Black Trite Bloody Skulls

MODE Old Fart ON

Chekhov says that nothing is more awful and depressing than banality.

There ARE more awful things, though… but I agree than the pink and black sides of mundane banal trite clichéd boredom are depressing.

Tritely Tritely Lalala, what are these?

These are the two sides of the SAME boring simple small bowls :

1. PINK : forever love in the sun, sunset kisses, flowers orgy, summer syrup music and schmaltzy wishy-washes…
2. BLACK : forever suffering, fog, zombies, cemeteries, skulls tattoos, autumn bloody roses, gothic music, dark winter moods…

I know a gothic girl (“No I’m not, she says”) who wears black only and collect dozens of pairs of Dr. Martens – and all I see is the simple symmetry : pinky cotton candy and collecting walls of pumps.

Kidults cattle are awful. The herds are 30 or 40 years old, they happily collect Pop Figures, swimming in mainstream boring geeky shit and other TimBurtonneries marketed by the truck. Gothic & Emo people are worse : banal gothical bad music (with choir and interesting hair), piercings and boring “death inspired” tattoos…

With this real horror in front of you have to hide your sarcasms : they all feel “different”…

“We’re different, let’s gather to… resemble”

Peas in a pot.

This week I found this blood stained Walking Dead welcome mat. Oh my.

So some people are amused/fascinated by death? And why not? What I reproach to this somber shit is :

1. its childishitty – impossible to talk about adult things, about masters of the past, about branches of art or music, about the complexities of life, or history… impossible to have a conversation out of gossips and other “all politic world is rotten”…
2. its stupid innocence – here is one crying before one “Don’t open, Dead inside” welcome mat, as his daughter has just been killed in a car accident, or as a wife just died of brain cancer…

Awwwe suddenly it’s not funny anymore?

By the wayyy, it’s Halloween todayyy! Yeyyy!

Will you obey, crowd? Party on with dark make-up? Watch a horror movie? Yes. Good idea. Follow…

MODE Old Fart OFF

sorry…

(bip)

Thanks for reading!

 

Goth Subculture Predictability

French Fall City Walk Photography, Part II

French Fall City Walk Photography, Part II – Oct 31 2018

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

French Fall City Walk Photography, Part I

French Fall City Walk Photography, Part I – Oct 31 2018

 

 

Proust : « Beautiful books are written in a kind of foreign language » – repost

https://wp.me/p6yTGH-6pv

Photography : Hardelot, North of France, Summer 2009…

When you insist until you fail… on purpose.

“When you insist until you fail… on purpose” is a pattern everybody knows and everybody tried one day, right?

For Headlong rush or forging ahead, in French we say : “La fuite en avant” (an escape forward).

Sometimes one does it oneself, but is it on purpose and fully aware – as a strategy, or in a nihilistic despair suicide-like rush?

In other times, we can be part of it, for instance when you work for a company which makes bad decisions in a row :

Incompetence or Cruelty?

There’s these ideas swirling in “forging ahead” : going fast, decide quickly, being a bit crazy, vanity and vainglory, last brightness, grab what we can, or maybe go ahead, destroy what we can, and bury yourself in the end. Who knows?

In dictionaries I found to careen, which seems to be a bit crazy, right? To throw oneself into the fray (if the fray is a fight, why is there another word? Is a fray a messy fight?). “Fling yourself” sounds similar.

All these sound risky and breaknecky… but I titled my article “When insisting…”. Therefore I’d like to talk about a quieter way of forging ahead, a headlong quiet insisting daily rush…

I just found the word “Adamant”, which is splendid! Maybe because in French “Un Diamant” is a Diamond. Your adamant sounds to me like “adamond” – see?

I also found that you add “on” after insist : to insist on, stubbornly, right? Leads me to “pigheadedly” (waowwww!).

This is really funny to discover these words… In French we also say this. Entêté (could be “enheaded”, or têtu comme une mule…

Calmly insisting… until I fail. Makes me think about self sabotage (but “Why would you do that??”), or nihilism.

