Paths & Place

This is a Google Translation. Sorry.

“If only you had been taught, rather, to be happy by staying still. All these stories about your own path. Find your way. Follow your path. While it could be that we are made to live on a square, or in a public garden, there without moving, to make life go, it could be that we are a crossroads, the world needs us to stay there without moving, it would be a disaster if we went, at a given moment, to follow our road, but which road? The others are roads, I am a place, I do not lead to any place, I am a place.

Alessandro Baricco

 

Two Thinkers Letters & Friendship : #Gide & #Valéry

Some friendships don’t need any oath.

It’s just there.

These days I’m happy because I found the best thinker I could imagine.

Paul Valéry (1871-1945) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Val%C3%A9ry – a French poet, essayist and philosopher.

For me, he’s even stronger than Nietzsche!

In France, he’s known as a poet. That’s all…

Thus, I’m devouring his notebooks, his essays, his poetry : thousands of pages.

This guy is a genius! You can find his notebooks on the web. If you need seeds…

And, well, I read also books from André Gide (1869-1951) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Gide

Hence, I discovered they were friends.

I just ordered and got an almost 1000 pages book of their correspondence.

I was so glad to get it! As I was opening the box tonight, I thought : “Two of the best thinkers of their time!”…

…which I found on the back cover of the book :

“This friendship is a dream come true : two of the most gifted and most clever writers of their generation met at the beginning of their careers”.

A friendship.

Nothing, absolutely nothing (they were very different) could work loose or detach this friendship.

Valéry says it’s not about literature or common or complementary tastes. It was the faculty to follow each other, to instantly adapt, to guess each other with happiness…

In an article of Le Monde, the French newspaper, I found this :

“Leur dialogue de dandys supérieurs porte sur les moyens et la manière, jamais sur les principes et les fins”.

“Their dandy dialog is always about the means and the ways, never on the principles and the ends”.

Most of you will get it, right?

 

Well, that’s all, dear. I just wanted to share!

Thanks for reading!

Jean-Pascal

 

“…and nothing is more certain than an inclination which exist in itself, without any argument, without common feelings or ideas – like with no reason”.

P. Valéry

 

 

 

Jonas Bendiksen, Norwegian Photographer

https://www.jonasbendiksen.com/

“Photojournalist”, as they say, Jonas Bendiksen is born in 1977 and is a member of Magnum Photos. No war zone here…

He’s different. I can’t really tell why I love his work so much. I know this for Jeff Wall or Stephen Shore, but not Bendiksen!

Just plunge :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#cats #whenyouseethem

There are two cats here…

from Instagram: http://ift.tt/2DrLw4y

Too complicated to be bugs : Chronicle 34

If you’re passionate, if you’re a thinker, there are two types of spouses. When you begin a lecture about something you found, with “this” tone and sparks in eyes :

1. Rolling eyes “Here we go again!”.
2. Asking questions, loving it, helping you, smiling “I love your lectures, love!”.

I’d love my blog to be not some food, but some stimulant.

Someone who thinks only thoughts which (he thinks) are useful.

To me : “One mistake at a time, will you?”.

Criminy! Yesterday, someone took an article I wrote years ago, cut 95% of it and put it into the drafts section. That’s opening a few questions : who, how, why? Some occurrences are bugs, but some are too complicated to be bugs.

Cinematographer Gregg Toland worked with such directors as John Ford on “The Grapes of Wrath”.

“Toland’s trademarks included sharp, deep focus pictures, black-and-white film, ceilinged sets, low-angle lighting, and touches of Germanic expressionism”.

After much success in his early career, Toland remarked, “I want to work with someone who’s never made a movie. That’s the only way to learn anything from someone who doesn’t know anything.” He got his chance in 1941 with Orson Welles and “Citizen Kane”.

Exhausting : when people don’t hear you (and don’t understand) when you’re exhausted.

How come you could be trapped AND unmoored? When?

I reckon there’s a Meta-Talk Toxicity. When we communicate we sometimes have to talk about the ways and paths of… communicating. Sticking to it – and killing something. How and why? Develop.

