What are the most harmonically complex songs of Bob Dylan?

What are the most harmonically complex songs of Bob Dylan?, I asked in BobDylan SubReddit. I got many interesting answers…

To Fall in Love With You, which was never really finished, has an extended progression which takes a long long time to get to the key chord.

I’ve always found On a Rainy Afternoon to have a very elegant chord progression, though it wasn’t ever completed. Very simple in the beginning, but the resolution of the progression gets much more involved.

Lay Lady Lay actually has kind of a weird chord progression, which I just realized yesterday.

Nashville Skyline has soooo many amazing changes. Among my top 5 faves

I threw it all away has some funky changes as well now that I think of it

I’m very partial to Tell Me it Isn’t True

I was going to say Oh Sister but I just remembered I thought the other day that it sounded like Knockin on Heavens Door … not Lay Lady Lay … so I am not helpful lol but I want to see if someone knows!

I think it’s similar to All Along the Watchtower, but not exactly the same if I’m remembering correctly

Frankie Lee And Judas Priest – FLJP is G with a capo on the 7th fret (so effectively C), but it’s G, Bm, Am, G (I iii ii) whereas LLL is A, C#m, G, Bm (I iii bVII ii). The G (bVII) in LLL gives it a unique characteristic not present in FLJP. It also gives it a chromatically descending bassline – A – G# – G – F#. I can’t recall any other BD songs with a chromatically descending bassline like that (though I suspect there are some bridges which do it.

House of the resizing sun and death of emmit till have a C/G D/F# F bassline which gets close and simple twist of fate has E, EMaj7, E7, A which gets close but it’s not the bassline so much.

The rolling thunder review SToF were G, Bm, G7, C which is the closest song, in spirit, to LLL I can think of offhand.

Make You feel My Love also has a rather nice chromatically descending bassline.

There is an interesting ascending bassline in the pre-chorus of Too Much of Nothing.

Ballad of a Thin Man has another chromatic descending bassline in the start of the verse.

There it is! I really need to listen to JWH more I’m pretty unfamiliar with it compared to the rest of 60s/70s work

I will say that Dylan and folk music in general though is not where you go for harmonic complexity. If you compare Dylan and, say, Steely Dan or queen by that metric, he’s pretty primitive. But he does have some deceptively great melodies and chord progressions, as evidenced by the number of artists who want to cover his work. And as for that one-of-a-kind voice and those lyrics, well, we all know about that.

One of the first ones that comes to mind is Forever Young Fast Version

Dear Landlord and In the Garden have some interesting stuff going on. A lot of the gospel songs have chord progressions that vary from the “standard” folk patterns.

Black Rider, In the Garden, Dear Landlord.

Just listening to In the Garden, wow, these constant stairs-like modulations (transpositions?) are amazing!

Moonlight.

I Contain Multitudes has some pretty complex chords

In search of little Sadie (or whichever of the two plays first on self portrait) has a strange chromatic chord progression that’s very unusual, and it’s literally Dylan reharmonizing an old folk song so that in itself is pretty interesting to me

Dear Landlord. And if I hear it right, blind willie mctell has an interesting chord progression too

Tears of Rage comes to mind, its sooo pretty and a really unique structure. Richard Manuel composed the music to Bob’s words on that one though.

On A Night Like This uses an Am/F# (F# half-diminished)

“In the Garden” is probably the answer, as it modulates four or five times in the space of a verse while the melody employs a couple scales.

“Dear Landlord” modulates all over the place as well

“Black Rider” is a truly novel progression and the final contender for most harmonically advanced song with its chromaticism and modulations.

“Covenant Woman”, “Moonlight”, “I Contain Multitudes”, “Make You Feel My Love”, “Too Much of Nothing”, “Ring Them Bells” all deserve honorable mention but are not as complex as the three listed at the top.

‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’ has some pretty interesting stuff going on. The verses are a pretty straight forward G-C thing, but then in the B-section the C swaps to a minor chord, and all of a sudden there’s an A-flat major thrown in there which transitions back to C-maj and then A-min.

Mama, You Been On My Mind – I believe it is in the key of C and uses an E7, D7, and G#dim7.

