Blog move

The blog has moved to alexgrech.posterous.com.

Gil Scott-Heron's comeback

Welcome to a masterpiece.

Time-travelling

When Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen were in full pomp, and a generation of kids was in awe of the Muppets.

Thirty four years later, it seems like nothing's changed much.

Lennon and the social web

Yesterday, I gave a talk on how social media can be used within a business environment. It was fun, and exhausting. And apparently I still wave my hands too much and cover my face when I'm trying to make a point. The joys of how others see us.

And today, I came across this clip on Yoko Okono's site. And I thought: can you imagine what John Lennon would have done if he'd had access to the social web, like we have today?

Put the right tools at the disposal of creatives, dreamers, heretics and doers. And watch the world change.

WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It) from Yoko Ono on Vimeo.

The Cat Piano

When my family is away, I am reacquainted with the needs and aberrations of our 12 year-old cat. It's always a timely reminder of how interesting all things feline can be.

The Cat Piano from PRA on Vimeo.

48 going 100

It's the end of a week when I have gone back to studying, lost a friend and turned 48. I'm still learning to join the dots, do the best I can for the ones I love, and find a tribe where I can be comfortable in my own skin.

Someday, I want to go and watch the Cure.

For Dennis Vella

If you wanted to be pedantic, Dennis Vella and I would not have been considered to be 'close friends'. Not in the sense that we met regularly every week. But we were friends over a long period of time. And when we did meet, often bumping into each other in Valletta, or at some concert, it was difficult not to get engrossed in some conversation on art, food, love, music and the movers and shakers in Malta who would occasionally rudely interrupt Dennis's world.

For a short period of time, when I was setting up Heritage Malta, I was technically his boss. He was patiently waiting for some bureaucratic mountain to be moved so he could finally do what he was born to do: get people to understand that modern art in Malta deserved a museum and that artists deserved a voice, a friend, a scholar to put what they did into context.

Everyone has a personal picture of Dennis. Mine is goggle specs, a book on Sciortino seemingly permanently tucked under his arm, even in the middle of a drunken party. Vague, smiling, wispy, gentle, anarchic, elegant, even dapper, sometimes. A fine chef. Owner of a Pandora's treasure chest of art at his house - many of them artists he had discovered, encouraged, sponsored. He bought my brother Shaun's piece called 'Three White Scum' for the museum just as racism started to rear its ugly head in this country.

A brave guy, easy to forget, particularly if he came to stay with you - because he could bury himself in a book or spend hours admiring something in your house that you had forgotten you owned. Never ever boring. He once cooked this incredible lamb casserole, and being the only single guy at the lunch party, kept a spare seat for a Russian icon he had just bought from some antiquarian in London.

Now he's gone, at 56, I just hope someone will have the grace to see his lifetime project to its conclusion. And set up a Museum of Modern Art in Malta, in his memory.

So many of us have lost a person that in some way, contributed to making our lives more interesting - and this country, that much more bearable.

Yesterday, as I was preparing to leave my office, my eye caught a Norbert Attard print I have hanging on the wall. It's an old present from Dennis, to coincide with my return to Malta, all those years ago. It's called 'Intelligence of the Heart.'

I'm just so glad I bumped into you, Dennis, over the past 30 years.

Three men and Everest

Marco Cremona, Dr Greg Attard and Robert Gatt plan to climb the sixth highest mountain, Cho Oyu (8,201metres) this September, and Mount Everest in May 2010 in their challenge8000 expedition. This is their story. But there are also others in on their adventure: Victor Saunders, their guide; and the three women who live with them.

Marco Cremona, 40, is a man in a hurry. A wiry man in perpetual motion, he speaks quickly. The conversation veers from green issues - at the core of his business as a mechanical engineer and environmental consultant - to the mountain boots he has just bought online for Euros 690 from a US specialist store. At an altitude of 8,000 metres and in minus 40 degrees, size 40 feet need size 45 boots to accommodate thick socks and swelling.

Dr Greg Attard is next to show up. At 32, he’s a cross between a rugby player and a 1960s’ Rock Hudson. He lets Marco do the talking. A query about whether Maltese climbing mountains is akin to Jamaicans doing bobsleigh at the Olympics is met with a shrug.

The answer comes later in an email from Robert Gatt, the third man in the challenge8000 team. “We’ve lots of good quality rock climbing in Malta. From rock climbing in Malta, it’s a natural progression to other climbing disciplines and bigger challenges.” Climbing is also a natural way for Robert to live. “Whether it’s a sun drenched rock wall in Malta, fell running on a wet English day in the Lake District, climbing up a frozen waterfall in Italy, an Alpine gully in Chamonix or a Himalayan peak in Nepal, it’s my passion,” he says.

