Do you have a cow? – “La rate au court bouillon” & a few other French idioms

On va quand même pas se mettre la rate au court-bouillon!

It’s our way to say something like “Bahh we won’t get worked up/have a cow!”. It means in French : “We won’t put our spleen in the stock”. Yes the bodily organ in the broth…

Well obviously we won’t worry to much for this…

 

On n’est pas sortis de l’auberge

We have big problems to deal with, therefore “We’re not close to be out of the inn”.

Yeah, “We’re not out of the woods yet”…

 

A la Saint-Glinglin

Well, there’s no Saint Glinglin in France (or anywhere), therefore it means : “When pigs can fly”.

Never

 

Ça mange pas de pain

For “It can’t do any harm”, we say “It doesn’t eat any bread”. Makes sense?

You can always try…

 

La confiture aux cochons

To give jam to the pigs is our “To throw pearls before swine”. Yours is better, right?

It’s useless, lost energy

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Amelie Lens is dancing

I follow Amelie Lens on Instagram. She’s a Belgian DJ and she’s very very pretty. She has an “official” account with almost 300.000 followers. Good!

I just watched her live on Instagram.

YouTube her! You’ll find long concert movies made of this : short patterns, loud and fast rhythms, her happy energy to trigger these things. And no music at all. Not intent. Not a single idea. And she’s very pretty. And she’s dancing in front of her turntables.

Turning buttons happiness…

She made a hit, I think. Here it is. 1 720 964 views :

 

Then : you don’t understand, right? Me neither.

I tried. I’m interested in this music. I like to explore (though I prefer to explore other musical fields, from Boulez to ECM).

 

I love repetition and energy, like The Field (this guy know EXACTLY what he’s doing) who knows how to make you wait until orgasm :

 

Or the dry abstract Trentemoller, like a lego builder :

 

Or the modutating loud energy of Digitalism (two single ideas, but good ones – an harmonic one and a production one (dirty/clear)) :

 

I can even feel the trancy vulgarity of Astrix (listen all of it, loud) :

 

Or Vitalic, like a mainstream gorgeous thing, right?

 

Chemical Brothers, with the ever building Surface to Air (don’t watch the clip) :

 

 

All these guys are “music programmers”. Their musical tools are pretty… weak (small simple melodies, big rhythms, wait/relaunch processes), but for all of them I see what they do. I notice their “thing”. It’s delightful sometimes!

Not for Amelie Lens. I watched plenty of hers. The happiness of triggering buttons, wait/relaunches, and fuck : not a single idea.

It’s useful to have this milestone. The zero one. Röyksopp is the other milestone. At the other side of the bar : intoxicating “too many ideas”.

Why? How? What do I miss? Why do people love this? When something you don’t understand/dislike seems to reach zero, what about this rush of the mind : “What?”. Is the seek worth it?

Why do I dream to ask her this question :

“How do you progress?”

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Beware! Bigwigs are visiting!

CEOs and other bigwigs visit one local office, a local store.

They are surrounded by the local chiefs and managers, like butterflies around a lamp in the night, who laugh too hard to the Big Chieves jokes…

Right? See it?

But of course, the bigwigs warned they will make an appearance. The “important visit by the important heads” was scheduled weeks before!

Thus, for and since days, everything has been hidden, fixed, changed, modelled… to please the elephants.

Finally, the place visited by the pointy shoed top managers and their staff has NOTHING to see with the “real place”. It’s now like a decor.

More : bigwigs talk only with local bigwigs. It’s almost a rule. Emperor not talk to proles and plebs!

 

TOOL :

If you were a smart BigWig, you would/should :

1. NEVER warn you’ll visit your stores and offices – Surprise!
2. TALK to common people, longly, in private, without any managers around

 

That’s all, folks! That simple! This is a double simple way to know what’s really happening there…

But do you want to know? Or do you like the fake “as if” masked game everybody’s playing around you?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : _bodylanguage_

 

 

Jeffrey Catherine Jones, American artist

Jeffrey Catherine Jones (1944-2011)

How come I didn’t know her work? I grew up and a little part of my interest was aimed at Heroic Fantasy. I read a few Conan books, I loved Fritz Leiber. Illustrators, for me? Two names : Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo. Then I loved John Howe, Roger Dean…

I love this “Fantasy” work and I spent a good hour on Pinterest, fascinated. I suppose I found two reasons :

1. Non finito : it’s like not finished, therefore more alive, more modern, I dunno…
2. Weird structures : I always have a half-second of “What’s happening here?”, which is something I love

Non Finito : Inchoateness in Art

Strangeization Tool & Eyebrow Criteria

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Stormy night in France : Grumbling Tweets

We had storms for hours during the night, in North of France, a real crocodile line…

This morning I had fun watching the badly written angry French texts on Twitter. Grumbling against elements….

