Monday, May 7 2012
International Beats: The Desire for the Foreign in Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’
With the film adaptation of On the Road just a month away, it's important to once again define what characterized the Beat movement: an infatuation with the foreign.
Wednesday, December 7 2011
Walkin’ to the Beat, the Rhythm in My Feet
Walking around a new city is a good way to get to know its nuances -- the sights, the smells, and especially, the sounds. Boston taught me its rhythm, and I kept in step.
Friday, August 26 2011
Last Stop Greece: Then the Global Prowler Heads on Home
Six months of Global Prowling concludes in Greece, passing through pre-riotous Athens and making a final stop in Melbourne for the International Jazz Festival where Sonny Rollins teaches the Golden Rule.
Wednesday, August 3 2011
In With the Old in Bucharest: When There’s No New Space for Art, Find an Old Mansion
In its most recent transformation, Bucharest is striving to become a regular European capital, with office jobs, historical buildings, monuments, hipsters, and an art scene: it's a new world squeezing into old spaces.
Friday, July 29 2011
Kaleidoscopic Istanbul
Perhaps more than any other world city, Istanbul transforms with the seasons. In this kaleidoscopic city, thriving and chaotic, cosmopolitan with entrenched provincial colour, you sometimes feel like you’re at the centre of the world.
Friday, June 10 2011
Georgia on My My My Mind: Your Global Prowlers in the Wonderful Former Playland of the USSR
Under springtime sun the city of Tbilisi is as delightful as an Italian renaissance town, but when the clouds are black it's a decayed Oriental-Soviet underworld stinking of cold mud and acrid cigarette smoke.
Thursday, May 12 2011
The Civil War and the Uneasy Fabric of American Identity
America's obsession with the Civil War reveals not-so-invisible wounds that linger to this day in the landscape and the nation's psyche.
Wednesday, April 27 2011
Across Iberia by Slow Train
While prowling the globe for artist-friendly cities, your correspondent finds himself the only vegan at a Madrid bullfight, hunting for Stolchlickoff vodka in the streets of Barcelona, and getting fleeced in Paris.
Thursday, February 17 2011
Across the Yucatán with a Ragtag Carny Crew
A Mexican dispatch, by the sea and on the road with students, musicians, actors, wild children, and juggling LSD dealers. On the backpacker trail from Cancún to Mérida, we discovered we were not the only ones on a global prowl.
Tuesday, February 1 2011
Que Pasa, New York?
How do artists get their work done in other cities of the world? Where is it viable to live? It's probably silly to begin our investigation in New York. Just 30 years ago, New York was still opening its arms to the tired, poor, huddled masses of creatives. But now?
Friday, January 7 2011
Artful Living
How do writers, painters, filmmakers, and musicians get by in other cities of the world? Asprey and his partner, priced out of Sydney, hoist their backpacks and set off for a trip around the world -- on an artist's budget — to find out.
Friday, December 24 2010
Clash City
Marcus Gray's book about London Calling inspires a journey around the London of the Clash. There's a huge sense of disaffection in this city, a feeling that the government protects only the rich and will leave the poor to suffer the recession – it’s like 1979 all over again, and London is still calling, calling out into an atmosphere of impending catastrophe.
Tuesday, July 6 2010
When Flying the Skies, Best to Avert One’s Eyes—Especially in Coach Class
What's the etiquette for your personal movie choice on a long flight when the nearest set of eyes is just a shoulder-width away from your screen?
Friday, October 16 2009
Looking for the Lost: Memoirs of a Vanishing Japan
With its narrow streets and dark and hidden infoldings, there’s a distinctly feminine, mysterious, and inexplicably magnetic aspect to Japan that exists in few other places in the world.
Tuesday, January 20 2009
Visions of the World
Three world-music documentaries deserving of your attention detail the unity of Islam through music, the convergence of South Asian folk with modern technologies, and the plight of Saharan desert dwellers.