Gates of eden really stands out, because most of his early stuff is very simple chord wise. But here he modulated between g major and c major all the time. And then that Bb major comes out of nowhere and it sounds just great. That Bb to C to G is actually kind of an early punk chord progression.

This Wheel’s on Fire has more chords than most Dylan tunes and a diminished chord in there as well, which he doesn’t use a lot. Rick Danko is credited for composing the music with Dylans lyrics.

Baby let me follow you down

“It’s all over now baby blue” which is in C, uses an E major on the transition, which is and sounds interesting

In thE Garden, Dear Landlord, Moonlight, and Black Rider are the ones I see most commonly mentioned here

I’ve seen people post before that In the Garden is probably his most complex song harmonically which I would have to agree with.

Joachim Hildebrand : Wild West

It’s a book. I smiled because of the photographer’s simple knack : showing a shock between the “wild west” and the… civilization. It shows something…

Tamed nature, right? Hmm… It at least show how Americans are conscientious.

 

 

Steel Taxes’s Wrong Way Up

I don’t do politics, but this one is too good…

There’s a Google search you can do : “Trump Steel Bush”.

In 2002, G. Bush imposed taxes on imported steel and aluminium, and it’s been a big disaster.

The lesson was : “Things are much more complicated than we think”.

It became hard to find some steel to buy. The prices increased and impacted customers. There were like 20.000 more jobs in the steel industry (yeyyy!) AND 200,000 LOST jobs elsewhere (in the car industry, for example). The taxes on imported steel had to but stopped quickly before it harms the industry too much.

Trump just re-did it. He just did it harder. Read the articles you found with Google, it’s interesting! The typical wrong idea…

And by the way, it’s very interesting that a GOP president uses a socialist protectionist tool (where’s the invisible hand of the market here?) on a market which is on the decline in the USA since… 1953.

 

This is a great little pattern to study. The wrong way up : when does it happen?

• When you ignore the complexity of things.
• When you mix words (labels) and reality.
• When you ignore the past.
• When you wrongly insist.
• When you don’t listen to people who know.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Greta Gerwig & Sacramento

My daughters were delighted : they went to the theater and watched the first Greta Gerwig movie : Lady Bird. They loved it!

So I told them about the director, Greta Gerwig, who wrote a movie with her boyfriend, a film about New York, a film I love so much, in the middle of Woody Allen (around Annie Hall) and J.-L. Godard. This freedom, this black & white…

We watched Frances Ha together and it was fantastic!

In Frances Ha, a 27 years old woman, is living a bohème life in New York city. She’s a dancer, changing roommates all the time, meeting people, trying to live and find her path and dreams.

At one moment, she has to go back to Sacramento, her parent’s home. Lady Bird, indeed, takes place there. It’s (or course), where Greta Gerwig grew up…

In both films, we see something :

The character tries to “fit” where she’s from. California wealthy all-the-same little houses, with an American flag on the front porch, right? It’s christmas. An uncle plays the trumpet (or another instrument). Everybody is religious (and probably have guns), and the grass is well cut.

Horror.

You can see her TRYING to fit, though. She’s from there, after all!

She doesn’t fit and has to go back to NYC quickly. There she meets wealthy people (a lawyer, etc), and doesn’t fit at all!

 

Well, that’s all. It made me think a lot about this kind of people, who are absolutely BORED in front of “normal persons”, normal life, the “house and car and husband” choice, and commuting, etc. They would die quickly. They need to be in their element, sophistication and exploration, opportunities and art. ART. Out of it, they wither.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Lady Bird : “In 2002, an artistically inclined seventeen-year-old girl comes of age in Sacramento, California.” – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4925292/

Frances Ha – “A New York woman (who doesn’t really have an apartment) apprentices for a dance company (though she’s not really a dancer) and throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as the possibility of realizing them dwindles.” – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2347569/

 

 

Harper Lee has a little pattern for you

In “To Kill a Mockingbird”, there’s a character in the background.

Adolphus.

A white man who lives with a black woman, and has mixed-blood children.

This man explains that he lives as if he was an alcoholic.

He says that he had to do it, like a “give the dog a bone” thing.

He had to invent a “flaw”.

Without it (“Meh. He’s a drunk.”), people wouldn’t have accepted his way of living.