Ask for a map.

 

Have a nice day!

200 Followers! Thank you!!

Hey everybody! I salute you!

More than two years ago I began with this article :

https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/a-matter-of-levers/

I had some great help from a WordPress blogger, and ONE follower…

Today I reached 200 “real” followers (197 + 3 “by email” – more than 350 with Social Medias)  and reached more than 1000 views in the month of January. Waow!

It’s little when you know some other blogs, but it’s a big satisfaction for me. Merci !

I love to blog. I stand up and I stood up thanks to it. It’s organizing my messy brain, and at the same time I love sharing little ideas (tools) with you.

Thank you for being there! Thank you for liking it when you do…

I invite you to steal anything from it and share it if you think it can be useful, or build your own text from this. Ideas are floating and they are free. Tools should be shared.

One day, someone told me that 40 followers was a classroom.

Well, it’s a bigger one today.

Bonne journée ! Have a nice day!

Ohh : 201 now 🙂

Chains of Movies Wandering

There are so many ways to choose a movie! As some say, Netflix‘s robots are clever enough to suggest you new movies you’d like. Good.

As I don’t really move with the times, I like to choose, therefore I don’t watch any “Channels”. So I build “chain of movies”.

This game says : choose a movie, then find any link to another movie which will be the next.

Some chains are obvious : same director, or same year. Those are easy (all Bergman’s movies, all 1961 movies, all Ava Gardner movies) but you quickly dead end, right?

Chose directors of photography – you can then talk or think about the light in the movies. Reading books, watching the bonuses… Culture.

One of my best travels : Adaptations of Tennessee Williams plays at the cinema (Entertainment made a page on this : http://ew.com/gallery/tennessee-williams-movies/ )

Increase freedom : invent a new link after each movie.

From the last Star Wars you can watch Looper (same director), or Paterson (Actor : Adam Driver). After Patterson, another Jarmusch : Only Lovers Left alive… Ending in Morocco… Hmmm?

Stay with an Actress a few movies long (Emily Blunt). Stop with Edge of Tomorrow. Appreciate the light (Dion Beebe is the Director of Photography). Therefore watch Collateral (double link: Tom Cruise), the great Memoirs of a Geisha (music composed by John Williams : great! – He’s old therefore you can explore the past : go to Sugarland Express).

Choose the composer, but also the State. Thus, you could spend a month watching movies happening is West Virginia or… Tuscany, right?

 

OK, t’was my game. It’s an artifice to discover movies you wouldn’t have thought of.

What’s the tool, toolbox blogger?

Mmhh… How to organize things to get lost on purpose… in order to discover newness. OK.

 

Have a nice day!

Jean-Pascal

 

 

André Breton : Union – a French poem

‘Free Union’, by André Breton.

My wife whose hair is a brush fire
Whose thoughts are summer lightning
Whose waist is an hourglass
Whose waist is the waist of an otter caught in the teeth of a tiger
Whose mouth is a bright cockade with the fragrance of a star of the first magnitude
Whose teeth leave prints like the tracks of white mice over snow
Whose tongue is made out of amber and polished glass
Whose tongue is a stabbed wafer
The tongue of a doll with eyes that open and shut
Whose tongue is an incredible stone
My wife whose eyelashes are strokes in the handwriting of a child
Whose eyebrows are nests of swallows
My wife whose temples are the slate of greenhouse roofs
With steam on the windows
My wife whose shoulders are champagne
Are fountains that curl from the heads of dolphins over the ice
My wife whose wrists are matches
Whose fingers are raffles holding the ace of hearts
Whose fingers are fresh cut hay
My wife with the armpits of martens and beech fruit
And Midsummer Night
That are hedges of privet and resting places for sea snails
Whose arms are of sea foam and a landlocked sea
And a fusion of wheat and a mill
Whose legs are spindles
In the delicate movements of watches and despair
My wife whose calves are sweet with the sap of elders
Whose feet are carved initials
Keyrings and the feet of steeplejacks
My wife whose neck is fine milled barley
Whose throat contains the Valley of God
And encounters in the bed of the maelstrom
My wife whose breasts are of night
—
And are undersea molehills
And crucibles of rubies
My wife whose breasts are haunted by the ghosts of dew-moistened roses
Whose belly is a fan unfolded in the sunlight
Is a giant talon
My wife with the back of a bird in vertical flight
With a back of quicksilver
And bright lights
My wife whose nape is of smooth worn stone and white chalk
And of a glass slipped through the fingers of someone who has just drunk
My wife with the thighs of a skiff
That are lustrous and feathered like arrows
Stemmed with the light tailbones of a white peacock
And imperceptible balance
My wife whose rump is sandstone and flax
Whose rump is the back of a swan and the spring
My wife with the sex of an iris
A mine and a platypus
With the sex of an alga and old-fashioned candles
My wife with the sex of a mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes that are purple armour and a magnetized needle
With eyes of savannahs
With eyes full of water to drink in prisons
My wife with eyes that are forests forever under the axe
My wife with eyes that are the equal of water and air and earth and fire

