Exploring movies from Tennessee Williams’s plays…

Once you decided to go under the surface of “news”, there are many ways to explore the movie history. I once imagined I explored a year of cinema : let’s begin with 1960. Let’s watch Psycho, l’Avventura, La Dolce Vita, Elmer Gantry, Exodus and The Magnificent Seven…

There’s another way. Which is to find the author. My best choice (from far) has been Tennessee Williams. You can watch : A Tramway Named Desire, The Night of the Iguana, Suddenly Last Summer or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tatoo, This Property is Condemned or Baby Doll (there are more, but these are masterpieces).

Check the Internet Movie Database !

For a month, forget Netflix and shows. Watch these movies. Read about T. Williams, his life, etc. You’ll plunge, then, in a strange world with a taste of the South.

Something between William Faulkner and Anton Chekhov. One days I read that these two were, for him, the two best writers of history.

There is no “tool”, here. Just a map. An idea. Make a step aside. Stop reaction on “what they propose you”. Choose your territory.

Moite, complexe, adulte : it’s clever-South, clammy adult movies for adults… You’ll have problems to go back to average shows, I can promise you…

 

 

 

 

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Inner Gold and Sleeping Parts

I think that some friends have a particular talent.

When you talk with these people, you have a strange (et délicieux) feeling : some inner parts of you, of your mind are… activated.

(It happens, sometimes, that you trigger the same effect in response)

You can use subtle metaphors to explain this, like surprisingly finding inner gold, or opening unknown windows, new stairs… thanks dear !

I do think that some parts of our brain are sleeping, or are “put in a box”, useless. Sometimes you don’t even know or remember that they’re here, in a corner of your attic.

When they’re activated : you are surprised, thankful, you see and feel them blossoming around, in you. It gives you a big amount of energy and happiness.

When you activate them (by doing nothing but being yourself in a conversation)  in your chatterboxing partner’s mind, you can see this person like… floored-with-a-smile.

If this person dies, or flies away, you feel a bit strange or sick for a moment, because, as you can guess, these golden activities which liked to dance in your head, they want to dance more, and they can’t.

The bond only could make them dance. Conversations.

Some parts are real gold, they stay : you can keep them for you, you grew, that’s your new treasure, votre nouveau trésor !

Some parts begin to hurt you, though. They dance alone, lost in your mind, they hit walls, they break themselves. They wait.

You have to use the old boxes.

These sleeping parts of you, made alive, have to go back to sleep, “Off to box, chatterbox !”. Your pie gets smaller.

This is how you understand why Conversation is an Art, sometimes.

Dial : Nothing lasts forever. You knew that, don’t you ? Good news or bad news ?

#mood

Waldgänger uses the forest

Waldgänger is a german word we could translate as “Forest Goer”. It’s a state of mind archetype, an inner way of standing in life. It means : staying where you are, but you don’t believe in what you live anymore…

Wald means “forest” – a Walgänger is someone who retreats into the forest.

Many similar representations exist, and are more common. In fact, to define what a Waldgänger is, it’s maybe easy to tell what it is not…

It’s not a rebel (against), nor an otaku (cut), nor an ermite (far). You don’t go away. You just retreat inside. And you stay there. You are different, suddenly, but nobody knows it.

You become a Waldgänger when you step aside inside of your mind. You are stuck into a game, a situation, and you don’t believe in it anymore. You make “as if”, but inside of you, you are out. You watch. Maybe you contemplate the disaster. You don’t play the game anymore. Or as if. And you know what : you are invisible. It can happen to you, but you can decide it, too. It’s maybe a struggle with yourself (“Protect me from what I want”, says Jenny Holzer). You don’t tell.

#womanonbicycle

Tool provided by Nietzsche :

a kind of most profound self-reflection and self-recovery that desires to avoid, not “temptations,” but “duties”: an escape from the daily round; a detachment from the tyranny of stimuli and influences that condemns us to spend our strength in nothing but reactions and does not permit their accu- mulation to the point of spontaneous activity

…which leads to La Culture à réaction, or why “Luxury is Insular”…

The other one is easy, logical : you become a Waldgänger to avoid becoming crazy. It’s a inner retreat. You don’t move, you don’t “quit”, you don’t rebel : you watch and don’t believe in what to see. And nobody knows it. Waldgänger state is alone. But you can think…

 

The Photographs of John Vachon

Wikipedia : John Vachon (May 19, 1914 – April 20, 1975)

He’s known for his black & white rural poor people photographs. What I want to show you here are his color and cities photographs. You’ll find more in Pinterest, or course (for example here).

Here are three of them. The rainy color one is colorised (and wow !).

(my Pinterest : https://fr.pinterest.com/jrobocatwaldgan/

 

 

 

WhatsApp Quiet PingPong Images

WhatsApp is a perfect App, so elegant that more than a billion people on Earth use it. I loved it the first minute it was on my phone. I was floored by everything in this App : clean, elegant, simple.

