Photography : Dawn in France… from my window!
Month: March 2020
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 6
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 6
Jünger writes :
It seems that in particularly looted regions, one found refuge in arts like in lifeboats, mostly in poetry and music.
***
Types of confinements? Sometimes we look like prisoners of course, or castaways, shipwrecked sailors (oh I read so many books about this “type”, very curious about what they did and how), but also otakus, those people who do not want social contact at all, hermits, waldgängers…
But I prefer to place myself in the role of these two guys in Jünger’s fable On the Marble Cliffs : the narrator and his brother live in a hermitage, a closed retreat, a life of refinements and quietness, with plenty of books and a garden. Outside, there’s a village and surrounding hills, “who feel increasing pressure from the unscrupulous and lowly followers of the dreaded head forester”… Brrr!
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Marble_Cliffs
- https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/2016/04/24/waldganger-uses-the-forest/
***
New words I discovered yesterday : bollix (but, verb or noun?), stake (but, wager, and bet??).
Each new word is like a “hole plugged” and filled, and in the same time it appears like an enigma, a radioactive element full of questions : When do people use this? What is the difference between it and its synonyms? Etc…
***
This epidemic made me think about Social Medias. To find informations, accounts, opinions…
- Facebook is useless. Who uses the search bar here? And if you find a good text from a doctor on the web, do you ask him as a friend on Facebook to follow him ? Nope. It’s just fun, voilà.
- Twitter is better but need constant adjustments, I love the way I find new persons and things through retweets.
- Reddit is great, à ma grande surprise, because it’s moderated. There you can follow a person, but you mostly follow a subject.
There are really useless and hilarious and interesting SubReddits, like /aww, /damnthatsinteresting, /kamikazebywords, /technicallythetruth, /oddlystatisfying, /birdsforscale or /catsstandingup, or /hmm.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatsStandingUp/
***
I think it’s a common human law : people don’t really think, and they feel invincible. When the epidemic began to expand out of China, if you were a minimum informed you knew you had to buy some food, wash your hand, and avoid crowds.
I began to follow the /coronavirus Reddit and read accounts of young guys in Italy telling that they were mocked if they wore a mask. “It’s just a flu” will become a phrase people will remember in the future, as a symbol of hurdy-gurdy-stupidity. Today they have almost one thousand deaths per day, in Italy…
Today we hear about Spring Break parties or about guys in the world arguing like “Nobody will tell me what to do and when to do it”. These things shall pass, for two reasons :
- Stupidity and not listening, with consequences (maybe regrets)
- “No Choice”, sadly, with consequences too
When in India or Mexico or Africa we have confinement, people have to go out because they are not paid if they don’t work, or they massively move to go home (which is far elsewhere), or it’s so crowded in cities that when you go erranding, you’re packed, want it or not.
***
In the constant irony of life, there’s religion. In many place on the planet – and each one has its own “God”, right? – religious gatherings lead to explosions/disseminations of cases, therefore deaths. Very curious to see this range of religious or conservative milieus – because what? Hmmm. Example in France :
Thanks for reading! Stay safe!
Have a nice day! Stay safe!
Postmodern Short Stories in America?
Hmm Postmodern Short Stories in America? That’s a good title, right?
I always loved short stories of the USA, and in my life I read a lot of these – I remember Faulkner, Salinger, Carver, but also Fitzgerald, William Goyen, Flannery O’Connor, Edith Wharton. I bought and didn’t read K. A. Porter, and in English – which is difficult for me – W. Cather, or more Raymond Carver…
Finishing the David Lodge autobiography, I found these three names : Brautigan, Barthelme and Coover, as postmodernists. Puzzled, because I know Brautigan a bit, I googled and found this subject : Postmodern Short Stories in America.
So, I did a little search and found this (I bolded the bold) : “The history of the short story in mid-twentieth century America continues to be marked by a tension between the twin fictional poles of realism and romance, the story of accurate ‘reportage’ and the story of fantasy and imagination.”
Thus :
“The short story also encourages a reflexive self-consciousness about literary form, a propensity to build into the story a commentary on itself – and a mingling of genres and registers.”
THIS is interesting, right?
Because, what is “postmodernism”, after all, now we’re… after that?
Wikipedia is a messy mess, look what I’ve found :
Skepticism, irony, or rejection of the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism, self-referentiality, epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, and irreverence.
Let’s dig :
- John Barth is said parodic, “The process of making a novel is the content, more or less.”
