Robert Iddiols

Beirupdate, circle

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:10:00 +0000

We awake as though from sleep into our final week like the throat of a great landscape and the scriptured ceiling drops through the glaze and onto my face like the fug that overhangs this place. Our hosts from times-ago join us for dinner and S rides his all-american suzuki with A on his arm after pouring pitchers to the bars of rhymes we know too well. J and I linger and fail not to pay the Monday round by backchatting the security I pushed down the steps and called a cunt but says hi to E anyway. We don’t tip the best service we ever had and instead hit Gemmayze and bump W and L into the monkeyhole where not for the final time J and I note the circularity. Someone brings vodka and with sincerity a single measure of chaser that tastes to me of devilry so we walk the deadzone road and shout at taxis. L spears a parked car with his shoulder though later claims he fell and the owner takes to debate like a wronged mother. He holds a sandwich as I say fuck you check your car have you checked your car fuck you and L roars the roar of wolves and then a sandwich slaps me on the cheek and sprays bluecheese over my world. Alcohol and consensus quell my effort to end his life so we walk the remaining road in cigarette smoke and adrenaline. In the morning J explains to Yassar Arafat why there’s a monster box of vegetables on the floor while I steal paint in Hamra to make custom threads we wear to neighbors in the night. I tell the bar I don’t ever want to ask for more and soon I’m outside tonguing a dog. We bisect the alleyway bar to bar wherever a heavy allows but I win with an ashtray to my lips and I drink as though I don’t know and then muscles relaxes and doublefists bottles we don’t need. At dusk like silhouettes behind a salad of ash and apple and almaza we realize Beirut has swallowed our lives.

Beirupdate, heroes

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:46:00 +0000

We invite Yassar Arafat round to maid our palace and she prioritizes laundering our bedsheets which she describes as black and then she points and laughs when I sneeze. We hide plainview in Sanayeh surrounded by hajj and hijab and not a liquor store for blocks when our neighbours march upstairs to complain of latenight babywhails and waltzing stiletto shackers and a different perp every week and threats of police to which we say give a fuck and M takes as an invite to go full fuckyou and scream even louder. J and I shower while M swills half the Bombay from the blue to cash our supply so much we sack her off at the first bar after she falls asleep and off the chair and empties her insides into bags in front of teenage barstaff and younggun businessbods. Her phone lights to the call of someone called Joe Cunt and I say answer fucking answer it but she throws it to the ground and breaks the straw so J and I split to meet MJT and his companion whose book I admit I haven’t read but entertain us with tales of Hitch in Hamra and maybe the reason I’m here. He knew nothing of the SSNP and nothing of the martyrdom only the swastika in a spin enough to sharpie that shit and return with paint and fire. With tears we cheers to Hitch and I know on this day I came as close as can be.

Beirupdate, glazed

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 02:41:00 +0000

Looking back at notes written in a hand drunk on poisons we sack off our lives for a week. Generous gunfire whistles between the nearby trees and flashbangs damage nothing so we drown our ambivalence at the bar where earlier they fleeced local lines to mount a screen on someone’s home. A girl called E arrives from Texas or London and again it’s all a game and we run around ruining her mind with glazed faces and blue label I don’t steal from my employer without indifference. J and E leave me to turn arabic to a room full of better women when I realize I’m still hanging and smell of breath but I go full gosling on the little americans and they agree to maintain our celebrity at hard rock later that day. On the walk home I’m wearing sandals and shorts and a cut-off tee that may well blaze a star of david into the eyes of every passer-by. I open the door to M who says the army are in the streets and that was definitely not celebratory gunfire and groups with black flags kill all foreigners on sight but J and I say we’ll take it. Together we split with E and join the little americans on the waterfront to walk the stairs to the deadzone that smells of diamond beer and buffalo. Shit in my sinuses has fucked my ears so I can’t hear a word barelylegal says to me but I grin and nod and it passes the hours before she bounces back down the stairs. The other waits an hour before inviting her boyfriend to the table and he seems impressed when I wedge four of his cigarettes between my fingers and suck the nubs as though depraved. J and I cash a row of glasses in haste and later J admits not remembering losing. By now the americans have left us on the ledge and we’re awash with booze and wilting like dandelions in a storm. In the morning E tells me I called the waitress a cunt and shows me pictures of men that look like us dancing with wet floor sandwich boards and talking down our security entourage while wearing hard rock Beirut t-shirts intended for minors and we agree we must return. Before she leaves E says she wants to do something blogworthy and she does.

Beirupdate, please

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 11:22:00 +0000

At least by day I hear this is Lebanon or welcome to Lebanon or we’re in Lebanon like some ironic but proud excuse for idleness or insolence and today A, an American, schools me further by rolling her words through her breath as though talking to a boy when she tells me eeeverything is a game in Lebanon and I don’t understand but she’d do well to tell me why I don’t want to. Working again a local man almost breaks when I speak of males near here. Do you have someone I’m asked. Do I have. Then he says please please don’t listen only make your own opinion and he says I have a friendly face when he disappears. As I linger at the bar a young man comes to me with his face in his hands and rubs his hair and shirt and wails for his brother. Just for supporting them he says not even fighting just supporting. He’s been in jail in Damascus for six months. If I hear word tomorrow he says that he is dead I will go and fight for the free army. Who am I he asks. I do nothing. Together we drink jack and smile at the TV but when he leaves I want to go with him. When M comes later she waltzes round the room with knives before your very eyes and I’m resigned this could turn Friedkin so I whip her to the ground and tell her don’t fall. What if I’m already falling. Then I break your heart. It’s already broken. She traces the words in my notebook to remind me why I’ll never love again.

