Genesis’ Ripples

Sail away, away
Ripples never come back.

 

I loved Progressive Rock. I loved Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes and Mike Oldfield. And, but, there’s a little special place in my heart for Genesis… Probably because of Tony Banks (the keyboard player)…

Peter Gabriel left the group in the seventies and, well, the drummer (yeah, it’s Phil Collins) had to stand up : he was the only one who could really sing. They made Trick of the Tail (1976)…

I love Ripples because I don’t understand the lyrics, because I love the fragility, the finesse of the song, because I love how the group “quits” the love song in the middle of it (go to 4’00”), to take off like a plane in the clouds of a SO ENGLISH instrumental, with a plaintive guitar, a science of “what a bass line is”, modulations, and this “we don’t really care” aspect which is a good sign of…

Whatever.

Why does it hurt so much? Is the melancholy in my youth, or in the music? Why do I always come back to these lyrics?

 

Ripples

Blue girls come in every size
Some are wise and some otherwise,
They got pretty blue eyes.
For an hour a man may change
For an hour her face looks strange –
Looks strange, looks strange.
Marching to the promised land
Where the honey flows and takes you by the hand,
Pulls you down on your knees,
While you’re down a pool appears.
The face in the water looks up,
And she shakes her head as if to say
That it’s the last time you’ll look like today.
Sail away, away
Ripples never come back.
Gone to the other side.
Sail away, away.
The face that launched a thousand ships
Is sinking fast, that happens you know,
The water gets below.
Seems not very long ago
Lovelier she was than any that I know.
Angels never know it’s time
To close the book and gracefully decline,
The song has found a tale.
My, what a jealous pool is she.
The face in the water looks up
She shakes her head as if to say
That the blue girls have all gone away.
Sail away, away
Ripples never come back.
They’ve gone to the other side.
Look into the pool,
Ripples never come back,
Dive to the bottom and go to the top
To see where they have gone
Oh, they’ve gone to the other side…
Sail away, away
Ripples never come back.
Gone to the other side.
Look into the pool,
The ripples never come back, come back,
Dive to the bottom and go to the top
To see where they have gone
They’ve gone to the other side

 

Peter Gabriel, before this, gave to their music… more weight. Firth of Fifth (1973) is haunted by something. The piano intro is great, the song is more intense, but… Go to 3’26, where they kill it into music before the middle of the track! A bass flute, a twirling piano, a clever bass… At around 6’00, the guitar tries a solo before understanding it has to let go, and fly like a swan (6’30”).

The sheep remains inside his pen

 

 

To say goodbye, I add Steve Hackett‘s solo album. He’s the flying guitarist of Genesis you heard in the two previous songs, a very special sound he had, right?… I adored this album. But ain’t it too complex for today’s ears?? If you go the the Shadow (35’00), you’ll hear a carillon. These little bells drown into this swanny guitar sound climbing in clouds of mellotron (and ah, oh, this art of bass, made in UK, John Barry like, cf Persuaders).

Too lyrical, right?

 

Have a nice day! Thanks for reading.

 

Angels never know it’s time

 

Marguerite Duras #quote

“Very early in my life it was too late.”

“Très tôt dans ma vie, il a été trop tard”

Marguerite Duras

Instagram : _bodylanguage_

 

 

Are Bloggers Proustians?

We’re all the same, us bloggers. One day we ask ourselves : “WHY do I blog?”

You can read this article about it : Why do you blog?.

…my theory was that you blog because you want to be loved…

But tonight I think about Proust and La Recherche.

In his long suite of books (“In search of the lost time”), the narrator, little by little, realizes that he has to remember, that memory in important, that he has to WRITE… the book we just read.

Clever loop, right?

I’d like to add this paragraph from Wikipedia :

Gilles Deleuze believed that the focus of Proust was not memory and the past but the narrator’s learning the use of “signs” to understand and communicate ultimate reality, thereby becoming an artist. While Proust was bitterly aware of the experience of loss and exclusion—loss of loved ones, loss of affection, friendship and innocent joy, which are dramatized in the novel through recurrent jealousy, betrayal and the death of loved ones—his response to this was that the work of art can recapture the lost and thus save it from destruction, at least in our minds.

