Kinks | Karavansara

… and no, I’m not gonna talk about the old single by The Kinks.

Fact is, I’ve just witnessed one of the most amazing tricks I ever saw.
A friend of mine – who’s very wise in the ways of the web – basically summarized the main points in a blog post, without reading the post itself.
He already knew in detail what the post was all about, how it was written – he even predicted a few phrases exactly.
Pure intellectual sleight of hand.
It’s all about structure, he explained.

Which is something that strikes me at various levels – because I’m very fond of structure when writing, because I am a blogger, and because I’m very fond of sleight of hand and stage magic.
And to me, someone that reads a blog post without actually reading it, knowing the full contents just by the title, is performing a mentalist trick worth of a fine stage magician. Continue reading →

Ok, something a little different – thanks to the ubiquitous Facebook, I found out that yesterday was Ray Davies‘ 70th birthday.

Now this feels weird because I discovered Ray Davies and started listening to the Kinks very late, when I was nineteen.
My friends listened to Pink Floyd – I listened to the Kinks.
And now I’m forty-seven.
And therefore Ray Davies’ words have traveled with me for, what, twenty-eight years?
My goodness, they want by so fast.

I think great writers are those that can actually write down what we feel, and think, and they do it in a better, more economic and focused way we ever could.
In this sense, Ray Davies has been to me one of the greatest writers I ever knew.

And now I should provide some sample of this writing excellence, and I can’t really choose.
Too many songs, each one closely connected with a single moment of the last 28 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-D9xcZgKX4

One of the many little things that make me an anglophile, I guess.
But it’s more complicated than that.
So, why not just place here the song that I currently find closer to me?

Enjoy!