_______________

BoyForYouForever, 20
i just need someone who can help me?????? HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME

I am a young guy(20 yo) to rent (for life). I'm lost in a world full of evil and confusion.

I would like to meet someone who will snatch me from backward Polish. I do not have school. I do not know English. My family is dysfunctional.

I have depression but I still hope that someone embrace me. I can return the favor and be faithful to the end of life.







_________________

diffidentsub, 23
Prepared and trained to be kept encapsulated head to toe 24/7 in rubber under owners total control, bound, tubed, and plugged, along with strict confinement and isolation in any facility for life, and prepared to sign an agreement consenting to be an owners total property.

Can I learn to be grateful for whatever childhood events made me this way?





_________________

PASSIVE, 20
Not shore what passive was but I'm top lol
Your mean that your pass！
No I doant





_________________

ScrewYoCouch, 18/23
First up my names Calum from Bristol. The other is Steve from Portishead.

We are looking for a permanent cam and real master. Our preference is a master aged max. 58 years, slim and no body hair. Experienced is not required, but we expect that you are serious.

You will start with an inspection via cam of the youngest Slaveboy. The less young Slaveboy will let you use him in real, not once but frequently.

When he is being used, the youngest Slaveboy will watch via cam. It’s also possible that he will get (cam)exercises. When he refuses, you will punish the less young Slaveboy.

Our status: 23, slim (171cm, 58kg), light muscled (working on a six-pack); 18, slim (185cm, 70 kg)






________________

seriouslywanttogettorturedextremely, 21
Unavailable.

I'm now in a very vanilla relationship. You took too long, guys!






______________

Bait, 18
Bought this little (5'1") cunt off a Polish guy. Done all the shit I want to do to him now. Looking to pass him on for low six figures or reasonable trade. No paper trail to worry about. Minimal online trail will be deleted. If you're outside Germany you'll need to drive him across the border or use a private plane as he's got no ID. If he's got limits I haven't found them. Great bleak attitude toward his life, future, humanity.







_________________

imsoweird, 23
I'm an anal virgin, pretty new to all this role-playing-physical-shizzz, and I want that to change, and I think I like the muscley ones in my ass soo fucking hard. And put a fucking profile picture on here, you weak fuck! Man Up!






_________________

xanax_and_vodka, 19
I live in a small shithole of a town, no jobs, nothing here. Desperate to get out, if anyone is willing to 'adopt' a willing bottom for a couple of months in Birmingham area, Wolverhampton, Telford etc, I offer up a tight asshole that you can wreck daily or hourly or whenever you want for a room. When I say wrecked I mean wrecked. Oh and I may not look like it but god can I hold down my liquor!






________________

castratethisboy, 23
I READ I DONT LIKE STUPIT PERSON I SEEKING FOR MASTER DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU






___________________

getouttayourmind, 24
thanks for stopping by page!!

im Alan

DJ for dances, parties, etc

'bro' type in Midtown

7 inch muslim rod

love to Text

just like to be control useless,hang upside down with CBT.

not into Asians or phone numbers.






__________________

playdoh, 20
Really need a hand deep inside me! I love the feeling when a nice manly hand is wriggling around in my bowel. Don't do this often so when I do I want to make it count! To be honest, I'm very interesting and I love everything else too but I'm not into being shit on. A drink is cool. I also happen to be a trans boy and am built a bit different than other boys ... mwaaaaaaaaaah.





________________

2bslaved, 18
I'm young and I wanna do other things





_______________

daaannnnyyyyy, 22
Bttm, 160, 6, smoothish, white meat cock jacket that wants to be dick raped a bunch of times. A top man cunt wrecker's world be done...

My dream date? Nice dinner with an imposing, large smart bear daddy, who smiles nice and is very civil, who takes me home, pours himself a drink, slaps the shit out of me and who rapes a gift into my hole...

Scary, debased, all good. Prefer large hairy older men, especially angry men... I want to have SIRs anger put inside me. Hitting is AOK, as are mind fucks...

I have very definite ideas about the male's power to take sovereignty from another via insemination... that one MAN can force pain into another and feel only excitement and pleasure, engage in such an alienating but ultimately intimate act as rape and take away another's manhood in that moment of penetration and insemination, while promoting his own virility as dominant and normal... that punitive, injuring intimacy... animal, biological only... is what it needs.

Looking for something long term, steal me away to a remote shack... and breed me against my will for a week... then tell me you're going to "put me down" and choke me out...







________________

moog, 22
I'm the most beautiful person u have ever met!
I am very good in your bed as well as on your dining table.
My beauty and my voice will charm you every way and i can assure u from the moment you saw me your PRIVATE will be full awake no matter how old u are!!

I should also warn you, i'm so beautiful and so charming that there is a big chance that u might turn from my master into my slave!
If so i will dump u so fast your head will spins!
If u take me out you'll feel like the luckiest person in the world when everyone else will constantly stare at you for having a sexbomb beside u.
I want u to lick my ass, I want your cock in my mouth deep, and in my ass deep.
STOP! You found the best guy in the world!







_________________

Soinlove, 19
I really don't feel like doing this.. Okay, my name is Joesph Laan. I have two first names. I have a master... So yeah.. This isn't my first account.. I'm in love with my master ^-^ And I'm a sweet Guy. So peace broskies.






________________

idoubledareyou, 20
ahm,,, i looking a right master for me ,,,, i leave here ,,, together with my parents ,,,,,,, and also my farther,,,, i'm 20 years old ,, i stop my study,,, not all lover's are good sometime they just need to suvive ,,,, i pretend im nice ,,,,,, thats all,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,







__________________

BlameSociety, 19
Im a girl looking for a gay slave best friend i need help :) and my profile pic is my bf cuz it wont let me post my pic








__________________

PUZZLING_SLAVE, 24
NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE NICE SLAVE NICE NICE.
LECK IHRE FÜßE.
Dnt ask ma name n blah blah blah blah....





