portobello Beach. I braved the midges and went right to the very top rock (the midges seemed to like this very top rock, a lot). The cliffs drop off on almost every side and it's a bit of a puzzle getting down, because so many people have climbed over this hill so many times that there are paths, or things that look like paths, everywhere. I took one that ended in a small chasm, so had to retrace my steps back up and find a better way down.

I think I'm going to have sore legs tomorrow.

I walked up the Royal Mile and stopped in a few shops and a museum of Edinburgh life, then was caught by the former church that is now called Tron, and was holding free music. It's an incredible venue, with exposed stone and ancient stained glass windows behind the stage. An accordionist was playing when I came in, but that soon changed to a pair of singer-songwriters on guitar and box. (I'm not sure what the instrument I'm calling 'box' actually is. It looks like the back of an old speaker, and you sit on it and tap/bang it to get a range of percussion. I will continue to call it a box until I find out what it actually is.) I'm pretty sure one of the guys was a Kiwi, from his accent. I really enjoyed the songs with harmonies.

By this time the previously-sunny day had clouded over, so I made a detour to the hostel to get my Kathmandu jacket. You may remember my ode to my Kathmandu jacket from some time ago. When I got back to town it was properly pouring, so I went to find a coffee shop close to the theatre to sit for the rest of the afternoon with my iPad. Writing in an Edinburgh cafe. Very JK Rowling.

The concert for the evening was the Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company doing both traditional and contemporary Kathak dance. After much thought, I decided that Kathak could also be called slap-dancing - like tap-dancing, but with feet slaps instead of taps. The dancers, both men and women, wore bells around their ankles in the traditional first half, stamping and wending their arms this way and that. The second half was the contemporary half, and I think my favourite. This is strange, because this half did not have bells, and usually I like bells. I think the percussion of the foot-slaps was easier to hear, perhaps, and it's amazing how fast they can do it. The movements also seemed bolder and more impassioned in the contemporary Karthak, and there was lots of diggadiggadiggadig chanting, which I really like and would love to someday learn how to do. I'm not sure if my mouth moves that fast, however...