Set yourself the goal of getting published in an inflight publication, one of the publications provided by airlines in the seat pockets in front of each passenger .

Many writers dream of getting featured in an in-flight magazine . Just imagine your feature article being read by travelers as they fly all over the globe . Many of those magazines will eventually find new homes – from coffee tables to banks to doctors’ waiting rooms – after passengers carry them away after their flights.

Why Write for In-flight Magazines?

There are several reasons why getting published in an in-flight magazine is a suitable objective for your writing career.

Firstly, there’s the exposure . Secondly, you will have an excellent publishing credit to add to your writing portfolio. Winning other high-paying assignments will become just that little bit easier. Finally , you will be paid well. Most inflight magazines pay very well, with many paying approximately a dollar per word.

Diverse Passengers, Diverse Topics

Don’t limit your article ideas to traditional travel writing. Although a lot of airline passengers are on vacation others travel for business or other reasons. Also, since passengers come from different walks of life in-flight magazines publish feature articles and departments on quite a wide range of topics . Their published material includes articles on travel and adventure, dining and entertainment, business, nature and the environment, and many other subjects .

Always rememberwhen pitching ideas to an inflight publication that the airline’s route destinations are critical. Every article needs to have a connection to the destinations and routes of the airline.

Did I Mention Competition?

There must be a catch, right ? Well, getting published in an in-flight magazine is not going to be a without serious competition . You won’t be the only freelance writer pitching your ideas to these busy editors . To suggest it will be highly competitive is probably an understatement.

Editors of in-flight publications demand a high quality of freelance work , and they usually prefer to work with freelance writers who have proven experience and professionalism.

In-flight Magazines Are Not For Beginners

How about if you have just starting out as a freelance writer ? Start somewhere else . Try targeting some local publications. After you have several pieces published start working your way up to regional magazines. As your portfolio grows you will eventually be ready to target inflight magazines and other leading publications.

Check out this huge list of In-flight magazines

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The finance required to fund an election attempt in the 21st century is now of a size that can only be raised in the corporate sector. (It also raises the issue of whether these financial implications inhibit the true application of the democratic process for anyone seeking office, because of onerous financial considerations.)

As far as the leadership of any political party is concerned, raising financial support produces the problem of divided loyalties between sponsors and electors. A solution seems to have been found in the introduction of the “Party Line”, which effectively fudges the issues of local democracy by confining activity to the Party Agenda.

Political parties can demonstrate control over their members through adherence to the Party Line. This in turn provides corporate sponsors with the confidence to invest and support an organisation that can manage its direction and any changes to that direction. In so doing it can deliver on policies which are capable of supporting corporate views and desires.

For business to invest in anything, be it new equipment, staff or sponsorship, it needs to be sure that there is an acceptable level of return on that investment, whatever that might be. That is the nature of business and we should have no problem with that discipline.

However the actual democratic process seems to be under increasing threat from the powerful influences the corporate sector can now wield, further exacerbated by the acceleration of the doctrines of Capitalism across the globe.

The challenge lies in the shift in people power that this process seems to be implementing. We now have a reduction in voters at the ballot boxes because of apathy we are told, but a greater assertion of control over the corporate sector through consumerism.

Companies react to the will of there customers and this in turn causes movement by political reaction to meet corporate need. Somehow the corporate sector has managed to inject itself between the politician and the voter, enabling it to increasingly introduce corporate values and the dictates of profit into our everyday life.

Whilst consumerism operates in a similar fashion to democracy, our ability to influence and change could become restricted to our needs as consumers, rather than our needs as members of society. This new democracy is unhealthy because of the serious imbalance it creates within society, at a time when we need to be able to function as flexibly as possible in coming to terms and dealing with climate change.

Copyright 2008 – John Coombes

Born in 1946 in South London and with a Secondary education, for 35 years John Coombes had a successful career in the City where he built several companies and a £100 million group. In the late 80′s he became disillusioned with “just making money” and in his early 40′s suffered several traumas including ME, Breakdown and Bankruptcy. In the space of 18 months Coombes went from a City boardroom to the paint shop in a small art metal works factory. At the time the Stock market and housing market also collapsed and he lost everything, including his family.

Over the last 20 years he has embarked upon a sabbatical which has resulted in him now coming to view life and its workings from a new, totally different and more meaningful perspective. In his manuscript “What if WE are God”, of which this article is an extract, there are amusing as well as very poignant stories that provide the backdrop to a deeply penetrating observation on the human condition, and how we seem to continually hold ourselves back from realizing our true potential as a species in this thing called life.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Coombes

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Having recently released “Power to the People and the Beats: Public Enemy’s Greatest Hits”, to document their immense and far-reaching legacy to the development of hip hop music, how did Public Enemy catalyse the transition of rap music from minority interest to establishment juggernaut?

