Billy's Lines Of Gibberish

— 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

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— 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?

Pieter Brueghel the Elder — Landscape with the Fall of Icarus [Landschap met de Val van Icarus], ca. 1558 Oil on canvas mounted on wood — 73.5 x 112 cm Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels

I am leaving Paris this Friday morning, en route to Peru where I'll spend ten days. Not another medical conference this time, but mere tourism, with my brother and father. We shall visit Lima, Cuzco, The Machu-Picchu, Lake Titicaca... I feel pretty excited and plan to take a lot of photos there.

There's only one (very little!) fly in the ointment: they don't have the White Night in Lima yet, that will occur on the next Saturday night in Paris and many cities. The White Night is a cultural night of discovery that has been organised every year since 2002 in a growing number of cities, in Europe first, then in the whole world.

Throughout the White Night, museums, libraries, monuments, places of worship, tourist sites, cinemas, parks and gardens, hospitals, swimming pools, universities, etc. will stay open. You can go and see an exhibition at 2 am or visit a library at 5 am if you feel like... you will sleep later, tomorrow is a Sunday.

I usually manage to be in Paris on the Nuit Blanche, as it is called in French. Three years ago though, I was in Brussels, and enjoyed it a lot in this welcoming city. I walked in the streets all night long, listened to music bands, ate mussels with french fries, and went to several museums. The Fall of Icarus by Pieter Brueghel the Elder was exhibited in the Museum of Ancient Art, part of the Royal Museums of Brussels.

I don't know why I've always had the feeling that the scene in this painting occurs in the New World, instead of the Aegean sea... on the Peruvian coasts, maybe, which makes I have now come full circle in the weird associations of idea that made up the present blog.

Poor Icarus... In the painting by Brueghel, his fatal fall is of minor interest.
The ploughman is bent over the ground...

They couldn't care less what happens to a dreamer, a reckless person who dared to challenge the sun.

I thought of this melancholy painting today when I read again this poem by Charles Baudelaire.

There are few things about which I don't have any doubt, but here is one: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry is one of the greatest books ever.

I read Le Petit Prince — the original French title of the novella — for the first time when I was about eight, and I have read it again a lot of times since then... it is worth it, and also, this great book is a small book.

It is a children's story, yet it is also a philosophical tale, a poetical fable. The novella contains the best lessons of life, love and friendship you can read. Like Alice in Wonderland, it is a novel à tiroirs, with several levels of reading, in which everyone will find something different. Also, you will not find the same thing in it when you read it as a child, a teen or an adult, when you are young... or not that young any more.

There was a lunar eclipse last night, you could see in Europe and Africa essentially. From about 9:30 pm onwards, the moon progressively took an unusual coppery colour, when every first light and sunset in the world focused on its surface.

A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon enters the Earth's shadow. One would think it looks darker, more greyish than usual. Yet, on the contrary, it turns red, because the atmosphere of the Earth scatters the light of the Sun, and changes its colour.

The partial eclipse reached its peak shortly before midnight. Then the moon progressively returned to its usual paleness. It was time for me to go to bed, and read poetry by Charles Baudelaire again.

From the black A[lpha] of original darkness to the light of white E, and finally the violet O[mega], the last colour in the spectrum. Letters in this poem by Arthur Rimbaud are considered graphic or sound objects that have inherent meaning and ability to awaken a lot of other ones.

About two years ago, I went to an exhibition in Le Grand Palais in Paris. Italia Nova was dedicated to Italian paintings and sculptures in the first half of the twentieth century. I was amazed then to see that several Italian Futurists of the 1920's would use letters and numbers as objects in the same modern way Rimbaud had first used half a century earlier and pop-artists such as Andy Warhol would do later as well.

Voyelles

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes :
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d'ombre ; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles ;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes ;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux ;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges ;
- O l'Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux !

Arthur Rimbaud

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
which buzz around cruel smells,

E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
in anger or in the raptures of penitence;

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega! the violet ray of His Eyes!

Arthur Rimbaud

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.

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

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.