Pia De Girolamo shares a travelogue recounting observations and art from her trip to Vietnam.
Vietnam Travelogue
My Rain
“The wind that comes off the Sahara towards the Atlantic is called Harmattan. The breezes over Senegal and Mauritania mingle with the warm waters near Cape Verde and occasionally become one of those end-of-summer storms that plod their way up the Mid-Atlantic states, dropping enormous amounts of rain and causing damage.”
In This Our Land
In this our land we have a term for suffering, shege. The proverbial phrase seeing shege is a present participle tense that describes the action of going through it — suffering. And there’s levels to it you see, because in this our land we’re all in the same hell, just different levels.
Was buying a house in Syria the brightest decision I ever made?
I am now forever connected to that city but not because of the house, because of the people and relationships that were forged over that time.
Back in Kilifi
During the pandemic, Matt Cotten reflected on his time in Kilifi. He was finally able to return in September 2022. Here is the before and after.
My Pop Life: Pleasant Valley Sunday – The Monkees
The Monkees couldn’t put a foot wrong for this ten-year old boy, yet to worry about small parts and auditions … yet to discover that they weren’t in fact cool, because they were manufactured and didn’t write their own songs, yet to discover that despite all that they were still brilliant.
My Pop Life: ‘The Emperor’ – Haydn
They are works that make you feel happy. There is a level of complexity in the music that your brain can grasp immediately.
My Pop Life: The Night – Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
“I think I then immediately boxed my heart away and tightened the great padlock over my chest so that I couldn’t feel anything that would undermine or dissolve me…”
My Pop Life: All Along The Watchtower by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
“It was a terrifying record, an exhilarating record, it was everything I ever hoped to be, everything I feared, a prophet crying in the wilderness”
My Pop Life: The Carnival is Over by The Seekers
“Most of my traumatic moments, my lonely moments, my brave moments have been hidden inside my personal soundtrack. The music made it all bearable.”
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