Billy's Lines Of Gibberish

John, Paul, Ringo and George (Cover of Let it Be – 1970)

Paul McCartney had only just woke up in his room in London, one morning in 1964, when he hurried to the piano and turned on a tape recorder. During the night, he had dreamed of a melody he did not want to let slip into the recesses of his mind.

In order not to lose it then, he played it with temporary lyrics inspired by the breakfast he was just about to take with his girlfriend: 'Scrambled Eggs… Oh, baby, you've got so lovely legs'.

The music was here, the whole of its melody so precisely composed that McCartney was not sure at first it was truly a creation of his own. He feared it might be involuntary plagiarism, that he subconsciously remembered a music composed by someone else. 'For about a month', he told later, 'I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before. Eventually it became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it.'

Beatlemania was as its peaks at the time. The group of four boys from Liverpool — whose name was a pun made of The Beetles (one among their many first names, and a tribute to Buddy Holly's group The Crickets) and 'to beat' — had turned into the world's most famous band in the history of popular music in the 20th century. Even, first dissensions had appeared, that would make the band break in 1970.

In 1964 though, John, Paul, George and Ringo would always sing together. John Lennon and Paul McCartney composed most of the songs, they would always sign together — Lennon/McCartney. It was the case also with Scrambled Eggs when McCartney succeeded at last to add real lyrics to the music composed during his sleep. Yet, for the first time, the song was not sung by the whole Beatles but Paul alone, accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar, with a string quartet on the background.

Yesterday has become one of the world's most popular songs ever, with more than 3,000 recorded versions. In a poll of  British music experts and listeners in 1999, it was even voted the best song of the 20th century. I do love the song, but I somewhat regret it has not remained an Ode to Scrambled Eggs, just for the sake of fun and originality.

[BbN #4]

— 2A — At the beginning

Kyss [The Kiss] by Edvard Munch (ca. 1895) Oil on wood, 38.7 x 32.5 cm — Munch-museet, Oslo.

Önceleyin [At First] by Cemal Süreya

-:-:-:-:-:-

— 2B — I Don't Want to Be a Couple

Woodstock  by Burk Uzzle (1969) [This photo has become famous as the cover of the first Woodstock album]

I don't want to be a couple.
Couples are stupid.
Couple kiss all the time.
Couple moan.
Couple fight.

I want to kiss you when I want.
I want to leave you when I want.
I want to come back when I want.
I want to be free.

I don't want to spoil everything.
I don't want to be a couple.

-:-:-:-:-:-

— 2C — Looking Together in the Same Direction

Der Kuss [The Kiss] by Gustav Klimt (1907) Oil and Gold Leaf on canvas, 180 x 180 cm Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna

S'aimer, ce n'est pas se regarder l'un l'autre, c'est regarder ensemble dans la même direction. [Loving is not looking at each other, it's looking together in the same direction.]

-:-:-:-:-:-

— 2D — Old Lovers

[...] But finally, finally, It took us a lot of talent To be old without being adult. Oh my love My sweet, my tender, my marvellous love From bright dawn until the end of day, I still love you, you know, I love you. And more the time marches on The more time torments us. But isn't it the worst trap For lovers to live in peace?

A rainbow in Dubrovnik — March 11, 2009.

Dubrovnik this evening bears scarcely any resemblance with the sunny, exuberant city they talk about in the guide I read in the plane this morning.

The crowd that was supposed to fill the streets of the old town, was made up in actual fact of one tourist with a camera, a couple of local women doing the shopping for tonight's dinner, and half a dozen schoolboys messing around at a bus stop.

It has been raining the entire day in Dubrovnik, and now it's getting dark. We're in the off season undoubtedly.

The atmosphere makes me think of a song by Francis Cabrel, that says:

C'est le silence qui se remarque le plus,
Les volets roulants, tous descendus,
De l'herbe ancienne dans les bacs à fleurs sur les balcons,
On doit être hors-saison.

La mer, quand même, dans ses rouleaux continue
Son même thème, sa chanson vide et têtue,
Pour quelques ombres perdues sous des capuchons,
On doit être hors-saison...

What you notice most is silence,
Rolling curtains, which are all down,
Some old grass in planters, on the balconies
We're probably in the off season.

Yet the sea, with its rollers, goes on
Its only theme, its empty and obstinate song,
For a few shadows, lost under their hoods
We're probably in the off season...

