Category: Me

Memories of Rural Iran

In the mid-1990s I spent the best of a year in the province of West Azerbaijan in northern Iran, based in the small farming town of Takab. The area, about a day’s drive from Tehran, is populated largely by Turkic and Kurdish people and Zoroastrianism is still practiced there. The day-to-day language is Turkish. Rural and fairly remote, life for the villagers goes on as it has for thousands of years.

Me (left) at 33.

I was running an exploration program at a project called Zarshuran (“the place of the gold washing”) working a 6 weeks in / 2 weeks out rotation with Budapest as my home base.

The routine in Iran was pretty simple. Get up. Eat breakfast: flatbread with honey, eggs and yoghurt. Spend the day at the project. Come back to the Hotel Ranji in Takab. Eat dinner: chicken or beef kebab, yoghurt and grilled tomato. Sleep. Repeat for 6 weeks.

One day in 1996 or ‘97 my daily routine was pleasantly interrupted when a Dutch traveller turned up at the hotel. In Iran for his friend’s wedding, he was on his way to visit an archeological site near Takab: Tahkt –e Soleyman (the name means Prison of Solomon and legend holds that King Solomon used to imprison monsters there.)

Zarshuran village, northern Iran

In need of English-speaking company, I persuaded him to travel to my project for the day. It was a 45 minute drive from Takab through small farming villages where he got a chance meet the locals and photograph the hard-scrabble life of Iranian subsistence farmers. As a bonus, I took him underground at a small but spectacular arsenic mine to collect world-class samples of bright yellow orpiment (arsenic sulphide) from the ore pile.

Orpiment: Arsenic Sulphide

Twenty years later, out of the blue, I got an email from him. He’d tracked me down on-line using an old business card I’d given him during his visit. And attached were 20 scanned photos from his day on the project which he said was the highlight of his trip to Iran. I was totally blown away. All the photos I’d taken at the project were of rocks, drills, and general technical stuff with a few scenery snaps thrown in. But here were photos of me, at 33 years old, looking vaguely like a geologist on a day I’d long since forgotten about… being all earth sciencey and authoritative at the Zarshuran project, which is now Iran’s biggest gold mine.

Hand cobbing lumps of orpiment

Dies Irae, Dies Illa

Every second Tuesday, starting in September, I join a small group of elite singers… Look, can I be honest for a moment? We’re so good we could all have successful music careers if we hadn’t decided to take ordinary jobs, no really… sorry I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes… Every second Tuesday we meet at a local church for an hour to practice Gregorian chant led by our lovely choirmaster, Colleen. It’s a wonderful but short lived opportunity to slip away from the shitness of the Trumpian world into a bygone era of Latin plainsong, pillaging, gout and rampant Plague.

As elite a bunch of singers as you could hope to meet.

If you’ve never explored the world of monophonic music, I highly recommend dipping a toe or two in. The origins of so many modern hymns, film soundtracks and great classical pieces are hiding there in plain (sorry) sight. For the choral duffer, it’s an easy place to start your singing career because it uses simple-ish, unharmonised melodies sung in the same register by the whole choir. Although plain song structure is usually complicated by a lack of time signature so regular practice is needed to nail down the commonly used melodic / rhythmic patterns.

The Dies Irae (Day of Rage) is one of the most famous themes. Well over a thousand years old, it’s popped up all over the place down the centuries. In the 20th Century it was written into Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, and some of the music from the Star Wars movies. Genesis used it in Attack of the Giant Hogweed (yes that’s a real song). Here’s an interesting vignette from Canada’s CBC on how Dies Irae has influenced modern and ancient music.

Despite the apparent simplicity of most plain song, the more you work at it, the more you realise why only Monks have ever really nailed it. They’re the only ones with enough time on their hands to put in the hours needed to make it sound great. A typical day in the life of Brother Francis …Wake up at 4am. Practice the liturgy in plain song. Fast. Bit more practice from 8-10am. Confession. Practice liturgy. Fast again while confessing. Practice. And so on, interspersed with some chicken feeding and gardening till midnight when they wind up another hard day with more plain song before bed washed down with an invigorating cup of hot water. Musical perfection ensues.

Look, Gregory, I’m telling you there’s a pause at the end of Quod sum causa tuæ viæ