Here are some for you, for no reason. I added mistakes on purpose to translate the ones I found :

This, this is not a storm, it’s Thor who just came on Earth

It’s stormy everyday it’s not even funny any more

The storm he is a little to much angry there

The next one I hear he says “gnia gnia the storm I love it” I signal him

Thank you storm, thanks to you I spent a beautiful three hours night

Rain + storm this is all I hate, I sincerely think to put a man in my life

The storm in the light of day, yes. In the middle of the night : no.

He’s not kidding, the storm

Usually I don’t care about the storm but now it goes too far

I have Netflix and a storm, I lack arms and candies

I’m the only dumb who loves storm

I believe the storm he takes too much the confidence here however

It’s not a storm anymore these are earthquakes there

People who love storm it stays a mystery to me, it makes me I wanna die

I love when there’s a storm like that it appeases me too much

Hi today a storm AGAIN, with forest animals we’ve had enough we will have a manisfestation against the storm clouds. We’ll say “No the the storm clouds, yes to the luminous sun”. And we will block the Poudlard Express.

Storm, what a splendid weather to make love

 

Today we will have more. Twitter #orage.

Have a nice day! Be safe!

 

 

 

 

Macrophotography : 4 little guys I met

 

 

 

Moments & Epiphanies

ONE

As a bookseller I just ordered the French version of Dan & Chip Heath‘s “The Power of Moments” :

“In this book, we explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work”.

You’re probably like me feeling confusedly that there’s something true here, hmm?

 

TWO

Today I opened a book about Andrew Wyeth, one of the three Wyeth painters (Andrew is the father, Jamie the son, N.C. the grand-father), and I found this quote (in French, I try to re-English it) :

I know nothing more enthralling than to be simply sit in a corn field on a windy day, listening to the dry rustle.

 

THREE

Yeah, “moments”…

I admit I’ve been obsessed for years, as a young man, with the idea of “Perfect Moments”. I ask Wiki about Epiphany (I bolded the bold) :

An epiphany is an experience of sudden and striking realization. Generally the term is used to describe scientific breakthrough, religious or philosophical discoveries, but it can apply in any situation in which an enlightening realization allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective. Epiphanies are studied by psychologists and other scholars, particularly those attempting to study the process of innovation.

 

Where do I go with you here? We all know that we remember intense moments (good or bad). The first time you took your lover’s hand. A haunting place, a new city. Meeting a new person and becoming like close friends in a few minutes. A life changing idea. A religious ecstasy. An harmonic moment in family, a summer evening…

I think we all know this, in a way or another!

 

FOUR

I think we sometimes “need” a moment like that, in the deepest of ourselves.

Therefore, I believe we sometimes have a strong tendancy to get “out of the railroad” (for example : doing unusual thing, traveling in new places), just to find more chances to dive into these kind of “moments”. We push ourselves… unthinkingly.

So OK, there’s a book about the “usefulness” of these, but in the end, you and me know that we can’t really trigger them. Being ready for ecstasy is a great way to never meet it!

• Maybe one can place oneself on positions where it “could” happen.
• Maybe to have our eyes opened for little moments, or more precisely to be ready to catch spoons, minutes and modest sparkles, like remembering that a new day could be the beginning of some experience. The happy, hidden hope to discover a new point of view, maybe just that.
• Possibilities.
• Including intoxicating ones, marvellous ones, overturning ones!

 

But we can’t program epiphanies, right?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Paths of Iron & Supple Escapes

“Biases to Pieces” – when life goes wrong, do something unusual

Inventing Ecstasy? Inventer l’extase…

 

Instagram : bodylanguage

 

 

 

Paths of Iron & Supple Escapes

“No one knows what the body can do”
Spinoza

 

Railroad. In French we say le “Chemin de Fer” : “Path of Iron”.