Yet, when I went out of the hotel a moment ago, there was a wonderful rainbow over the ramparts of the old town and the sea, standing out against the dark sky. Without rain, you cannot have rainbows, can you? Hurrah for the rain then. Anyway, a few drops of water will not prevent me to get to know the ancient city of Ragusa tomorrow.

Gagnants/Perdants by Noir Désir

Noir Désir became famous in 2001 with their song 'Le vent nous portera'. Yet the band was disrupted after singer Bertrand Cantat was jailed for the manslaughter of his girlfriend, actress Marie Trintignant after a violent row in a Lithuanian hotel in July 2003. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment, but left jail last year after he had served half the sentence.

"Noir Désir died the same day as Marie", Cantat once said. Yet the band does not appear to be that dead, since they released two new songs on the Internet last Thursday, that everyone can download for free.

For several months, I did not listen to 'Le vent nous portera' because I could not help thinking this voice belonged to a man who once beat his wife to death. I still have mixed feelings about it: the song exists anyway, and it is a great song.

Giorgio de Chirico The Red Tower (1913) The Barnes Foundation

When I was in Philadelphia lately, I visited The Barnes Foundation, a fascinating place where hundreds (!) of chef-d'oeuvres are displayed. It owns a lot of Impressionist paintings especially. Also, many canvases by various painters who were not impressionists are exhibited, among which several pieces by Giorgio de Chirico.

I like many paintings by Chirico, in particular those he painted during his 'metaphysical' period. Yet the artist later joined the futurist movement 'Valori Plastici', then its 'Novecento' following, who both supported Mussolini's fascism. I sure dislike what were the ideas and behaviour of the individual. I still love many of his paintings anyway.

Another example: French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, also a doctor in medicine. His first novel, 'Journey to the End of the Night' (Voyage au bout de la nuit) is among my favourite books ever. 'Death on the Instalment Plan' (Mort à crédit) is another great novel by him. His medical thesis about Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, who discovered the cause of puerperal fever and introduced hand washing in medicine, is at the same time a marvel of smartness and independence of mind, and splendid literature.

Yet Céline was a racist and anti-Semite, who shared many opinions with the Nazis. He wrote shameful pamphlets about the Jews before and during WWII. After the war, he was convicted a collaborator and imprisoned. I despise the man, I deeply admire several novels he wrote.

So... I still look at paintings by Chirico. I still read Céline. I still listen to music by Wagner. I may still listen to the songs by Bertrand Cantat also then. It does not mean I would shake the hand of the man, if it ever happened that I met him.

Joachim-Raphael Boronali — Sunset on the Adriatic [Coucher de soleil sur l'Adriatique]

The painting on the left induced some hurly-burly when it was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1910. The canvas was signed by a person of obscure repute named Joachim-Raphael Boronali, who had prepared the picture's appearance by drafting a manifesto about a new, dissident futurist school, Excessivism.

Many specialized critics who saw the painting in the show found the work 'very interesting'. It was sold twenty Golden Louis (400 French francs, about 1,800 current dollars). And yet, its author, who appears in the adjacent photo with his best friend, was not a painter at all.

There is a famous cabaret at 22 Rue des Saules in Montmartre, named Le Lapin Agile, where, in the 1900s-1910s, unknown people called Picasso, Utrillo, Modigliani, Braque, Derain, Dorgelès, Apollinaire or Max Jacob would meet, talk, joke, sing and drink together. The owner of the place was Frédéric Gérard, Le Père Frédé as everyone called him, who is the bearded man who appears in the photo above.

The cabaret had existed since 1860. It was originally called Le Cabaret des Assassins — Cabaret of Murderers — until Andre Gill, a caricaturist, painted in 1875 the sign that was to suggest its permanent name: the picture of a humanized rabbit with a top-hat, who jumps out of a saucepan with a bottle of wine in his hand.

Residents soon called their neighbourhood night-club Le Lapin à Gill — Gill's rabbit — a name that naturally evolved into Le Lapin Agile — The Agile Rabbit.

Cora Vaucaire — Frédé

Pablo Picasso— At the Lapin Agile [Au Lapin Agile] 1905. Oil on Canvas, 99 cm × 100 cm Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New-York.

The cabaret still exists nowadays. It is still full of customers who come and listen to French songs dating back as far as the fifteenth century.

Frédéric Gérard— aka Frédé — the owner of the place shown with his donkey on the photo above, was a character. Songs have been written about him, and he is the man playing the guitar in the background, in the adjacent painting by Pablo Picasso.

In this painting, Picasso portrayed himself dressed as a Harlequin, accompanied by his model Germaine Pichot. According to the tale, Picasso once paid a lunch with this painting, that Frédé sold in 1912 for the equivalent of 20 dollars. In 1989, it was auctioned at Sotheby's for 41 million dollars.