L’Union libre

Ma femme à la chevelure de feu de bois
Aux pensées d’éclairs de chaleur
A la taille de sablier
Ma femme à la taille de loutre entre les dents du tigre
Ma femme à la bouche de cocarde et de bouquets d’étoiles de dernière grandeur
Aux dents d’empreinte de souris blanche sur la terre blanche
A la langue d’ambre  et de verre frottés
Ma femme à la langue d’hostie poignardée
A la langue de poupée qui ouvre et ferme les yeux
A la langue de pierre incroyable
Ma femme aux cils de bâton d’écriture d’enfant
Aux sourcils de bord de nid d’hirondelle
Ma femme aux tempes d’ardoise de toit de serre
Et de buée aux vitres
Ma femme aux épaules de champagne
Et de fontaine à têtes de dauphins sous la glace
M femme aux poignets d’allumette
Ma femme aux doigts de hasard et d’as de cœur
Aux doigts de foin coupé
Ma femme aux aisselles de martre et de fênes
De nuit de la Saint Jean
De troène et de nids de scalares
Aux bras d’écume de mer et d’écluse
Et de mélange du blé et du moulin
Ma femme aux jambes de fusée
Aux mouvements d’horlogerie et de désespoir
Ma femme aux mollets de moelle de sureau
Ma femme aux pieds d’initiales
Aux pieds de trousseaux de clefs aux pieds de calfats qui boivent
Ma femme au cou d’orge imperlé
Ma femme à la gorge de val d’or
De rendez-vous dans le lit même du torrent
Aux sens de nuit
Ma femme aux seins de taupinière marine
Ma femme aux seins de creuset du rubis
Aux seins de spectre de la rose sous la rosée
Ma femme au ventre de dépliement d’éventail des jours
Au ventre de griffe géante
Ma femme au dos d’oiseau qui fuit vertical
Au dos de vif argent
Au dos de lumière
A la nuque de pierre roulée et de craie mouillée
Et de chute d’un verre dans lequel on vient de boire
Ma femme aux hanches de nacelle
Aux hanches de lustre et de pennes de flèche
Et de tiges de plumes de paon blanc  De balance insensible
Ma femme aux fesses de grès et d’amiante
Ma femme aux fesses de dos de cygne
Ma femme aux fesses de printemps
Au sexe de glaïeul
Ma femme au sexe de placer et d’ornithorynque
Ma femme au sexe d’algue et de bonbons anciens
Ma femme au sexe de miroir
Ma femme aux yeux pleins de larmes
Aux yeux de panoplie violette et d’aiguille aimantée
Ma femme aux yeux de savane
Ma femme aux yeux d’eau pour boire en prison
Ma femme aux yeux de bois toujours sous la hache
Aux yeux de niveau d’eau de niveau d’air de terre et de feu

 

Instagram : bodylanguage

Another translation :