The three did not discover mountains at the same time. Greg was always an all-action type; a Scout, in love with the outdoors. By 17, he’d started to travel. In the summer vacations on his medical course, he’d go for an elective exchange and spend two months a year climbing in eastern Europe and Greece. Marco got the mountain bug when he decided to join the Kilimanjaro One project. “After that climb I was hooked. I met Greg when I went to Etna for training. Robert I knew socially.” Marco is the glue among the men, and the expeditions.

The three were consistently climbing higher mountains; raising the bar by 500 metres with each climb. This September, the team plans to tackle Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth highest mountain. At 8,201m, it is the standard preparatory trail for Everest. The technicality of both mountains is similar – oxygen is required, and the expedition can take anywhere between eight and 10 weeks. The Everest expedition is scheduled for May 2010 and will entail climbing and camping in inhospitable terrain and unforgiving, cold to reach the summit at 8,848metres.

Climbing is a logistical challenge: the team needs the support of a specialist organisation to take care of equipment, flights, porters (two sherpas for each climber), food, water, visas, transport and equipment. The missing piece in the jigsaw is Victor Saunders, the guide, who has climbed Everest four times in the last five years. Victor calls himself a cautious coward. He was chosen on the basis of reputation, which is basically measured on the number of people he has got safely up and down the mountain. He’s known as a warm, level-headed, Scotsman, and is an architect by profession.

Training can be gruelling as you need a good cardio-vascular background. Greg runs and cycles. Marco says he’s lucky that he’s lightweight, but admits to doing aerobic exercise running up and down 60 degree clay slopes. “You have to train your mind too. Mountaineers are hard-headed and everyone involved has an opinion,” he says.

Timing is everything and often make or break of a climb. There’s only a short season, pre- monsoon, in which to climb the mountain and this can result in a kind of ‘people jam’ on the ascent routes, with up to 200 people all having a go at the same time. “I hate crowded mountains. You can have one to yourself,” Greg mumbles.

Climbers have eight hours on oxygen going up, and another eight coming down. In minus 25, sweating, they’re pushing it and running out of time and energy. Hypothermia can start to kick in. “If you don’t make summit before 2pm, you need to turn back. Till now, we’ve never failed a peak. I don’t know how I would react to failure,” says Greg. It’s no surprise that 30 per cent of attempts to climb Everest end up in failure.

What makes a good team? The team’s roles seem well-defined: Marco is the logistics person and more of a trekker; Greg is more a mountaineer; Robert is ‘very technical’ and more a climber. Male-bonding is inevitable; if you are going to spend ten weeks in a tent together, you have to get on. “The mountain brings out the worst and best in each of us,” smiles Greg. “You’re dealing with fatigue and bruised egos. Saying we’re all hard-headed is an understatement”. Marco says he finds it relaxing. He can get away from the day to day and the mundane and just concentrate on the task at hand.

We skirt around the subject of danger, but it’s something they are reluctant to discuss. “Climbing is dangerous and even more so at high altitudes where the ability to make decisions is hindered by hypoxia and extreme mental and physical exhaustion. Danger is a challenge to be managed both individually and as a team. We’re not madmen. We’re taking a calculated risk. People engage in extreme sports because they are so demanding, mentally and physically, that you live for the ‘now’,” says Marco.

If you collapse on a mountain over 8,000 metres, the chances are that you will stay there. They’ve seen a couple of bodies on previous climbs. They’re too heavy, with all that kit, to retrieve without risking other lives. Knowing your limits is key to survival, and that’s where a good guide comes in. He has to know how to push a climber to his maximum capability, but not let him get beyond that. He has to look for tell-tale signs – people getting out of breath for instance. The guide can turns things around if necessary.

What makes a man contemplate bad food, no sleep, no sex for 10 weeks, pain, danger, fractures, falls, frostbite, hypothermia, altitude-related injuries, disorders or possible brain damage? The answer seems to be one word: the summit. It’s a loaded word and keeps cropping up in the conversation. It’s as powerful a driver as the purely nationalistic one - to be the first Maltese to climb Everest. There is a sense of history being made. But the real motivation is personal; it’s part dream; part challenging yourself to get out of the comfort zone; and all about ‘pushing yourself to the point where you never thought it was possible to be, mentally and physically.’ They hope that their forthcoming expeditions will inspire people to dream and have a go at turning those dreams into reality.