Adolphus doesn’t care about race very much. He has a relationship with a black woman and has “mixed” children. He puts a coke can in a paper bag which the town suspects is alcohol. He lets them believe that it’s alcohol and acts drunk because he says it gives the town a reason to understand the way he is. The town couldn’t accept race mixing and mixed children, so he needed to give them a reason. He honestly is not much of a drinker and coca-cola really is in the bottle.

What’s that pattern? To invent a flaw you don’t have to be in peace? Nowadays, when do we need to be Adolphus? To have peace? Where, how?

 

Thanks for reading!

The Depth of the Air is Warm & Birds are Swarming like before the End of the World

My working day finished at 6 PM today and I was surprised to find a little daylight when I was outside in the streets of Lille : “Hey, the days get longer…”.

Walking/smiling in the city dusk, I stopped suddenly : a big frightening swarm of birds was crossing the sky-street-cut over my head, like in Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. Waow!

They didn’t attack.

I had to bike for like 20 minutes to go the the animal-hospital to get my Bidou diabetic cat 2 bags of his crusty catfood I ordered this week-end on the web. The night was coming and the air was strange.

Some days, it’s COLD but you feel the air is WARM, oui? I don’t know how to say it. In France we can say “The depth of the air is cold” (“Le fond de l’air est frais”). The contrary today : Cold but with a warmy depth.

I’m sure half of you understand this concept. Not if you were born in California or Florida. Kansas? Maybe.

And indeed, the birds felt it. As I was crossing a street I passed along a big set of trees. They were CROWDED with hundreds of screeching birds, invisible in the dark shadows. Frightening. Haunting. Big sound!

The night was there almost and I biked along, thinking about this chilly chilling thing in my chin : The End of the World is for soon.

In a way, we have a retained desire for catastrophes, right? One loves the cities-in-disasters scenes, from Godzilla to explosions, meteors or earthquakes. BAOUM!

Then I thought about Marguerite Yourcenar. She was a Belgian writer, and a great thinker. She says two things about romanticism. I rebuild this from my memory because I don’t need, here, to be exact.

ONE :

One must be very romantic to dare calling for reason

TWO :

Sometimes we’re romantic enough to hope for a disaster, and we don’t realise that it has already begun

See?

I love thinkers, because they always find new ways to open a problem.

I met very few real thinkers in my life!

As always, luxury is insular : you are alone if you can’t talk about these. Only a few will be interested in questions like “For an artist, do you have to be a rebel and invent your rules, or do you have to know all the rules before going over them?”. Most of human beings think it’s fly’s masturbation, right?

I wrote many articles about Paul Valéry and writing, typical-this.

OK.

The Polar Vortex (the big pocket of icy air above the North Pole) just split this week-end (as predicted – it’s global warming doing its thing). It’s a very big mess for the weather (and weathermen are hilariously excited and in a awe). We expect to have cold and shitty weather in Europa. Maybe we’ll be frozen next week? Gasp!

For America, it’s not sure. Half of this beasty continental pole-air pocket will attack the USA in ten days. But will it go to the East like in January? Or will it attack Washington, Oregon and California, letting the East in an Early Spring paradise? No weatherman knows today, it’s too early.

It WILL be a mess, though.

Watch the birds, guys! They know.

Thanks for reading!

“Why do you live in this place?” – Shore & Depardon

Bonjour tout le monde !

In the preface of a French photography book called “Habiter en France” (“To live in France”, by Raymond Depardon), the writer says that it’s one of the most intimate question : “Why do you live in this place?”.

Indeed, I think he’s right. It comes from the deepest of the deep. Parents, roots, the sky, people around. We stay “here”, but why? What’s the bond? What do we like? Why do we live here? These questions seem to put us in a thoughtful silence…

Today, the 23 December 2017, I got this huge, heavy, mythical book from Stephen Shore, one of the best American photographer ever : “Uncommon Places”. It’s a present I made to myself…

Both books, one in the USA, one in France, like to show what is rarely showed. Not the Eiffel tower. Not New York. But little roads, normal houses, parking lots. And certainly not in a bad way. Uncommon places in America, and where do people live in France.