Beirupdate, T

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:50:00 +0000

Alone I pull pints and smash bottles to the roars of men like they’re watching football when T walks through the door in airport threads and tattoos. We shout smiles at each other across the bar and of a sudden no one matters beside Johnnie Walker and the twelve ounce glass I fill for him to the brim. I walk the length with Mexican gold and through the fug I watch T take celebrity like corpses to coffins. The next day together we walk downtown with M and V and drink smoothie martinis made with blood before Hariri mosque SS cloak the girls in black and dress down J for tonguing females on holy real estate. He splits with V and three of us visit neighbors for Lebanese brew and doodoo. T relates dropping three thousand rubs on a whore and doesn’t twitch when a monkey in Gemmayze says fifty for three drinks and I practice my arabic shouting pour it back pour it back in the fucking bottle and on my way to the concrete I pass punchbowls and pink gorillas lunging chicks to Korean pop and the strong men put arms across but let me pass from I work in a bar fuck you ana bsteghel bi bar and I didn’t fucking drink anything bchirib waleshi. M collects me from the curb and later claims she didn’t push me to the gents and didn’t ride me on the john and didn’t leek blood over my clothes and then she says there’s something called implantation bleeding so little Lyndon might be on his way for which T and I realize I’m beiruining my life. As the last drops fall from the empty cloudless sky a small boy reaching up his hand with a rose asks me if such a thing were possible for valentines. I take the flower and bite its head off while staring into his eyes and pouring crimson wax on M’s wrist. Alone again T and I pour double black like revolutionaries down our throats as though willing toward the dead zone so much so the karaoke barstaff throw the paper upon which we write radiohead creep dickhead. Resting fails so we feel fresh whiskey for a morning meal all golden in the glass like a syrup grail glazing our eyes and minds like girls. We learn Hamra means red so that’s where we hit for all you can drink poliakov and it’s almost written off when a native gives me tobacco mixed with something else he refuses to name but we dance with chairs and neck from tequila optics and the night is gone long before the warehouse where wolves and happies waltz to euphoric generica and hipster heavies tell J he can’t do that with his girl and shirt in the sky and a killer line do you even lift bro that everyone but us finds unfunny but it’s irrelevant when a hundred people jump to time and monster eggs kettle the crowd. And so we send T away with eggshells in his hair and the faces of brunette shakiras knowing that for four nights we bloom minds.

Beirupdate, romance

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 02:03:00 +0000

Talent like yours, Mr Idiots, should not go wasted in Beirut. V visits from Switzerland. She has blonde hair and of a sudden I understand I’m growing used to this place. J romances her with sunset suppers and seafront roleplay while I explain to M that the roach she saw was just a mouse and nothing to worry about except that I’m bad fucking news. J and I do pushups on the terrace while the girls look good and we all hydrate each other with black label and bombay in teacups. Soon we leave to test Lebanese patience and with M and V we’re the envy of a small world. After seven hours and a bill no one recalls settled J and I blow minds and ruin lives. Over fifteen pitchers I tell the story of the river and we agree that infidelity is admirable but when M’s mother arrives and I offer shots and sex with an unbuttoned shirt it goes down badly and yet her daughter sticks around. By now we’re Beirut celebrities and I know I am the same way a baby knows it will live forever so I dance the stage while the DJ packs away and sing in rival circles and harass short skirts to where a waiter we never tip tells me to take it easy. In the zone we waltz to McDonalds and I throw bills across the counter and yell take it fucking take it like a man as J mixes his own dessert. At home I hear myself say let’s have kids and I tie M’s neck with my belt and she falls asleep in tears.

Beirupdate, evil

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:51:00 +0000

Someone sucks whiskeysours and shakes my hand with warmth as though I didn’t blag the mix and tells me of the three monkeys. The first he says doesn’t speak. To the tune of chants astride the bar a boy beckons me forward. You know ee dee ell he asks and I say what like he’s spelling my name. Ee dee ell. Ee dee ell. He wears a white sweater with a red cross but a sun cross and I understand EDL like pulling on my ears and puking down my mouth. EDL as though he’s English as though he’s been to England as though they wouldn’t kick shit out of him as though I want him in my bar and I poke his knights templar sweater like a girl kissing a toy. I ask what the fuck through a grin but he doesn’t speak. The second he says doesn’t see. Z takes me to his wing for solitude and whiskey and out the blue he says I have a problem. With my son. Z bleeds and weeps to me for his boy who’s lost to his world and for whom I ponder and cross lines with empathy. He has everything but wants nothing he says, which we know is okay but for the trees he doesn’t see. The third he says doesn’t hear. In rags and feathers J and M and I play tables with embassy staff and hotshot capitalists and green people with alcohol. We cling to bottles so much so that J smalltalks our ambassador's earpiece and I’m sauced for tomorrow’s job interview but I land the gig so who’s counting. Alone we move from beer to wine and wine to arak and play I’ve never but hear nothing that wasn’t already known.