- Donald Barthelme, “…experimental, he avoids traditional plot structures, relying instead on a steady accumulation of seemingly unrelated detail. Subverting the reader’s expectations.”
- Robert Coover, magic realism, self-referentiality.
- William H. Gass, the stylist : “His prose has been described as flashy, difficult, edgy, masterful, inventive, and musical.”
See why I’m intrigued?
Do you know some of them?
Thanks for reading!
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 5
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 5
There’s one newsletter I follow, more professional, by the MIT, it’s here :
https://forms.technologyreview.com/coronavirus-tech-report/
***
Watched a duo, great movies : The Post (Spielberg – 2017), and All the President’s Men (Pakula – 1976), same newspaper (Washington Post), same executive editor (Ben Bradlee, by Tom Hanks and Jason Robards). Interesting concepts (freedom of the press, sources, decisions, investigation methods), strongly increased by this pleasure : comparison between the films. The bonuses on the Blu-rays are fantastic!
When the pleasure is in the comparison
In a way, the second movie is the following of the first, though it’s been directed 40 years before. I LOVE to couple movies, like Fellini‘s 8 1/2 and Allen‘s Stardust Memories. It can be a remake, or a ‘connected’ film – which is the case here.
***
When I was a teenager I suddenly understood why music was so… pleasantly toxic to me sometimes, with Ennio Morricone or Mike Oldfield for example. I know people love music for different reasons – energy, memories, genre, a voice, virtuosity, lyrics. My reason is the pleasure given by modulations.
I found an article in French, you don’t have to read it, just click on the two YouTube movies. The guy gives examples of typical “Floating Harmonies” invented by John Williams in Harry Potter or Indiana Jones. It’s here : https://compositiondemao.com/harmonies-flottantes/
You have have an… unexpected torsion in the middle of it, before it goes back to normal.
Williams does this all the time, it brings magic to a melody, therefore you can’t forget it. The Vader (The Imperial March) theme is based on this trick :
On this page ( https://www.leandrogardini.com/single-post/2017/02/12/The-Williams-Modulating-Themes ) , watch the Minority Report (first movie). His “Floating Harmonies” decisions make him modulate the melody (at 0’56”, 1’45”, 2,07″).
This makes me think that Morricone and Williams are the best movie music composers. This makes me adore Joni Mitchell, Mike Oldfield, Abba, Röyksopp, or… Puccini!
- Modulating Solos : The Pat Metheny Swervy Syndrome
- The Strong Liquors of Dissonances
- “Pick the Quarter Best”, a Quincy Jones pattern
- Passages, Modulations, Transitions
- The Abba/Puccini syndrome
Of course I’m interested in… what would be a modulation elsewhere, in poetry or architecture, literature or blogging…
***
So I read that Miles Davis is the Pablo Picasso of Jazz, like Federico Fellini is the Picasso of movie makers. If you’re bored, this is a trio : there’s material here for a couple of months.
***
Agnes Obel, again. In the vast terrible ocean of soft female voices with a piano, she’s with her cousin Vienna Teng. Here she sings with a male voice (which is herself with treatments), it’s delicate and sophisticated, and I love the mysterious lyrics…
Hmm, there are floating harmonies here, right?
For our love is a ghost that the others can’t see
***
My godfather passed on this week. It is a mess for the funeral (only 20 persons allowed). He was in his nineties, and he sometimes talked to me about when he was a kid when Germans occupied his village, the coming of the Americans after the D-Day in the summer of 1944. My father was an orphan when he was a little boy, and Ernest was next to him for years to help…
He’s the guy on the bike :
Thanks for reading! Stay inside!
JP
Bloggers/Writers : Let it rest!
Bloggers/Writers : Let it rest!
I read an interview of Arcadi Volodos, a pianist.
He says that when he works on a record, he makes it during the night. When it’s done, the tapes are abandoned for a few weeks.
Then he listens to them, weeks later, with a new ear. Sound montage, then? The less possible.
When you write on something, it must flow. The beginning is sometimes hard, but then, here you go! When it flows, it’s so good, right?
Si vous pataugez dans la semoule (if you “wade in semolina”), you get nowhere (fast or slow). Let it rest, then. Forget it. Write some else. Go for a walk (these times : around your room).
Drafts are gold. Forget about all of them. Let them rest. For weeks.
One day you open something, you…
- wade in more
- have a spark
I don’t know how it works. Maybe you have a new eye and you wonder how you could be stuck like that. Maybe it’s magic. Maybe your brain works alone when you sleep, haha. The reason why it works sometimes is a mystery, there you and me don’t care about it. So there.