___________________

Infinite-death, 18
ima faget(im gay) ,single,botdf,nsn,sws,davey suicide,n balhblah lol. iam borned to slavery and is ready to give all my info and be on phone for Master that want to make me disapear. fuck me! btw ima suicidak freak :,(






*

p.s. Hey. So, I got okay sleep again last night, so maybe I'm okay. Maybe this is the last time I will ever mention the j-word, at least until the next long distance transfer. ** Michael, Hello there, Michael! Very pleasant and far more to see you. I don't think I know that Gira video, but, yeah, a must view for obviously sure. Let me add it ... Everyone, d.l. Michael has a great add for the Drinking Songs gig yesterday, and here he is to direct you to it. Michael says, 'Though Swans is duly represented here, I thought I would throw in Mssr. Gira's 'You See Through Me', from Drainland. It's kind of just a recording Jarboe made of Mike when he was drunk, senselessly arguing with her about his alcohol addiction. It is quite harrow and fucked up and all brutal & lovely at the same time, and well, is it even a song? Anyway, just thought it was a very apt selection to go with this already brimming-with-awesomeness collection.' I've been all right, other than my recent spate of jetlag. Sorry to hear about your bug. Get better now, please. 'Gradiva', hm, maybe I haven't seen that one. The name doesn't ring a bell. Huh. I'll check around. Everyone, again, Michael wonders if anyone has seen Alain Robbe-Grillet's film 'Gradiva', and, if so, if you have an opinion on it. If so, he would like to hear. Thanks. 'Glissements' is probably my favorite too. Anyway, good to see you, def. Take care. ** Misanthrope, Nah, you're not thrown out. It takes a lot to get thrown out of here. I think there've been two forcibly tossed out folks in this blog's history. You're safe, it would seem. Yeah, how did he get that name Oral?  Is that a real name, or I mean a name people give their kids? Is it from the Bible or something? ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Hey! Basehead add, awesome! Everyone, the Dreadful Flying Glove contributes Basehead's 'Ode To My Favourite Beer' to the drinking themed gig yesterday, and, if you click that, you will see why. Do it. And/or, for you fans of the fisting post the other day, Glove plops this down in the equation. Oh, excellent about the end of the week's do-ability. And, wait, it's the end of the week right now! So, ... congratulations? Wonderfully and funnily or something enough, the 'Them' gig will be in Brasilia! How about that? I know, I'm super curious and excited to see that place. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, drinking post adds. Hold on. Everyone, and Mr. Ehrenstein has drinking gig adds for you. First, you've got Monty Python's 'The Philosopher's Song', if you like, and then you've got Frank Sinatra's 'Drinking Again', if you like. Thank you, sir. Oh, sorry, I thought I'd told you that your new Petit MacMahon will appear here on Saturday, the 8th. My jetlag must've fuzzed my memory. Anyway, yes, and thank you for the marvelous it! ** Steevee, I don't know that KL song, and, if it's a hit right now, that certainly could be why Jill didn't stick it in there, 'cos it doesn't need our help, presumably. Cool about the Fandor thing! ** _Black_Acrylic, Me either. I haven't gotten drunk in ... shit, I don't know. You are glitterati! That picture cements that, man. Thanks. You're tall like me! Everyone, witness the Yuck 'n Yum art glitterati! ** Billy Lloyd, Hello there, Billy Lloyd! Welcome to this place, and I'm very happy to have you here. Thank you a bunch for the good words about my Cycle and blog. I was going to ask you if I could hear 'Flood', but then I clicked your name and then clicked other stuff, and I wound up in your Soundcloud, and there it was, so I'm going to listen to it and 'A City' as soon as I get out of here today. Cool. Everyone, how about welcoming Billy Lloyd to here and pleasing yourself in the process by clicking this and listening to two songs by him on Soundcloud. Sound like a good idea? It does, right? Yeah, it's a bit time consuming to do this p.s. every day, but I get to talk to all these interesting people like yourself and so on, so it's kind of worth it ultimately, I think. Anyway, thanks a lot. Please hang out here as often and as much as you like, yeah? ** Paul Curran, 'Suicide Solution', ha ha, good one. Lag might be gone. I'm wary to say so, but maybe. It was indeed about five days, you're right. Interesting. Good call. ** Cobaltfram, Definitely going to avoid 'Lincoln' like the plague. 'Killing Them Softly' is that Pitt movie, right? I just watched 'Take Shelter'. A little late, but still. You see that? That was/is very good. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Glad you liked the gig, J. No, I haven't heard the 'Desertshore' thing yet. I know I should be excited about it, but I'm strangely not so excited. Might be my mood or something. Yeah, I read too that there's a CD of the rehearsals with Gen's vocals coming out somewhere at some point. That interests me a little more. The new GbV is the best of this year's trio, I think, which is saying a lot, since all three of them are great.  But, yeah, I think it's the best of the three and one of the GbV catalog new all-time highlights. Sometimes unplugging is necessary for sure. I do that, or I unplug from almost everything. Not from here, but otherwise. ** Sypha, You've never drank alcohol at all? That's interesting. You've never even wanted to take a sip and see what all the fuss is about? ** Frank Jaffe, Hey, Frank! I've been jetlagged until very recently, so I've been kind of ugh-ish, but now I'm okay. Before that happened, I was good. LA was great, indeed. Oh, the culinary highlight was probably this vegan Mexican place in Echo Park that I don't remember the name of, unfortunately. That was really good. AA Bronson contact, cool! Maybe he'll finally stock the zine at the store. Cool if you can see him and Scott, yeah, for sure. Oh, wow, soon re: Luke in Paris. Tell him to write to me or call me or something. It's cold here, but I guess that's to be expected. If he wants any to-see tips or whatever, I can give him mine, and Michael and Bene will be happy to as well, I'm sure. Other than movies on the plane and 'Take Shelter', I haven't seen many movies recently either. Might go see 'Wreck It Ralph'. That appeals. January, okay, cool. Great to see you, Frank! ** E., Hi, E! A pleasure to see you, very naturally. My bathroom? Uh, hm, not too special, I guess. There's this vent on the wall that kind of looks like an interesting sculpture, and whoever designed the shower has his or her signature printed on the floor of it. That seems kind of odd. I don't want to jinx you getting over your writer's block by saying I'm excited by that fact too, so I hope I didn't just do that. I think my excitement is generally a good luck thing, but I don't know. What I enjoy about this blog? Huh. I don't know. I usually don't think about it, I just do it. Sometimes I think that if I think about it too much, I'll realize it's a crazy thing to do, and then I'll want to stop. I don't feel forced to respond to the comments though. I like doing that. Yeah, there are these occasional days when I'm not in the mood at all, and the p.s. is a little like pulling teeth, but those days are pretty rare. The only times I get bugged are the days once in a while when almost no one comments about the post of the day. Those are the only times I get like, Why do I even bother? But, no, you can or should come on here and be bratty or complain or do whatever you want. I like that. Feel free. It's all good. Saskia, cool. Okay, I will download that and listen to the first track at the very least, and I'll tell you what I think, but you'll have to come back and ask me what I thought, and then I will. Deal? Deal. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Sure, a day on E. M. Cioran's 'A Short History of Decay' would be really great! Thank you! Wonderful! Richard Howard really is a fantastic translator sometimes, I agree. Love to you too! I hope you get the snow garden. I hope Paris gets one too, but it will have to be a weird year for Paris to get any snow at all. But one can hope, right? I do. ** Lord_s, Lord! What a rare and true pleasure, sir! And that is a terrific secret you just passed along. I'm going to go pull that up out of storage and listen to it with my newly enlightened ears. Well, I guess it would be my brain that's enlightened. My ears are just their usual floppy yet stiff selves. How are you? You good or even really great? ** Randomwater, Hi, R! I guess I used to drink too much too, but it was a long time ago, so I guess it's okay. I used to drink by myself. Worst way to drink, I think. I think I had some awful phone conversations, but that's about it. Delivering food is a good thing to do. Food is good, obviously. Oh, you have new writing on your blog! Why didn't you tell me? You don't have to tell me or do anything, but I'm pleased that I got all inquisitive and clicked your name today. I will read you to my heart's content. Aliens? Mm, probably not? I don't think I really believe in those guys too much, I don't know. I guess I think it would be the end of the E.T. ride, which is now just a pile of rubble somewhere. Or at least the one at Universal Studios LA. That was a sad day when they tore that ride down. And the ride they replaced it with, which is Simpsons-themed thing, kind of sucks. I don't recommend it. Fine day to you! ** Right, It's your monthly slaves day around here. Master it, if you feel so inclined. See you tomorrow.