Public Enemy have released a ‘Best of’ compilation of their music after near on twenty years of beats and rhymes, to consolidate a rich and pertinent legacy to the development of hip hop that helped to kick-start the whole Gangsta Rap sound and, indirectly, the co-option of hip hop by the music industry. In 1987, when Public Enemy’s impact was first heard with a resounding boom-bip, Rap music was a minority interest, either derided or patronised. Their sonic and verbal militancy caused a major shit-storm in the media, engendering the kind of outrage and moral panic that tends to surface on slow news days, and enabled hip hop music to carry the mantle of bête noire that it used so successfully to market itself beyond the urban streets to the callow youth of suburbia.

The concerns of hip hop music have now shifted from politicisation to accumulation; from rebel to label. Chuck D memorably coined rap music as the “Black C-N-N” whereas now it has become the “ghetto QVC” – from radical to superficial in twenty short years, leaving the once mighty PE irrelevant in its wake.

Hip hop music began in New York in the mid-to-late seventies when disco was still at its height and party music was the order of the day. (MC’s rapped over R&B music backdrops to create a feel-good vibe amongst the revellers, the music had many parallels with reggae toasting and indeed, may have been inspired by it). It was an underground, D.I.Y. music that was a world away from the mainstream.

Rappers Delight by the Sugarhill Gang changed everything. Released in 1979, probably as a novelty single, it became a surprise hit and is still a favourite of a lot of people (mostly blokes) who are obsessed with being able to recite it word-for-word throughout its fifteen minute running length. It was fun, funny but, most of all, it was funky and served notice to the hip hop music community that this kind of record could sell. The many early conquistadors of rap and hip hop music came, saw and conquered the shit out of the nascent form, introducing a number of innovations; Grandmaster Flash, Mantronix, Kurtis Blow, Afrika Baambaata, Kool Herc, Sugarhill Records, Whodini, Keith LeBlanc, Stetsasonic, Marley Marl, Eric B & Rakim, LL Cool J, Ice T and Run DMC all pushed hip hop forward in terms of lyrical form, cutting, scratching and sampling at a time when soul music was becoming increasingly mediocre.

The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was another landmark, pushing the lyrical content further than any rap record had done so far. Released in 1982, and sounding like an electro update of Stevie Wonder’s Living for the City, it was a stone cold classic relaying, in forensic detail, the lives of society’s bottom-feeders, tingeing its stories with anger and despair. The delivery of the lyrics was by-and-large less bombastic than other rap records (excepting Melle Mel who could sound dramatic reading out a shopping list) with the rappers preferring to be downbeat, cementing its documentary realism with dense passages of pithy prose (“my son said, daddy I don’t wanna go to school ‘cos the teacher’s a jerk, he must think I’m a fool, and all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d be cheaper if I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper”) and still keeping the rhyming right on point. The Message lived up to its title, providing dancefloor beats for the head as well as the feet. hip hop had now begun to carry the torch of the socially conscious agenda of 70′s soul that had been blanded out by disco and bedroom R&B.

So, rap music was considered a novelty that occasionally spiced up the charts but was still expected to die out after having been assimilated. Constantly criticised for its apparent lack of musicality, hip hop continued to break through with minor hits until Run DMC officially staked rap’s ground in the mainstream with the extremely radio-friendly Walk this Way. It’s a record that I can barely stand to hear nowadays, because of its middle-of-the-road commercialism and the fact that it was played to death, but it created the first rap superstars (if you didn’t know who Run DMC were, you needed to check in to the nearest coma ward) and ensured that hip hop would continue to have a voice. That voice would continue to speak to the party hardy, but was also the voice of the street incorporating braggadocio, bedroom entreaties and stories from urban realities.

In 1987 rap found a revolutionary voice that laid the foundations for the golden age of hip hop. Rebel Without a Pause was a milestone, signalling its intent with its opening sample declaring “brothers and sisters, I don’t know what this world is coming to” before slamming into a squealing saxophone break over thunderous ‘funky drummer’ beats. This was the sound of hip hop entering its maturity, refusing to give a shit about mainstream sensibilities, the Public Enemy sound, as produced by the Bomb Squad, had an edge so sharp that it created an instant love-or-hate-it divide; blowing open Pandora’s Box for a whole generation of Black artists. The furious, dissonant mixture of beats and samples was dubbed “music’s worst nightmare” by Hank Shocklee of the Bomb Squad and as such, it played right into the hands of those who would decry Rap for its lack of musicality. Except their opinions didn’t matter anymore; the Bomb Squad’s confrontational sound created a rallying point for the future of Black music.

