People at work 4 - seeing dreams come into being

Steve "Huzz" Porter shooting material for Rebecca Clamp's soon-to-be-out-on-Youtube video for her song "St Wilgefortis". Watch this space, I'll be linking to the video.

The one man band played on

An American one man band guy was playing downtown. He told us his listeners he would do an old Finnish schlager as his last piece, which he sang in perfectly passable although heavily accented Finnish. The heavens opened, but members of the public rushed out with their umbrellas, to save his amp...



...things got really hot when out of the rain-soaked crowd, a guy in a leotard emerged and did a dance with his perfectly ordinary-looking (male) friend.

Don't you just love him

I do.

Showtime, he yelled

The Helsinki poetry marathon

As a counterpoint to the Helsinki City Marathon, Saturday saw a poetry marathon, staged at the old Central Bus Station.

J.K.Ihalainen mid-performance with his strong, beautiful poetry. This guy has had William S.Burroughs illustrate one of his books! Follow the link given, click on Poetry, and scroll to find a sample. His best stuff is in Finnish, though, in my humble opinion.

Night of the Arts, part 5. High culture.

Night of the Arts is, as the name would suggest, a night devoted to the arts. Arranged in Helsinki this year for the eighteenth time, it features performances from right across the broad board of (what terms itself) art. We ended our evening at the National Opera, listening to this wonderful tenor doing an aria from Yevgeni Onegin, followed by a duetto from La Traviata, to which we were all invited to dance. More pictures of the event on my flickr site.

Night of the Arts, part 4.

Fire-juggling is too cool. These kids were good, and there was drumming, too. My older son is somewhere in the crowd.

Night of the Arts, part 3. Return of the Pancake Man

We ate the pancakes afterwards. I was in some way happier that they were cooked by the lady.

Night of the Arts part 1

Dozens of shamanic drummers gathered in the park at Töölönlahti Bay.