There is nothing as painful as summit day. Their longest climb to a summit to date was 17 hours. “Half way during summit day, you think, this is the last time I am doing this. Once you get to a summit, you have to calculate the energy reserves you have to get back. You may get summit fever. You get intoxicated. That’s the risk. People judge if you are successful if you have got to the summit. Ten metres away doesn’t count. It’s a very cruel thing,” says Greg.

What happens when you’ve climbed a mountain? Marco says on the way down he dreams of beer, junk food, and a good shower. Greg says he’d be happy to stay on the peak, and that he gets ‘post-performance depression’ when he gets home. Both men say the mountain is a drug. “We read about mountains every day. We may live here, but we live the mountain each day”.

I wonder what it’s like to live with these men. They grin and say the heroes are the women who see them risk their lives, and spend a long time away from home and large sums of money on their lonely passions. Marco says the mountains came after his relationship, and that his wife knows he is cautious, but it’s tough not being able to communicate for long periods of time. He has been away climbing a mountain for one month a year in the past years. Greg says his girlfriend knew that ‘the package involved the mountain. ’ Robert, they tell me, lives for the mountain. I ask them what happens after Everest. Marco squirms. He says he’s agreed to have one shot at Everest and then that’s it. He’s 40 and this is his last big climb. Greg says that he will find some gentler peaks to go for, and perhaps take his girlfriend with him.

There are perhaps other limitations on their expeditions though. So far, they’ve been funding themselves, but the big two climbs coming up need funds from corporate sponsors. “Climbing is expensive, so that means I have to work harder when not climbing, “says Robert. Hopefully, corporate sponsors won’t be long in coming since the team’s effort is all in a good cause. Challenge8000 has pledged that throughout the next year it will be promoting awareness of asthma and better air quality in Malta through its association with the Society of Maltese Asthmatics and the ‘Stop the Dust!’ campaign.

As they leave, Greg jokes about the frostbite from his last climb and that his big toe is still stuck. Marco says they will be linking up on Etna over the weekend. When they leave, I switch off my laptop, and wonder if I’m any closer to understanding these two complex, gifted men, intoxicated by a summit on the other side of the world.

Simulating a storm

As summer takes hold and the air thins, others are simulating storms.

Man of his time

I think I will always be able to listen to this man. Master history story-teller. Wonderful and deeply moving to listen to. And doing whatever he can to swim against the tide of stereotypes.

Breaking the rules

| Get your Presentation Pack

Mr Blue Sky

What do you do, when you get blue for no reason? Or for a thousand reasons? Maybe it's because Jacob woke up with a fever and never made it to the school Carnival party in his wizard's costume. Or maybe it's because I'm tired of winter, and credit crunches. Maybe I'm just tired.

Then I remembered this song. I guess I'll always be in search of Mr Blue Sky.

Obamame

The best velvet glove 18-minute speech I've heard for a long time.

Whatever this man will achieve, he has already changed the lexicon of politics for ever.

Even managed to silence a six year-old.  Jacob knew it was history, all right.

And for a day, thanks to this, even you can bask in the great man's glory.

11 Wishes

1. Exercise
   
2. Write
   
3. Insiders
   
4. Coach
   
5. Learn
   
6. Travel
   
7. Love
   
8. Heal
   
9. Connect
   
10. Strength
    
11. Go 
    

Christmas is for kids

We had a sleepover for Christmas. My 4 year-old niece, Scarlett, stayed over, so her parents could get find time this morning to clean up the house after the Christmas Eve party.

At 6.15, there was the first fragment of conversation from the kids' room. Santa had delivered, Jacob was tearing into the contents of the sack on his bed, and Scarlett was screeching at the Barbie and the pink fake make up kit. There's little you can do except surface from what's left of the alcohol stupour of the night before and mumble instructions about toilet doors, clothes, tripping over spiral stairways, breakfast soon on the way.

You grasp your first mug of hot coffee, look at the exhausted face of the mother of your child, and hope the caffeine will somehow carry you through the day.  

And the day swims by.  We get to my brother's in a heap for lunch, spend four hours eating too much turkey and Jamie Oliver stuff, watch an old Muppets Christmas Special, drowned in the sound of squabbling kids and adults sneaking the occasional slurred cat nap.  Two girls aged 4 and 5 gang up on my son aged 6 and scream they both want to marry him, and he doesn't know where to look.  The presents arrive late, my father is tired and has more wrinkles than last year and there are not enough bags around for the booty we have to carry back home.