As shocking as the music was, it was matched by the emceeing of Chuck D; polemical, urgent and declamatory he took no prisoners as he cut a swathe through all the forces that would rail against him. He delivers the Public Enemy manifesto with his authoritative baritone, building thought upon thought and rhymes within rhymes, never looking back, never standing down.

Politically aligning himself with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, the radicalism was there for anyone who would care to listen. It was an untamed new voice full of righteous anger and intelligence that delivered its message in tones reminiscent of Black political leaders from Malcolm X to Stokely Carmichael to Farrakhan himself. Through Chuck D, hip hop had found a political voice that was not only lucid but embraced the radical politics of the, decidedly non-mainstream, Black Power movement.

The album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back followed up the promise of Rebel Without a Pause covering the politics of the Black experience thoughtfully and uncompromisingly with practically every tune a classic. This was their second album – their first, Yo! Bum Rush The Show, released only a year earlier seems almost primitive in comparison, with its beats less furious and bragging emceeing reminiscent of LL Cool J – and is now considered the greatest hip hop album ever. Flavor Flav played the fool to Chuck D’s straight man, delivering off-the-wall material that felt in perfect counterpoint to the harsher realities of Chuck D but was still weird nonetheless, often spouting complete, almost surrealist, nonsense with his own inimitable enunciation – although Flavor Flav is probably as responsible for inspiring as many emcees as Chuck D – oddball rappers abounded in the years after Nation of Millions all the way to Eminem today. – They released the almost perfect Fight the Power in 1989 as part of the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing – containing what is probably their most famous lyric soundbite – “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me” – before releasing the much anticipated Fear of a Black Planet. Flav came into his own on this album, delivering top-class tunes such as 911 is a Joke and Can’t Do Nuttin’ For Ya Man, while Chuck D pushed the manifesto message even further with tunes like Burn Hollywood Burn and Welcome to the Terrordome. The Bomb Squad, again, provided beats and samples that were pant-shittingly good.

Following up the work started by Public Enemy, a group emerged in 1988 called Niggaz Wit Attitude (or N.W.A. to give them their less provocative acronym) who displayed their anti-authoritarian rage with the release of their single Fuck Tha Police. This was as incendiary a statement of intent as has ever been delivered in music and N.W.A.’s notoriety was assured. Although they were less politically astute, their tales of urban resentment were still cloaked in Black Power rhetoric, warning of the consequences of creating a large Black underclass whilst revelling in the lurid violence and misogyny of their position. Gangsta rap was born and set out to hijack the mainstream through its explicit and shocking imagery both on wax and on the streets.

Hip hop’s greatest creative period followed, with several hip hop legends-in-the-making beginning their careers. The diversity of acts that came in the wake of Public Enemy was immense with a new act born practically every week. The roll-call of artists coming up out of this period (from 1987 to 1997) included Big Daddy Kane, Young MC, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, The Jungle Brothers, KRS-1, Gang Starr, Naughty By Nature, Cypress Hill, House of Pain, EPMD, Pete Rock, The Pharcyde, Black Moon, Mobb Deep, Jeru The Damaja, The Roots, Xzibit, Outkast and The Wu-Tang Clan. Many of these records were commercially successful and hip hop fashions were changing constantly. The various political agendas of these groups tended to revolve around the notion of Black Power and the disaffected underclass, whereas the more explicitly political groups took the liberal high-ground. The voice of rap was being dissipated amongst a multitude of talented individuals, each with their own take on society and their place therein.

However, the one dominant voice during this time was that of Gangsta Rap with its East Coast-West Coast beefs and explicit lyrics providing the better stories, and which sound-tracked the racial unrest in America that ignited 1992′s LA riots. Its leading exponents were Ice T, Ice Cube and Dr. Dre -the latter two embarking on solo careers, having once been part of N.W.A. – but while the Ices were embroiled in the business of authority baiting, Dr. Dre took his old George Clinton records to put together The Chronic, a hip hop masterpiece, on which the main guest rapper was Snoop Doggy Dogg. The Chronic sold extremely well and created a real anticipation for Snoop Doggy Dogg’s solo project which, when Doggystyle was released in 1993, went stratospheric. The future was here and it was wearing a bubble-perm. In the post Doggystyle years, hip hop gained wider acceptance and progressively wore the mantle of mainstream mediocrity (niggas, bitches, violence, sex and bling).

