William Faulkner : “The past…

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

William Faulkner

I don’t like Dylan’s or Springsteen’s music but

I don’t like Bruce Springsteen‘s music but… I keep reading about him. Why?

There’s a lack of strange chords in this music, and I feel like in front of Bob Dylan : I’m interested in the person, the choices, the doubts, the lyrics. But the music bores me!

Therefore it’s like tango, and I keep coming back to reading biographies and interviews, documentaries, making of, about both musicians, etc.

1. In the last Scorcese documentary, I saw Bob Dylan jamming with Joni Mitchell, who was showing him the… strange chords she was using in her new songs. He was watching her hands, smiling like “heyyyy”…
2. In the making of Darkness, I heard musicians talking, I saw Springsteen working, and I realized he COULD be a much more “sophisticated” musician, but that he declines it, he turns down it.

Their books are really great. I see clever humans trying to live. I see what they… found, and that the core is, for them, lyrics. The way they just want to tell a story, or to impersonate someone for a song.

I keep being fascinated by this : their music is only a vehicle for their words.

So I keep exploring, watching concerts (with subtitled lyrics!), buying books with “each song explained”. I want to understand something. And I learn a lot about the USA, too.

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This shows that I need to explore territories that I “feel” interesting and that I dislike in the first place. Much more pleasure could go with Pink Floyd or Genesis or King Crimson!

I could go the the beach to find shells, but today I prefer to go to the sand dunes to find what I don’t know at all. A wind, a snake, a deer, a butterfly?

Thanks for reading!

“My friends, keep your old friends”

Diderot, a French philosopher of the 18th, laments the loss of his old dressing gown, which he wore around the house for casual clothing. He bought an expensive new one, but regrets his old comfortable one.

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

He wrote :

“My friends, keep your old friends”

I like it : it’s the contrary of what you’ll read everywhere! The whole world seems to associate success and freedom to speed, goals and ignoring of the old and the past. I like to think the other way.

I love the tools here.

• Starting from scratch is maybe less effective than adding a room to the existing house.
• We sometimes don’t need to “replace” things, but use what we comfortably have.

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I found the Diderot story in a French Chantal Thomas book, “Café Vivre”, made of two or three pages chronicles.

It’s a good book if you learn French : texts are short, and full of frenchness, I suppose. Curiosity, a way of inventing slow moments to contemplate the world, traveling, culture, It’s a happy book !

She talks about Patti Smith and Roland Barthes, Hokusai, Sade and Saint Patrick, about New York city in spring, old houses on the French seashore, swimming and Canada.

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What old friends will you keep?

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Thanks for reading!