Sometimes it’s the only way, the only path to walk on, so… you go! Sacrifice? Maybe. Suicide? Maybe. Dark fun? Why not? Manipulation? Ohhhhh… No. To provoke, to trigger an answer, to show a door or a window? Well…

When do we do that? When do we witness that? What to do, then?

Overthinking, I know.

Thanks for reading!

Company Business Mode : “Grab the most you can, haphazardly”

When you head a business, you have many modes. Being cautious, aggressive, fast or thrifty – it could be artificial and funny to list them.

For example we could study the “Fast & Small Unit” mode. Imagine there’s a snow storm in Marseilles, South of France. It never happens, so the whole city is disorganized. A guy working in a garage takes a huge truck, buys hundreds of snow-tires kits, parks it at one entrance of the city with a billboard, and makes a fortune in one day.

Today I study the “Grab the most you can, haphazardly” mode.

Imagine you own a toy store. As it’s trendy, you decide to sell LPs, vinyls, big quantities, big money. Yeyyy!

On the whole, you have two ways :

1. Build an annex, hire three or four music fans to buy, organize, present and sell your vinyls and make big money, becoming the great place to be to buy records.
2. Build nothing, hire nobody, order tons of random vinyls, put them in heaps in corners or in the middle of toys, command your toys specialists to take care of all of it, and grab the most money you can, haphazardly.

It’s funny to watch the consequences of 2 :

• Your team will be exhausted.
• Stressed by questions they don’t have the answer to (they know how to sell toys, but they are not record dealers).
• Your assortment is wrong (“someone” bought the LPs for you and doesn’t know who your customers are and need).
• Your clientele will be furious (it’s badly organized and the employees know nothing).
• Your toys turnover will be dipped in many ways (your store is in chaos, you lack place of toys, your employees are in burn out and don’t have time to do their work properly, etc).

But well : you’ll sell vinyls now, right?

You see what you win, but you don’t realized (or don’t want to) what you lose. What are the consequences? How is it inelegant/uncouth? Looter or capitalist scavenger? Why this fear of doing things properly? How to act within this Universe? Who shall wash the dishes?

Who makes more money in the end? 1 or 2?

– Hey Mister Lego, in which Lou Reed album he sings tululuuuuuu?

Thanks for reading!

Organizing Withdrawal

Seeing to Finesse amid Chaos

The “Titanic Octet” state : stop panicking & arrange twinkles

The Inside Idea of North

Had a good laugh this morning, having coffee on the bed and imagining a tropical happy flowery trumpets ambiance…

Which would be like being in hell, right?

I can’t talk much before my coffee, I don’t want a crazy happy dog (who wanna jog with me) at breakfast, and I don’t want a Cuban/Mexican brass band near my bed…

I need quietness – maybe a little Satie piano music if you want. I’m happy to see the cat lounging on the bed, and a few triangles of sun on the wooden floor. Basking silence…

 

I live in the North of France, it’s 34°F this morning, with a perfect cold wintery sun outside leaving bright still frames everywhere in the room. I talked yesterday with a guy who lived a few years in the South of France, who told me he was depressed by the solid blue skyed “great weather” of Nice or Toulouse : “Give me passing clouds, mist, showers and snow, give me low angle lights and pale blue skies…”.

It’s relative, because North of France is the very South of Norway, for example, right? Do people in North California have the same feeling, the “comfort of being from the North” (even if the State is only 170 years old)? Then, what about Oregon? what’s the North, for Morocco or Tunisia?

Is Autumn comforting to you? Like “Ahhh we’re home!”? Do you prefer Sibelius (Finland) or Villa Lobos (Brazil)? Cat or Dog? North or South? Have a walk in a forest, or party in Cuban bar?

Have a nice sunday!

BooksTeaCat, SportsBeerDog & their Social Interactions

 

 

Sense of Space in the movies

I read an interview of Brian de Palma, in a magazine, a special issue about crime/thriller movies.