Public Enemy’s output continued (Apocalypse 91: the Enemy Strikes Black, Greatest Misses, Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age, Chuck D’s masterly solo album The Autobiography of Mistachuck, He Got Game, There’s A Poison Going On, and Revolverlution) but the Bomb Squad were no longer taking complete control over production duties and, while the deeper and bassier production was anticipating the West Coast sound, the edge was being lost as hip hop moved on at breakneck pace. Chuck and Flav were still magnificent but were becoming increasingly irrelevant as the acts that came after them commanded more of the attention. Having put rap at the forefront of innovation, Public Enemy found they were falling behind in terms of a public that was constantly searching for the next new thing; they also lacked the killer tune that might have put them back into the limelight. At the time when hip hop was joining the mainstream, Public Enemy quit their record company and began releasing records independently, thereby leaving them without the money and marketing that might have led to a successful reinvention – their brand of agitation and polemic was no longer useful to an industry that was becoming as apolitical and bland as soul had become in the eighties.

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Those events just showed us that words can be as hurtful as actions. From Aragones the Spanish coach calling T. Henry a ‘N…r’ on a training pitch, to R. Atkinson leaving a mike opened at half-time of a game and delivering the ‘N…’ word again…to Matterazzi saying whatever he said, probably in the heat of the moment and ZZ reacting probably in the heat of the moment, the way he did…

Football and its rulers are not under scrutiny. The racists and closet racists are not safe anymore. What was tolerated decades ago is no longer and the son of immigrants will not accept any tampering with their rights and pride. Having said that, I don’t like the press game, which is trying to stir a story not out of the two main men, who both seem to regret what they respectively did, but through relatives, friends, lip-readers, anti-racists campaigners, far right so-called ‘leaders’ etc…

Yes Italy plays dirty but so did Portugal and other nations and France wasn’t that clean either. This World Cup will be remembered as a ‘morally dirty’ World-Cup from the negative tactics, to the poor refereeing and now racism…

FIFA has not been able to restore its dwindling image and proactive attitude in all those areas, as it is done in US sport on a regular basis.

The football authorities have to seriously start clamping down on racist behaviors or I can guarantee you that this is not the last incident of such nature we have seen on a football pitch, parole!

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John McLaughlin, quite simply, is an eloquent. A guitarist whose musical vocabulary is both fluent and succinct; a musician who has proved he can work on equal terms with players from around the world and in any context. The language of music has rarely been expressed better.

He is also the guitar hero’s guitar hero; admired by Johnny Marr, Jeff Beck and Robert Fripp amongst many others – there are very few serious guitar players who cannot have been influenced by his virtuoso technique. John is currently recording a new album, with a group of invited musicians, which will incorporate ideas from Asian underground music that originated here in the U.K.

“Asian music and culture have played a pivotal role in my life, whether from a musical or philosophical/spiritual viewpoint. About 12-15 years ago, Jungle music appeared and coincided with a very strong retrospective movement in Jazz. I was never a fan of retrospective music, and I became intrigued by Jungle only to find out that it had its roots in Jazz-Rock, Reggae and Indian music. Drum ‘n Bass is a derivative of Jungle, but for my ears Jungle is more unpredictable and consequently more enjoyable.

“Asian Dub Foundation, Nitin Sawhney, and Talvin Singh have experimented with either Jungle or Drum ‘n Bass, and in addition have introduced a vast array of Indian percussion with it and Indian vocalists. I’ve even heard Shakti influences in some of their recordings.

“Some of the recordings they have done are very interesting from the conceptual point of view, and the sometimes very tasteful use of synthesizers.

“With these artists, there are some really interesting groups such as D Note and Lemon D, who have also made some excellent recordings.

“Now while the music might not be as ‘rich’ as jazz music, for me, some of them are more interesting musically.

“The other aspect of ‘Underground’ is the world we live in, insofar as it is now extremely industrialised. We live surrounded by the sound of industry, and my idea is to incorporate this ‘industrial music’ into new forms of music. That’s the tricky part. The other part is putting together some of the world’s finest musicians, from East and West, and placing them in a musical situation where their particular musical conventions might not work. In other words it makes them think in different ways, and then putting all of this together.”

Born in Yorkshire on January the 4th 1942, John McLaughlin grew up in a musical family but was essentially self-taught as a guitarist and took on various influences from blues, flamenco, jazz and classical music. His love of music informed his dedication and has led him to being one of the foremost talents in the world today.

“On my iPod I have a selection from:- Miles (early & late period), Coltrane (early & late period), Bill Evans, Charles Lloyd, Cannonball Adderly, Joshua Redman, Brad Meldhau, Sly and the Family Stone, D Note, Lemon D and other UK ‘underground’ groups, Bluth, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Vinnie Colaiuta, Massive Attack. The list is endless.”