1.
Wolf presents ... A Defense of Brutalism.


For some reason Brutalism gets a lot of hate, and since I happen to really love a large number of Brutalist buildings, and think that it was, is, a great architectural movement, I thought I'd give you a little tour of Brutalism's mind, life, likes and dislikes, etc.


Brutalism doesn't give a shit (much like the honey badger).




Brutalism knows you don't like it. It doesn't care.





Brutalism doesn't fuck around.





Brutalism tells it like it is.





Brutalism doesn't hide.





Brutalism doesn't put on airs.





Brutalism doesn't correct its elaborate hairdo with a delicate hand every ten seconds.





Brutalism doesn't read Cosmo.





Brutalism doesn't do bling. It doesn't really do real gold either, although it would if it could afford it. Gold does not tarnish.





Brutalism doesn't wear its grandfather's brogues.








Brutalism knows the periodic table by heart.





Brutalism scratches its butt when it itches, regardless of who's around.





Brutalism is refreshingly true to itself.





Brutalism shows you what it's made of, just like that. "BLAM".





Brutalism's skin is too thick for the bad rep to hurt. Well, it's not skin, it's concrete.





Brutalism really has your best interests at heart.





Brutalism is proud, not arrogant.





Brutalism is heavy, not fat.





Brutalism erodes with style, and does not go for that chronophobic botox nonsense.





Brutalism does have a sense of humour.








Brutalism takes its duty with dedication.





Brutalism is not diplomatic, but not warmongering either.





Brutalism does what needs doing.





Brutalism will still stand there when you're ash.





Brutalism is not smug, it's self-assured.





Brutalism does not have nightmares.





Brutalism does not believe in fairies.





Brutalism has style, substance, and what goes in between.





Brutalism is what humans would be like if they knew they were gonna die tomorrow and cut the crap.





Brutalism is not totalitarian, it is totality.








Brutalism has no issues with its more graceful neighbours, it just doesn't have time for that cocktail party on Friday.





Brutalism drives half a mile below the speed limit, and barely notices when you fishtail it.





Brutalism has read Sartre, it's read Camus, it's read Hegel and it's also read Nietzsche. In fact, Brutalism has read everything. And processed it.





Brutalism is not trying to prove a point, it's letting the point that it is prove itself to you.





Brutalism does not get into arguments in public transport, it stares at them with a smirk.





Brutalism is sometimes very gentle. With kittens, for instance.





Brutalism would go for colour if concrete came in cerulean blue, but it doesn't, so grey will do just fine.





Brutalism plays with texture, shadows, angles, parallax. But it's a serious game.





Brutalism's favorite animal is the bear. Bet you saw that one coming huh? Good for you.