They both “insist” on photographing these places until we feel the mood, the sky, the silence or the little winds…

I remember this friend from Kansas, feeling the summer air here in France, like… “Ohhhhh… There is something…”.

 

I LOVE to have these two books together. In this blog, it’s because I found a common structure, a pattern, of course. Pictures of normal life. And as usual :

The pleasure comes from “finding the subtle differences” within these cousin works…

 

Merry Christmas! Thanks for reading!

 

Originally published in 1982, Stephen Shore’s legendary Uncommon Places has influenced more than a generation of photographers. Shore was among the first artists to take color beyond the domain of advertising and fashion photography, and his large-format color work on the American vernacular landscape stands at the root of what has become a vital photographic tradition over the past forty years. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works, published by Aperture in 2004, presents a definitive collection of the landmark series, and in the span of a decade, has become a contemporary classic. Now, for this lushly produced reissue, the artist has added twenty rediscovered images and a statement explaining what it means to expand a series now many decades old.

Snow in America

Winslow Homer, American painter

Winslow Homer, American, 1836-1910, “best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art.”

I saw a painting from Homer in le Musée d’Orsay, in Paris, a long time ago (it’s the first of the works I chose for you). The last one (the reader, at the bottom of this page) was my choice for my Journal, years and years ago…

I’m not a critic, I can’t talk about this guy. I just keep amazed by his… poise, his ease. It’s perfect, elegant, gorgeous, and sometimes even risky (see what he does with silhouettes, with the light, or weird angles…).

Is he well known? If you like him, you’ll find plenty more on Google Images.

In all these, I can… see the Wyeth family coming. The grand-father with his almost mythological America, the father with some dark moods, and the son : the sea, the sense of wind in the seashore… I’ll blog about them very soon.

Thanks for reading!

 

“During an eclipse, be careful not to look at the sun”

“During an Eclipse, be careful not to look at the sun” is the boring advice you’ve heard 8754 times this last week. OF COURSE you won’t look at it, silly! Tell it firmly to the kids, and voilà.

BUT

As the “protect your eyes” thing is obvious, there’s another reason you shouldn’t look at the sun…

In 1999, a total eclipse of the sun happened in France. It was plain summer, and it’s been quite an event… I was at work, but needless to say we were all allowed to go outside to see this. “Be careful not to look at the sun”, right? OKey.

Ten minutes before it began, the Grand Place de Lille was FULL of a nervous what-if-it-was-the-end-of-the-world crowd. A small percentage of human beings had the appropriate device to “watch it face to face”. Then… it began.

And I can tell you that NO-BO-DY was watching the sun with their stupid glasses. You know why?

The mood of the world changed surreptitiously. Then it became darker. Then DARKER. The birds suddenly stopped singing, the cars stopped, the city stopped. The women, children and men on the place became silent. The night was there. In this quit surreal crowded silent mood, I saw the stars (ohhh), I was cold (yes, it was the night, really), and I’m pretty sure my hand was on my opened-in-a-awe mouth. And it’s pretty long!
I remember quite well the big quiet SIGH of the crowd, after the moon decided to go shadowing the Earth elsewhere – “Ahhhhh… It’s not the end of the world”. And nobody had their eyes burned!

 

Before an eclipse, you are allowed not to desperately shop for “Magic Stare at the Eclipse Glasses”, they’re useless : Be with your family on a hill. Be in a crowd on a place, and feel little and equal on our little planet.

Be prepared to be thrilled…

 

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day! Bonne journée!

 

 

The warm haunted trumpet of Jon Hassell could suit your summer evening…

Do you know Jon Hassell? He’s an American trumpet player. Wikipedia says : “He is known for developing the musical aesthetic which unifies ideas from minimalism, various world music sources, and his unusual electronic manipulation of the trumpet”. He uses an unusual softer way of blowing into his instrument.

I chose here three albums which suit perfectly with your summer loving evenings.

• Fourth World is the “easiest”. The trumpet is a veil, a triple breathe, a moanplaint, and Brian Eno (who produced the album) draws landscapes and mysterious sounds around it. It’s like a nocturnal African dream. Put it in loop and watch the stars.
• Surgeon is more… like… drunk. Swampy (like the sleeve)? Some moments are haunting and gorgeous. Hide three candles in a room, in a hot night, and this album in loop. Be slow.
• Powerspot is more urban, electronics are different here. Beatboxes build impossible architectures. Futuristic and sweaty, like Miles Davis in another century…

The first two albums are in the link. Powerspot : only a track (explore the others!).