He emerged publicly during the British blues revival of the Sixties, featuring in bands such as Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames and the Graham Bond Organisation, before cementing his reputation in avant-garde jazz with the similarly brilliant John Surman and Dave Holland. Drumming legend, Tony Williams picked John to play in his group Lifetime, with Jack Bruce and Larry Young, after hearing a tape of his playing and soon after Miles Davis came a’ calling. Miles was moving into his Jazz-Fusion period and was sweeping up the cream of young musical talent to join him; even though Miles risked alienating Tony Williams, a man he respected and admired, by asking John to join him on the recording of In A Silent Way, his move was vindicated by John’s beautiful, soulful playing on what has now become a landmark recording. John continued to perform with Williams and Davis but soon formed his own band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, playing jazz-rock fusion that was by turns muscular and contemplative. John’s career since then has found him in varied musical environments with a succession of dazzlingly accomplished partners from the screaming jazz-rock of his work with Carlos Santana to the exhilarating indo-jazz of Shakti to the exuberant flamenco work-out of his trio guitar work with Paco DeLucia and Al DiMeola. John gives the impression that, like Miles, he never wants to sit on his laurels.

“My first band was formed while I was still at school. After that I became a kind of permanent side-man until 1970. I had just played a gig with Miles and we were speaking together in the band room. All of a sudden he said ‘John, now’s the time to form your own band’. Since he was the most honest man I’d ever met, and my hero since the age of 15, I had to justify his faith in me, even though at that time I didn’t feel ready to be a leader. Since then I haven’t stopped. As far as ‘feeling comfortable’ is concerned, I love all great musicians and great music wherever they may come from so I’m delighted to play with Spanish, Indian, Western musicians, whatever. However, in a way I am against being ‘comfortable’ in music. I need to be provoked in music, and of course I also provoke in my turn. For me, it is somewhat dangerous to be too comfortable in music. Human nature quickly becomes indolent.”

The list of partners that John has chosen to collaborate with has been a catalogue of the world’s best and most innovative artists: Billy Cobham, Jerry Goodman, Zakir Hussain, L. Shankar, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Jan Gabarek, Trilok Gurtu, Kai Eckhardt, Joey DeFrancesco as well as the aforementioned Carlos Santana, Paco DeLucia and Al DiMeola. Also, John’s work as a “side-man” has enabled him to work with the last great Miles-influenced generation of jazz legends (or “Miles’ Boys”) including Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Dave Holland, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, and Airto Moreira.

“Music is a communicative art: firstly amongst the musicians performing, and secondly with the audience. One of my main criticisms of the ‘Retrospective’ Jazz I spoke about earlier, was the lack of interactionbetween musicians which is to me one of the principal criteria in good Jazz, or good music in general. Jazz and Indian music are essentially collaborative or interactive musics because improvisation plays such an important role – the most important role. What this means is spontaneity, but there’s no spontaneity without other humans to be spontaneous with.

“I will never be able to repay my debt to Miles for his ‘influence’. Since the age of 15 he has been influencing me in the most marvellous way musically. Being able to play and record with him was critical for me in being able to learn his way of playing and leading, recording, whatever. His way was simply masterly. ‘My Goals Beyond’ half of which contains several, quite exceptional, acoustic guitar pieces was an exception to what I’ve just written, but of course, there is always room for the ‘solo’ artist to produce great works. Since this was the only ‘solo’ recording I ever made in my life, this is indicative of my interest in solo work.”

The work for which John may be most fondly remembered, certainly on the Indian Sub-Continent, is his collaboration with Indian classical maestros who formed the heart of Shakti. John found himself in conversation with the powerhouse talents of L. Shankar, Zakir Hussain, and T.H. Vinayakram (and later, the sublime Hariprasad Chaurasia) and was completely at ease in this exalted company. The Shakti recordings sum up everything that is good about music; the breadth, subtlety and shades of emotion that are contained within are, quite simply, breathtaking. Shakti are the only Indo-jazz fusion group that has gained widespread acceptance in India and is a testament to the universality of the musical language that exists with great musicians and to John’s musical honesty that he immersed himself entirely within an idiom that other western musicians find difficult to engage with except on a superficial level.

“My relationship with Asia in general, and India in particular has been very long and until now, a wonderful adventure. My life, and as a consequence, my work also, would be dramatically different without these influences. Actually unthinkable!

I don’t agree entirely that western musicians engage superficially with Indian classical music. Yes it’s true that lots of the new ‘World Musicians’ use the sounds of Asia simply for effect and to add colour. This is unfortunate, but then again, there are lots of people who want to hear this kind of music, whether for ambient sound or otherwise. It’s not at all demanding. Joe Harriott was certainly an exception. To say clearly what drew me to Indian music or to Indian culture for that matter, is unknown to me.