Beirupdate, M

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:36:00 +0000

I meet M whose father hears voices and who dropped out of life to become something unreal, to act and commit herself as though to hospital. She tells me of earlier years and older men and fired teachers and married men and ruined lives like one of us. All the while I talk through teeth and can’t believe she’s real with eyes like fields and her voice a mirror to passing guys all envy and stares. Because I show them garbage and flowers she says and I have a beautiful face she says but the men here treat me like a cockroach. Tomorrow she cooks foul for us and launders and sings and laughs and fucks and asks for violence and not to stop and says she’d forgive her man with offers of others so with her I’m the most hated man in the room. For me she pulls favours and friends and spends the day but she can’t be real while I see it through those around me watching in the Hard Rock café, through cameras and bile where J swills local beers and tells his wildest tales to MTV and orders wings for the first time in years. Later M and I lay to Damien Rice in the halflight and the next day she rings to the same songs to bring me tea and oranges and send me pictures and talk of morals and visas and England and marriage and I see the rocks beneath the berth and I know she’s falling in love so this is where I stop writing.

Beirupdate, self

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 10:21:00 +0000

J falls asleep at the bar on nothing but illness while a guy tells me about hashish in Lebanon and compares it to politics. Like a drug he says. A fear he says. A ten year-old boy knows more politics he says than you. Hitler he says wanted peace in his way. Ask anyone around the world. Even terrorists communicate a culture he says with bombs and threats and deaths and fear like selfhood. Meanwhile I work where wanderers fall, an English bar with football and Danish ale and Guinness. I work for my identity only and support a team no one knows and split the bar like a sword while J sings songs at home alone to echoes of rifle fire from moped thugs with reverb as though at war with houses. The next day we walk graffiti streets and disused carparks to the smell of piss before a call to prayer rallies a hundred men and we cross a sandbag walkway not unknown to northern France in nineteen seventeen. Martyrs Square sits inside highway tarmac and vandalized walls and bomb-shelter architecture. Of bulletholes. We answer the call among the shoeless others but as we enter the blue roofs and marble arches a van astrides the sidewalk all in earpieces and crewcuts and suits and Glocks away from which our gaze averts. A silence ripples the carpet all aligned in symbols as four women anonymize their selves behind a line of raised behinds. A clock tells all of time and a chandelier made of lies and lives and money dominates. We exit beneath a green man running through an open door. Later J gives a speech to a room full of hackers and lawyers about morality and theft and Aaron Schwartz while I meet a crazy with a United shirt who kisses and kisses and pushes me to be from England even though she’s never been. I make her vomit and the next day I steal from H&M but before I waltz I ask the guard for a pharmacy to buy own-brand rubber from which no one benefits.

Beirupdate, waltz

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:47:00 +0000

This guy believes Roethke’s Waltz is about a Waltz and not a fight and when I tell him he’s gone wrong I go warm inside like I’ve been floored but then I realize this guy knows shit about poetry. J saves me with noise and alcohol so we split to a bar called Dictateur like some French fuck factory and I sit across from a mum who thinks I’m her age and a designer who definitely does not look like Zooey Deschanel and answers my questions by blowing smoke in my face. I douse the table in beer and scotch and absinthe before everyone bails to a club called fuck knows what where fags and dykes and chubs prance to eighties classics no one remembers. The last thing I feel is neat Bombay in a large glass and a single drag from a cheap cigarette that burns it down to the nub. Soon we hustle cups and balls for pong with espresso vodka and scotch chasers and despite refraining from a decider we leave to streets of nausea and go Mad. The site says sanity is overrated but before we arrive J shouts lalala at the cabman and throws me to the tarmac. We know that Mad is hundreds down the line so I stand uncontrolled in showers of sprinkler water shouting and jumping as though a god and I feel untouchable and so we fight. With jeers and laughs J eggs for others to come and swing and they do and we make peace between nations when a boxer dances from across the street to punch me in the stomach. The next day I eat sheep spleen in a sandwich and then brains that taste of nothingness and dissolve on the tongue like promises to a girl I once knew.

Beirupdate, water

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:59:00 +0000

We walk taxied streets and waterfront promenades. No beaches only rocks and shirts and shiny shoes for half a dollar. In bright colours we walk under flags of gold and green that we see to be Hezbollah, so we pass bowed and hushed but then embarrassed when boyscouts hand us cookies. Then we drive. On roads like pouring water our driver shows us a small boy who returns to windows with factory alcohol in pink plastic. Our driver drinks and drinks a beer before we see Byblos. Roads and souks of cobbled stone draw a coastal paradise. We walk a pier of seaspray and perfect sights all night and faraway lights. From scotch to roadside drinks and beers and scotch again before local liquors that look like semen on ice and taste like anise and our host says fuck your life. Below and beyond the dead zone now we steal mugs and waltzing couples to the taste of hops and scotch some more. Our driver drinks and eats nothing and we laugh in the car while we ride with my hands over his eyes like we’ve already survived. We play five-o-one and finish on deuce checkouts but whoever wins concedes to the abyss while our hosts depart to goodbyes and girls not from around here. Meetings with Kiev and Hackney and Bogotá and lastly Glasgow who touches me beneath his jacket and tomorrow someone says we’re in the shallow part of the pool.