Deleuze, the philosopher, used to talk about a “between people geography”, links made of hard lines, supple lines, escape lines…

 

ONE

Well, that makes sense : we are surrounded by powers, who want us to stay on paths of iron, right? “Obey! Rules are made for you too! It’s dangerous outside!”.

But desires and grapes of possibilities transform our lives in (oh a new word!) an unremitting evolution of connections.

Paths of Iron are there : what you’re told to do (education, instruction, social obligations). We follow and we have to. Laws and contracts and pressures.

But we watch outside, by the window, we dream and play with possibilites. And about what the body can do…

 

TWO

Supple, subtle, little : now we talk about what happens “under”, in small moments : the small magic, the unpredictable.

In a company, under the schedules and duties, people (and bodies) never cease to dream, to change, to try, to escape control, to invent, to dig little tunnels. Lines of life! A smile, a gesture, tiny cracks (see the light?), a triangle of sun on a table, a seventeen words conversation…

Haecceity! A dance, or a resistance. Denying iron!

We are a group of different speeds and slownesses, an individual, a singularity, constantly inventing grapes of possibilities, a play of forces or encounters. Lines, new lines, inventions.

 

THREE

We can’t grow if we don’t escape, if we don’t walk out of the paths of iron. We all have our ways to do that : knowledge, hunting, exploring, trying…

One escape line can last one minute or two weeks or a life. An on our own becoming…

Fuir -> To Flee/To Leak – a #Deleuze word game

 

c’est toujours sur une ligne de fuite qu’on crée, certes pas parce qu’on imagine ou qu’on rêve, mais au contraire parce qu’on y trace du réel, et que l’on y compose un plan de consistance. Fuir, mais en fuyant, chercher une arme.

it’s always on an escape line that we create, not because we imagine or because we dream, but in the contrary because we trace some real life on it, and because we arrange a consistency. To flee, but in fleeing, to seek a weapon.

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

(thanks to Pierre Ansay – may Deleuze’s tools spread)

 

Tools from an Opera director

To direct an opera is certainly a mess! You have to deal with a “text and music” system, then with musicians, singers, light, settings, the past… all this with a vision, right?

I read an interview of Claus Guth who directed a La Bohème (Puccini) in Paris this winter. Here are his ways :

1. Two years before the opera, he takes the book, reads it, takes some notes, and… put it back in the drawer for resting.
2. He listens to the music in loop, for days. He’s happy to not understand the words (he’s German, Puccini Italian), and writes the ideas he gets : irrationally, emotionally, viscerally.
3. Then he works : searches about the opera the composer the writer the historical backgrounds…
4. After months of thinking about it, he gathers his team to talk around a table, to get ideas. A concept emerges…
5. One year before the opera, they try things with scenery, settings.
6. Then he retires, alone, for a few weeks.
7. He begins to work with singers and confront them with what he wants to do. Some play along rapidly, some have to be guided… to be creative.
8. According to him, the main thing is the music. If the text is good but he doesn’t like the music, he can’t do anything. But if the text is weak but the music good (which happens often in operas), he will work on it, on elevation…
9. He likes to keep rehearsals secret, wanting the audience to be surprised at the premiere.

 

La Bohème is about poor artists in Paris in the 1830s. For me it’s the best opera ever! Therefore I’m never annoyed by directing transpositions in other styles, the fifties, or other countries, etc. It can be ugly, but it’s most of the time interesting. I really think that we can do anything with a masterpiece : you’ll never hurt it really. Playing with archetypes, putting’em into other universes, it’s often amazing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_boh%C3%A8me

I have to say that I already watch dozens of La Bohème happening in the streets of Paris and in frozen attic rooms (2nd picture). Guth decided to put it in space (!) (1st picture), in a lost spatial station, playing with a game of souvenirs, double characters, etc…

As they say in Libération, the French newspaper, it was “sidereally staggering” ( http://next.liberation.fr/theatre/2017/12/07/une-boheme-siderale-et-siderante_1615146 )