Anyway, how about 'Joachim-Raphael Boronali'? Who hid under the nickname? You know it was not Picasso or any of the abovementioned artists since I wrote that the painter was portrayed in the photo displaying Frédé with his donkey. Yet the painter was not Frédé but... Lolo, the donkey!

The painting was a hoax by the writer Roland Dorgelès and a few friends, to make fun of art critics. They tied a brush to the tail of Lolo, which daubed a canvas with several colours in front of witnesses, official ones included. They coined the nickname Boronali because it is an anagram for Aliboron, as Jean de la Fontaine would call the donkey in his fables.

Boronali in the process of creating his masterpiece

Ta douleur (Your pain) was the second song in Camille's second album Le fil (The Thread), released 2005.

Camille – Ta douleur

Here are the French lyrics of the song and their translation into English. It is noteworthy that the word 'douleur' (pain) is feminine in French, which allows Camille a poetic licence: she speaks of pain as if it were a female... a female rival? Hence the use of 'she' instead of 'it' in the translation below, so that it renders the ambiguity of French lyrics... of which the meaning is probably obvious for their author only anyway.

Klaus Nomi started being famous in the late seventies when he performed with David Bowie in New-York. Quite unusually, the German countertenor was involved in underground and pop music, and in opera as well.

He was not only famous because of his exceptionally wide tessitura, but also because of his elfin look and usual appearances on stage as a black and white alien. Yet his career was short: he was one of the first celebrities to die from AIDS.

In November, 1982, before his home crowd in Munich, Klaus Nomi performed The Cold Song from King Arthur by Henry Purcell. Although the audience did not know, he was already seriously ill at the time, which appears obvious on the movie below. He died a few months later, aged 39 only.

The lyrics to this old aria appear strangely prophetic when you watch at it now, the last two lines especially... Knowing what a difficult time Klaus Nomi was having then, just adds to its intensity and frightening beauty.

Ipanema Beach – Rio de Janeiro, April 2007

The World Congress of Nephrology was taking place in Rio de Janeiro and I was there!

For several months, I had waited to go to this dreamy city, and hoped I could visit it a little between sessions. I certainly was there for working, yet not every communication in a convention is interesting: you usually go from one session to another then, and listen to the talks about topics you're interested in only. Hopefullythen, there are a few gaps in your schedule, when there is really nothing on the programme you feel worth attending. You may then leave the convention centre for one hour or two without guilt, and visit the place.

In Rio de Janeiro, it was not possible though, because the Convention Centre was located in an almost deserted neighbourhood, far away from the city centre, beaches, stores, everything.

Rio de Janeiro's Sugar Loaf – April 2007 Pic taken from a boat on Guanabara Bay

On the last day then, I decided not to go to the congress at all. Instead of taking a bus at 7:00 again, I remained downtown and played the perfect tourist: I took the cable-car to the Sugar Loaf, went round the Botanical Garden, strolled around in Old Rio streets, went on a two-hour cruise on Guanabara bay, had a swim in the ocean at Ipanema beach, and on the evening, at Ipanema also, I went to the Vinícius Piano Bar, a famous Bossa-Nova club in Vinícius de Moraes street.

The place is where Vinícius de Moraes, Antonio Carlos (Tom) Jobim and João Gilberto, in the early sixties, used to ogle a beautiful girl called Heloisa Pinheiro, on her way to the very same Ipanema Beach where I was swimming a few hours earlier. A new song was born, and a new musical genre, Bossa-Nova.

Drinking caipirinhas and eating a very good meal of which I forgot the name, I listened to a talented singer called Toni Barreto, who accompanied himself on the guitar while singing compositions of his own and Bossa-Nova standards such as Águas De Março, Água De Beber... and Garota de Ipanema, of course.

The Saltire flag of Scotland (The Highlander, a Scottish Pub in Paris)

I arrived in Scotland two days ago, for a 9-day vacation trip in the country of William Wallace and Sean Connery. News from the Castles and Highlands to come then, and from Nessie also perhaps, who knows?

Scotland is not an independent country anymore, therefore it does not have a national anthem. Yet a few songs are used instead, that convey Scottish will to differentiate themselves from the rest of Great Britain.

It is especially the case of Flower of Scotland, the beautiful, patriotic song by The Corries. Resolutely directed at the English, the song celebrates Robert the Bruce's victory against the troops of King Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314.