“However, from a musical point of view, there is a deep connection between jazz and Indian music. They are the only two schools of developed rhythmic improvisation on the planet. The foundations are different since the western way is harmonic, but since the advent of modal music by the late 1950′s (Miles again), and the outstanding work done subsequently by John Coltrane in modal music, we have even more in common.

“My work with Shakti is not to learn how to play Indian music, (though I have studied it seriously for many years), my work with Shakti is simply the desire to play with these absolutely fantastic musicians. I am first and foremost a western musician, but I have benefited in countless ways from my association with these musicians.”

John’s relationship with Eastern philosophy began in the early 70′s, when he became a disciple of Sri Chinmoy Kumar Ghosh (Sri Chinmoy gave John the name Mahavishnu), and John’s spirituality can be felt quite clearly in his work. Music has always been able to express emotion with more fecundity and nuance than the spoken word will ever be able to bear or, to put it another way, a jazz musician’s job will always be to make a tune sound not like itself but himself. Like Miles, Coltrane, Rollins, Bill Evans and all the other greats too numerous to mention, John expresses a profound emotional resonance and beauty through the notes he plays that is served by his astounding technique rather than enslaved by it; he has never reduced himself to the empty verbosity that technical expertise can engender in less articulate musical linguists.

“We may think that music operates only on the emotional, spiritual and aesthetic levels, but politics and the intellect are there all the time. The reverse is also true insofar as the world’s politicians are concerned only with the economic and political ramifications of their actions. As a result, they forget, or are unconscious, of the corrosive influence they have generally on the hearts and minds of people by ignoring these essential aspects of human existence.”

John McLaughlin has been at the peak of his creative powers for over 30 years and a generation of guitarists are beholden to him in demonstrating the splendour that lies at the heart of the instrument and an indefatigable spirit that keeps him moving forward.

“There is so much left to do, and I really don’t know what keeps me going creatively. Passion???”

Jazz guitar legend John McLaughlin has recently released an educational box-set about improvisation called This is the Way I Do It.

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Three artists from east London, Alan Bond, May Cornet, and Dawn Shorten have been chosen as lead artists in the Artvaults project which takes place from July 9th to Oct 9th.

These artists have just returned from a showing in Rome and Artvaults is a development of that show. Dawn Shorten and Alan Bond will be sharing the Castle Vault with pieces about Space. Dawn Shorten, whose work is invariably wry, humorous and deadly serious will show ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, a spectacular reconstruction of a rocket launch. Alan Bond has constructed planetarium consisting of a geodesic dome which sits on a circle of doors scavenged from skips. Light penetrates through hundreds of holes drilled in the dome.

The PlanetariumThe Planetarium is a response to the form, dimensions and dark of Castle Vault. It develops ideas about space that have informed Alan Bond’s recent paintings in which eroded, scuffed and perforated painted surfaces parallel the cosmic history of collision, creation, destruction and remaking.

In The Planetarium he uses the cast-offs of the material world and makes reference to the world of advertising and consumerism. Exploiting the aesthetic attributes of these re-cycled materials he transcends their source, to create a mysterious allusion to the ethereal beauty of the night sky

Somewhere in this piece are cryptic references to medieval ideas about the underworld, heaven and earth.

May Cornet will show at 94 High Street. Her installation is reminiscent of a laboratory. The illuminated seed boxes suggest a process of cloning but May sees each of the seedlings having the potential to grow into something unique. Delicate, clinical and beguiling, the work suggests a scientific intervention into the natural processes of creation and germination.

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Roger Corman’s B-movie factory of the sixties and seventies produced a number of leading film talents like Francis Ford Coppola,Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson and James Cameron who have become big cheeses in Hollywood. They’ve each created large niches for themselves and become marquee names whose presence will guarantee a following. Even more regular cheeses like Joe Dante, Peter Bogdanovitch, and Monte Hellman have become known for their idiosyncratic visions and their adherence to signature styles. Graduates from the Corman studios tended to become iconoclasts, probably as a result of Corman’s high concept, high turnover approach forcing directors, writers and actors to think on the run and be brave with their decisions. Fellow Corman graduate, John Sayles has always been different – one of America’s best independent filmmakers, he has worked with genuine skill and clarity as a writer, director, editor, actor and script doctor for nearly 30 years. What separates John Sayles from his peers is his refusal to play out his work in terms of a simple hero/ villain morality, his refusal of the strictures of iconoclasm.