Have fun!
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 4 – Cheesers & Chocolaters
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 4
This morning I read about a little family whose daddy’s a stressed man who can not function properly if he doesn’t run his good 12 km (7.5 miles) everyday, thus he watches TV all day long.
This made me think about boredom, with the consecutive metaphors we find on the social medias – confinement is like being in a prison (home), or in an animal in a zoo.
I wrote this article – Big Boredom – about the ways people find to fight.
- Evasion, with pills, alcohol or drugs?
- Engagement, with politics or religion, rules?
- Moderation, with culture, knowledge, watching the world?
- Pushing limits, with speed, danger, exploration?
One seems possible with booze (how do you buy drugs if you’re not allowed to go outside?), but without seeing people and staying inside, it could lead to disaster, right? Two is possible on the Internet, with the ridiculous risk to become an angry fool wanting to change others (hahaha). Three sounds wise. And Four is out of the question – or maybe you can throw yourself into domestic bodybuilding (push-ups).
***
Heroes are people working in hospitals. But some other heroes are those who go on working because they are essential to society : delivery guys, cashiers, funeral people, mailmen…
Some companies in France will pay 1000 Euros ($1076) for this month to employees who kept working during this crisis. And next month?
***
OK there’s a new hashtag : #quarantinediaries
I found an interesting article about how hashtags are misused :
***
We alternate movies. One evening is for happy, funny, easy movies, the other evening is for a bit more serious movies. We don’t binge. I find it awful, exhausting.
Yesterday we watched a children movie, “The Secret Life of Pets 2“. It immediately came to me that it was a film for children… made for children.
Most Pixar movies are, for example, children movies made for adults, or “made also for adults”. Many little boys ADORE “Cars”, but don’t understand the plot :
While traveling for the final race of a Cup against, the famous Lightning McQueen accidentally damages the road of a small town and is sentenced to repair it. McQueen has to work hard and finds friendship and love in the simple locals, changing its values during his stay, and becoming a true winner.
Two-years-olds adore. Lightning McQueen, fast car! (that’s all). Many kids like characters and a few twists and turns, but they simply don’t understand the movie. It’s often the case with Star Wars…
Here, the plot is simple, the characters are cute, it’s full of colors, the evil character is simple, and… it’s fun!!
I always watch this dial in movies for kids : where’s the “adult dial” here, where is it?
***
There’s a scandal in France concerning a diary written Leila Slimani, for whom the quarantine is a “fairy tale”. Confinement when you have a country house is cool, it’s like a big holiday, she watches the horizon. If you want to read some French, Google her name + “journal”. For example :
https://diacritik.com/2020/03/19/le-journal-de-confinement-de-leila-slimani-est-un-conte-cruel/
***
The medias like to show idiots in malls with dozens of toilet paper packs. Hoarding, panic buying. Yeah, that’s too much, but if you’re informed and know that you’ll be quarantined, you have to “stock up” food. I began way way before the decision – I was just watching how things were moving – I was buying double at the moment : cans, rice, who knows. I don’t have a car thus I had to, little by little.
This disease is a mess. If you need a respirator, you’re intubated for 3 weeks! I read Chinese diaries. You don’t get the virus if you don’t get out at all.
Confined, you are allowed to go errand, but, well, let’s do it the less possible, OK? Therefore, you fill your car, go home, and stay there. That’s not hoarding, that’s normal!
Yesterday I’ve seen a man walking in the street with a single French baguette. Come on, guys!
***
A writer here made a Twitter survey : what, apart from alcohol which is non-negotiable, is the food you have to stock up? It seems that two camps appeared :
- Cheesers
- Chocolaters
You? 😉
***
It is true that we all look like people in Hopper’s painting…
***
I met two Latin expressions recently :
Hic Sunt Dragones
Wiki : “Here be dragons” means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps where potential dangers were thought to exist.
- I thought that we were today in a Hic Sunt Dragones state in the world. Uncharted territory!
- I thought also about… when you are in the beginning of exploring a new cultural field (Italian cinema? Civil War battles? Picasso’s sculptures?). This state of hungriness.
- I thought about when we begin a new love story. We are then… deterritorialized, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_be_dragons
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
Wiki : “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” is a Latin phrase that means “Thus passes the glory of the world”.
So it’s said as a reminder of the transitory nature of life and earthly honors. Therefore it could also be “Memento mori” (remember that you must die), This too shall pass, and Vanitas. There’s a whole development about Memento Mori on Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic_transit_gloria_mundi
Wherewhen do people use these? I should Google it a little to find out…
In the end : nunc est bibendum (now is the time to drink)
Thanks for reading! Stay safe!