De Palma explains that he loves to film crimes, mainly for two reasons :

1. Each crime has a witness, and he’s interested in the process of showing a witness.
2. It a great game of directing possibilities, building suspense or having fun with image storytelling.

In a way, it’s already the subject of an article : here, he’s not really interested in the bad guy’s mind or motivations. And the victim(s) : not really either…

Then he tells us about the stairs scene in The Untouchables. Something like : “Someone will get killed in a station, let’s have fun with a complex suspense scene with the big stairs, adding other people and a baby carriage”. De Palma tells that it’s complicated, with many people and points of views involved, therefore he had to “explain” the scene, the space, the stage, very carefully… to the audience.

And it was a funny way to play with the iconic carriage/stairs scene of Eisenstein’s Potemkine!

 

I have three names in my mind when we talk about the sense of space in the movies : John McTiernan (Die Hard), Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) and Brian de Palma. They take care of us, spacely talking. It can be with a map, a way of moving the camera, light, but also the way people look at each other (the house in the forest, in the 13th warrior, is a great example).

When you’re aware of that, you have one more criterion in your toolbox when you judge a scene. For example, in the end of Alien 3, we don’t understand the alien trap at the end, it’s confusing.

Do you have other directors in mind? And in other areas, like photography or teaching, in museology or music, what would be the “sense of space”, the “I take care of the audience, I want people to have a map in head before and during action”?

 

The tool I extract here is :

If De Palma likes crime not for the crime but for the images possibilities it gives him…

If I often like Art “not mainly” for beauty, for the paintings, for the photographs or for the poems, but for the words the artist says about them…

In other fields, what could it be?

When you love something not for the “normal” reason, but for the “à côtés”, the side issues, the interesting words besides, the…

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toyal Disturbance – Photography

Many MTWs (Picasso)

Marie-Thérèse Walter was one of Pablo Picasso’s mistress. Today we see her as a Type (young, sweet, sunny, blond, athletic girl), which is incorrect but interesting, if you study Types along the life of the painter.

We all know the Picasso-esque messy faces, sideways-full-faces with eyes all around, with an ear on the forehead et voilà.

Today I chose three ways for MTW : photographies, paintings, and drawings. All of them are very different, though you quickly realize he managed to show something of her on each. Showing the person, her kindness and her curves, her half smile, her strength, her splendid profile and…

…well : see by yourself :

“Marie-Therese, Face and Profile” (1931) by Pablo Picasson is shown in this undated handout photo released to the media on Dec. 5, 2012. The portrait of the artist’s French mistress Marie-Therese Walter is included in the Guggenheim’s survey “Picasso: Black and White” through Jan. 23. Photographer: Beatrice Hatala/Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society, New York/The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum via Bloomberg

 

Seeds for the mind : what does a painter show? What do we see in Goya “official” royal family portrait? Reality, or what’s inside? Lines, or the painter’s feeling?

What could we do with these questions? In photography, poetry, storytelling.

What is hidden and shows something?

Have a great day!

Nietzsche quote repost : “The struggle of maturity is to…

https://wp.me/p6yTGH-6in

How to translate Mallarmé’s poem Apparition in English and realize…

There are maybe four great French poets of this time : Verlaine, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and… Mallarmé.

Mallarmé’s poetry is haughty, “learned”, puzzling, abstract. Thus, it’s a game for the poetry lover – and impossible to translate properly!

Here’s the end of Apparition :

Qui jadis, sur mes beaux sommeils d’enfant gâté
Passait, laissant toujours de ses mains mal fermées
Neiger de blancs bouquets d’étoiles parfumées.

I found this translation :

Who, in the blissful dreams of my happy childhood
Used to hover above me sprinkling from her gentle hands
Snow-white clusters of perfumed stars.

Okey, but no… It should be more like…

Who, long ago, along my spoiled child lovely sleeps
Was passing, always letting, from her improperly closed hands,
Snow some bouquets white of perfumed stars.