(I bolded the bolded…)

Let’s get to my point : Bloggers are Proustians.

If you consistently write and publish, it’s to be loved (that’s OK, dear), but also maybe to… remember.

To remember what? What you’ve been thinking at? What you ARE? Who you’re becoming? To remember that you like to share?

What?? You would blog because… you blog? Just because you feel you have to?

Nope. Maybe you blog to understand WHY you want to blog…

Clever loop. Proustian. QED.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Indecipherable Harlekeen & Quick-Eyed Happy Centaur

Je porte un manteau d’Arlequin : I wear a coat of Harlequin.

“…is characterized by his chequered costume. His role is that of a light-hearted, nimble and astute servant, often acting to thwart the plans of his master, and pursuing his own love interest, Columbina, with wit and resourcefulness”, says Wikipedia.

Yes it’s about facets, but I do think this pattern is effective to describe different levels of some personalities, from the deep to the surface.

Harlequin, Harlekeen on :

• Changing
• Never being sure of
• Aware that things change all the time
• And that people evolve and change along the day
• Being curious
• Being unsteady (which is “to be alive”)
• Fast, Slow : Changing speed/gear in a second
• Indecipherable at times
• Masked. Disguised.
• Being two things at the same time
• Complexity as a skill
• Positive
• Keensharp, vivacious
• Backhanded if necessery

 

It’s Sunday! Fall! Then pick yourself up…

Don’t be that serious, Harlequin is in you. And you know it, quick-eyed happy you!

 

Instagram Boredoming #Minimalism Variations

Yeyyy you know that mottoto, “find beauty in the little things”, etc. It’s like… too easy and you wanna fight it, but you have to agree it’s a wisdom. Let’s say a lazy wisdom.

As a photographer, you can perfectly be a pro in Afghanistan’s moutains or a specialist of Amazonian’s spiders, or you can have a more normal job but post two pictures a week on Instagram taken in your kitchen, voilà.

You can read this article about The Yoknapatawpha Rule – which says that it is possible to use Faulkner’s revelation : talk about what around you, silly!

I realized a few months ago that people really like minimalism in photography. I’m sure that it’s a whole harp, from cleaned up esthetics concerns to Nordic sight-effectiveness, by way of Zen needs or just the pleasure of eyes.

So I began to post – maybe once a month – pictures about this ugly place in a landing office. Fake plants, worn out floor, lazy chosen furnitures…

I tried to keep it simple, but interesting : a sun light reflection, a blurry mood, a sharpangle view, etc…

For me it’s a way to keep focused (“What is there?”). Maybe. Or, Okey, to find beauty where there’s little.

Have a great day!

 

Event VS Structure

“Event VS Structure” – This is a title, right?

A philosophical problem I pick like a screwdriver, to examine it.

1. A Structure, it can be a rule, a law, a “it’s the way things are”, a habit, a skeleton under things, an axle, a map, a followed road.
2. An Event is what suddenly happens, it’s life, it’s a surprise, an accident, a happiness, a present, a mishap, a disturbance, a movement, a change.

 

This article is an invitation. The game will be : choose your structure, and invent an event :

Where do they touch? Is it good, bad? What happens? Can an event change a structure, or entertain it? Destroy it? What then? Is a new structure needed? Is there a thirst for other events? What is a suite of events? Can a structure hide another one? What triggered the event? Another structure? Can a structure contain an inner “events invention”? Do you have to protect the structure against events? Are there Metastructures? Do a structure USE events to grow, to increase knowledge, to breathe life in? What is a mutation? What is a call for event?

Structure : Battle? Symphony? Plan? Marriage? Company? Life? Body?

Suddenly, an Event. Mutation, change, disease, sudden victory, cut, inspiration, meeting another structure, thoughts, failure, ending, bend, ideas…

Does an event have a structure?