Free Union

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone
My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child’s writing
With brows of the edge of a swallow’s nest
My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof
And of steam on the panes
My wife with shoulders of champagne
And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice
My wife with wrists of matches
My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts
With fingers of mown hay
My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut
And of Midsummer Night
Of privet and of an angelfish nest
With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks
And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill
My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials
With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking
My wife with a neck of unpearled barley
My wife with a throat of the valley of gold
Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent
With breasts of night
My wife with breasts of a marine molehill
My wife with breasts of the ruby’s crucible
With breasts of the rose’s spectre beneath the dew
My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My wife with buttocks of swans’ backs
My wife with buttocks of spring
With the sex of an iris
My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus
My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
My wife with a sex of mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to drink in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

High Horsy & Embers : Chronicle 33

Some Music? The Do : Shake, Shook, Shaken. You’re welcome!

When you write an article for your blog and you’re stuck, you have to let go. Maybe do something else IRL. When you’re back on it the day after, you find your words and your phrases like seeds, like embers, or laying like dead animals. Nothing to do to wakem up. Too bad, but let go. You’ll find a way one day. One is combination (with another sleepy article).

A man withdraws from a woman, and at the same time reproaches her to quit him.

Some say that memories have to be linked to a certain place.

P. Valéry imagines a poor student who has to describe a storm in front of the sea. Instead of a boring list of commonplaces, he can recenter everything on himself. Impossibility to focus, fear, impossible desire to see everything, imagining falling into the sea…

If you can’t name something, does it exist?

Blogging : “See. Then make it see”.

Some have a need and are not sure what it is.

An angel has two aureoles, halos. When it’s cold outside they move near ears, to warmem up.

Wikipedia : “Methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study”.

“Methodology and method are not interchangeable. In recent years however, there has been a tendency to use methodology as a “pretentious substitute for the word method“”.

Develop in 2 pages.

 

 

Have a nice day

#Blig #Blog #Blug : your doughy articles are maybe great, and vice versa

ONE

André Gide was in his seventies during the war; he explains in his diary that he was writing a weekly chronicle for a French newspaper, thus he HAD to write. As an experienced writer, he managed to do it, but he explains his surprise, because some articles were very slowly and painfully written, or some articles seemed absurd for him because terribly trivial & obvious. But he had to hand in his paper…

These two kinds, he says, were considered fabulous and the best of the best, etc, by the audience.

TWO

I read Bill Bruford‘s autobiography. He was the great drummer of Yes or King Crimson. He explains that some concerts were a mystery to him, because when the team on stage felt it was great and magic, it was obviously NOT the public’s opinion. And on the contrary, some lukewarm or boring performances triggered tears of joys and fantastic reviews in the newspaper the day tomorrow. So WTF…

THREE

You bloggers know this pattern by heart :

1. Some days you’re happy with an article, and you get just a couple of likes and no comments. Dang!
2. Some days, it’s very hard to finish, you’re slow, doughy and grey, and you get truckloads of emotion, congrats and joy and you feel like a hen who found panties.

FOUR : Why?

Obviously, because we don’t understand the effects what we do have on others – but I love to make it more Chinese :

Because we focus on “Why” and “How”. And we forget to imagine the “Where” and “When”. Mmhhh?

 

Conclusion : 

Write, write, and write. It’s an exercise, it’s good : maybe some people will hate it or like it, but who knows? Not you! If it triggers one idea in one head, it’s perfect. You’ll never know. Just work. Go on. You’re good!

 

Have a nice day!

 

Instagram : tissybrauen

26 Worst Ways to Wake Up

Well, hi. I woke up with this title in head, therefore I had to write it…

Why 26? I don’t know, but I kept it, though there’s not 26 ways here. It’s like the traps on Facebook : “11 elements which proves you’re more intelligent”. Yeah yeah yeah.

You can add some in the comments!

The 26 Worst Ways to Wake up are :

1. There’s no coffee anymore
2. The cat puked everywhere in the house
3. You had insomnia all night and you slept at least… ten minutes before your alarm buzzed
4. You walk on and crush your glasses
5. There’s a spider on your pillow
6. You shower and go to work and when you’re there it’s your day off

 

 

Your turn!

 

Have a nice day!