Deterritorialization is a funny tool/dial to use!
Photography : Empty French Streets, March 21, 2020
Photography : Empty French Streets, March 21, 2020. It’s forbidden to go outside because of the coronavirus but I had to, for cat food. I took me cam and these streets :
Photography : Spring in French Streets
Photography : Spring in French Streets. I had to go outside to get food for the cat. I took my cam and I saw spring!
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 3
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 3
I live in Lille, a city in the North of France. The neighbor country here is Belgium. When I was young in the eighties, most of university students were listening to Radio 21, a Belgian “music and news” radio, the only one in French – a part of Belgium speaks French – which aired Indie Rock at the time. David Sylvian, Clan of Xymox, but also Marrs, it’s there that I discovered some treasures…
Radio 21 disappeared, split into a radio for teens and another for adults, called Classic 21, which of course I listen – I prefer Pink Floyd, Supertramp and Police than Rihanna or Ed Sheeran.
Yesterday at 8 PM, dinner time and on radio, the news. Something like : “At 8 PM tonight, people in Belgium, confined in their appartments, applaud at their window, together, to say thank you to the nurses and doctors who fight the coronavirus”. I opened my window and immediately heard the whole neighborhood here doing the same.
***
The majority of French humans understand the meaning of mandatory “Stay Home”. Only, I’ll be outside every two weeks for food, with my signed paper in my pocket. A few idiots though go on happying on beaches and along rivers, to socialize and see the spring and the sun. One city today (Nice) decide a curfew after 8 PM. Others will probably follow. Many cities including Paris have to close parks for this reason.
***
Watched An Officer and a Gentleman, great romantic drama! I searched a little, to find that it’s been directed in Fort Worden, which is in the labyrinth of sea/land NW of Seattle. It’s always interesting to discover “normal” places in American movies, I mean elsewhere than New York City and L.A..
Should re-watch Urban Cowboy (with Debra Winger too).
***
Netflix or TV channels or Blu-rays?
I separated my TV from the cable channels in 2000. I was annoyed by the fact that I had to choose from “what was proposed to me”. Even with 400 TV channels, I had to watch what someone decided to air. Nope.
Thus I own a big collection of DVDs, then Blu-rays. I choose what I want, when I want. Netflix and her cronies are for me a lukewarm swamp, where I can choose, OK, but from what?
What if I wanted to watch an old Bergman, or a silent movie from John Ford, or a documentary about Kupka or Joni Mitchell?
***
Book : David Lodge autobiography. Music : Mozart Concertos for piano (Perahia).
***
I have another blog about photography, where I “try things” about a place, a thing. It’s, therefore, about the idea of variation. Some photographers, admittedly, say that for a given place, there’s only one… place to take a good photography. Of course one is tempted to shake their head, but I admit it makes me think. Here it is :
Locked home, joggers and duck hunters are sad, but readers and photographers are not. They can play home.
***
I read in a Claude Roy diary, as he’s around 70 years old, that he would like to reach this season, this state : “Le temps du cœur triste et de l’esprit gai” – the time of the sad heart and the merry spirit.
What could that mean?
Have a nice day! Stay safe!
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 2
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 2
Like many of us, I suppose, I read (in French and English) the news every morning. I will have to think about… distancing about it, though. One could easily be overwhelmed by this epidemic mess.
Curiously or not (Twitter is really a mess), I find informations on Reddit :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/new/
I know why : Reddit is a social media made on… topics. Each group is moderated. Thus it’s rich and adult. There’s a sister Subreddit, more professional, here :
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19
***
I watched Yesterday (2019) : “A struggling musician realizes he’s the only person on Earth who can remember The Beatles after waking up in an alternate timeline where they never existed.” – that’s pretty good!
***
It’s too early for real good news, but I watch : China is recovering, Italians sing at the balcony, people try to help the eldest, dolphins visits ports in Mediterranean sea, and Venice waters are clear and transparent for the first time in decades. Dramatic times, but plenty of best things will blossom from all this, I’m sure…
***
I know nothing about economics, but I find interesting that some countries ruled by right-wing and conservatism (lower taxes, free market capitalism, deregulation), in a time of crisis, have to begin to think and act like what they call “Socialists”.