And then I find out that Pinter has died.  

Christmas is about kids.  It's about waiting for the next present, the next kiss, the next distant relative to plant a smacker on your nose and ruffle your hair until you are well and truly exhausted and can finally crawl back to your bed and start counting the presents in your head.  

There is no other day in the calendar which makes me more aware of time slipping through my fingers and the resourceful networks of family than Christmas day.

The Whistler and the last tambourine man

Tommy Camilleri spent the first seven years of his working life opening blocked drains.  Then he got fed up inhaling fumes and he got a job as a road sweeper in Naxxar.    “It’s good work if you want to get to know everyone in Naxxar,” he shrugs. 

Tommy is the last tambourine player of Malta. The tanbur is the poor man’s tambourine:  the frame is made from beech wood and sheep skin, often with some decorative tberfil painting on the skin.  A wooden loop (cirku) slides over the frame like a belt clasping the skin.  The jingles (plattini) were traditionally made from the lids of food preservative cans.  

Tommy played with some of the finest folk musicians of his generation - Toni Cachia ‘Il-Ħammarun’, Ganni il-Ħawli.   They played in hotels for tourists, in Carnivals, during Christmas, at weddings and for anyone who would pay.  Like all tambourine men, Tommy was the front man for the band, with his own well-rehearsed act.  Then, in the second half of the last century, Maltese folk music went into terminal decline.   And now the people Tommy used to play with are all dead.

He turns up for our appointment on a Tuesday morning in his finery:  cap, black waistcoat, matching pin-striped trousers, white shirt, black sandals.  He refuses a glass of wine at the Mqabba Band Club because he says he is recovering from a heavy night.  Behind his thick glasses, I could make out watery eyes.  Tommy is 78 going on to 98.  He’s tiny and quiet and weaves his hands nervously on his lap. 

Just as the acrid black coffee kicks in, we are joined by a beaming Guzi Sciberras, also known as ‘Il-Mija’.   Il-Mija is 57, and clearly still relishing early retirement from the Dockyard, where he was a Charge Man.  He now makes the flejguta, the Maltese end-blown cane flute.  It’s his idea that we should talk in his field ‘next to the Torri Vincenti’.  “It’s where I find my space and peace and quiet.  I’ve been spending all my spare time there since 1967,” he says. 

The glue between the tambourine man and the flute maker is Ruben Zahra, the freelance composer who often uses folk material within his contemporary works.  Ruben is in a race to save traditional instruments from extinction.  “Together with Guzi Gatt, I’ve listened to hours of 1960s recordings of Maltese folk music.  All the core Maltese traditional instruments - the żaqq, the Maltese bagpipe, the tanbur, and the flejguta – have stopped being made, for more than a generation.  In the case of the flejguta, we could not even find one.   But we knew the sound it made.  We decided to try and make these instruments before we lose them forever.  Our research led us to the makers of traditional bird whistles.  Enter il-Mija.’ 

Il-Mija’s piece of solace is a tongue of soil and a stone hut right by the perimeter fence of the airport.   In the middle of the patch is a beehive with an open door.    I immediately think of bird traps and sense that this place was a killing  fields of sorts, at some stage. “We used to bait the guys from the RAF for some morsels, through the fence, when we were kids,” grins il-Mija.  “Don’t worry about the bees,” he adds, as one zooms past my left ear.

Il-Mija opens a box over-spilling with pluvieri, the Maltese bird whistles.  He’s like a kid with the cookie jar.  The names of birds roll off his tongue as he goes through a demonstration of the sound each whistle makes.  “This one is Il-birwina – listen carefully!  This is the tellerita.  This is the gurlin.”   It is difficult not to get intoxicated by the childish delight of a man who has spent 40 years making whistles.  And as for the sound – if you close your eyes, you could believe that you were in the midst of bird song that most people in Malta can only imagine.

Maltese traditional instruments were made from locally-sourced material:  ashwood, cane, string, animal skins and cow horns.  Il-Mija is both an artisan and a recycling man.  In the true spirit of the Maltese, nothing is wasted.  He showed us whistles made from the bone of a horse’s leg, a piece of walnut, and the tubing from an old car tyre.  “You cannot make one of these things unless you are a whistler yourself.  The cane needs to be firm, dry and straight – but most of all you need to understand tone.  If you are going to fake a bird into thinking another bird is calling, you have to master this with precision.  There is no margin for error.” 