As always, translation poetry is a mess, and with this guy it’s worse, because… even in French we’re not sure!

• Enfant gâté means spoiled child, but it’s ALSO a positive happy thing, it can be “overly happy childhood” (mmmh maybe it’s the same in English?).
• And here, sprinkling sounds wrong to me. She doesn’t “sprinkle”, but, as her hands are “mal fermées” (“incompletely closed”, but on purpose, right?), she from her hands lets perfumed stars… snow.
• The color white must be placed after the word in French : “un bouquet blanc”. If you put it before, you sound “poetic”, which made me write “a bouquet white”. How does it sound?

Ahhh, have fun, thanks for reading!

I added Mallarmé painted by Manet, his friend – who could perfectly paint him academically, but chose, I suppose, to show something else…

Apparition

La lune s’attristait. Des séraphins en pleurs
Rêvant, l’archet aux doigts, dans le calme des fleurs
Vaporeuses, tiraient de mourantes violes
De blancs sanglots glissant sur l’azur des corolles.
— C’était le jour béni de ton premier baiser.
Ma songerie aimant à me martyriser
S’enivrait savamment du parfum de tristesse
Que même sans regret et sans déboire laisse
La cueillaison d’un Rêve au coeur qui l’a cueilli.
J’errais donc, l’oeil rivé sur le pavé vieilli
Quand avec du soleil aux cheveux, dans la rue
Et dans le soir, tu m’es en riant apparue
Et j’ai cru voir la fée au chapeau de clarté
Qui jadis sur mes beaux sommeils d’enfant gâté
Passait, laissant toujours de ses mains mal fermées
Neiger de blancs bouquets d’étoiles parfumées.

La La Land – Lyrics – Emma Stone : repost

https://wp.me/p6yTGH-639

Baltimore Text found in a Church, Part I

Where I was a teen, in the seventies, there was a paper.

People where photocopying it for each other, even in France, as a source of life wisdom…

“Manuscrit trouvé dans une église à Baltimore”

I remember it pretty well because I liked very much some (most) of the sentences :

Here’s the text. Tomorrow or the day after, I’ll blog about my own version I wrote, watching my little daughters growing up. It’s a bit different, you’ll see.

By the way, it was NOT a text found in a church, but a prose poem written by a man called Max : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata – I learnt it today : in these times, you believed it was found in a church…

Thanks for reading!

 

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

 

Decisions

Conversation today with a guy, about decisions.

Authors like Gladwell, Taleb, Kahneman, come to the same idea :

When you have to take a decision, the good one is always the fast, unthought one.

Call it “instinct”, “intuition”, the result is the same.

Overthinking it, weighing pros & cons, asking others, etc : it’s not the good way.

It’s been studied for decades by many authors, who converge to the same idea : intuition is fast and effective, follow her path.

Some more esoteric authors like Chopra will talk about quantum physics, or about plugging to the Universe, it doesn’t matter : their books are full of these stories of quick decisions they had to take, following their fast instinct to encounter great persons or life changing situations.

The few authors I read say our brain work very fast, in seconds, under our conscience, with elements like experience, analogies, and yes : instinct.

I say this : getting older, I apply it more and more. Before a decision, I go fast, I don’t think that much. I know, and I go there.

But sometimes my old schemes win : and here I am undecided, with my mental drawing things… losing all the sense of it. That’s life!

Thanks for reading!

When to NOT pay attention is an Art for decision making

Savoir Attendre – Know How to Wait

A thinktool for bloggers : Intertextuality (« the meaning of a text does not reside in the text ») : repost

https://wp.me/p6yTGH-75V

Chinese Poetry : “When the water-clock sounds…

When the water-clock sounds three times, I realize it’s midnight
Lovely wind and cold moonlight everywhere in pine and bamboo,

we sit here in perfect idleness, empty and still, saying nothing :
just two people in the shadows of a medicine tree, just two people.

Meng Chiao

 

#minimalism

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