Instead of letting the market “decide” (and companies die), they inject billions in the system to “help”. Instead of letting people die home (or letting the “no sick leave” people go to work – and infect colleagues), they talk about free testing for everyone, of taking care of people who need it instead of the eldest and health “insured”, and injecting big money in the system.
Imagine a right-winged president somewhere clinging to his system, watching the collapse of banks, all booksellers and many things, and refusing to take charge of the health of the poors, just because it’s what the Right does? “It’s the invisible hand of the market, only the strongest will survive, good”.
I think that, in history, many social progresses have been made during big recessions, epidemics and wars… I should check this tomorrow.
***
I’m definitively not a tourist, and I respect those 10% who visit a country with respect and cultural curiosity. Therefore I can not help being amazed to see Venice and Paris transformed in quiet deserts, and no buses around the Pisa tower and the Taj Mahal. The pollution plummeting is also something…
***
Watching Fellini Roma (1972), a necklace of scenes about the city. It’s brilliant, sewed with incredible short pure magic moments (the welders next to a tramway, flashing lights in a street, some priests climbing stairs). The ring road scene begins normally with traffic jams, cars and toll booths, and begins a crescendo with a film crew with a crane, heavy rain, a horse, smoke, an accident, ruins. It’s so good and crazy that I have to stop the movie.
Fellini is complicated and very rich, he fills the viewer with amazement and sounds, symbols and complex structures. It’s brilliant and exhausting. I don’t mind to watch these extraordinary films… in pieces. In between, I read, I think, I smile!
Antonioni/Fellini/Visconti & other trios to operate on…
***
Tonight I’ll watch An Officer and a Gentleman (1982 – the best Richard Gere – and with Debra Winger!).
If you want some reading about movies, here’s some in my blog :
https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/category/movie/
Thanks for reading! Stay safe!
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, Day 1
Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 1
March 17, 2020. From noon today, no one is allowed to go outside in France, except for food or medication. One must print and fill and sign a paper, a sworn statement, to show to the police. Get a fine if you don’t have it.
***
Confinement is also the word in French, and we write quarantaine. “Quarante” means forty in French. The idea comes from Hippocrates (it’s also in the Bible, the idea of separation, etc), who said that 40 days is enough for a disease to… appear if someone is sick.
***
I read a few weeks ago about Wuhan and China that the big population blocus of millions of humans would probably lead to a Baby Boom in autumn – which makes sense. I thought about the big blackout of New York (is it 1965 or 77?) which lead to babies 9 months ago – but is this true of an urban legend?
Mmmh they also talked about a big divorce boom – which makes sense TOO. Many couples stay married because they really don’t have time to be together, busy busy busy. When they have to, it can lead to many interesting developments…
***
Empathically I think about those who are old or alone, but also about those who live with a mean person (spouse or mothers-in-law) or… a teen!
***
We have food for about 2 weeks, therefore we did not have to queue for hours before supermarkets, where French humans are since this morning. I chose delivery, and I’ll run errands on Friday, when it’ll be calmer (well, I’m not sure of this, but).
***
Many stores on the planet open only for the eldests for one hour BEFORE the crazies rush into toilet papers and food.
***
There are the same old good advices about distance, sneezes and hand washing, but I also read that anti-inflammatory pills (like Ibuprofen) are not recommended if you get sick (it can make it worse), and also, if you go outside and have to wash you hands, that one should get rid of rings and jewelry (which seems logical : those a good nest for little demonic viruses.
I have a thought for my colleague who would never quit the bunch of wristbands she keeps all life long. Here’s something to read :
A Microbiologist Tells You Exactly How Gross Festival Wristbands Are
***
Little by little the whole planet gets quieter. People have to stay in their house, in their apartment. They have to find something to do, be creative, read, find movies. It slows the planet.
This is what introverts do all the time. Thinkers, quiet persons, loneliness lovers. These people will adapt. They watch their books and films collection with a smile and some appetite. It’s the moment to dig deeper into complex or long things : John Ford or Hitchcock movies, Proust or Dante books. It’s the moment to learn, too.
It’ll be harder for the others. I think of them. Sports obsessed. Party goers. Managers.
I think of Susan Cain’s book : Quiet, The Power of Introverts.
https://afrenchtoolbox.wordpress.com/2020/03/07/quarantine-introverts/
***
I live in the North of France. The climate seems to be similar to Seattle in America. It’s the North! We just had WEEKS of rain and drizzle, and like a storm every sunday. Everybody was tired of this endless winter.
The FIRST day of the quarantine, today, the sky is absolutely perfectly blue. This is NOT cool.
