A A
RSS

Working the city

Sat, Aug 15, 2009

Mexico, Mexico City, Panama

Everything clicking into place now. Patterns are forming… lists, pages, chapters. My mind is settling into the task, the routine. Mexico City – with all its wonderful and monstrous machinations – is taking over. This is the 24-hour aspect to the job. The constant working of ideas. Endless thinking, analysing, planning. I wake up and start poring over maps. I go to bed and dream about it.

Still, there is this sense of utter disconnection. How to bond with a city like this? How to be friends with the monster? I could walk for a day in any direction and still not reach its limits. I am less than a speck of dust in an unrelenting urban universe. There are no forests or valleys here, merely rolling concrete, mile after mile after mile. And the task, like the city, is utterly relentless. Some 70 hotels and 80 restaurants to check. A plethora of tour agencies, shops, bus departures, flights and directory listings. Who knows what else. A minor mountain of information. Two weeks into the project and I feel like I’ve barely dented it.

Mexico City: Grim humanity, as far as the eye can see...

Mexico City: Grim humanity, as far as the eye can see...

Bookmark this post:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • StumbleUpon
  • Tumblr

Related Posts

  1. Making the rounds: Zona Rosa and Insurgentes Sur
  2. Death in the City
  3. Welcome to Mexico City
  4. Checking hotels in the Centro Historico
  5. Naked Protests in Mexico City

Tags: ,

Leave a Reply

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree

«
»

Located in Nicaragua’s most remote and disconnected province – the North Atlantic Autonomous Region – the diminutive settlement of Waspam is the centre of the Miskito universe. This short video clip, featuring music from Miskito musician Li Lamni, was shot on take-off from town’s modest airstrip.

Mr Edgar ‘Rasta’ Coulsen is a native of the Caribbean town of San of Juan del Norte – an end of the world settlement perched at the mouth of the Rio San Juan. In this short video interview, Interamericana talked to him about the changes that have taken place in the region since his childhood.

One day, me and my compadres took a trip up the Río Istiam – a tranquil waterway that meanders inland at the isthmus between Ometepe’s two volcanoes, Concepción and Maderas. The river is home to abundant bird life, caimans, turtles and herds of indolent livestock. Many thanks to Jennifer Kennedy and the three Matts – Barwick, Hicks and Ashford, who appear in this video clip.

Via Via is something of a León institution, attracting Nicas and foreigners alike with its buzzing multi-cultural atmosphere, dirt-cheap bottles of rum and rousing Friday night music sets. Amalgama, featured in this video, are an institution in themselves, playing everything from rock ballads to crowd-pleasing revolutionary classics. In this clip they are accompanied by itinerant musician Richard Crandell and his Zimbabwean imbira.

As a poor chele, or white boy, rhythm was never going to come naturally to me. Nonetheless, my militant salsa instructor, Angel, patiently tried to teach me to dance. And when he could be patient no longer, he simply ordered me to the nearest disco…

Granada’s international poetry festival kicked off yesterday, 14th February 2010, with a belting set from Katia Cardenal. Performing at the Plaza Independencia, Katia sang a mixture of rousing folk songs and revolutionary ballads, including a superb homage to the Miskito people of the Atlantic coast (2nd song featured, actually in the Miskito language). Turn up the volume, pour yourself a rum, kick back and enjoy…

Latest Videos

Asides