 

Instagram : vzcomood

 

From “Looper” to “Star Wars VIII”

1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi was directed by Rian Johnson (born in 1973). As I often like to chain the movies I watch with a link, I watched Looper… his previous film, the day after. Looper is a splendid Sci-Fi movie and I watched a long interview of Johnson in the bonuses. I discovered an adorable geek with a fast brain, capable of talking about Casablanca, Akira, who wrote, organized and directed the movie, which “delivers an uncommonly smart, bravely original blend of futuristic sci-fi and good old-fashioned action”, 93% on Rotten Tomatoes!
2. I really respect and understand that the Star Wars teams wanted this guy, as they wanted Gareth Edwards (born 1975)  for Rogue One. Monsters was a haunting masterpiece (though very low budget), and his Godzilla was… really different.
3. I have a third example : Joss Whedon. Smart father of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly (then Serenity), a great “space western”. After Cabin in the Woods, he was swallowed by Marvel Studios, directing two huge Avengers movies.

 

OK, here’s the pattern : smart directors swallowed by huge systems to make the biggest blockbusters.

Could it be a special Peter Principle?

Did we lose the guys for good cinema? Why?

 

 

 

 

 

How to Unblock what you don’t know what is Blocked?

“How to Unblock what you don’t know what is Blocked?” – yes, I know, my English is a bit drunk at times, though I didn’t (drink).

This article today is a dial. I suppose you got me :

Something is blocked. You have to unblock it AND you think you’re able to, but you don’t know where and what is blocked.

…(a thing, mister Tech, or a situation : when blockness is around, anything can be blocked, right?)…

Like in Diplomacy, or like an Oriental Master watches his trainee, like a Mother in front of her teen’s stubbornness…

 

You turn the thing like a big ball, continuously, until you see the tiny fissure from where you can act. You don’t necessarily find what is blocked, but maybe a way to find it, or something to trigger to make the whole thing unblock itself. What else?

Watch. Displace. Think. Displace. Trigger. Watch. Try. Breathe. Watch. Insist. Try else…

I give you a hint : maybe you have to change the word/tool, like the locksmith changes his key, patiently.

• If you can’t teach, you can maybe influence? (how?)
• If no tools work, maybe try… water?
• If no methods work, what about ruse?
• If you insisted and fail, what about letting go?
• What if blocked was good?
• Wait…

 

Thanks for reading!

• Miles & Pina : Enigmas and what their message addressees make of them
• “I chose you for your weaknesses” – #Pina
• “Biases to Pieces” – when life goes wrong, do something unusual
• Savoir Attendre – Know How to Wait

 

 

 

 

Tricks & Ropes : Two Apprentices

ONE

A Method is ideal, it’s a model, it’s abstract, transmissible and transferable, you can teach it. It’s logical, manageable, and you start from yourself to apply it.

TWO

There’s this new apprentice. He’s young, fast, has instinct, he’s casual, but clever. He’s doing pretty well!

But :

THREE

Of course, as soon as you work with life & its pertained complexities, things begin to hurt, to squeak, to skid and to run out of control eventually. One gets stuck. Two… crashes. Both are surprised!

FOUR

If you’re the person in charge, you have to deal with these apprentices. One has to learn suppleness and how to find colors. Two has to learn methods, to canalize.

FIVE

In French we say “Avoir du métier“, “To have some skills from working experience”.

• Methods are effective quickly if you work on algorithms, on computer programming.
• Instinct is great if you draw, take pictures or write poems. You go girl!

But :

There’s always this “stuck moment” where they understand (I hope so) that they have to learn the other skillside, THEN to learn how to build their own engine with both.

Both have to learn the ropes, the magical ones and the logical ones. One has to learn how to be like water, how to adapt quickly. Two has to learn rules (even to bend’em), to find where the levers are…

 

A diplomat, a teacher, a therapist,

 

This Patterntool can be used to study : Diplomacy, Teaching, Photography, Marriage, Poetry, Writing, Architecture, therapy : in every job involving humans or creativity, your skill is made of strict methods AND the fast ability to watch and adapt to the situation.