Way to Safety

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 12:37:00 +0000

Two months ago a telecommunications engineer from Beirut launched a start-up company that aims to permanently alter the face of urban warfare and eradicate gun-related crimes around the world.

Utilizing the hardware infrastructure we already have, Firas Wazneh wants to launch an application that uses GPS and wi-fi positioning to pinpoint the precise location of gunfire when heard through the microphones of any laptop or smartphone. It’s called Way to Safety.

“I was sitting and I heard gunshots, machine-guns”, he tells me, “and I turned on the media – nothing. The gunshots were really close. After two hours the media told us the gunshots originated near our house, so what the Hell is the country doing to locate these shooters? I thought of the idea [behind Way to Safety]. Being a telecommunication engineer I know that it is possible. Then I searched online, founded my company and thought of the solution, going mobile as an application.”

It’s a simple idea, and not without hurdles, particularly with regard to patents and privacy, but Wazneh is convincing and didn’t mind me writing about his ideas online. He explained the concept to me as follows:

“It’s an application, a mobile and PC application that will sound-triangulate the source location of gunfire. Whenever a shooter fires a gun we will triangulate the position of the shooter in about fifteen to twenty seconds, and our goal is to send this information to the security agencies primarily, then to the media and press, and it’s free to the people in the hot-zones. So when you hear a gunshot and you have the application you will get the knowledge, the data, where the shooter is, for free.”

Hot-zones refer to isolated areas of high gun-crime. One immediately thinks of Homs in Syria, or Tripoli in Lebanon.

The technology has been around since World War I, when well-placed microphones could locate the whereabouts of canons and artillery batteries. There’s a comparable city-wide system in the US, most recently implemented in Chicago. Wazneh concedes that he’s not doing anything new.

“In the US there’s a similar system for gunshot location that’s been around for sixteen years and it’s still growing and growing heavily. It takes a lot of money. The problem is it needs hardware; it’s not scalable. It costs about $50,000 per square mile per year, which the security agencies pay to this private company. They’re not scalable for this matter. They need help, they need equipment on the rooftops, they need to rent places, they need constant internet and electricity. That’s how my thought came to mind: to use the existing infrastructure that we have from phones and laptops, and locate the shot.”

Needless to say for the software to work it requires a lot of people to download the app. “The more people you have, the more accurate it will be,” claims Wazneh. “Basically you need ten to twenty people in a circle with a radius of 1.5km. That much and we will be accurate to 25 meters.”

When I press Wazneh on its usability and the reliance upon its own ubiquitousness, he explains how simple it would be to market, especially in the middle-east, where gun-related deaths are so prevalent. Not only in war-torn countries like Syria, but also in the United States, where the topic of shootings is so hot as to melt steel.

“Because of the scalability of my product,” he says, “being an application, of course I expect it to expand in America. They have about 10,000 people killed per year in gun-related crimes.

“I think it will market itself in the hot-zones,” he goes on. “For example, in Tripoli now they are firing. If I go to the media and tell them, use this application; it will tell you where the shooter is and where they’re shooting from. Or if I go to the media personnel in the hot-zones; if I tell them I need five or six of you to install this application and then I can tell you where the shooter is, and the direction he is shooting, and the quality or type of gun he is using, they will install it.”

Every gun produces a different sound when fired, as identifiable as a fingerprint. Wazneh and his partner will spend a lot of time mapping the sound-signatures of hundreds of weapons over the coming months.

Way to Safety is intended free for civilian users, which one suspects is essential given its prerequisite for popularity, so when I ask about monetizing the service I’m told they will find a way to sell the data to the media and emergency services.

“I’m working on the concept to maybe get investors to help me,” says Wazneh. After he’s granted proof of concept he can deploy the application to different platforms. “Now I’m getting permitted to one platform [Android], then investors will help me to hire mobile developers and draw other mobile users.”

The start-up is young, and already it’s secured its share of funding, but in November Way to Safety placed third in a social innovation competition hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum after someone raised a question about invasion of privacy. Listening in on a user’s microphone is a delicate issue, which Wazneh recognizes.

“It’s a really good question about privacy. Later on I came up with a solution to make the application mostly open source [code available to the public]. I will verify it with a different company, get my application certified by a different security company to show that it will not hack your phone, nor spy or spam you .”

Technology is not my scene, but where Wazneh is unclear about his strategy for commercializing the concept, he’s sure about his plan: to revolutionize gun control.

“My solution is not for a particular party,” he concludes. “It is for every party all over the world, so there is no more gunfire. It is an ideal thought but I want shootings to stop.”

You can follow their progress on Twitter.