Yes, of course it likes elephants too. I mean come on.





Brutalism's favourite dish is thai green curry. Bet that surprises you huh? Well, it is.








Brutalism's favourite movie is Salker. Make of that what you will.





Brutalism doesn't do drugs. It wants its brain sharp as a tack.





Brutalism doesn't drink. It wants its reflexes sharp as a tack.





Brutalism likes doing funny faces and likes the fact that no-one even notices even more.





Brutalism likes the idea that if Shit comes to hit the Fan, it'll fit right in that dystopian landscape.





Brutalism knows that if Shit never hits the Fan, it'll still look good. You know, as a warning.





Brutalism had trouble fiding shoes in its size so it just goes barefoot now.





Brutalism used to hang out and drink tea with J.G Ballard. Sometimes with milk and sugar, sometimes black. It even tried a slice of lemon once. It was ok. Brutalism is not fussy.





Brutalism doesn't think the truth should be concealed. Not because it would be Bad, but because, why bother?





Brutalism's favourite word is Impervious. Brutalism's favourite people are Impervious, too. It also very much likes Pragmatism, and Pragmatic people.





Brutalism is not responsible for the excesses perpetrated in its name. It is not responsible for the great ideas, either. It is base material, neutral.





Brutalism likes to remind people that the shortest trajectory from A to B a a straight line. We are mortal, and like is short - why lose time?





Brutalism does not put on a silly patronizing voice when it talks to children. Or anyone, for that matter. Brutalim assumes you know what the deal is. If it's wrong, that's your problem.





Brutalism has a dream...





Brutalism thinks there's something weird about the way some people take pictures of every place they go with themselves in them, as if to prove something.





Brutalism never had anyone walled in alive. As it were.





Brutalism might be heavy-footed but its posture is impeccable.





Brutalism knows who killed JFK.





Brutalism once believed space could make the man, but is now content with the many-times proven axiom that space is neither made not making. It just is.





Brutalism knows how much everything costs and sees no point in driving a city bankrupt just to look pretty. Not that looking pretty is a goal it has much respect, let alone desire, for.








Brutalism knows a Building is a Building and a Forest is a Forest. Yeah, ok, so what, you say? Well... THINK, it says.





Brutalism likes pecan in its ice-cream. Well you never.





Brutalism is the kind of dude you want on your side in a fight. If you try and punch it, you'll just break your hand.



For more technical, historically correct details, as well as YET MORE images, see:
Wiki, of course...
Architizer
Brutalismus
Fuck Yeah Brutalism! (HA!)








2.
Tender Prey presents... EXPERIMENTAL DOMESTIC CELLS


With a few exceptions (nos 5,8,9 and most notably no 1) these interiors only ever existed as prototypes conceived and built for architecture & design fairs or exhibitions. They are projections of possible interiors, without a concrete relation to an exterior, which is part of what appeals to me about them. All the images apart from 8 and 9 were scanned from the book 'Model Apartments - Experimental Domestic Cells' (Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1997)
















2. Alan Wexler 'Crate House'
New York, 1991

















3. Joe Colombo 'Total Furnishing Unit'
produced for the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, MOMA, New York, 1972

