 

What do you choose to study?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : anapaula

 

Word’s Power : “Une Araignée” vs “A Spider”

Some words have a power.

Therefore, because they have a form of newness, foreign words can have a very strong power. For me, for example, the world BETRAYAL is almost diabolical. It frightens me! Betrayal. It sounds like – maybe because of Belial? – the essence of the Devil. Who we call in France : Le Diable. Brrrr…

“Spider” sounds very innocent – is it? I think of spiderman, or of a little spider, an harmless one. I wonder what it is for English speakers… The French word for this fascinating animal is ARAIGNÉE.

For a French, the word ARAIGNÉE is horrible when you examine (and hear) it. You immediately see a frightening dangerous horrible spider. You don’t laugh anymore. You feel the chill along your backbone… It’s not cute at all. At all! And, oh, sorry, it’s feminine…

This word, araignée, is like containing the essence of it all. It’s haunted. You feel the creepyness of it, just with the sound : araignée. It’s awful, complex, vicious, archetypically incomprehensible…

Have you met someone like une araignée one day? What happened? Did you survive? Did she trapcatch you? Was she haunted by death or a curse? How come you realized she was one? A web? Dead eyes? Some weird skill? What was her venom made of? Did you sicksleep, or die slowly, or lose all reason? Did she have bored slaves (like the flies on the first picture)?

What are other terrible words? Why? Why are some words so charged?

Yes, yes : their buttonlike many eyes… Brrrr…

 

 

From frowny eyes to hilarity : When you have to “find the fun” – Cioran & Bernhard

Emil Cioran was a Romanian writer and philosopher. He is famous for writing books such as The Trouble with Being Born. As you can guess, it’s very tormented and pessimistic.

William H. Gass called Cioran’s work “a philosophical romance on the modern themes of alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease”.

Thomas Bernhard was a Austrian “novelist, playwright and poet”. His style is mainly about monologues reported to a listener (you?). It’s very intense, full of anger and a bit disturbing. His books’ titles are like Extinction or Concrete.

“Bernhard’s prose is lapidary and translucent in its vocabulary, but sinuous and formidably dense in its phrasing”.

 

Yes, you can take all this very seriously.

I’ve known a couple of young men who read Cioran as an obsession, like a Master of pessimism : “The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live –moreover, the only one.”. And why not?

And I admit I read my first Thomas Bernhard with frowny eyes. “Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it’s lost.”

 

Then… you grow up, you study the way they write (one in archipelagos, the other one in words rivers), you begin to notice their ways, their exaggerations, their… wizardry, their understanding, their contradictions.

Then you smile.

Then you LAUGH…

I agree, it’s a strange laugh. It would be a bit short to say it’s sarcastic, because it’s not. Sometimes humor sticks out with a whole harp of powers. You laugh but you think, you laugh but you sob, you laugh but you have empathy, you laugh but you’re deeply moved, you laugh and you want to get out of your house to run like hell out in the streets, full of seeds, anger, and new ideas…

You just needed to make progress until you have the capacity to “get it”.

 

Where does it happen, when you have to “find the fun”? How would you make it? When do things have like this, many doors? Why should humor move with this flag : “This is humor”?? Can (and do you need to) you invent and trace humor on something which is “obviously” not funny?

Isn’t it a lesson? Like… maybe we have to find a possible way to laugh after our months of deep despair?
Thanks for reading!

Have a nice day. Pardon my Frenchenglish, oui ?

 

Hey, it’s my article N600!

 

 

 

 

Stephen Shore, mesmeric #Photographer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Shore

Stephen Shore is very special to me.

• Like William Eggleston, he’s one great artist who “rediscovered” color photography when everybody was shooting in black & white.
• He uses light and sun (and therefore the shadows) like nobody else.
• He likes to take normal, “non interesting” places, like suburbs, streets, parkings – I am very touched by this approach.
• His book, Uncommon Places, is a marvel.
• Each photography is charged with a mood. You can almost breathe the air of it.
• He has his own way of photographing normal lands, cars, streets, people with so much… care that all these become fascinating, mesmeric.