 

One question : in your field, on what platform of the scale are you?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

The painter paints then steps back to judge then steps forward to paint then…

The painter paints then steps back to judge then steps forward to paint then…

All this in a loop.

As a perfect metaphor for creativity, which could be defined as :

a dance between effusion and lucidity

Every thinker-creator is aware of this dance of focus/de-focus, and this is a splendid territory to explore in its lightest nuances, its thinnest articulations.

I give you three examples I found from a book from Michel Thévoz :

1. Artaud talked about an intellectual eye in the delirium : intelligence and folly never don’t merge, they revolve around each other.
2. Dubuffet, a painter, advised practicing “alternated construction works”. One day on a painting, the day after on another one. A way to disembark as a visitor each morning.
3. Michaud is famous because he tried drugs to create, but he was very clear on this : everything he wrote was after the dissipation of drugs effects, he wrote in the lucid phases of oscillation, and talks about “miserable miracles”.

 

There’s a need of a “New Eyes” state. Monet wished at times to be born blind and suddenly discover vision, to have a wished freshness…

Baudelaire and Valéry both talk about the urging need of having a critic inside a good poet.

Maybe one secret tool of every creator is disenchantment, is to surf on this descending wave which follow the “miserable miracles” of the fast defocused “inspiration”.

 

Tools :

We could go further, right? How, in your field (blogging, photography, poetry, teaching, management, advertising, writing?), do you articulate this necessary dance? Do you need external things to lose focus? Are you aware of useless rushes when you’re fast, effective and proud… to get nothing good at the end? Where and who is your inner critic? Is this person inside you too powerful, too weak? How is it activated? What would you add? You know what inspiration is, but how do you “fix” it? Do you need to? How do you canalize?

 

Thanks for reading!

A little pattern in Star Wars VIII The Last Jedi (Spoilers!)

I watched the first Star Wars movies (IV) at 11 in 1977. Of course in awe!

When the “greatly anticipated” second trilogy began in 1999, I remember a splendid interview of George Lucas – criticized for writing and characters (oh Jar Jar Binks…) – who really blew a fuse, telling that he was not a god, that he did what he can, and that it was just a movie! It was really a “If you’re not satisfied with it, good to you!”. I loved that! I could imagine the pressure on his back…

Hardcore fans, people who really want to make a Jedi religion, plus the Internet, are like a boiling crowd. If a new Star Wars is too close of the beginning, it’s bad. If it’s too adventurous, it’s bad. Why so serious?

 

Yesterday I watched the new Star Wars (The Last Jedi), and I found a little pattern, a vector-motto. If you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t read the rest!

1. Rey wants to be taught how to tame the Force, and Luke mocks her about what she “thinks she knows” about it.
2. Luke throws the saber over his shoulder.
3. When she thinks she “feels” something, rolling eyes Luke is tickling her hand with a long grass.
4. Luke wants to set the sacred books of Jedi on fire, and Yoda… accelerates it, burning the whole place to ashes, laughing at Luke being sooo serious about a few boring books nobody really read (“Page turners, they are not”, haha).
5. Yoda to Luke : “Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here, now, hmm?”.
6. Poe mocks the seriousness (and uses it) of General Hux (Hugs. With an ‘H’. Skinny guy. Kinda pasty”).
7. Leia has to stun Poe, damned serious about his mutiny.
8. Snoke: [to Kylo Ren] You are no Vader. You are just a child in a mask.
9. Kylo Ren destroying Rey’s intense hope about her parents (“They were filthy junk traders. Sold you off for drinking money”.). Hop.

 

“The greatest teacher, failure is”…

I’m sure I could find much more. It’s a constant pattern here :

“Don’t be that serious, silly!”

I would add : these are just movies, let’s have fun.

 

Thanks for reading!

Take this Waltz / What happened in a Norwegian Wood?

Rock and Pop Music are 4/4, period. Well, most of the time.

When a group composes in 3/4 it’s a waltz, and it’s always interesting. Do they need to breathe differently, to get some air?