Thanks for reading. Stay safe!
PS : If I were passive-aggressive, I could have written : “It’s blue sky today the first day of confinement, that’s sooo cool”. But no.
What is Third Stream? – a personal uncharted territory
What is Third Stream? Let’s ask Wikipedia :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_stream
“Third Stream is a synthesis of jazz and classical music.”
Critics have argued that third stream—by drawing on two very different styles—dilutes the power of each in combining them. Others reject such notions and consider third stream an interesting musical development. In 1981, Schuller offered a list of “What Third Stream Is Not”:
It is not jazz with strings.
It is not jazz played on “classical” instruments.
It is not classical music played by jazz players.
It is not inserting a bit of Ravel or Schoenberg between bebop changes—nor the reverse.
It is not jazz in fugal form.
It is not a fugue played by jazz players.
It is not designed to do away with jazz or classical music; it is just another option amongst many for today’s creative musicians.
I’m interested because I love classical music and I don’t know contemporary jazz very well, but I think the “melting” genre can give interesting things, I’m excited by this personal uncharted territory (as a French, I always want to write “unmapped territory”).
I think about progressive rock (who probably encroaches upon this genre). The first label I thought about was ECM, but I found Rune Grammofon too. Of course, I find everywhere the reference of Bela Bartok, who collected and used old Magyar folk melodies…
It seems that today the genre is now 100,000 streams, like the Mississippi delta, a vast complex that has been fed by countless tributaries, with other musics, ethnic, folk, etc…
Let’s Google this. I find :
- https://www.allmusic.com/style/third-stream-ma0000012292
- https://www.last.fm/fr/tag/third+stream/albums
- https://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/subgenre/third-stream
This last link casts wide, for repetitive/minimal to ECM to Miles Davis or Lalo Schifrin (who wrote the Mission Impossible theme).
Well, that’s just the beginning of a new exploration!
Like each time, some branches will displease us, but with a bit of luck, we’ll find a golden one.
Thanks for reading!
What did I Shazam recently? I suppose because of…
“What did you Shazam recently”, she asked?
Chimacum Rain – Linda Perhacs, I suppose because I liked how flowers of voices blossomed in the middle of this little whispering lazy folk.
Richard Hawley – The Ocean, I suppose because of the Tindersticks-like voice, and the crescendo, voilà.
Martha Tilston – The Waters of Tyne, I suppose because of the silver pointy voice, or the “little Irish tale I’ll sing for you” tone…
Whispering Sons – Alone, I suppose because of the sound of 80s, very Xymox, no?
Juliette Gréco – un petit poisson, un petit oiseau, I suppose because of this :
A little fish, a little bird
Loved each other with tender love
How to go about it
When you are in water
Schubert: Sonata For Arpeggione And Piano In A Minor, D.821, I suppose because Schubert with a guitar, it’s possibly good!
Andrea Motis – Louisiana O Els Camps De Coto, I suppose because, as it was “not enough”, I couldn’t stop listening until the end, though. That’s why.
The Internet – Wanna Be, I suppose because I’m not used to this sophistication in this music (listen to the bass, or the way it ends).
Bolerisch (From “Femme Fatale”) Ryuichi Sakamoto, I suppose because of these Sakamotoish strings, the modulations…
Elbow – Magnificent (She Says), I suppose it trapped me with the end. The bass & percs system is cool.
AIR – High Point, I suppose because it’s instrumental, modulating, comfortable and quiet.
LALO – Concerto russe pour violon et orchestre, Op. 29: II. Chants russes, I suppose because it… sings!
What I didn’t find : Havoun Havoun by Tigran Hamasyan, Für Lou by Oliver’s Cinema. Also I passed Indochine La Vie est Belle (the clip is violent).
Other options of Ran Blake, a Jazz pianist – an exploration
I don’t like jazz that much, and I know why. I have too much empathy, and I put myself in the guy’s shoes TRYING to make his thing, I feel bad.
So, I opened my book about Jazz, page 206, randomly, to find Ran Blake, born in 1935, pianist. Never heard about him. You?
I kept him because of some elements I read : he worked with female singers, he was said to make “singular covers”, he has been a music teacher in Boston, he’s influenced by gospel, Monk, Prokofiev, Messiean, movie musics.
So here it is : I use my own method of exploration, which is to YouTube randomly around his name.
His solo piano style is very unique, with nonsense any old things invading old standards for seconds (Epistrophy), delicate memories framing ice water on broken tooth picks, suspended chords, splendid high notes, wobblings.
