Billy's Lines Of Gibberish

Why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West? You have a gun and I have a gun, and we'll settle it in the streets if that's they're thinking. We think we're such an improved society... The rest of the world is laughing at us. — Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

The Mayor of Chicago responded here to a recent statement by the Supreme Court of the United States of America that the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 is unconstitutional, and handguns may not be banned by the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court enacted that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights.

The Second Amendment states: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. As you can imagine, it's a very old stuff: it was enacted in 1791, shortly after the war of independence against the British. More than two centuries have passed, but it has not been modified.

A few months ago, I already wrote a blog about several articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine, where they showed that guns are a main Public Health issue in the United States, with tens thousands casualties a year. Unfortunately, it seems things will not change before a long time in that country.

In fact, Mayor Daley, most of the people in the civilized world are not laughing at the U.S.A. They are astounded rather, and sometimes scared.

Towards the light - Midnight by E. Steichen (1908) (The statue of Balzac by Rodin in the moonlight)

In a book published in 1911, entitled The Birth of the Sixth Art, Ricciotto Canudo (1879-1923), usually referred to as 'the first theoretician of cinema', suggested that cinema was the sixth art in a list that put together the spatial arts — architecture, sculpture and painting — and the temporal arts — music and dance.

He realized afterwards he had forgotten poetry and added it to his list, moving cinema from the sixth to seventh position.

Later, television and strip cartoons were also added. Then, Canudo's list is traditionally made up of nine items: architecture (1), painting (2), sculpture (3) , dance (4), music (5), poetry (6), cinema (7), television (8), and comic strips (9). Have you noticed? Photography is not included in the list.

Untitled #66 by Cindy Sherman (1980)

Situated as it is between artistic pretensions and technological constraints, photography is on the horns of a dilemma.

On one hand, it has the great advantage of allowing everyone to practice some kind of a plastic art. That's a great advantage indeed for people who pretend to have some artistic sensibility, but don't have any drawing talent: thanks to technology and automatisms, they can try and produce beauty now.

French poet Charles Baudelaire portrayed by Étienne Carjat (1863)

On the other hand though, because of its duality, some may still sound doubtful as to the artistic nature of photography. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, for example, called it An average art. Charles Baudelaire, in 1859, criticized it already for being the refuge for every flawed painter, not gifted enough or too lazy.

This appreciation may appear surprising, because he was friend with Nadar, one of the first photographers who used the medium with an artistic intention (he worked in particular a lot on composition and light). Yet Baudelaire did not criticize photography itself. Only, he believed that every art should strive for beauty, not mere reproduction of reality.

Photography can undoubtedly be art sometimes. Undoubtedly too, it is very often not artistic at all. I believe then that the question Is this art? is not that much a question about the medium itself, but about how it is used, by whom, and with which intentions.

June 21, the day of the Summer solstice in the Northern hemisphere, falls on a Saturday this year. I expect there will be a lot of people in the streets this night then, to celebrate the Fête de la Musique, the World Music Day.

Fête de la musique means Festival of Music in French. Launched in 1982 in France, it is now held in more than one hundred countries all over the world. New cities join the festivities every year, the main newcomers in 2008 being Melbourne (Australia), Sacramento (USA), Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan), Cebu (Philippines), Port-Moresby (Papua New Guinea), Hannover (Germany), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Málaga (Spain) and Québec (Canada). Several traditional festivals happening on solstice day, such as the Midsummer Celebration and Saint John's Eve festival, now take part in the popular festival.

The purpose of the festival is to make all genres of music accessible to the public, with a multitude of free concerts everywhere, including places that are not usually used for concerts.

Officials say that more than 10,000 free concerts will be held in France today. Also, amateur musicians are encouraged to perform in the streets. The slogan Faites de la musique ! (Make music!) — which is pronounced the same as Fête de la Musique — is used to promote this goal in French speaking countries.

I'll probably spend most of next night strolling around in the Latin Quarter, listening to a musician, singer, or band after another one. Leaning on a wall at the corner of a street sometimes, sometimes seating on a bench in a public garden or at the terrace of a café, no doubt I'll hear the best and the worst: the festival is open to everybody, without discrimination to résumé, background, style and experience. Musicians only need to find a place where to put their gear, which in Paris means they'd better arrive early if they intend to play in a place where a lot of people walk through.

A good classical guitarist may come on right after a dreadful heavy metal band... or the contrary. You can leave the rap singer on the boulevard and get closer to the piano and mezzo-soprano performing Voi Che Sapete in a courtyard, if you are lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. The unstructured nature of the festival is the basis of its success.