I don’t know why, I’m always a little proud when I hear a song and I jump : “Heyyy that’s a waltz!!”. It’s like a smile!

Beatles for the lyrics. Beach Boys for harmonies. Byrds for the surprise (it’s a 5/4 and 3/4). Golden Brown is tricky too. And I would never found Joni Mitchell’s – like floating in harmonic intelligence…

There’s a tool here…

What if your life, your creativity, your job was ALLLL in 4/4? What and how would it be to try 3/4? Take a waltz? What for? Dancing differently? Trying to find doors towards out-of-a-comfort-zone?

What if (try 7/4, haha) you tried something “which would make all of it difficult”? What for : you’re killed/bored by your skills and easiness? Try your left hand? Talk less? Oblique pictures only? Poems without any letter “e”? Tell me…

For the Pet Shop Boys song, my ear/brain system was on alert immediately : “There’s something wrong in this rhythm”. In what field would you need to do that? Sounding different…

Have a nice day!

 

 

Norwegian Wood

I once had a girl
Or should I say she once had me
She showed me her room
Isn’t it good Norwegian wood?

She asked me to stay
And she told me to sit anywhere
So I looked around
And I noticed there wasn’t a chair

I sat on a rug biding my time
Drinking her wine
We talked until two and then she said
“It’s time for bed”

She told me she worked
In the morning and started to laugh
I told her I didn’t
And crawled off to sleep in the bath

And when I awoke I was alone
This bird had flown
So I lit a fire
Isn’t it good Norwegian wood?

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Danish painter

Simplicity – recording of the “banality of everyday life”, this is Vilhelm Hammershøi. people don’t “pose”, they show their back, most of the time.

Yes, he’s a cousin of Hopper, right? People in silence, in melancholy – maybe – are they simply… quiet?

Do you love it? Watch his photography : don’t you think he… doesn’t look like his paintings? ☺

Thanks for reading. Have a great day!

Backwards Propaganda

I have a good example : advertising of radio. It’s so bad, so wrong, so ridiculous that you facepalm and promise yourself to never buy it. EVER.

You’re in a big store and there’s a “commercial announcement” in the loudspeakers. But the voice hesitates and makes mistakes : a disaster. And it goes on, for days, weeks and months. Flee!

It’s almost all the same for propaganda. When the audience is aware (and that’s not too difficult with this mess : big statements, systematic criticism of the “enemy”, exaggeration of successes), all you reap is inner sarcasms, facepalms and rolling eyes.

So yes, the audience is this “You can’t be THAT stupid, right?” state.

There are entire books of jokes “under communism”, and they are hilarious.

Where else are we confronted today to this overboring crap? Companies slogan? Ads?

Propaganda SAYS something about the propagandist. What is it? What do you do about that? Run away? Indifference? As if enthusiasm if you have to? Inner LOLs?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

A Rock in the Current : the Hammershøi Paradigm

V. Hammershøi (1864-1916) was a Danish painter who, in the splendid middle of modernity, stayed in conservatism.

The core of Art, says G. Deleuze, is “What newness does it bring?”. It’s essential, of course, and any good Art History focuses on this force of progress. Art is moving forward. Each important artist, in music or painting, brought something new.

On all the keyboard of a discipline, the “newness” is very funny to study. It’s why I am currently reading a Manet biography. It’s why I love Fellini or Godard in cinema, or Bartok and Debussy in classical music.

Jubilation, it is what you get in front of invention.

But.

There’s always a time when you see there’s a rock in the current.

Well, there’s a pleasure in Art exploration in seeing the one who stays behind, in “his style”, when the whole “correct” colleagues seems to push forward. Hammershøi? It was the time of Van Gogh and Cézanne!

As for every domain, it’s splendid to study “conservatives”. To find out why, what were their motivations. “Where” they were evolving all the same. What they said, wrote, decided. Were they aware of the progresses outside? What they did from the movements they saw. Little elements? A slight change? Nothing at all?

Are and when these artist are re-discovered?

I what other domains should we sometimes watch the unevolving strong rocks in the current? Why? What do we learn?

Thanks for reading!