 

I found 12 pictures for you (plus the front cover of his book). Stare at these.

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

#waiting #teddybear

from Instagram: http://ift.tt/2lhrOnC

Bovary 2 #quotes

“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

 

Instagram : sarah_feldmann

#minimalism

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“We know what to do, but we do not do” : Chronicle 18

When you move in with your lover, do you merge your books collections or not? Why?

 

I can’t really read Art Books : as soon as I’m on my armchair, my cat Bidou jumps on my lap – no place for the book, errr…

 

Whatever : in this delicious autumn feeling, under pullovers and cardigans, with two scarves already, I read a great book about Goya, the Spanish painter, with my cat on my legs, with a glass of Morgon (yep it’s a French wine). What else?

 

The only true aristocracy is that of consciousness.

D. H. Lawrence

 

“We know what to do, but we do not do”, says a character in the movie Ma Loute. Isn’t it Tolstoian?

 

Imagine you live near a volcano, or in a city which has been destroyed by earthquakes before : do you have a suitcase of “I take this in case of destruction”? What would you put inside?

 

“Three Worst” :

 

What is the worst demon? The Family Destroyer.

 

The worse things happen when people stop talking to each other.

 

I wonder what’s the worst : to be hurt by someone on purpose, or to be hurt by someone who has no clue…

 

The loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!

Charles Baudelaire

 

Have a great day!

 

Sshhh…

The Last Paintings, Sibelius’ Piano & other Lateral Entrances

If you decide to explore a field, you can take the highway : choose the best selling hits & jewels and study them. Mona Lisa for Da Vinci, The Bolero for Ravel, Citizen Kane for Welles. La Recherche for Proust…

Main entrance…

This morning I read the interview of a pianist who recorded the works of Sibelius for piano – yet this composer is mainly known for his symphonic works.

This year, in France, there’s a new coffee-table book named Le Dernier Tableau (“The Last Painting”). As you can guess : it’s a surprising book. The last painting each painter did before death – is showed and described with interesting developments (Is it premonitory? Is there a new freedom? Do you see silly risks, or dejection?).

You see me coming, right?

An “other” way to study something is to find the lateral doors. Other fields, where the Master is weaker, or more casual. Minor works. Last sparkles (or awkward beginnings).

You could find :

1. New perspectives on an artist you already know well
2. A fresher way to enlighten a career you’d like to know more
3. A preparation for a deeper study
4. A seek of casualness and peace in front of an impressive artist

 

Who’s your next prey?

 

Have a nice day!

 

Picture : Cocu Liu

Broken Cam #Photography – Cabourg 1

Cabourg is a little city near the sea, in Normandy, France.

I was there in 2009, for a whole week, with a cheap Canon camera, which was at the end of its life. It was cold and rainy, and I spent days alone, wandering around, listening to Hindemith on my iPod (I’ll explain it in another post)…

From time to time, the whatchamacallit before the shutter stayed stuck in this oblique funny way. I often took one photo “like this”, before finger-opening it. There’s some Amor Fati in the photographer’s mind, right?

I chose a couple of pictures from this day, to build a tool for thinkers & inventors, which is :

Tool (let’s call it “Use it before you fix it”) :

When something “doesn’t work”, stop. Think about it. What doesn’t work? What could you do “with” it before fixing it?

Where will you apply this tool : Painting? Powerpoint? Poetry? Blogging? Would you go until you think it’s a sign? For what?

 

You’re a photographer. You lost or forgot something? What do you do? Do you have examples? Is improvisation good? Why?

So, well, my broken Canon picts are a little creepy like subjective views in a cheap horror movie? Of course, but I hope I got somethings else :

• a little eyebrow movement from you (“Hey, what is happening here?”)
• voyeurismness (mask behindness)
• questions (“what is the last picture about?” – it’s a dirty corrugated roof)
• maybe a mood (the remote house in the mist with the fence on photo 5) – feel the cold wind?
• an illusion game (droplet as an eye, seaweed’s cuteness)

 

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day.