“we were flabbergasted (under the scream and catcalls) because we were suddenly seeing the bohemian lifestyle, from 1840 or 2017), on stage, all naked : artistically battybonkers, suicidal, not looking for approval, desesperate and sparkling like in a dream plunge to escape the misery of life”…

 

It’s true that the idea of Bohemian life (being a poor artist, with casualness and freedom (and parties and alcohol) it implies) is a problem : there’s a lie, a too big differences between your ideals and the reality…

 

 

I wrote this article to throw a few tools on my little table :

• In Art, one pleasure is to compare readings, interpretations of a same piece.
• It’s maybe creative to take a long time to work on something, with weeks or months of rest between work. Simmering.
• Explore a masterpiece casually – without holding all the cards, just to see what it triggers in you. Then explore, read, and watch how what you fiund weaves with what you imagined.
• Collaborations and conversations : sources of ideas.
• Strength given by pauses alone. Watch things grow into you.
• Find from where you can grow things (here : music) when a system in not entirely satisfying.
• Keep things secret to have more impact.

 

These tools are somewhat obvious. Where will we apply them? Poetry? Photography? Couple? Teams? Companies? Literature?

 

Thanks for reading, and sorry for my English…

 

“A Room with a View” & nuances

Early 1900. A young English (and passionate) woman visits Italy with her chaperon cousin. In the hotel she meets George, a quiet English young man who gives her a kiss. Back to England, she is to be married to Cecil, an inhibited tight ass aristocrat. Of course, the young man and his father find a house not far. “Lucy begins to tell a series of lies, mostly to herself, about what and who she really wants for and in her life”.

A Room with a View. I love this movie and I watched it many times. At the very beginning you understand that you’ll have fun with the shock between upper class English demeanor and the call of life of sunny Italy.

I was amazed how Forster (who wrote the book) draws footbridges within the two universes. Lucy’s family is wealthy and well educated, but fun-loving (her brother is a light hearted music lover). Forster is anticlerical but his priest character is very smart and funny.

You constantly feel the forces of life and daring possibilities moving strongly under the polite British maneers : the fiery writer character who loves to get lost in the city of Firenze, the cousin Charlotte who struggles between rules and what she likes (or liked), Lucy’s family, the way she plays Beethoven, etc. One of the pleasures of the film is to see the pile of lies needed to keep a “respectability”, until the whole thing crashes down…

This scenario should be studied a little more. I wrote this article because of this tool/structure :

1. Find two opposite universes A and B.
2. Show where are the doors and potential bridges between them.
3. Show possibilities, desires, will to discover and explore.
4. Show what part of B exists already in A (and vice versa).
5. Have fun.

This structure can be used for the two faces of yourself, two merging companies, a new couple… what else?

What about the “Ahh screw it!” moment?

Thanks for reading!

Photography : There’s something on the left, Part 3

Provence, France, 2018

Canon G9X. No retouch at all. Only cropping.

 

 

 

Photography : There’s something on the left, Part 2

Provence, France, 2018

Canon G9X. No retouch at all. Only cropping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photography : There’s something on the left, Part 1

Provence, France, 2018

floweries and thornies…
Canon G9X. No retouch at all. Only cropping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should we know about the Masters?

I heard about an old French movies critic who was wondering about the fact that many cinema enthusiasts where like stuck in their time, knowing nothing about the Masters of the past.

That’s a good question, right?

It’s the same for other Arts. You can be a good photographer without knowing much about big photographers or movements in the 70s, or in the 50s, the 20s, whatever.

I do ask myself though. Who are the masters? What did they bring? What can we learn from them?

I do think it’s not really a problem, though. In Cinema, you can enjoy Nolan without knowing Kubrick, you can watch The Sopranos without knowing anything about Coppola’s The Godfather.

It’s a “me” thing, I beg.

It’s because I think that the main string in Art’s harp is this question :

“What newness is brought, here?”

Novelty is pulsing along the long course of human creativity. This is what I seek. As Zola says before Manet : “What I seek before all else in a painting is a man, not a painting.”

