Jaffé &
Neale - Bookshop & Café
Website
|
WWW.APLACEINTHEAUVERGNE.BLOGSPOT.COM
INFORMATION EBRU FROM A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE
M
y personal photo journal and a daily look at the world: www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
Ebru is a Turkish art form, the process of paper marbling that produces constantly changing interwoven patterns.
"We're not a mosaic, different from one another and fixed in glass," a Turkish anthropologist has said, talking about Turkish society. "Ebru is done on water. It is impossible to have clear lines or distinct borders."
My premise is that the same is true of our the world, and the way we could organise the information we use to look at it.
On my blog, I try to I try to filter the already filtered information chaos and then re-present it in a way that does not have distinct borders, but at the same time I am trying to connect some dots. I leave space for the reader to write their own story about Earth, and, I hope, a place to escape to. Some of what I post I agree with, some of it appals me. You too can draw your own conclusions.
What I don't do is follow the traditional main stream media information hierarchies (with their distinct pages of news by geographical region, opinion and editorial and their sections on business,culture, sport etc.).
The world is not a mosaic, nor is our society one where people are somehow separated from Business or World Events; the world is like water, fast flowing, deep.
Therefore my Information Ebru has no clear lines or distinct borders between 'types' of information about the Earth I live on nor between the lives of all of us 6 billion and one of us - me.
To show this, I juxtapose pictures of the very simple life I lead alongside the Information Ebru, because to understand the narrative of the 6 billion it helps to follow the narrative of just one of them.
I find it humanizes and gives a framework of reference to a story that is otherwise too vast to get a handle on
This blog is a destination for those who spend most of their lives 'inside', be it their office, airplanes, their own country or their own local media perspective of Earth.
It's a place to escape to, to go 'outside', perhaps to dream.
It's also a destination for people who want to understand what on Earth is going on, but who don't have the time to do so, but who want a broader perspective.
What Information Ebru provides then, both with its mundane photo story of ONE human's life combined with its constantly changing, interwoven patterns of global information is (speaking as a writer of narrative non-fiction myself) a daily global narrative.
Newspapers today remind me of staid historical non-fiction of an academic publishing era when compared with the compelling, humanized stories that the leading writers of historical narrative non-fiction are publishing today. (e.g The Whisperers/Stalin/Blood River/Zanzibar Chest etc)
A NOTE ON MY SOURCE MATERIAL
Every information source has is its problems (Noam and others, I know); in the time I have available I can only use the one I trust the most in the world - the Paris-based newspaper, the International Herald Tribune, owned by the New York Times. My newspaper arrives in the post, most days, at around 13.00 hrs local time.
The IHT's talented editors have already compacted the day's events into 20-odd pages. I think they use something in the region of 1% of all the articles that they have access to and which their editors study every day. What I then do is to take that 1% and post about 1% of that on this blog. I provide links to the IHT's website (www.iht.com) and encourage you to go and explore further.
|
RURAL ASSOCIATIONS,
CHARITIES, ISSUES AND ORGANISATIONS
THE COTSWOLDS
COTSWOLDS WRITERS' GROUPS
Although I was not
a member of these groups there are two very active writers'
groups in the Cotswolds:
Cheltenham Writers' Circle
Contact Carol Sandiford
Tel.: 01242 578109
Cotswold Writers' Circle
Contact
http://www.cotswoldwriterscircle.kk5.org/ |
INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS IN THE COTSWOLDS
INDEPENDENT BOOKSHOPS IN THE UK AND IRELAND
To find and support
other independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland click
here.
|
OTHER CHARITIES
MEDIA
FILMS & MUSIC
| Show of Hands
Steve Knightley and Phil Beer are widely acknowledged as the finest acoustic roots duo in England. Knightley, who writes most of their inspired material and Beer, a dazzling multi instrumentalist, have built up a huge following which has seen them twice sell out the Albert Hall , headlining at major festivals from Glastonbury to WOMAD and playing all over the world, from Europe to America, Australia and India. Voted Best Live Act by the public at the 2004 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, the jury is still out on just what kind of music they play. A genre defying mix of rock, roots, blues, country, trad, and often influenced by the music of other countries, it is played out on an array of instruments from slide guitar to fiddle, mandolin to South American cuatro.
'Formidable operators in the roots arena. A class act' The Independent
http://www.showofhands.co.uk/
Country Life, by Show of Hands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Y7cBLJWgI
Letters from Litein
An emotional, thought provoking, and inspiring feature
length documentary about a group of students, teachers,
and parents, from a small school in Canada, reaching
out from half way around the world, to touch the hearts
of orphans in Africa, and as a result change their own
hearts and world.
http://www.lettersfromlitein.com
Shooting Dogs
This is the official website of the feature film Shooting
Dogs, about the Rwandan genocide. This site contains
constantly updated news, views and diary entries from
the cast and crew. You can also see the latest photos,
trailers and much more.
http://www.shootingdogsfilm.blogspot.com/
|
|
 |