4. Gio Ponti 'La Casa Adatta'
produced for Eurodomus 3 (Pilot exhibition of the modern house), Milan, 1970








5. Joe Colombo
Joe Colombo's apartment, Milan 1969-70




















6. Ettore Sottsas
produced for the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, MOMA, New York, 1972














7. Alison & Peter Smithson 'The House of the Future'
produced for the Ideal Homes Exhibition, London, 1955-56








8. Sabina Lang & Daniel Baumann 'Everland'
travelling one-room pod hotel, originally produced for the Swiss Expo 2002








9. Staffan Berglund 'Villa Spies'
Toro, Sweden, 1969









10. Joe Colombo 'Visiona 69 futurist habitat'
produced for the Interzum Salon, Cologne, 1969





















11. Ugo La Pietra 'The Telematic House'
produced for the 61st Milan International Trade Fair, 1983











12. Archigram 'Living 1990'
produced for the Weekend Telegraph Exhibition, London, 1967
















*

p.s. Hey. This weekend, you've got an amazing two for one, post, courtesy of the d.l. superstars Wolf and Tender Prey, who have put their considerable noggins together and offered up the beauty of a double, interconnecting thing that you see above you. Enjoy the heck out of it this weekend, and talk back to them, if you will, yes? Thank you! And multiple exclamation marks rear-end the thanks I proffer to the big W and TP. ** Billy Lloyd, Hey! You came back, cool. Man, I love your music. Holy shit, it's great. I like the originals and the remixes too. That Howl one is a trip. So, yeah, what a total joy of a discovery. I want to hear more. Really great work, Mr. Lloyd! Dude, I think you can make money off your music if you want. I really can't see that not happening. As far as I know, the slaves are real, but how would I know, I guess? Fakes have been pointed out before. I definitely think there are a bunch of so-called slaves that are just fantasy-players looking to dialog with fantasy masters. The beautiful do get lost though, for sure. Being beautiful can get you pretty lost, what with people tending to skim you because your beauty is so thick. Yikes, about the sleep paralysis. No, I've never had anything like that, but I know people who do regularly. Really weird. Maybe an alien was abducting you? ** Misanthrope, Nah, thinking that the slaves aren't up to par visually wont get you exiled from here. Pretending you are one when it's your second infraction of that nature however, well, yeah. Ed White invented the word oral? No wonder everyone thinks he's the gay literary bees' knees. ** Wolf, Hey! There it is. I hope I got the layout right. It's awesomeness incarnate, pal, and thank you and the Marc-ster so much! Yeah, I was a Jabberwocky until two days ago. It sucked. Favorite j-word ... juicy maybe? Jiggly is kind of nice too. Are the slaves misguided, or are they the enlightened ones? I think it could go either way. 'TS' was really good, yeah? Michael Shannon is the main actor in it? Yeah, he was superb. You're post-work now. So, this weekend will just be packing your stuff up and getting ready for the limo that will take you to the airport? So, the next time I talk to you, you'll be back in London? Trippy shit, that. Safe packing, drive, flight, tube, etc., etc. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha. The White 'JoGS' was a lot better than the Picano one. Got your email, emailed you back. ** Sypha, Dude, you'll never have sex if you're afraid of losing control of your body, right? That's kind of partly the whole point? You have to give your body your trust. It's interesting. It's not as scary as you think it'll be. Xmas card from James, excellent! Bring it on! ** Heliotrope, Hi, Mark! Brasilia isn't absolutely for sure happening, but it looks good. The stickler, as I may have told you, is that they agree to let us spend a week or so there, 'cos I don't think any of us will do it if they're planning to fly us in and out in two days or whatever. I've been to Peru, but that's it. When I was, like, 14 or so. To work on archeological digs during my period when I wanted to be an archeologist. The boredom factor of archeological digs cured me of that dream right away. Ah, shit, about the seriousness of your foot problem. But what do doctors know? A lot, but not everything. Cure that thing as big fuck you to the medical profession. That's my advice. I'm having this weird thing with one of my eyes, and I'm fucking praying it goes away so I don't have to go see a doctor myself. Happy late but great birthday to J! Yes! Please do write again then if not way before, buddy. Love in buckets to you. ** Steevee, Maybe he has an emergency room fetish. That would not be unprecedented. I had heard of Benning's 'The War', but I didn't know you could see it. I'll definitely go watch that. Fascinating, thank you. As I think I said, I'm higher on recent Benning than you are. I saw 'The Second Cabin' recently and really loved it. That's definitely stressful about the therapist change. I only ever saw one, and I can't imagine having to switch after a year. I hope she has a really good solution for you. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. I'm doing better just 'cos the lag left me alone. I haven't opened my novel yet, but I think I will today. I'm procrastinating because, actually, working on that novel makes me feel depressed and emotionally fucked up, not feel great. It's curious right now too because a possible lead re: tracking down George Miles' brother Jay, who I've been wanting to talk to about George for a long, long, long time, and who I want to talk to re: the novel, but it's very tricky as to whether it would be a good or bad thing to get in contact with him. Complicated. Big dilemma, trying to decide. I think your proposal will sell because you're super talented and because I'm an optimist, and because I'm usually right when I get vibes like that. ** Statictick, Yo to you! Glad you passed along the stupid $20. Scary about the rash, but, yeah, phew. Don't stress too much. Stress will give you a rash in and of itself. I know the name Tunde Olaniran from somewhere. Sounds really interesting. I'll see if there are any videos of him out there. Thanks! Good weekend! ** Frank Jaffe, Hey Frank! 'Take Shelter' is really good. You should see it. You won't be sorry. Yeah, Luke can email me or call or text me or whatever. I'm raring. Where did you put all your nefarious and x-rated stuff? Do you have a secret compartment? Okay, yes, that dish that Luke made sounds utterly fantastic without a single reservation from me. I would gobble it. I wouldn't even chew, I would inhale it. Yum. What's with the crowd phobia? Did you catch it from Kiddiepunk when you were over here? I'll track down the name of the vegan Mexican place. It's one word. Shit, I can't remember. Have a great weekend, Frankie. ** Bill, Ha ha ha, yes. Sleep's going better so far, yeah. I think I'm okay. Thank you. I'll go find that Signal to Noise article. Cool. I went to Generator at least once, maybe more. It was very sweet. ** Bollo, Blogger is being an evil shithead lately. I would beat the shit of it if it were sentient and had something that I could beat on. 'Wrong', yikes, please cut some of the bad pieces in there some slack, thank you. I was young. We all were. Oh, cool, that Serpents Tail 'awesome' badge, yeah. People have offered me, like, a hundred dollars for one of those, but I only have two. The Rehberg mix was really good, right? Yeah, Peter's the Man. Ouch, about your back. Did the shower fix it? My eye is fucked up. I need a quick, homemade cure for that. Eyewash, I don't know. You have a great weekend too! ** Lord_s, Hi! Stephen O'Malley agrees with you about the superiority of 'TaD'. Maybe I do too, now that I think about it. I wish I was into current Earth more than I am. It's good, but I don't feel any passion for it. Traveling, nice. And I'm obviously really pleased that you liked LA. Is LA not a fucking kingdom? It kind of is, really. Where did you stay? Do you have friends out there and stuff? ** Okay. Let the weekend officially begin as far as this place is concerned. Wolf and Tender Prey have you utterly covered. Enjoy and think and dwell and pontificate and whatever else, okay? I will see you on Monday.

'The earliest recipe of the Bûche de Noël shows up in Pierre Lacam’s 1898 Le memorial historique et géographique de la pâtisserie. The earliest mention however is a couple of years earlier in Alfred Suzanne’s 1894 La cuisine anglaise et la pâtisserie where he notes in passing that it is (was?) the specialty of a certain Ozanne, presumably his friend Achille Ozanne (1846-1898). Of course we have no idea of what this looked like. An article in the French newspaper Figaro adds an interesting tidbit (see Pierre Leonforte, “La bûche de Noël : une histoire en dents de scie,” Figaro, 17 December 2000): according to Stéphane Bonnat, of chocolatier Félix Bonnat her great grandfather’s recipe collection from 1884 contains a recipe for a roll cake make with chocolate ganache. Admittedly she makes no claim to this being the first bûche de Noël.