For example I love Stephen Shore‘s photographies, but I also love he’s a thinker, that he says that a photography has to be “solved”. I love to know what were his… concerns, and how he tried to find solutions, etc…

I’d say this is a trait. Thinkers. They like to do things with passion, but they also like to think about it, about the links with other arts, other eras, other times. Links. Links. Links. What grows. What dies. What moved, or rotated. Links. Links. Links. Words and analysis…

I like to know who are the Masters of the past, and who they were, how they were working, what they discovered and shared. Not necessarily to try to be better, my, oh no.

Just to have a map of the ground I’m walking on.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Darky Droplets Photography

Where’s the Photographer’s Pleasure?

I was at a wedding in Provence, south of France, and I met a few photographers, from the multibigcamera-ed professional to the pouched amateur connoisseur.

I watched them working – with huge admiration for the pro guy, who shot everywhere for literaly hours, never quitting his sparkling eye. On a “Searching an angle for a target” mode, he was amazlingly fast (and he was very kind to offer me a few tips). As always it’s enthralling to watch an experienced professional at work.

I turned over a few rocks

 

I talked with a few of these guys – and to other people with passion (as a cabinetmaker). I had taken my little Canon cam (I took 923 picts!) and was having so much fun walking among the olive trees that I was questioning myself about the photographer’s pleasure. Where is it? What’s the source, the deepest axis? So I asked them!

I found this grass

 

For me, I know it’s all about childhood. I love to be alone, following my own rhythm, it really makes me think about the pleasure of discoveries – like when I was looking for insects in my garden as a kid. I think my modest “creativity” is linked to “this” reconnection.

I knew it was the same for the cabinetmaker, I saw this spark in his eye when he showed me a picture of a bench he made… the shape of a clothes pin! This smile…

Therefore the consequences are : a will to experiment (here, with the light, with frames, with subjects, with everything), then a will to share (which is similar to “Mummy, look what I found” of the seashells gatherer), a state of mind which is very exploratory and casual. The “what if” pleasure is infinite, right?

The sun’s behind

 

I asked the others, imagining it was the same – but nope : it was not. Of course, there’s a common bouquet of things : what to shoot, when and how. Their pleasure, though, was like really in the machine, the camera itself. Technology. Effectiveness. Rules of photography. How to make the proper photography.

Knowing the rules and the User Manual is very important for them (when I just want to try everything – even in the wrong way – especially the wrong way!). Being effective and fast, that’s important when you’re a pro! But not for me : I read the instruction manual… from time to time.

And an ant

Click!

 

Tool :

Where’s your pleasure, in your field? What does that mean? How do you explore? What does the others do? Where is their axis? What can we learn, and how?

 

Hey it’s my article N°1001!

Thanks for reading!

To the sea 2/2… (Cabourg Normandy France)

Yello : Ciel Ouvert (Open Sky)

Just listen loud in the night alone and dance it along like smoke

Blonde Redhead : “Elephant Woman”

Blonde Redhead

“Elephant Woman”

Angel I can see myself in your eyes
Angel won’t you feel for me from your heart
Do return my heart to me
No don’t insist I’m already hurt

Elephant girl
It was an accident unfortunate
Angel threw me like a rubber man
Aiming for the ground
Why amuse yourself in such way
No don’t insist I’m already hurt

Lay me down on the ground softly softly
Don’t remove my head hurts much too much

You never return it
Well I wouldn’t miss it
I shed no tears for broken me
You never know it my peace of mind
Now inside and outside are matching

Why amuse yourself in such a way
No don’t insist I’m already hurt
If you never return it
Will it break your wings
Will you shed no tear for broken me

Les Pieds dans la Lune (Feet in the moon)

 

♪ Les pieds dans la lune ♪

Combien de pages ont vu s’échouer
Les gerbes d’orage en bris de mots
Contents les vents se sont marrés des tours noyés
Dans une mare de cent regrets

Combien de vagues j’ai ravalé
Quand dans la marge tu n’avais pied
Violent courage que ce pas fait
Qu’on sait défait
Mais cède s’aide cède à qui sait donner

Sur la lune à pieds
De plumes en funambules
J’essaie de filer
Les pieds dans la lune
Qui d’amour jamais ne s’est laissé tomber

Sur la lune à pieds
De plumes en funambules
J’essaie de filer
Les pieds dans la lune
Qui d’amour jamais ne s’est laissé tomber