Destino — White telephone and ruins (1946, Oil on plywood, 60.6× 47.9 cm)

Although it is hard to imagine two more widely separated artists, Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney admired one another.

Dalí made no secret of his interest in Disney: as soon as in 1937 he wrote to his friend, the French Surrealist André Breton: I have come to Hollywood and am in touch with the three great American surrealists — the Marx Brothers, Cecil B. DeMille and Walt Disney.

On his side, Disney loved to have contemporary artists involved in his films, although relationship with them was sometimes stormy.

More than sixty years ago then, the idea was born of a short film collaboration between Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney. Disney probably made the suggestion to Dalí when the latter was in Hollywood in 1945, working on Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound. Dalí worked on the storyboard in the Disney Studios from February to April 1946. The film was originally planned to combine real footage and animation and tell the story of the ill-starred love of a ballerina and a baseball player. It was called Destino, after a ballad by the Mexican Armando Domínguez which was to accompany it. However, Disney Studios could not complete the film for financial reasons... at least during the lifetime of the two men.

More than a hundred paintings and drawings had survived though. This material enabled the Disney Studios, in 2003, to make a six minute film directed by Walt's nephew Roy Disney and the French artist Dominique Monfery. I watched it several months ago — several times in a row — in the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris, at an exhibition entitled Il était une fois Walt Disney (Once upon the time, Walt Disney), that surprisingly connected Disney's original drawings to occidental artworks that inspired them, from Gothic Middle-Age to Surrealism. The whole film is not online, but here is an excerpt found on YouTube:

I arrived today at Ajaccio, in Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean sea, where I'll spend three days. The island and city are essentially known as the hometown of Napoleon Bonaparte. In Ajaccio, Napoleon is everywhere indeed, from the big bust that is the first thing you see when you arrive in the main hall of the airport, to street names and many cafés' signs.

Yet Napoleon is not the Corsican 'hero' I wish to talk about now. On my way from the airport to the Convention Centre, the taxi passed though Le Cours Jean Nicoli ('Jean Nicoli walk'). It recalled me that I read a book about this great name a couple of years ago, and several quotes by him have marked me.

In 1942, Corsica département was annexed by the Italians, still Germans allies in the first years of WWII. Jean Nicoli was a French Resistance fighter. He was caught captive in 1943, tried for terrorism, and sentenced to death. The night before he was executed, Jean Nicoli wrote a letter to her wife, daughter, and the people of the world. Here come an extract of this letter (English translation of mine, any correction welcome):

I can give men an advice: don't be afraid of death. It scares you because you don't know it, yet believe me: it is not evil at all. It is nothing terrible, and as soon as you are getting closer to the large black gate, it seems welcoming and cheerful.

Do not lament that much over your leaving ones: you are much more to be pitied than us. We have arrived, and we see you, at the foot of your death, struggling to catch up with us. Poor you... You are climbing, and you are afraid to arrive at the top and rest.

Don't be scared of the top. I have reached the last meters. I feel that I will rest soon on the springy smoothness of the top. You think: "how awful it must be, when you know you're going to be shot in four hours!" Well, no, you see, it is not...

Önceleyin

Önce bir ellerin vardı yalnızlığımla benim aramda
Sonra birden kapılar açılıverdi ardına kadar
Sonra yüzün onun ardından gözlerin dudakların
Sonra her şey çıkıp geldi.

Bir korkusuzluk aldı yürüdü çevremizde
Sen çıkardın utancını duvara astın
Ben masanın üstüne kodum kuralları
Her şey işte böyle oldu önce.
Cemal Süreya

Tout au début

Tout au début, il y a eu tes mains entre ma solitude et moi
Puis les portes soudain se sont ouvertes en grand
Puis ton visage, puis tes yeux et puis tes lèvres
Et puis tout s'est accéléré

Nous n'avons plus eu peur de rien
Tu as retiré ta gêne pour l'accrocher au mur
J'ai abandonné tous mes principes sur la table
Ça s'est passé comme ça, tout au début
Cemal Süreya

At the beginning there were your hands between me and my loneliness
Then the doors were opened suddenly all through
Then your face, your eyes and your lips
Then everything came up

A fearlessness surrounded us
You took off your embarrassment and hang it on the wall
I left the rules on the table
Everything happened this way at first
Cemal Süreya

Beijing — June 1989.

(Repost of a blog published on the same day last year
on Yahoo 360°, with a few changes)