Like it, or too much?

Thanks for reading!

 

Olathe means “Beautiful” – My Ouisconsin Toponymy Bliss

France is smaller than Texas alone, but like everywhere, it’s divided into regions, with different cultures, crowded (Paris region) or not (l’Auvergne), near the sea (Bretagne) or near Germany (l’Alsace).

Some regions have city names with the same suffix. Next to Lille (North of France), we have many towns finishing by “in” : Carvin, Camphin, Phalempin, Wavrin…

In Normandy you find many “ville” : Dauville, Trouville…

In Brittany : Bannalec, Carnac, Le Drennec, Glénac, Iffendic…

You know that I’m a little obsessed with America, and I often wander on the USA map, trying to find the origins of the cities. Indian native, or English, French, Spanish? I check on Wikipedia…

For example, there’s a List_of_Swedish_place_names_in_the_United_States

More interesting : List_of_non-US_cities_with_a_US_namesake, where I find a Chantilly, Missouri (Aawweeeeeeee) or a Versailles, Kentucky (oh really?). Paris, Texas, remember?

22 American city names comes from Norway! (Drammen, Wisconsin, OMG).

So, let’s see the States names. Alabama is Choctaw. Arizona means “The Good Oak” in Basque (South-West of France), Nevada means “snow-covered” in Spanish, and OMG, Wisconsin : “Originally spelled Mescousing by the French, and later corrupted to Ouisconsin” : That’s cute, n’est-ce pas?

 

For each city, you can open this little box of shells. I chose Olathe, Kansas, gives :

Olathe was founded by Dr. John T. Barton in the spring of 1857. He rode to the center of Johnson County, Kansas, and staked two quarter sections of land as the town site. He later described his ride to friends: “…the prairie was covered with verbena and other wild flowers. I kept thinking the land was beautiful and that I should name the town Beautiful.” Purportedly, Barton asked a Shawnee interpreter how to say “Beautiful” in his native language. The interpreter responded, “Olathe.”

I knowww, I will never be cured 🙂

Good day !

 

Sad Heart, Merry Spirit : Chronicle 9

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.

Here I have a vocabulary problem : is “gai” happy, merry, gay, jolly? I don’t know. I chose merry.

But I’m very fascinated by this “goal”, from an aged author I liked very much. As if he knew he could never heal his heart. But, knowing this, building his own happiness, a “merry spirit”. This touched me, a lot.

 

Just read an article evoking Robert Osborne, a TCM Television Presenter who just died at 87 years old. It is told that Olivia de Havilland had with him :

One phone call a week, for decades.

Awwweeee! (-> this was the sound of my merry spirit). I wish I had a friend so close that she would call me once a week until I die at 87. Like a whatever-happens-I-want-to-talk-with-you. Awwweeee again (my merry spirit if very merried by this idea).

 

I read (but where, is it Casanova or Jünger?) about the Venice Purse, a knack which says that when you have to go to a “dangerous” place (which was Venice at the time), you needed to have two purses, one with a little money in case you’re robbed, attacked, knocked out, and another one with the main part of it – well hidden.

It’s just funny to know, but then you realize that when you travel abroad you really have to think about what you do with your passport, the amount of money you have with you, etc. I wonder what this concept can tell us about life in general : Be cautious? Watch the exits? Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket? But also : GO to places where you need to think about the Venice Purse, right?

Venice, in French, is VENISE. A perfect word to say : Venizzz. Elegant as a swan, right? Venice is more like braking at the end. No good. French better, sorry.

 

Elmore Leonard says somewhere about novels writing : “If it seems written, I rewrite”.

What a beautiful idea, right? Writing Style Dissimulation Efforts.

And a paradox many artists know well : work, work, work, until nobody sees you worked. It’s an interesting goal, and the path itself is enthralling too. How to reach?

There’s a balance to find, I suppose. It means you have the eyes to know when it’s not OK, when it is OK. Experience.