In particular, Scots break into Flower of Scotland at the Highland Games — sometimes — and before a match by the Scottish national rugby team — always.

Edinburgh, 17 March 1990. Scotland previously defeated Wales, Ireland and France in the Five Nations Championship. Today, in Murrayfield Stadium, the last match in this championship is about to start, against the auld enemy and hot favourite, England, undefeated also. Victory in the Championship, and a Grand Slam, are at stake.

Players are on the field. Five minutes ago, while the English team ran into the Stadium as usual, David Sole, who captains the Scots, deliberately walked his men onto the pitch, in a slow, belligerent march, to deafening cheering of the home crowd.

English against Scots. Hundred years of conflicting history. Furthermore, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has experimented the Community Charge (aka Poll Tax) for one year in Scotland only, leading to massive disobedience, and riots to come shortly in the whole country.

Both teams are lined up in front of the VIP stand. Fifteen English players bravely sing God Save the Queen as strong as they can, while TV cameras slowly pass in review the staring faces of every Scot player fixed in a provocative silence. For the first time in their history, they don't sing the anthem.

Then, David Sole turns his head toward the musicians, and bagpipes start playing, while the Scottish team and whole home crowd — 50,000 souls — all together launch with fire into Flower of Scotland.

Needless to stay, Scots won the match and the Grand Slam. On that day, they just could not lose.

Obviously, L. Cohen is not any more the young writer of Beautiful Losers I blogged about lately. He is not any more either the folk singer who created Suzanne and Famous Blue Raincoat. He is a 73 year-old man with a history.

Although he was born in a Canadian Jewish family, and says he has always remained a Jewish, he has embraced Buddhist philosophy for decades. He spent several years in the nineties on Mount Baldy, a Buddhist retreat in California, then went back to the world, had most of his money stolen by his manager, recorded two more albums (Ten new songs in 2001, Dear Heather in 2004), and in 2008, at last, decided to tour again, starting with his homeland Canada, then Europe.

The Roman Theatre in Fourvière (Lyon)

Lyon was his first stage in France, before Nice on July 22 and Paris in November. The show was a unique evening performance in Les Nuits de Fourvière, a summer festival held every year from June to August in the marvelous site of the Roman theatre.

A very special place for a very special singer, the Roman Theatre was built more than two millenaries ago, during the reign of Augustus in 15 BC, as the centre of the Roman city of Lugdunum. It is just the best place you can dream of to be at a show. Just have a look at the picture above, I took yesterday in the afternoon, when they were making the stage ready : the site is gorgeous and its maximum audience is about 3,500 only, which means you're close to the stage wherever you sit.

At 21:30, the show began. Leonard Cohen arrived on the stage half-running, a puny-looking white-haired man with a trilby hat. He said "bonsoir", and for the first time in my life I saw a crowd cheering an artist with a five-minute standing ovation *before* the concert.

He then said the first lines of a poem every French-speaking person in the audience recognized at once:

... it was a French translation of Dance me to the end of love, his musicians then began playing while he switched to English and started singing. He would later introduce most of his songs the same way during the first set, with a few lines translated into French. He talked in French also sometimes, so that everybody in France remembers (how could we forget it?) he is also a Québécois, born and raised in Montréal.

The Future, There ain't no Cure for Love, Bird on a Wire, Everybody Knows... and so on, Leonard Cohen sang 23 songs, including 5 encores, with his deep and steady voice.

The whole of the show was very professional, thanks to the musical direction by Roscoe Beck (who plays the bass in the band also), but the professionalism of the performance did not lessen the emotion the lyrics gave vent to, of which the meaning so often goes beyond the words.

The three vocalists sang beautifully — Charley and Hattie Webb, the Webb sisters, and Sharon Robinson, that Cohen repeatedly referred to as his collaborator — she is the co-writer of several songs. Every musician was good, and was individually named by Cohen several times during the show after their solos: besides Roscoe Beck on bass, there was Rafael Gayol on drums; Neil Larsen on keyboards; Bob Metzger on guitar; Dino Soldo on, well, maybe ten different instruments, from saxophone and other woodwinds to synthesizer and blues harmonica; and last but not least, Javier Mas who played several stringed instruments, among which the Oud, in particular as a wonderful airy introduction to Who by Fire.

In order to make the stone-built terraces more comfortable to the public, organizers had kindly provided recyclable and reusable cushions before the show. After the first encores, people started throwing their cushions to the stage, like frisbees. Several landed on there, which surprised Leonard a lot at first, then made him laugh and take his hat, mimicking he would throw it back into the public. One of the Webb sister even took a camera and made pictures of the scene, and apparently kept one cushion as a souvenir also.