'One of the famous stories about this French dessert is associated with Napoleon Bonaparte of France. He issued a proclamation, as per which, the people of Paris were ordered to close the chimneys of their houses, during winters. It was thought that entry of cold air into the houses was causing spread of illnesses and the proclamation was aimed at prevention of such diseases. It was during this time that Buche de Noel or yule log cake was invented in Paris. As use of hearths was prohibited, they needed some sort of traditional symbol that can be enjoyed with family and friends during the festive season that falls in winter. Thus, this cake became a symbolic substitution around which the family could gather for storytelling and other holiday activities.

'It makes sense that the cake, like so many other Christmas traditions (think Santa, decorated Christmas trees, Christmas cards, etc) dates to the Victorian era, to a time of genteel, bourgeois domesticity. In France, in particular, a certain romantic image of peasant traditions had become part of the story the French told themselves about themselves and while the average Parisian bourgeois could hardly be expected to hoist logs into their 4th floor apartment, they could at least show solidarity for their country cousins by picking up a more manageable bûche at the local pâtisserie. That the result was a little kitsch fit the middle class sensibility too.' -- collaged




_______________
This year's candidates

_______________
Christophe Michalak



Tout feu tout flamme 160€



90€



____
Lenôtre


Buche de Jean-Michel Wilmotte 145€



Buche de Lacoste 55€



_____
Ladurée


Bûche de Noël Marie-Antoinette 88€



________
Pierre Hermé


185€



___________
Pierre Marcolini


78€



__________
Hotel de Crillon


85€



75€



____
Chanel



Le Sac de Mademoiselle 140



__________
Julien Merceron


A la mère de famille 38 €



_____
Hediard


The Kremlin's clock 64€



__________
Pain de Sucre


Bûche Empereur 64€



__________
Patrick Roger


Le Sapin 35€



_____________
Christophe Roussel



Planche de Noisette 33€



Red Christmas 33€



_________________
Thierry Marx/Pierre Mathieu


118€



__________
L'Hotel le Burgundy


76€



____
Raimo


Raimo d'Or 32€



____________
Sébastien Gaudard


36€



64€



_________
Hugo & Victor


90€



78€



______
Fauchon


120€



___________
Jean Paul Hévin


Bûche aux chenets49€




Bûche pétard38€




Bûche allumette 49€




Centre de table118€




___________
Café Pouchkine


Bûche Poème de Noël 45€



_____________
Emmanuel Hamon


Bûche Nivelo 68€



Bûche Ambra 55€



________________
Hôtel Fouquet’s Barrière


Bûche traîneau 38€



___
Plush


32€



____________
Arnaud Delmontel


40€



______________
Hotel du Ritz


Ritzy bear 80€



_________________________
Montblanc/Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme


90€



________
Verve & Elan


60€



__________________
Château de la Chèvre d’Or


Bûche bougie 120€




*

p.s. Hey. So, there are the Buche candidates for this year. As usual, I will probably buy two of them. One to eat with friends before they leave for their Xmas getaways, and one to eat on Xmas itself with Yury. I'm still deciding re: the chosen two. Any suggestions? Which one or two of them would you buy and eat if you were in Paris this Xmas and shared my Buche fetish? ** Alter Clef Records, Greetings, Mr. Hudson. Yes, today is the debut date of both your latest masterwork and Mr. Walker's. How interesting is that? I can't wait to hear yours. I've heard Mr. Walker's, and ... whoa! Excellent about the show-shaped premiere? Video of it anywhere? Surely. My new novel is ... progressing, I guess. Let's leave it at that. January, sure. But I'll be in and out of town three times that month to do gigs, so let me know when you're planning to arrive. Love, me. ** Kiddiepunk, Hey. Those are the Buches. What do you think? I'll call you this afternoon to check in and make some seeing you/ doing stuff plans. ** Sanatorium, Hey there! Very nice to see you! I have to go check out those more impossible sign-in things of which you and everyone keeps speaking. I have a backstage pass to the blog, so I miss out on a lot of the lack of fun. ** Grant Scicluna, Hi, Grant! I thought you might like 'Bande a Part', cool, yes, high five. I haven't seen that particular Haneke film. Seems like I should, but not necessarily in a terrible rush? 'Amour' is pretty great. Have you seen that yet? I haven't watched a lot. Uh, recently-ish, the new James Benning film 'The Second Cabin' and 'Take Shelter' and Ozu's 'Late Autumn' 'cos I was putting together an Ozu post. I think that's it. My weekend was okay. Very cold here. - 2 degrees at times. How was yours? ** David Ehrenstein, Oh, your event is tonight! So wish I could be there, obviously and for sure! Everyone, if you're in LA today, it is highly advised that you make your way to Book Soup tonight to watch/listen as David Ehrenstein reads from and signs his new and great book 'Masters of Cinema: Roman Polanski'. It's at 7 pm, and here's all the info you need. Be there, seriously. Break every leg tonight, Mr. E., and let us know how it went. ** L@rstonovich, Hey, Larsty! Nice. ** Cobaltfram, Yes, very complicated about George's brother. Hugely complicated. If I don't try to get in touch with him, I'll regret it for the rest of my life, so I guess it's more a matter of when. I did start easing back into the novel this weekend. Man, it will need so much editing if it's going to work at all. I think, at best, I have about a 50% chance of making it work, which is quite discouraging, but I'm going to at least finish the first draft and then see. You like 'KtS.' Interesting. I read somewhere that it got an F score in the exit poll of theater goers, which I guess is a rare, disastrous response. Maybe I'll check it out when it inevitably gets here. As per your question: Sure, that happens to me a lot. Pretty much whenever I write something, I always try to write something that's beyond my known abilities. Sometimes that works, and my work grows, and sometimes it turns out that I was asking for too much. I guess when that happens, I usually try to scale the experiment back a little to see if I can find a happy medium between the original ambition and the limits of what I can do. I think that mostly works, and sometimes even the compromised version constitutes an advancement. But, sure, sometimes it's hopeless. So, I say try tuning it down a little and see what happens. Or, if you can leave a hole that won't be noticeable as a hole to readers, that'll work, obviously. It's kind of hard to give clear advice to you without knowing the context and the specific problem, but, generally, I think salvage jobs are probably the best option unless the section is just completely out of your reach. Oh, my books always have parts where I had to scale back my ambitions. I don't think you would get much from reading them because I did my best to make the final forms read as entirely intentional. I'm facing that dilemma big time with the George novel right now. Trying to write a personal, emotional book without employing the easy tricks of lyricism and an elegiac tone and stuff is turning out to be extremely hard, i.e. to write in a way that will be seductive and compelling to anyone else, I mean. Anyway, well, the central 'cloud bridge' section of 'God Jr.' was originally supposed to do a lot more than it does, but it works okay, and I guess the same goes for the 'radio talk show' section of 'Period', but, again, I doubt you would be able to see what's missing re: my original goal because I refined what's there to hide what got