Well I have a vocabulary problem again. When do you use “enthralling“, dear? Can you say that about a person? How is it radioactivitied? Thrilling? Fearful? Exciting? Or more like “plainfully satisfying”?

 

I watched the Iowa episode of Aerial America yesterday. It’s amazing how many times I hear “French” in these. Detroits and Illinois were “frenchised” words, and how Iowa is a piece of this territory called Louisiana, the US bought to the French 214 years ago.

These TV programs tell me how BIG are the United States. Tonight I’ll watch Illinois, following the path of Bill Bryson’s book across America in car (cf Fixin’to traveling in the USA).

 

OK, it’s too long. I seize the run-up since a few weeks (is “seize the run-up” a good title?), like making the most of an epistolary energy…

I stop here. Next Chronicle next week. Here’s le hug by Ze French :

Have a nice day!

 

Fixin’to #traveling (again without moving) in the #USA

Sweatin’ like a sinner in church…

I downloaded a bunch of Smithsonian TV episodes of Aerial America. I just watched the Michigan one, and, say, I’ll probably watch the whole pack!

It’s just one hour long, it’s “taken from helicopter” so I see the country from above, it’s… interesting. There’s a little of History and some funny stories (Kellog’s, Detroit, Eminem, General Motors, Ford, the German population, lakes, and the fact it’s divided in two pieces). The flaws are : there are not enough maps to explain things. It’s not linked enough to the neighbor states. And the narration is a little too much American-TV (so everything is “THE BEST OF THE WORLD” – or the biggest stadium of the country, the greatest factory of the fifties in America, or the longest bridge EVER, etc).

I also have a pack of movies about American History. It’ll help, this summer, I bet, to move forward.

You’ll find plenty of arrogant European people telling that people in USA are non traveling ignorants who don’t even know where Belgium or Italy are on a map. But ask a French what is the capital of Colorado, or to place Oklahoma on the US Map, and you’ll see.

I began to read the hilarious Bill Bryson book called The Lost Continent. This guy is from Iowa and decided one day to explore his country with two big loops (cf map). So my next episodes will be Iowa and maybe Missouri. It’s another way to visit without moving, right?

When Bryson crosses some cities like Des Moines, Hannibal or Palmyra, I often stop reading and I go on Instagram. I search Pella, Iowa, for example, and, well, I see the land, the sky, the church, the roads, what people do, what people like (cycling or all terrain vehicles?). Do I see vineyards or corn fields? I can’t wait for Wiscasset, Maine, right? I Google-mapped too, a little.

I wonder what you people “feel” when you see one of yours words written in the UK way. For example with realise/realize or colour/color.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time on YouTube exploring accents. What is really the Southern Accent? So I watched this :

 

Sorry for my English, it’s difficult some days. I’m French, after all!…

Thanks for reading!

JP

Instagram : la_fille_de_la_cote

#vintage #cocacola

I like this little one, improbable combination of classic Coca-Cola vintage America and the soooo French “Délicieux avec de bons mets”.

Mets means “dish” (as a “food course”), but it’s unused today, dated and… vintage.

Visit my Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/jprobocat/

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

“And he heard how I laughed with you” : Chronicle 6

Happiness is a strange thing. Sometimes we forget to laugh, then we suddenly have someone who’s able to open a box. We laugh. It’s a strange and delicious laugh. It’s THIS box opening. A new sound. Something new. And we laugh.

As a French, I learnt at school that New was pronounced NIEW. Then I talked to Americans, all saying NOO. So now I’m proud to say : “Hey! That’s new!”. Correctly said (noo) and with the “no space between new and the “!”. I find SO interesting that we French are used to add a space here : “It’s new!” -> “C’est nouveau !”.

Today I watched this hippie movie, Hair, with my oldest daughter, and she and I loved it. Then we talked about the fact that last week we watched Forrest Gump. Like if we were studying the second part of the XXth Century of the United States of America, right?

I love this beginning, from Oklahoma to New York :

 

Imagine you live in America, and your street name is in Spanish, your city name is in Spanish and your school’s name is in Spanish. What does it mean? Well, OK, nothing.

I remember my own shock when I realized that San Francisco meant Saint François, and Los Angeles : Les Anges (The Angels, sorry).