Beirupdate, an intro

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:13:00 +0000

We arrive to streets and calls to prayer and generous hosts and shawarma. In minutes we find and fund a Beirut barfly where pink gorilla suits welcome girls onto the bar for a dance all in flames. Friendly tweeps colour the wall in warmth and invitation and soon I have followers and phone numbers from Brits, Lebanese, and Danes, girls and gays surfing the foam of bottomless beer. As the flame subsides and the monkey man leaves the stage a game of beerpong centres the room in clear cups and cheers. No one knows any rules but no one cares and my host tells us this is a perfect representation of society in Beirut. The staff no longer ask for empties and instead pour pitchers and pass along the bar. We meet W, a writer drinking who gets greeted across the street with a bottle of tequila and fresh oranges. It sours from the wrong side of the dead zone that’s been tracked all night by classic rock. I nudge his ribs and he smiles and we pour the stuff from a great height to our throats because we’ll never drink again.

Short-Course Worlds, Istanbul

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000

This piece originally appeared online at Guardian News and Media's Sport Blog on December 12, the opening day of the World Championships in Istanbul. It is reprinted here without permission and with minor changes, or rather, reversions to original copy in light of British editors, even at the most reputable of news outlets, being largely unlettered in sports besides football, cricket, and rugby.

Elite swimmers from all continents returned to competitive waters for the first time since the Summer Games today as the Short-Course World Championships got underway in Istanbul.

With so much emphasis placed upon the Olympic cycle, athletes may have been forgiven for taking a sabbatical, but the short-course contest offers a chance for swimmers to exchange 50-metres for 25 and race in the faster format.

While the distances remain the same, disciplines alter. Because competitors are allowed 15m underwater coming off each wall, the mindset of racing in a short-course pool differs so completely as to render the event almost a different sport altogether.

The dolphin-kick technique popularised by Michael Phelps means swimmers can achieve greater speeds by staying beneath the surface for as long as possible, so much so that rules were introduced in 1988 to ensure swimmers travel no further than 15m underwater on the dive and turns. Expect to see records broken throughout the week as competitors exploit the rules to their own advantage.

International eyes will turn toward Ryan Lochte to see if he can reproduce the success that garnered 13 gold medals in his last three outings in this competition. In so doing, he adopts the mantle of the United States' most decorated swimmer in the wake of Phelps, who retired after the 2012 Olympics. Unsurprisingly, Lochte is similarly renowned for his underwater kicking abilities, a trait that secured him countless titles on the American collegiate circuit, and will undoubtedly propel him into contention for each of his six individual events.

Competitors well-versed in the technicalities of short-course racing understand the value of their opposition. So often in the sport, where the margin between first and second place is rarely more than a fraction, swimmers race the clock. Not so in the 25m pool. Elite swimmers will talk of using the person in the lane next to them, hugging the lane-rope and surfing the rough water for his or her own gain.

The more experienced racers will conserve energy in the heats and semi-finals, feign illness or injury, get carried through on a literal wave of other competitors' speed, and secure an outside lane for the final, all with the view of passing undetected. Almost a thousand athletes from 162 participating nations are hoping to make the top eight of their respective specialty where the cat-and-mouse tactics of the prelims count for little.

Team USA look to dominate in the pool and yet again top the medal table. Swimming in 25-yard pools is commonplace in the US, where imperial measures still make up an uncomfortable marriage with the metric system, and competing in Olympic-size pools presents a break from the norm for Americans.

Hannah Miley and Olympic silver-medalist Michael Jamieson are among the 19-strong team representing Great Britain over the next five days, both of whom have lately enjoyed success in the shorter format. The Glaswegian came away victorious from the recent University and College Sport Championships in Sheffield with golds in all three of the breaststroke events. Elsewhere, Miley posted a new European record to win the 400m Individual Medley at the European Short Course Championships in Chartres last month.

'Split-second decisions'

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 19:45:00 +0000

This story first appeared in the Bucks Free Press, 26th October 2012, and is reproduced here without permission.

Five months ago I was a swimmer seeking to represent Team GB in London. But falling short by just four tenths of a second at the trials in June washed away my dreams of Olympic glory.

Although athletes learn to cope with disappointment, failure to take home a medal from the Olympic trials in June proved a pivotal moment in my life and forced me to confront a reality very different to the one I envisaged for so long.

How gratifying it would have been to fulfil the promises I made to so many: my coaches, my family, and those who sponsored me during my final months of preparation.

But the clock never lies.

In an instant, less than half a second, my future as an Olympic swimmer was no more. I had made no plans beyond the summer Games. Where I could enjoy funding and the recognition of achieving Olympic success, now I’m struggling to make ends meet and I’m forced to turn toward an alternative occupation.

After breaking junior records at the age of fifteen I competed internationally, and the past five years were totally committed to racing in the pool at the 2012 Games. I shirked university in Britain to attend college in the United States and train alongside some of the best swimmers and coaches in the world. For four years I lived as a professional athlete in Arizona away from friends and family, studying my sport rather than my books.

But last year I returned home to finalize my preparation for the biggest event of my life.

The Aquatics Centre in Stratford hosted the trials over six days, with the final of my main event, the 50m Freestyle, held on the last day.