We ask him about his tools.  He laughs and shows us another box:  a hand drill, a vice, a scalpel, a chisel. “I’m not interested in TV.   I have made 89 whistles till now.”  Making the flejguta is just another challenge.  The air is directed against the sharp edge of a hole cut in the cane just below the mouth piece.  Six finger holes along the length of the flute produce different tones and distinguish the flejguta from the simple whistle.

Ruben thinks it’s time to get to the music, unfurls the zaqq from his bag and coaxes Tommy into playing a tune, right there, against the wall.  Coming face to face with  Iz-zaqq is a bit of a shock – half goat, complete with tail, half whistle; the weirdest of instruments.    Its bag is made from goat skin, its chanter from two cane tubes and a horn that projects its drones. 

When Tommy plays, he is like one of those Wallis & Gromit  Plastecene men, moving in slow-motion.    The tambourine is in perpetual motion, and the man seems stuck to the tambourine.  One moment it’s under his leg, then against his knee, then it hits an elbow, then it’s under the crescent of his darting fingers.  And the music is familiar, Moorish, raw and sad rolled into one.  I am told later that Il-Hammarun played the same melody on the zaqq all his life.

When they finish, I don’t know whether to clap or just relish the moment.  Instead, Matthew’s camera moves and snaps the moment.  I ask Tommy what he thought of the new tambur Ruben is producing, as he cradles it on his lap.  “I like its voice,” he whispers.  “Remember that the first sounds that Christ heard were iz-zaqq and the tanbur.  These are instruments of the shepherd.”   He cocks his head like a thoughtful dog when il-Mija announces that we cannot leave before we share a drink with him.

I watch the jet planes take off and ask Tommy about playing abroad.  “I’ve never been on a plane,” he says.   “I’m scared of heights .  Even going up in a lift is not good for me. ”

The two men have different ideas about legacy.  Tommy has five children, il-Mija has two, none of them are musicians.  Tommy says one of his granddaughters has promise.  Il-Mija boasts:  ‘My craft will die with me.  Besides, if I teach someone, will they attribute credit where credit is due?’  He etches his ‘100’ mark on the back of all his whistles.  Somehow, there are different egos at play here. 

“Malta is the only European country which does not provide folk instruments as a cultural product on a retail basis,” says Ruben.  “We’re trying to do something about that, before we lose this cultural heritage for ever.”  With a mix of determination and entrepreneurship, the new Maltese tanbur is being made in Spain.  I guess you have to start from somewhere to reclaim your past.

On a humid morning in Mqabba, the bees buzzed, the jet engines screeched and the zaqq droned and flirted with the tambur.   And our heads were filled with folk music, Il-Mija’s excellent J&B and the indelible passage of time.

Change yourself

Obama managed to energise a nation and most of the western world into believing that change was possible, against a background of collapsing markets, war, strife, bigotry and overall disillusionment with the way the US came to be perceived after 8 years of George Bush.

Seth Godin is about to change the lives of some lucky people.  Very soon.  The details are here.  

Even just applying for this is enough of a paradigm shift, for most people.

January is round the corner.   New York City, for some people, is going to become the promised land.

New year and new directions beckon like no other year.

The tooth fairy

My son lost his first tooth this morning. I woke up to find him with his nose pressed against the mosquito net. In the half dark, I could just make out his open mouth.

"It just came off!" he sobbed, his hand cradling a tiny tooth.

I tried to comfort him as best as I could. I cracked jokes about pirates. I hugged him, and for a moment could remember all the teeth I had lost, before dentists could get their pointed instruments on their eventual replacements.

Then I remembered the tooth fairy.

We didn't get as far as a tooth under a pillow this evening. Instead, it nestles on a saucer, on his bookcase, waiting to be whisked to a place where everthing is available for barter. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.

And by tomorrow morning, there will be three euros, in place of Jacob's tooth, to buy another Roald Dahl book, and another story to spin.

The beautiful elbow

Elbow are finally being recognised as the great band they are.

Visualising It

You watch Usain Bolt smash his own 100m world record in 9.69 and start to celebrate 10m from the end.

You watch Michael Phelps collect his seventh gold medal and know he is just going to get his eighth tomorrow.

Then you see the glint in Bolt's eye as he poses in front of the Jamaican fans, and hear Phelps say 'I don't believe anything is impossible, if you really want it.'

Visualise it. Execute it. Just like Philippe Petit did, in August 1974, when he walked the tightrope between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in NYC.

These guys truly walk on air.