I read that a wall between Mexico and the USA would be a little stupid, because Mexican immigrants mainly come by plane. Is that true? Can someone be THAT stupid? I need a lecture.

Tonight I watched a great documentary about one of your best photographer alive : William Eggleston. If you Google Image him you’ll (maybe) understand why I love him so much : he shows (with a fabulous sense of color) something intimate about the USA, he SHOWS something. And this with a “constantly random” attitude (kids, a light, a street, a store, a car), which I adore. I was watching him “hunting” images in this documentary, with a constant “awwweeee” in my mind. The eye of a photographer is something really special. I love that guy. Here are a few pictures :

 

 

 

To finish this chronicle here is a good picture I found of Facebook yesterday.

Don’t forget how you laughed. I won’t. Ever.

Have a nice day!

 

Proust & les Hirondelles : Chronicle 4

Absolutely no cunning could prevent a man
from being smashed against his dreams

 

I’m French, I’m sorry : my english is clumsy these days…

Have you ever visited the school you were in as a very little child, now you’re an adult? Among all the memories and the heartbeats you feel, you also find that… everything around is very little, right? You’re taller, now… you’re different. Perspective.

Today is the “braderie” in the city of La Madeleine. We love braderies in the North of France. It’s like your US garage sales, all along some streets : today was about 1.200 exhibitors (or displayers, how to say that?). I took a cool picture of motorbikes toys, you like it?

I’ve been asked one day about my “goals in life“. I have been very disturbed by this question, which is so… all about efficiency. I couldn’t think of a goal, even one. I feel like Cioran, in shock and in anger, after being asked about what he was “preparing”. If a French says he has “goals” in life, he sounds ridiculously Action Man, that’s it. The idea itself is a nightmare – at least when you’re more than 22 years old. I don’t want to be efficient, I just try to live, right? Dreams, maybe… Dreams, OK.

Absolutely no cunning could… etc…

I’m too lazy to find it, but the stupidest quote ever is something like “Give yourself a very high goal, then maybe you’ll reach a lower but good stage”. Of course there’s a more accurate one, saying that while you try to do that, you fail choosing the right path to achievement, you stay blind to feedbacks, etc. Typical Wrong Way Up. Well yes, these are words only, I know.

I have no goal, not one. It could be “to be happy” or “to be creative” or “to be a better human” or “to help others”, but I already failed in all these fields, obviously! And who will feed my cat, while I John Wayne?

If you want some fun, though, Google Image “Goals Quotes”. Plenty of orders in capitals. Like : <<DON’T LET ANYTHING STOP YOU FROM REACHING YOUR GOAL>>. Ohlalalaa, my French eyes are hurt! I need a beer, I think.

So I found a goal : stay zen in front of bullsh*t 🙂

It’s when the weather change (warmer air, higher sun, sudden showers) than you can have a rush of childhood memories. Or teenhood, say. Suddenly it’s HERE, you feel the same feeling you had in your mother’s arms, or at school when you were loving some shy redhead in silence, or when you were gathering interesting rocks under open sky. The idea of memories in Madeleines de Proust come from the food, but also from a smell (freshly cut grass, chocolate cake baking, little pot of white glue in kindergarten) or a sound (of swallows flying hunting between streets, or the familiar engine’s roar of you’re father’s car), but also from the light in the air, the clouds, a coming thunderstorm…

Marguerite Duras says somewhere that she can NOT write if the bed is not made. Strange thing is : I never forgot that, because… that’s true.

I bought a Raymond Carver book, “The American Chekhov”, as they say. I know Carver’s work pretty well, but I never read him in English. Good exercise. I can’t resist to a blurb on a book saying “The (Italian, Canadian, whatever country you choose) Chekhov”…

They have something in common, that’s right : they watch meticulously our little renunciations, our microscopic failures, our rushes never said, our words, spoken and immediately regretted, our love silliness, our boredom. But it’s not “laments”. It’s more like : “This is it, brother human, and it not even THAT dramatic”.

I found a rose, there. Is a rose, is a rose, Mrs Stein. Look where she is (“une rose”) :

In the shades of break-up moods, you have the yellow poison of jealousy, the dark corners of loneliness, the twinge of uncertainty and many more. The invisible bitterness of “having being loved and then not” is sometimes like swimming against the cold current of a long deep river.