As I sat in the call-room waiting for the final I looked around at the opposition: faces I recognized from a career in the sport, swimmers I raced against as a teenager. I sat alone, utterly self-absorbed.

We waited while Rebecca Addlington was interviewed. The pressure was palpable. I was first to walk to the starting blocks. Each name was met with a wall of noise as we were announced to the crowd.

And then we were away. My fingers buckled as I hit the wall in a time of 22.91secs, faster than I had ever swum before, placing me fourth overall. But it wasn’t enough.

The experience was bittersweet: clocking a personal-best time but missing my dream by a fraction.

Since then I have tried to reconcile that sense of failure with my athletic career. Were it not for my disappointment, I suspect I would still be training and competing today. Instead, I’m confronted with serious questions about my future.

Without swimming, for so long an anchor in my life, I’m faced with new uncertainties like paying for rent, groceries, or petrol.

I’m passionate about sport, and although I’ve hung up my Speedos, at least for now, I’ve resolved to remain in swimming through coaching.

Similarly, I’m trying to break into sports reporting by working for local newspapers and channel my previously devoted interest, with a view perhaps to returning to the States for a post-graduate degree in journalism.

As ever, though, I’ll be up for the challenge.

great tree of night

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 16:39:00 +0000

The problem is, even if there is a heaven, how can there be one we can stand forever? On Earth, when you look up from being bored, things have changed, you're that much closer to the grave, and that's exciting. Imagine climbing up and up into that great tree of night sky. Dizzying. Terrible. Rabbit didn't even like to get too high into these little Maples around town, though with the other kids as witnesses he pushed himself up, gripping tighter and tighter as the branches got smaller. From a certain angle the most terrifying thing in the world is your own life, the fact that it's yours and nobody else's. A loop is rising in his chest as in a rope when you keep twisting.

- John Updike, Rabbit is Rich.

Lana Del Rey's Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:07:00 +0000

The other, his eyes merry at the thought of talking to an internationally famous writer, made a sound, 'R-r-r-r-rum, rrroom,' which Bech recognized as an allusion to the famous rubber-faced motorcyclists of Travel Light, with it's backseat rapes and desolate roadside cafes - Bech's homage, as a young West Side nobody, to the imaginary territory beyond the Hudson.

~ John Updike, Bech in Czech.

Roadside cafes, gas stations, camp-fires, fifths of scotch, tattooed men on leather seats on bikes on open road; the wilderness is America. Not only on the page, but on newsstands, the screen, in music and art, and without getting too wet, in the minds of every American.

With entrepreneurial guile in excess Lana Del Rey crawls over the American wilderness in her latest video, Ride, bluffing through poetry and song, cold-reading a cultural narrative full of lyrical and visual cliché.

Her narrative begins, “I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer,” a touching if paradoxical metaphor for prostitution, confirmed by the accompanying images, a past-time that few would pursue willingly let alone promote.

What's more, unfolding over nine long minutes, Del Rey makes clear her commitments in the war against cliché, and she’s fighting for the wrong side. “It takes getting everything you ever wanted,” she says, “and then losing it to know what true freedom is.” From Kerouac to Krakauer, Faulkner to McCarthy, the symbolism of the American outback is a land well-trod, and retracing the footprints of freedom is like pressing rewind and record at the same time.

Del Rey’s narrative voice artfully sidesteps nothing. She is a mystery, a paradox, walking with purpose atop fashion and feeling, regurgitating little poems that college freshman write on dorm-room walls: “Live fast, die young, be wild, and have fun.” Somehow capable of such profound inanity, she wraps herself in the Stars and Stripes, bites her lip, her nail, and sings like Stevie Nicks mixed with Marilyn Monroe.

Too talented to fail, too beautiful for the men she uses, too smart to convince, the fictional Del Rey dances with Alexander Supertramp, Mac McMurphy, and Holden Caulfield. She is anomalous, “born to be the other women, who belonged to no one” and, by implication, everyone.

That territory beyond the Hudson is the canvas upon which she paints a new image of feminism, squeezing the bikers with tattoos and heft tighter than they can squeeze back, rebuilding a proud and deliberate homage to female self-image from use and degradation, sand and saguaros.

Lana Del Rey is a phenomenon, and I forgive her contradictions. Her prose-poetic journey in Ride makes her intentions clear: to muddy the divide between art and artist. Securing one final paradox, she succeeds. "We had nothing to lose," she coos, "nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art."

Tie Game

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 22:46:00 +0000

Running for Senate in New York City, Matt Damon's character in George Nolfi's The Adjustment Bureau breaks away from lectern tradition and the better judgment of his advisers when he ad libs a concession speech to his supporters. "This tie was selected for me by a group of specialists," he says, "who chose it over fifty six other ties we tested. In fact, our data suggests that I have to stick to either a tie that is red or a tie that is blue."

Joe Biden wore blue. Paul Ryan wore red with blue American stripes. Their debate last night was the culmination of meticulous planning and choreography on both sides. Too much. Since Kennedy's polished chops sliced through a haggard Nixon in 1960 there's been little to explore in the fallout.

Without a motion besides 'who has the better policies', or 'who is more apt to govern', presidential and vice-presidential debates have little direction, the only purpose serving broadcasters, pollsters, and writers analysing tie colours.