lost. Anyway, best of luck with your dilemma, and what are you deciding to do to fix the problem? ** Sypha, Well, sex is sort of like if the area between your legs could sneeze, so maybe you'd dig it, ha ha. ** Jax, Thanks for the eye advice. Yeah, I'll try that. I'm a bit nerve-wracked by it. Ugh. Good weekend? ** Jebus, Hey there! How's it? You get the Walker LP tomorrow. I think we over here get it today, although I already have it. I think you will not be disappointed by it in any respect whatsoever. Maybe. That's my guess. ** SwAmPeX, Hey! Excellent to see you! So glad you dug the post. You good? What's going on? ** Billy Lloyd, Hey. Yeah, great stuff. Your stuff, I mean. Was playing/ looping the songs this weekend. Exciting about the zine/EP. A physical zine/product or an eZine? I want to get it when it's ready, so let me know where and how, if you don't mind. That first slave's visuals had a 'scanned from a fashion mag' vibe about them, the middle pic in particular, like you sort of said. I guess we'll never know. I guess it's a puzzle. I guess puzzles can be cool. I guess a puzzle wouldn't make for a very good slave? Wow, I don't know. Good morning, if it's morning! ** _Black_Acrylic, The YnY crew is a bunch of tiny people? Except for you, I mean. That's kind of a nice idea. So they're like Santa's elves, and you would be Santa by default, I guess. Hope the Xmas dinner was festive. ** Wolf, Oh, gosh, thank you! It was quite the big hit! Ha ha, you are chuffed, or you were.  Are you in London now? Are you more chuffed or less? Must be more for at least the first while. Tell me. ** Esther Planas, Hi, Esther!!! It's a boon and joy and a shitload of fresh air to see you, my pal! You're in Colombia, wow, and going to Puerto Rico, wow again. Never been to either place. That performance project looks really cool. What are you doing in it? Or, I mean, are you performing too? Can I find out if I search the website? I'll try. Lovely to see you! Have a great time and a very safe trip! ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh. Oh, yeah, marvelous email, and it's all squared away, as I think I told you in a consequent email. Thank you tons, buddy! ** Monee Zowee, Yay! You made it! Blogger stopped acting like a fascist bodyguard! I've missed you! Yes, my jetlag seems to have finally died, and I seem to be doing okay. What's the novel you're translating? What's the other stuff you're doing? Lots of love from me! ** James, Hi, James! Yes, I think I'm de-lagged at long last. Yes, I did get the email. Thank you so much! In fact, the thing you sent will appear here on December 22nd, as per your request. It's great, and I'm thrilled and grateful to you, sir. I hope you're doing well. How is everything? ** Oliver, Hi, Oliver! Great to see you, man! How are your holidays shaping up? Mine aren't yet, but I suppose holidays always form a shape eventually? ** Bill, Hi, B. Thanks for the link to the podcast. It's bookmarked and on my agenda for later. That photo show does look very intriguing. I'm going to google and see if I can see more works by Martin Sorrondeguy. Hold on. Oh, yes, I was successful. I'll pore later. It's raining here too. It was - 2 degrees here yesterday. Winter is winter. ** Steevee, Anything's possible re: Aimee Mann. You might be amazed at some of the famous people who read this blog regularly, or I am. Haven't heard the X-TG album yet, no. I will. ** Tender prey, Hi, Marc! Thank you so, so much for the amazing post! It was fucking gorgeous, and the great feedback is the proof. I'm glad your deadlines are work-related, of course, and to hear that you're excited. I'm just sort of carefully edging into writing again, and I guess I'll be at it full-time again this week. Obviously, I'm so sorry to hear about the close deaths. Yes, love for those who are both beloved and dead is a very intense love. What happens to love when it can't be expressed to the beloved is pretty furious. I understand. ** Alan, Hi, Alan! Very interesting about the Bond villain. Everyone, courtesy of Alan, and re: the Brutalist post, and very interesting, and in Alan words: 'Did you know one of the leaders of the Brutalist movement was the inspiration for (and namesake of) a James Bond villain?' ** JoeM, Hi, Joe! Very, very interesting. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. I'm post-lag, thank you. It was way, extremely cold here yesterday. Almost spookily so. Now it's raining and bleah and 11 degrees. And, where you are, it's/you're ... ? ** 5STRINGS, With your parents? That's all right, right? Parents can be good things to have. Much better to have them than roadkill. Later gator to that unappreciative schmuck. Butor, cool, pass along your big thoughts. Don't freak out, man! Or only in the good way! ** Flit, Hi. Excellent Brutalist thoughts and info and add, pal. Oh, sure, my blog can handle 560 width, no problem. I just have this habit of cutting vids down to 400 so they'll be the same width as the photos for some strange, probably uptight reason. But, yes, 560, go for it! Cut, paste, etc. sounds awesome. You're so nice. Thank you. I'm your humble everything. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. White is the Greatest Gay Person Ever? Who voted him into that spot? Oh, wait, I think I can guess. Wait, you mean Edmund White. I thought you meant Dan White, the guy who killed Harvey Milk. Oh, okay, makes a little more sense, sort of. I think I saw something in my mailbox, if that's what you're referring to, and, if so, you are both a gentleman and the Greatest Gay Person Ever. I'm saving the last 'Twilight' film for a jet flight where it belongs. ** E., Hi, E! E, listen , you were so incredibly right about Saskia. That album is insanely good, and, yeah, that first track is something else. I owe you. I'm going to see if there's enough on her out there to make a post about her even, and, if so, you bet. So, yeah, I owe you, like I said. How was your weekend, may I ask? ** Chris Cochrane, Bob Gluck read, nice. You flirted with Edmund White? Uh, whoa, so, uh, yeah, to each his own, buddy boy, and I mean that from the bottom of my anarchist heart. Interesting. I'm glad Ed is healthy enough now to be up and about. I'm okay. Rain and cold and rain and cold, but Paris is underneath that, so it could be worse. Your birthday's coming? What are going to do? Do something big and magical. Seriously. ** Lord_s, Morning to you, Lord. Yeah, your Earth take is basically my take. I've never seen them live, though. They cancelled on their recent Sunn0)))/Earth/Mika Vaino Paris gig. As did Mika Vaino. As did Attila. Kind of a wash out. South Pasadena and Long Beach are interesting poles from which to experience LA. If you like LA from those vantage points, then you must definitely like it. It's great to go there in the winter, obviously. I'm going to get there before winter dies too. Maybe we'll intersect. Would be cool. ** Pascal, Hi, P. It's freezing and wet at the same time here. Charming combo. I'm trying to not rush off anywhere if I can help it. 'IC', yes, superb, and I think you'll find 'L'Abbe C' pretty swell too, hopefully. I don't know that Sam Riviere book. Let me know if I should. Happy December to you! ** Bollo, Hi, J. There are the Buches. What do you think? Ugh, ouch, about your back. Take it easy, man, Jesus. My eye is still acting weirdly psychedelic. Spooky. Aw, well, thanks about 'Wrong'. You're very kind. I like maybe four or five things in there a fair amount, I guess. So, yeah, have a swell day of Buche perusing, and chill on the ambitious back movements, okay? ** Okay. I intro'd the Buches already, so I will just take my leave now. See you tomorrow.