The concert lasted about 3 hours, according to my watch, since it told it was 00:35 when Leonard and his band left the stage for the last time.

"On n'est pas pressés" he would say during the show indeed (we're not in a hurry). I suspect my watch is a liar though: I can swear the whole performance certainly did not last more than half of that time.

There are such moments in life: you look at a person you like, or love, and you realize in your deepest self that you will probably never see him or her again.

(Patti Smith, May 06, 2008 — approximate quote).

The Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain is an airy glass and steel building in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. It was designed specially by Jean Nouvel, also the creator of the Institut du Monde Arabe and the Musée du Quai Branly. As the name indicates, it is devoted to contemporary art. That's also the building where the great, yet disturbing, exhibition of David Lynch's works I wrote about previously took place in 2007.

The Fondation Cartier is now displaying an exhibition dedicated to the visual work of Patti Smith, named “Land 250”. Drawings, films, objects, and essentially photographs taken with a Land 250 polaroid camera. I went there past Tuesday, tooking advantage of evening opening hours.

I did not know that Patti Smith would be there in person on that evening. Few people knew obviously, since we weren't much more than 150 people there. I easily found a free space to be seated on a carpet, at 5 meters from her standing at the micro. It was not a show, nor a concert, but a lecture, a discussion with the public, questions and answers in both directions.

Patti Smith talked about her photos, about the poets she loves: William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Jean Genet, René Daumal. She sang a couple of songs, and read poems.

When someone in the public asked which photos she loved most, she did not answer, but said (quoting from memory): “I love some photos because they are technically, well... quite good” [laughing]. “There are also many photos that I love despite they are not that good technically, because they embody significant personal meaning: travels I made, people I met, objects that once belonged to people who mean something to me”.

“For example”, she added, “see this horse, on the poster of the exhibition. It's not a bad photo, it's not technically perfect though. Yet it means something to me. I took it in Africa, at the end of a horse ride. Just before we left the place. I was about to climb up into the truck, and suddenly felt a gaze on my back. I turned round, and it was him. The horse I had gone riding for several days. He did not move, he waited while I looked for my camera in my bag, looked at me when I focused and took this only Polaroid. Then, he went away. We both knew we'd never see the other one again.”

I could not help but think it was a shame this picture could not be used as the cover for her great album, Horses, 30 years ago.

The whole happening did not last more than 90 minutes, but it was pleasant and friendly, although the public was quite reverent and talked little (I am simply not sure most people were fluent enough in English to ask her questions).

After she left, I spent about one more hour wandering around the exhibition. Several photographs were good, but I did not felt the same as last year about David Lynch's exhibit, that it was a great artistic event. More than once, to tell the truth, I even wondered if these little photographs of beds, guitars and statues, or this stone "from the river where Virginia Woolf committed suicide" would be in an exhibition if they were not put in display by a famous rock singer named Patti Smith.

Manhattan by Woody Allen (1979)

"Fifty-five seconds. That's the time Woody Allen needed, in 1979, to make this place — in his dear Upper Side, by the East River — one of the most famous places in the world. A pilgrimage as much necessary to lovers than Venice [...] This sequence is made in the image of Woody's Manhattan: it's a dream, a fantasy. One more time, artifice created the reality of art." (Pierre Murat)

I translated into English a few sentences of an article by Pierre Murat about New-York and the cinema, that was illustrated with the iconic photo above, part of the famous sequence in Woody Allen's movie Manhattan.

Queensboro bridge. Upper East side, Manhattan — April 2008

Woody Allen is considered one of the main US film directors by the French – whereas I've been told he is not acknowledged as such in his country – and I love Manhattan particularly.

I have wanted for years to be in this place, in the same way people from elsewhere may long to go and see the banks of the Seine River. Because of the movie by Woody Allen, because of the song by Simon and Garfunkel also. So, a couple of hours after the plane landed only, I was at the Eastern end of the 59th Street in Sutton Place Park and was gazing at the Queensboro Bridge.

It was 10 am in Paris when my plane took off yesterday. It was about 5 pm in New-York on the same day when I took the picture on the right. A dramatic scene shift in a few hours from Amélie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet to Manhattan by Woody Allen, sort of.

The Beatles — Sgt Pepper's  Lonely Hearts Club Band

When I'm sixty four was written by Paul McCartney, who sings it on Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released 1967. Paul McCartney turns 64 today.

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride,

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera ,Chuck & Dave.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?