Silver Star, Sayles’ latest release due out in late July, is three films in one: a detective story reminiscent of Chinatown, a satirical look at the political and intellectual credentials of George W. Bush, and an indictment of the weakness of mainstream journalism in pursuing politicians and their paymasters. John takes us through his gallery of shady deal-makers, migrant Mexicans, leftist bloggers, cynics and the disaffected to delineate his vision of what really has gone wrong with the American political system, using an extraordinary cast headed by Danny Huston (who, after his performances in this and Ivansxtc, is as amiable as freshly buttered toast and should be in every American film made from here on in). The film feels like 70’s conspiracy thrillers in the vein of Winter Kills or The Parallax View with an overriding air of pessimism rather than paranoia – the bad guys can’t be caught, nothing really changes by the end of the film and the only victories are relatively minor human ones.

Silver Star flies in the face of prevailing Hollywood wisdom (leftist documentaries aside), being both political and not particularly heroic. Most, if not all, Hollywood films have a very simple structure: present the hero as someone in whom the hopes and ideals of the audience can be vested, introduce and play out a conflict that the hero must overcome, and finally see the conflict resolved. Simple. Except that life is rarely ever that simple, even if information is increasingly skewed to this model; witness the last Gulf War where first we see Bush and Blair as heroes fighting terrorism introducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction wielded by Sadam Hussain (the pre-eminent bad-guy of our times), secondly the exposition of this conflict through various media, and finally ‘shock and awe’ – roll credits. The good guys win, the bad guys are made to suffer, and we, the audience, are invited to cheer. The duplicity of this structure is that you either go with it or you refuse to suspend your disbelief, there is no active engagement with the scenario and no nuances to discuss or modify. John Sayles’ work displays exactly the opposite sensibility drawing on stories that are as much about the society in which they are based as they are about the people that inhabit them. His work tends to act as a social, political and emotional travelogue rather than a straight-line narrative. The films are all about nuance, all about the compromises that exist between individuals and the society in which they live; points of view being drawn richly, sympathetically and non-judgmentally (he mostly eschews didacticism in favour of letting the audience make up its own mind). Community and social mores emerge as lead characters in his stories and, since changing society is as difficult as twisting a melon, his stories tend to have downbeat or open-ended conclusions.

After graduating with a Psychology degree in 1972, Sayles worked in a series of blue collar jobs whilst penning short stories for magazines and working on novels. He eventually found work with Roger Corman as a writer, producing scripts for Piranha, The Lady in Red and Battle Beyond the Stars (all, quite frankly, derivative of other more successful films but fun with a nice line in characterisation), learning the rudiments of film-making along the way. Using the money saved from writing these films, he made his debut as a director with The Return of the Secaucus 7, a warm, dialogue-heavy comedy of character and connections whose story structure was followed three years later by Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill. The film was a critical success but not a commercial one and John went back to his day-job, writing scripts for films such as The Howling and Alligator (both of which are terrific monster movies, The Howling in particular being a witty and postmodernist update of the werewolf myth and just about the best werewolf film ever made) whilst raising money for his second film Lianna, dealing with issues of sexuality and its social and emotional fall-out. His first studio film, Baby It’s You, again showed Sayles’ ability to write wittily and incisively about personal and social issues with a story about a high school romance that falls apart in the post-school years because the social gulf between them is just too wide. Sayles never worked for a studio again because of arguments over the final cut of Baby It’s You.

His independence allowed him to make a string of American film classics exploring the emotional, social and political landscape of America working with a regular cast of actors including David Strathairn, Joe Morton, Chris Cooper and Gordon Clapp. The Brother from Another Planet looked at Harlem through the eyes of a mute alien on the run from bounty hunters, Matewan used a Western scenario to present a complex look at union politics, Eight Men Out presented the story of a sporting scandal in rich and illuminating detail, City of Hope used a multiple narrative to show the workings of a city bathed in compromise and on the edge of despair, Passion Fish showed the often fractious relationship between two very different women and earned a best original screenplay Oscar nomination, Lone Star distilled issues of community and race from an investigation into a 20 year old murder using multiple narrative and gained another Oscar nomination for best screenplay, Men With Guns was filmed entirely in Spanish and uncovered the harsh politics of an unnamed war-torn Latin American country, Limbo is a parable about three people trapped on an island tinged with ideas about the death of community, Sunshine State was another multiple narrative tale about a real estate development in Florida, and Casa de los Babys which was a study of six women who travel to South America in the hope of becoming adoptive mothers. In between films Sayles works as a script doctor, lending his intelligence to films like Apollo 13 and Mimic amongst others.