At one stage, woefully sidestepping an opportunity to cement the party line on the value of free expression, Ryan decided instead to mount a charge for the current administrations "weak" reaction to the killings in Benghazi last month. I wrote at the time about the more disappointing aspects of Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama's responses, but the issue is not party-political, it is constitutional.

Today Mitt Romney bypassed a similar opportunity to rally support for the First Amendment and position his party behind the American constitution. The temptation to peer over the wire and take a snipe at his opposition proved too strong.

Reacting to Joe Biden's assurances that the defense department were not neglectful of their consular staff in Libya, Romney said: "The vice-president directly contradicted the sworn testimony of state department officials. He's doubling down on denial." His reasoning is fallacious. Contradiction does not necessitate denial. Again, the issue is not Biden, nor witness testimony, but rather whether or not the United States should have foreseen an attack of that kind, or indeed whether the official response was consummate or strong enough.

If Romney and Ryan refrain from pot-shots, and instead address the issues behind the political ticket, they could start wearing whatever colour ties they please.

Radiohead Review

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 09:21:00 +0000

I was hoping to write a review of Radiohead's performance at the O2 Arena on Monday but I get a terrible headache when writing about something I love. Constantly rephrasing, recrossing and treading on my own fingers, it's the same with literature; there are some books it's best to leave well alone. Besides, Alexis Petridis wrote a brilliant account for the Guardian, better than I could, so go there.

Infibulation

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:50:00 +0000

We live in a country where the law prohibiting genital mutilation has never been enforced; where the authorities go wild when a 15-year-old white girl runs off to France with her teacher but stay silent when Asian girls are yanked out of school and forced into marriage.

Nick Cohen writing for the Observer, 9.10.2012.

Sledgehammer Censorship

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:21:00 +0000

Germany's censorship laws outdate the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the German government's continued attachment to bans on hate-speech, membership of neo-Nazi organizations, and Holocaust denial make a mockery of the fight for free speech.

While I recently used this blog as a platform to rave about the outrage of Muslim death-squads lining the streets, burning banners and terrorizing American consular workers for no reason besides a piddling video on YouTube, eyes were directed away from legislation that exists all across the enlightened world.

German mandates on censorship extend into constitutional decree. Baader-Meinhof or Nazi propaganda are both constitutionally outlawed, including any literature thereof, and likewise written or printed materials deemed to publicly express Volksverhetzung (Holocaust denial) are forbidden. Those refusing to tow the line face jail time.

Neo-Nazi German rock-band, Landser are forced to smuggle bootleg CDs from US printing houses and redirect traffic to their website through Canadian proxy servers.

Everywhere the laws are easily circumvented. Images akin to the swastika are banned, though far-right groups parade Nazi symbols all the same. The Reichskriegsflagge, images of sun crosses, and black crosses predate the swastika and are therefore legal.

Through their actions, Muslim's outraged by the depiction of the prophet Muhammad in the 'Innocence of Muslims' trailer, or by Charlie Hebdo's cartoon illustrated how not to advertise censorship. They gathered together under an umbrella of self-righteous umbrage and hoisted a giant sledgehammer above their heads.

Too bad they collapsed under its weight. We don't impose blanket bans on films when the content deserves certification. In the United States, and, for the main, in Britain we have a choice whether or not to watch a film, or whether to let our children watch a film, or indeed any other media for that matter, and we must fight for that choice.

When Germans force musicians out of their own country, forcibly disband political parties, and prosecute individuals for distributing leaflets, they are denying themselves that freedom.

As Piers Morgan pressed Mahmoud Ahmedinejad on the topic of Holocaust denial for CNN, the grizzly Iranian theocrat said:

I pass no judgment about historic events. I say researchers and scholars must be free to conduct research and analysis about any historical events, and have contrary opinion, pro and con. Why should a researcher be put in jail, one question? Question number two. Let's assume your parameter is right, your question is right. Your assumption is that this event took place. Where did it take place? Who were the individuals responsible for this event? [...] The third question I have. If a historic event, if a historical event has indeed taken place, why so much sensitivity surrounding it by politicians?

His answers surrounding the Holocaust are shady and surreptitious to say the least, but on the point of free inquiry he cannot be ignored. Sensitivity is the wrong word; feelings of discomfort may account for vast ill-feeling toward neo-Nazi organizations in modern Germany, but they do not justify censorship.

In July last year Germany's federal intelligence bureau noted that while politically motivated crime has decreased over recent years, membership of neo-Nazi groups has increased, and so too has the potential for violence. Am I alone in arguing that these statistics correlate to the aging swamp of censorship from which they arise?

Germany's constitution wields a sledgehammer against free speech and it's high-time it were disarmed.

Slave and Queen

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:42:00 +0000

Strange that Dean and Stan also failed to approach her; her unimpeachable dignity was the thing that made her poor in a wild old whorehouse, and think of that. At one point I saw Dean leaning like a statue toward her, ready to fly, and befuddlement cross his face as she glanced coolly and imperiously his way and he stopped rubbing his belly and gaped and finally bowed his head. For she was the queen.

~ Jack Kerouac, On The Road.