More : Internet, Facebook and some Apps on our smartphones allow us to meet people all around the world.

There is a great exercise you can make with someone living in another country. I call it WhatsApp Ping Pong.

You send a picture to this person, and you wait for the answer. It can be ten seconds later, or ten hours, or ten days. The purpose, to maintain a good pace, is to wait for the image-answer before you send another one.

Your books, the sky, a church, walls, houses, streets : EVERYTHING is interesting, when you watch it from another culture. Voilà.

And if you want, if you’re shy, you don’t need a single word, you ping pong images, only images. This App is such a great tool. That’s sharing. That’s humanity !

#labo #renault #vintage #garage

#architecture #building #architexture #city #buildings #skyscraper #urban #cities #town #architecturelovers #abstract #lines #beautiful #archilovers #architectureporn #lookingup #archidaily #composition #geometry #perspective #geometric #pattern

#shadowonthewood

Monochrome

https://www.instagram.com/p/BD5un7xCWbC/

Bag of Knots

One day you realise that there’s a day behind you, which you don’t understand at all. A day full of arguments or misunderstanding or bad behaviour or errors. It’s a Bag of Knots. Un “Sac de Nœuds”, voilà. You, with your ability of thinking and deconstructing and put things in order, you dream or you think that you maybe could open the Bag of Knots and watch the knots inside and pick one or two of them. There are strings, visible strings. Knots. Dark places and cores in the middle of the knots. You could fix that, after all. Deknotting by deknitting. Getting things better, and straight. With enough time and method, you could do it. But you don’t, because it’s a Bag of Knots. Let it be. Sitting here in the shadow. Full of misunderstandings. Give up. It’s too much, too complicated. You could fix it, but you won’t. It is what it is. You don’t have the steam. You want to watch in front of you. You don’t want to deknot. Let the bag closed. There’s no deknotting.

(OK, it’s “unknot”, I’m french, sorry 🙂

Tool : Some problems can not be “fixed”. Stop examining. Just draw a black circle on your map. You’ve been there and you failed. What doesn’t kill you…

#oldchairs #chairs #chaises

 

“Honor thy Error as a Hidden Intention”, and vice versa

…and Vice Versa, really ?

Honor thy Error as a Hidden Intention, is a concept, I suppose, commonly used by artists. As a kid, when I drew a little something, a house and a tree for example, if I accidentaly stained my paper, splash, I would probably use it and draw a bird with it, yeyyy !

Maybe the Universe wanted to help me ?

Honor thy Error as a Hidden Intention, voilà ! I think I read this expression in a Brian Eno interview, who is smart enough to bend the concept and use it as a method, say “sand in oyster” or Oblique Strategies or any another fruitful constraint.

I read, for example, that he was used to make a digital stereo (two tracks) pre-mix of U2 to prevent the group, in studio, to add continuoulsy add ideas and changes. To freeze the process and erase the 16-tracks source is a perfect way to say : “Stop. It’s good now. I just made a tree trunk. Haha”. A way to reframe.

When I play with a concept like this one, I always want to reverse it, to bend it, to break it in two pieces, whateverbim. That could be :

“Honor your Hidden Intentions under an Error” ?

What a strange tool, n’est-ce pas ? I can be a dial too…

Tool : At times, you maybe need to make an error on purpose. Because you know it will trigger a reaction which can be useful for you. Just make sure that reacting people don’t know you are manipulating. But also : Think a little. Maybe they KNOW that you had a hidden agenda, and they hide it from you. Individuals feels the need to maintain a positive self-image, after all…

Dial : What do you do when you find out a hidden agenda ? You dig it up to the open sky, or you shup your mouth, hiding that you know ? Well, I should ask Sun Tzu…

 

#johnford #foursons #silentmovie #lovers

 

 

A Bomb in a Drawer

I have a little story for you.

Today, in a big company, ten minutes before an important meeting, someone enters a room and tells Miss Rhino that Mister Giraffe will probably “tell something” in this meeting. Tell something wrong. Or dangerous. Or inappropriate.

Is Miss Rhino terrified by this threatening information ? Nope.

She opens a drawer, takes a folder, picks a paper sheet. Then she goes in Mister Giraffe’s office, and silently shows him the paper sheet. When she’s sure he did read the paper, she goes back to her place. Done. Meeting time now !

Intimidation, deterrence, dissuasion, I don’t know how you say that in english. I prefer call it “a bomb in a drawer”. Une bombe dans un tiroir.

Miss Rhino has probably a bomb for every dangerous colleague in the company. But she never uses them. Her enemies should sometimes know that she COULD.

Tool : Do you need a bomb for some people ? When should you show it ? Much before danger (no), or just in case, seconds before assault ? And what if you must use one for real, one day ? To warn others ? OK, let’s call this “Instant Dissuasion”.

#whatisit