Comfy cool jazz is like drunk, invaded with errors, shaken memories, blurriness (Round Midnight), it’s like a dream where fast vignettes of remembrances dance around…
“Let’s Stays Together” is just delicious – though at many times you want to say “Hey, be careful!”. Walking on a string…
( see also Epistrophy : Reflections )
With Rave (trumpet) or Lacy, he brings… insecurities in mellow jazz :
This sounds like a confused memory of something we know…
The delicious fragile modulating waltz beginning and ending :
Tools here :
- It’s interesting to listen to someone who disturbs my tastes and tests my limits. Sometimes I say : “NO! Come on!”. Sometimes it’s just perfect. My brain begins to focus more, to think, to search, to be afraid maybe. It’s an interesting process.
- I discovered great singers, like Sara Serpa (which lead me to the lakes of voices of Naka Nishina), or Jeanne Lee (incredible somber voice).
- I have pleasure in analyze. For example, Blake loves the extreme high notes of the piano, which is rare. And one of his “tricks”, when he supports a female singer or a trumpet player, is to let the other one stay steady, like a tree. The piano player is NOT the solid base, he’s the one which wanders, which drifts…
- I discovered a Genre : “Third Stream“, a synthesis of jazz and classical music. This is funny because the Wikipedia article lead me to this tool of defining something by what it is not :
It is not jazz with strings.
It is not jazz played on “classical” instruments.
It is not classical music played by jazz players.
It is not inserting a bit of Ravel or Schoenberg between bebop changes—nor the reverse.
It is not jazz in fugal form.
It is not a fugue played by jazz players.
It is not designed to do away with jazz or classical music; it is just another option amongst many for today’s creative musicians.
Have fun! Thanks for reading!
Un article en français : https://www.lemonde.fr/musiques/article/2017/05/15/jazz-ran-blake-pianiste-de-passion-et-de-patience_5127752_1654986.html
How to build an Anthology?
How to build an Anthology? #Jazz
Maybe you remember, I wrote an article about the fact that one book-lover could read only prefaces.
Imagine you have three hours free in a place full of books. You can pick one, or you can pick two dozens, reading prefaces only. That’s what I’d do, I think…
Yesterday I bought a book, “Jazz en 150 Figures”. It’s a great hardcover book, not about stars of this music, but about creative jazz.
This, alone, could be an article :
Choose a field (poetry, photography, history, etc), and don’t look for stars, but for creators. I reckon that they’re sometimes the same – but let’s focus on lesser-known explorers.
The foreword is one paged. The author asks What is an anthology? – to tell us, of course, what his book is NOT.
- It’s not a dictionary, concerned to be exhaustive – and being objective, boring.
- It’s not a kind “Who’s who“, telling for example that a tired aged musician is as great as himself as a young explorer.
- It’s not an Almanach of an elite, made from a list from stardom status.
- It’s not a chronological retrospective.
- It’s not a ecumenical overview submitted to different kind of quotas.
- It’s not a chory monstrosity which tries to make an impression.
So here I am reading this book randompagely, discovering names like Jimmy Lions, Grachan Moncur III or Roscoe Mitchell… with YouTube.
Tools here are multiple :
- Buying a good anthology, as a map do discover a universe you don’t know at all, or almost.
- Thinking, when you build something, about what it should not be.
- Reading prefaces only why not? Go to a library, then.
- Which domain to dig, for creators?
OK, I’m now writing something about Ran Blake – you know him? Me neither!
Thanks for reading!
https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/50-greatest-jazz-albums-ever/
https://www.jazzwise.com/features/article/the-100-jazz-albums-that-shook-the-world
https://www.senscritique.com/top/resultats/Les_meilleurs_albums_de_jazz/193105
WordPress Categories & Tags : my tips
Hi! I have one tip for your blog (I personally don’t follow it) :
If you want followers, choose a little field and stick to it.
Photos of cats, fashion in Italy, collecting forks, French painters, whatever.
I do the contrary, my blog talks about :
- “Things have many faces”.
- “Subtlety is better than false simplicity”.
- “Disillusions are part of the game”.
- “Rules are mostly movable/beware of mindsets”.
- “It’s funny/useful to compare or weave separated things”.
- “Art is a great buoy”.
- “Watch in the now/around you/the propensity of things”.
- “Finding structures as intelligence”.
- “You can quit the surface of new things”.
- “No one is a prince in every Kingdom”.
- “Keep aspects hidden/Be a Waldgänger”.
- “Consider other ways to change/Know how to wait”.