Roberto Bolaño's Secret of Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 12:33:00 +0000

Robert Bolaño writes as though describing a parallel world. If Stendhal walked the streets with a mirror on his back, Bolaño dropped the mirror from an aeroplane over a faraway place that only he could understand.

Anyone who has ever turned to writing will know the feeling of invalidity that comes from penning even a single sentence of fiction. Bolaño’s best short stories and greatest novels were composed with such utter simplicity they achieve nothing and everything.

Ignacio Echevarría, in his introduction to the latest collection of translations, The Secret of Evil, calls this phenomenon Bolaño’s “poetics of inconclusiveness”.

The second story in this collection is brief and describes a journalist meeting an anonymous source in the streets of Paris in the middle of the night. Bolaño addresses the reader directly, like he would a future self.

This story is very simple, although it would have been very complicated. Also, it’s incomplete, because stories like this don’t have an ending.

It opens thus, with structural awareness, apparently confronting the reality of his impending death. What the reader should take away is unclear, inconclusive. The remainder of the story offers little explanation.

The Parisian journalist was “a watcher with no one to watch him in turn” and had something “sad about his smile”. Paradox and cyclicality, so often traits of Bolaño’s stories, cavort with implosion and oxymoron whether through character or metaphor.

The Old Man of the Mountain reflects on the author’s lifelong friendship with Ulises Lima. Expressed vicariously through Bolaño’s alter-ego, Arturo Belano, the reader learns of “two young men sentenced to life”, somehow cursed to exist. In response they “both try in vain to find happiness or get themselves killed”; life propels them onward, yet their relationship has the circularity of a Beckett play.

In Scholars of Sodom Bolaño walks the tiles of Buenos Aires in the shoes of V.S. Naipul, who finds the practice of anal sex exasperating. In Argentina sodomy has become a byword for ownership.

If you haven’t fucked your lover or your girlfriend up the ass, you haven’t really taken possession of her.

Cultural insecurities are manifest in the act of violation thinly veiled by this superficial display of machismo. The author beats the drum of paradox to end the story by describing a lover as “queen and slave” to perfectly diagnose the problem in three words.

As the volume draws into its second half the stories are less complete. Besides contradiction and circularity, Bolaño introduces themes typical to his canon: sex, violence, and identity.

Perhaps his most autobiographical story, I Can’t Read portrays the author’s children and their dreams. His son, Lautoro is a dreamer who has developed a method of approaching automatic doors undetected. Bolaño, perpetually battling the loss of youthful idealism, tries in vain to mimic the boy by crawling up to doors only to be recognized, identified, exposed.

Sevilla Kills Me, the penultimate story of the collection continues Bolaño’s exploration of literature as an entity in itself. He once wrote that “poetry is braver than anyone”, and here he claims that “writing that plumbs the depths with open eyes doesn’t sell” while lamenting the readiness of young writers to sell and sell themselves.

No other has ever shown such determined commitment to the power of words. From his works we may conclude almost nothing, only that one’s idealism must never falter, nor the war for literature be ever lost.

Can It

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 16:41:00 +0000

In an unusual display of humour, the Millwall supporters sang "We can see you holding hands" to the presumably unimpressed Brighton faithful during Saturday's league fixture at the Den. One assumes they weren't directing their chants at the Lib Dem conference-goers, who seem wildly various in their non-support for Nick Clegg and the party lines.

BBC Radio 5 Live provided unstimulating coverage all day today, culminating in the Deputy Prime Minister's keynote address. One can always gauge the mood of a party not by how much or how often it applauds its leader, but rather by how abruptly the applause starts and stops. In the same way that the Football League show regularly overdubs furious cheering whenever a lower-league side scores to make it seem as though the game was well attended, Clegg was interrupted by what sounded like canned applause.

Clegg spoke as if narrating a children's book. Not only does he sounds more like David Cameron with every passing day, but he also seems to have adopted that management-speak PR guff that proves so popular with no one. And clapping in unison is not fooling anyone. The likelihood that this country faces the prospect of another coalition government, in one form or another, after the next general election is rather disheartening.

Taxi Driver

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Iddiols) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 23:08:00 +0000

Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic, Taxi Driver explores the depths of delusion and degradation to which a man will descend before committing himself to the abyss. The script spreads thick a sub-story of political nuance, juxtaposed against the workingman's realities of sorrow and forgotten ambition.

During a catalytic scene, friend and fellow cabbie, Wizard, played by Peter Boyle, describes for Robert DeNiro's character how "a man takes a job, you know, and that job [...] becomes what he is".

The closing scenes, as they draw towards the movie's bloody conclusion, slice through Wizard's straightforward notion of identity. In the same way a politician goes home to a wife and family, a young girl pimped for sex isn't altogether a prostitute, and a taxi driver doesn't sit all day in a yellow box on wheels. Yet somehow we're left with this image. A man becomes his job.

I've struggled with this scene for a long time. How does it drive Travis under, into the void, into violence and psychological furor? Do we watch as he shoots his way through the walls of Wizard's theory? I can't help but feel that, for all his intent, Travis fires into the air. Maybe literature has the answer; a writer, after all, is a writer.