A john Sayles film has a ‘no bullshit’ guarantee, he strives as he scribes to find the emotional and intellectual truth in his material with dialogue that is pithy, witty and wise (and often all three at the same time). Like Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, his films are heart-felt and humanist, although he tends not to involve caricature as much as Mike Leigh and works on a broader canvas than Ken Loach. Like Robert Altman, Sayles’ technique of using multiple narratives offer the opportunity of looking at a subject in different and sometimes contradictory ways but unlike Altman, whose approach produces a compendium of short stories, Sayles uses it more as a novelist would, to deepen and enrich the story. John Sayles may well be the most politically aware director working in America who has pursued his writing career with a blue collar work ethic. He is a true individual, telling complex stories with precision and, in turn, should be seen as a real icon.

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Work from Peter Ainsworth, Henrietta Armstrong, Emilie Bell, Claire Brewster, Angela Corcoran, Nicola Cunningham, Charlie Danby, Joel Ely, Kirsty Harris, Richard Hubner, Cheryl Lane, Harry Logan, James Manning, Tracy Neal, Johanna Nilsson, James Ormiston, Cara O’Keefe, Scott O’Rourke, Emily Power, Fiona Przybylski, Sophie Ruderman, Lucie Russell, Ben Twiston-Davies, Liam Williams and Mike Young will be for sale, with a percentage of the proceeds donated to Hackney Empire.

Theme Park Charlie Danby’s woodland constructions tell the story of that which is lost, and that which is to be discovered. Remnants of roller-coasters, references to theme parks, ruins, castles, bridges and fortified walls that separate nothing and safeguard even less. Myth and fairytale bring them into a landscape of synthetic idyll, where objects are both visible and invisible. The works are built on platforms that float like islands, scale and reference shift constantly and mirrors present optical recess and provide strange vistas.

Joel Ely’s paintings have been selected for the BP Portrait Award for the second consecutive year. His practice involves researching and combining disparate elements of the histories, theories and fictions surrounding food, nature and figurative art. This is realised through a bastardised approach to painting, performance and installation.

Kirsty Harris’ breakfast scene installation becomes quite unsettling when a closer look at the egg’s shell reveals it was broken by a bullet. Waking up, every day, to the carefully edited images and news reports is the way we gauge how the rest of the world exists. Reliance on corporations to transmit the truth suddenly seems naïve.

Empirical Emily Power manipulates the surface of wallpaper to include words beneath its pattern. Intermarried with the codes and regulations of the pre-made paper, the text looks towards linguistics and habit forming systems of communication, adopting a freeze-frame of gridded language to suggest an arresting of circumstances.

PRIVATE VIEW: SUNDAY 10th JULY 2005 6-9pm
Performance – 8pm Nicola Cunningham
Photography and Disc Jockeys in the Marie Lloyd bar, 8pm till late

OPEN DAILY 11th–14TH JULY 2005 5-9pm
Hackney Empire’s Exhibition Space
291 Mare Street
Hackney, London E8 1EJ

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The two personalities of elaborate perfectionist and grounded working class man constantly challenge and compliment each other inside Salvetti. “My designs stand for durability, are factory orientated and practical,” he says. It is evident that romance factors strongly in his work. “I really like flowing fabrics, fluted skirts,” he demonstrates by gracefully tracing the red embroidered spider silhouettes on Anna, his girlfriend’s, thigh.”My designs are directly about me, and not so much about outside influences. I came here to be inspired by Europe.” Are you? “No.” And a chuckle. “My inspirations are from myself, my past, my identity.” “The process of path-choosing, in every aspect, is an evolving process. I’m a Buddhist, I follow the Buddha’s lead, but if one direction doesn’t work out then I take another route which may also be suggested by his teachings. He’s a guide, not a god.”

Salvetti’s designs are usually in tough denim edge functionality with sexy cuts, zips and panelling. His clean lined collections come complete with thoughtful touches. “Do you know why I put pockets on all my garments for girls? Because I heard once the reason women’s clothes often don’t have them is so they can be subservient to men.” Like a true Aussie bloke, nature is a source of wonder. Insects are a widely exploited theme, “the preying mantis stares up the twig at the beautiful butterfly, but maybe bats and skulls next,” explains Salvetti. The dark side rears its scaly back again and Salvetti’s duality flicks between vulnerability and creative excitement; white, soft, excessive fabric and bats and death. , but he has proved himself so he can explore and amalgamate anyway he wishes. A globe of ideas spin behind Salvetti’s tranquil sea green eyes. The two sides of his past work for prominence; gentle white concepts versus gothic teddy boy. His creations tread the line between delicate art and tough streetwear.Victor is unique, so are his garments.

For further information: indohot@hotmail.com
Caroline Healey
Photo Richard Hübner

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