In the shades of illness… Oh, another time, OK?

You can read books (or see a therapist, it depends on how you’re made), self help or philosophy : you’ll read everywhere that you have to find your happiness inside you, right? Again? I “have to”? The capitalized ORDER quote is <<BE HAPPY AND SMILE>>. Yes, each time, you want to punch the author in the face! Bim! Paf! Pouf!

Give birth to a dancing star from the chaos you have within

Strange star, but that could be my Nietzsche goal, maybe… Well, see?

Thanks for reading! Merci!

“Interstate 80” fantasy #traveling #USA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_80

I choose this road. 3000 miles. 60 days. Drive 50 miles a day every morning, then leave the Interstate to see what’s around. Drive. Park. Breathe. Watch things, nature, villages, cities, roads, people. Sit somewhere on a bench. Watch. Take pictures too. I could do it.

No, it’s NOT Route 66.

I can’t do it for real, because I’m shy, lazy and broke. Maybe on Google Maps?

It’s traveling without traveling. Maybe when I’ll be stuck in my bed when I’ll be 80 years old. By the way, I found the list of big cities I’d cross over.

I publish this. I have to go, dear readers : I want to visit Joliet, Illinois, now.

“Quad Cities”? Really?

San Francisco, Californie
Oakland, Californie
Sacramento, Californie
Reno, Nevada
Salt Lake City, Utah
Cheyenne, Wyoming
Sidney, Nebraska
North Platte, Nebraska
Kearney, Nebraska
Grand Island, Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska
Omaha, Nebraska
Council Bluffs, Iowa
Des Moines
Iowa City
Quad Cities, Iowa et Illinois (Davenport)
Joliet, Illinois
Chicago, Illinois
Toledo, Ohio
Cleveland Ohio
Youngstown, Ohio
Sharon, Pennsylvanie
Clarion, Pennsylvanie
Du Bois, Pennsylvanie
Clearfield, Pennsylvanie
Bellefonte, Pennsylvanie
Williamsport, Pennsylvanie (par l’Interstate 180)
Bloomsburg, Pennsylvanie
Hazleton, Pennsylvanie
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvanie
Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvanie
New York (par l’Interstate 95)

Freedom & Hungriness : exploring a domain “in a roundabout way”

Imagine you want to explore the life of Abraham Lincoln, or the D-Day. You can do that the proper way, reading a biography or watching a good documentary. But I like to find other path, in a roundabout way, finding another door, another color, being a little casual and inappropriate.

Take the Lincoln example. You can :

• Read about someone’s around : his wife, a general, his murderer.
• Read about what happened after him, or the American life before him.
• Find pictures on the web about him, his life, his handwritten letters.
• Read a diary of somebody who knew him.
• Find everything about his opponents.
• Explore one month only of his life and the country’s life too.
• Find a Lincoln forum on the web and spend months exploring, reading questions and answers of specialists.

Tool :

Casualness in knowledge exploration is a possible way.

Thanks for reading!

 

#French #Blogging in #English : un Songe

OK I’m French, I knowwww that I make mistakes. Sometimes I even make mistakes on purpose, like when I use nouns as verb. Thus… at night : I bed, then in the morning I coffee. I should have written that “I mistake on purpose”…

Blogging in English? Why?

Because it’s not my native language, so I HAVE to make in simple and short. Simple because I don’t have all the vocabulary. Short because… I know you don’t like to read long articles on your smartphone. Therefore short is good. It also forces me to be synthetic.

I asked some friends “how does it sound?”, but they were really not able to tell me. Charming Frenchy? Awkward foreigner? Disturbing little flaws? I don’t know if it brings colors or botherness…

Yes, OK, botherness : no, OK. I liked it, though!

What I heard also is that it sounds French ALSO because of the way ideas are expressed (How so? Casualness? Impoliteness?), or even because… American people just simple don’t think like that, or say that. Parfois, un article vient d’un simple songe…

Songe? What’s between “think” (penser) and “dream” (rêver), in English? We have this verb : songer. And a splendid noun : un songe…

Bonne journée. Thanks for reading!

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