- “We need to be disturbed/There are many ways to deal with problems”.
- “Stay a dilettant/Slide and don’t bear down”…
…therefore I don’t have many followers. A few hundreds, in… years.
Your work will be found if you share it on Social Medias, but most of the time it’ll come from Google and other web search engines. You need to choose your Categories & Tags.
https://en.support.wordpress.com/posts/tags/
It’s never been easy for me to choose. Here’s what I learned :
- WordPress limits the number of tags & categories (combined) to 15.
- Invent only a few big categories, it’s useless to be subtle here.
- For an article, check one to three categories, not much.
- For tags, use the obvious (ex : France, Recipe, Cake), enlarge (ex : Culture, Traveling), then be more specific (ex : Chocolate, Paris). It’s about combine-harvesting larger!
- Conclusion : focus on TAGS.
You wrote an article about Hemingway?
- Category it : USA, Literature – that’s it.
- Tag it : Hemingway, Author, Books, Reading, Literature, USA, Novels, Writer, etc…
Think “hook”. Use Google to find other hashtags if you need.
Thanks for reading!
Instagram : clairemahoney
BooksTeaCat, SportsBeerDog & their Social Interactions Necessities – repost
Quarantine & Introverts
I don’t know if many of us will be quarantined, but I already think about it…
I read this morning, about China, that being locked in your apartment with your spouse will “maybe” provide a baby boom this next winter, but in the meanwhile gives two consequences :
- Infodemia (too much informations about epidemic dramas) and depression.
- Explosion of… divorces.
We don’t need a master in psychology to know that many couples go on just because they don’t have time to be with each other. Busy busy busy! That’s OK, we all do what we can, right?
Locked together, toxicity begins to dance around, boredom walks along walls like a tiger in a forgotten cage, back and forth…
I can’t imagine what happens to sports addicts, bikers and runners. They can do push-ups, but well, that’s not enough drug, I suppose.
But for introverts, it’s probably different. Being quarantined with shelves of books and Blu-rays (or with a computer and Internet, if you’re a dematerialized person) looks like holidays…
Bah, it’s just a feeling. Spring will come soon and will make all of us (including introverts and other cat persons) in a sudden urgent need of going outside to 1/ run with a dog or 2/ to lie down in the grass to smell the good quiet power of nature growing.
Let’s hope the heat wave will kill the viruses, all of them.
Thanks for reading!
Deparkerization?
I work in a bookstore where someone recently asked me about the Parker wine guide.
I answered with a bit of surprise : nobody asked me that in years! I checked and realized that the last Parker guide, in France, was from 2009.
We asked ourselves about how nobody seems to care anymore about Parker.
I remembered the “problems” at the time : the guy was giving notes to wines (from 0 to 100), and he was so powerful (or such an influencer) that wine makers around the world had begun to twiddle their wines around to satisfy him. And the higher notes made some wine unaffordable. And in France we have a suspicion about notes, the idea of “evaluation gives a digit”. Especially in Arts and human activities. Etc.
In fact, there were many “controversies”. The “Mondovino” documentary ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411674/ ) tells a bit about them…
If a wine is Parkered 67/100, is it better than a 63/100? Really?
This leads to many structures :
- The fact that Parker used digits to “note” wines was a problem in itself. Therefore we could note movies, poems, maybe love, why note? “This poem is a 88/100 and my wife is a 76”. Can we do this and why?
- Parker was powerful and listened, and when he titled a book “Bordeaux, The Definitive Guide for the Wines Produced Since 1961”, the impact was huge. What is a “definitive” ranking?
- Why is someone a star of an influencer at one moment and pretty much nothing ten years after? What about the stars we have today?
- What about “controversies”? Should we listen to the cons, always? How to study their arguments?
- What does one do with “Mainstream Tastes”? Do we jump happily in the pool of obedient followers? What is mainstream in a small world of specialists? Why do people follow, and who are those who don’t and try to find less frequented paths?
- What is social pressure when it’s activated by an influencer, a critic?
- If there a “Number One Influencer”, who’s the second (let’s rank the rankers, bim!), and the third? What if we compare them, organize ideas fights?
- What about the minority of the “last followers”, the believers? What if they were right?
Then, again : where to apply and think with these tools? Photography? Movies? Fashion? Anthropology?
This article made you think about other people? Who?
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for reading!
“This is how it should be done: lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times.”
Gilles Deleuze
Photography : Blurry lights in Paris tube
Photography : Blurry lights in Paris tube
a french toolbox 