 

Minimalistic Bookporn : when you read prefaces only

There are 2 types of houses : with books, or empty of.

Imagine you have a couple of days in an apartment full of books.

Of course, you have your own books in your backpack. These are like air, or food, right?

 

One strangeodd way of spending a few hours alone in this place is :

Read prefaces only

 

Pick up books in a random way – be fast and casual, like a little girl with daisies.

Read prefaces only. Mais oui !

– What for, mister Becausewhat?

1. It can bring you a urge desire to read the rest of the book
2. You’ll discover authors you don’t know
3. If a preface is written by another person, your brain will try to understand this link between both
4. It’s knowledge feast & debauchery
5. It’ll provide seeds for your hungry mind
6. You’ll associate this place with exploration and pleasure (and?)
7. It’s a good way to lose yourself (and you need to, right?)
8. Discovery (of fields you ignore)
9. Maps & new ways of thinking, drawing paths
10. Seeds for subsequent conversations with the books owner
11. Inspiration (take notes, silly)
12. Extending your knowledge

 

Voilà! What did you find? How did you choose? Did you ask for indications from your host – for the day after? What happened then?

Thanks for reading! Have a nice week-end!

 

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​”The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of a child at play” – Nietzsche

“The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of a child at play”.

Nietzsche

 

2 Goddesses for the world : Chronicle 17

What if the world was ruled by two sisters Goddesses that nobody on Earth know or pray? Imagine their loneliness or their anger, their boredom, their wisdom…

 

Rilke writes that there are three ways for a passion to die :

1. Exhaustion
2. Transformation
3. Substitution

 

Seeds to think about and with :

• “When you don’t examine Belzebuth’s proposition”
• “Dramatize tensions for lack of solving them”
• “Something happening for itself, and not as a preparation for something to come”
• “An obscure text, even for the author”
• “To take an interest in what’s left on the side“
• “Something is said, showed. Something isn’t, is hidden. What if you lean on the frontier between both?”
• “Change down a gear”. When? Where? How? Why?

 

Moon rays catchers. Who are they?

 

What kind of inner silence do you feel when someone accuses you of things you haven’t done since a long time?

 

Here are some Eluard poems translated in English :

http://poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/French/Eluard.htm

 

 

 

…the fear of being forgotten

 

 

 

 

 

#cat #blackandwhite

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Verbal Fencing : strong thumps are nothing against stingy words

A few weeks ago, sitting on a bench, I saw two male 15 years old students RUNNING from a small group sitting in a park. It was a chase!

The tall, big student caught the smart fast little one, and it began.

All cluttered with their bags, running. The tall one badly hit the small one in the back, gripped him. Shook him. Then with some judo-legged movements put him on the ground. Then put his fist against the cheek, crushing him strongly against the ground. He could have broken his teeth, because he was much stronger – and at this moment I was about to stand up and ask them to stop it. Like “Hey, calm down ,will you?”.

But they stopped. Stood up.

Then I saw something odd.

They both walked away, side by side, towards the group-with-girls. And the small guy was… like… comforting the tall one!

It’s been a little disturbing, but then the group was in the trees shade. It was a cool afternoon. Quiet. After school. All quiet.

 

I needed days to understand that all along, the small guy was the winner. He didn’t really fight back. It was NOT OK, right, I agree. Violence is bad. But I knew that the little student had triggered violence by what he said before. The other one was too kind (or too aware of the consequences of destroying his friend’s face) to really counter-attack. If you don’t have words (or the sense of repartee), you’re weak, even with muscles.

The small guy failed to regroup, to find back the tall one’s smile. “Allez, let’s be friends!”, he seemed to say with his gestures. But the tall one knew he lost. He was walking, in contained rage, with infuriated “NO. FUCK OFF” gestures.

 

Thanks for reading!