_______________




'Lately I have been thinking about the formal choices available to writers. Specifically fiction writers, as it’s where I spend most of my creative time.

'Much of the controversy around books, ebooks, piracy, publishing, and pricing models seems to signal a need for a significant formal change. It is as if piracy and disintermediation are arriving just at the time when writers need to be pushed off the comfort zone of the novel, the essay, the chapbook.

'I love those forms. Especially novels. They are going nowhere. But lamenting the inability to “make a living” in the old world of the novel is at least a waste of creative energy and at worst a self-pitying cry in a woody nostalgia.

'Story, anti-story, and poetry must endure genetically. We seem unable to dispose of it and we’re driven to it. The market has never and will never extinguish this. Economic proof: Have the poets stopped writing?

'As we outsource our memories and divide our attention spans, perhaps our culture is gradually asking us for a leap in form which respects the newer tools available to us, our newfound nomadic technical abilities, our socially acceptable headphone isolation in public, our ability to be in and not in the public space. Perhaps what is great about the oral tradition is asking to return, perhaps our world is waiting to be a real “memory palace” for our future fiction.

'If replicable and instantly shareable deprecates the economic value of a form (and you value that), maybe you’re creating within the wrong form.

'I’m working on some ideas which explore this. We have new tools which have changed the world on par with the printing press. There is, among the noise and the trivial, the opportunity for enduring and engaging art, or if not that, at least art that is on par with the processing power and the networked world.

'No one is asking us to stop writing books. Want one? Write one.' -- Eric Raymond








Eric Raymond Confessions from a Dark Wood
Sator Press

'Ken here. I don't often laugh, cry, and spit food on my computer screen simultaneously, but this book made that happen. You'll meet Nick, a hapless pawn in the world of global capital brand management consulting. And his girlfriend Sadie Parish, the first domestic suicide bomber. And his boss, emperor of bullshit, Pontius J. LaBar. And PJ's dreaded orangutan. It's a hilarious, heartbreaking, painfully smart satire that guides you through the high dollar swamps of modern industry.' -- Sator Press



Excerpt
from LaBar Partners Limited, an extension of 'CfaDW's' world beyond the book

An Open Letter of Welcome from Our CEO, Pontius J. LaBar

It is with a great sense of duty and humble joy that I, Pontius J. LaBar, CEO of LaBar Partners Limited, am now compos mentis and corpus sanus to present the relaunched LaBar Partners Limited Global Web Presence and Thought Leadership Portal Version 2.0™ (L.P.L.G.W.P.T.L.P.v.2).

Greetings, digital denizens and brand management enthusiasts!

Permit me one engaged page view to escort you through the executive tour! After a brief hiatus in which we retooled and reinvested in our steadfast commitment to provide valuable counsel to the world’s C-suite executives, I could not be more thrilled to throw wide our digital doors to you. We have officially rejoined the conversation.

My only disappointment is that your each and every visit here is not greeted with a thrum of kettledrums and animated Adobe Flash fireworks (which, believe me, I fought tirelessly for in the interminable web development “process.” Three firms, and not one could seem to fulfill my grandest vision! But I digress.)

Rumors Dismissed

First, let me dispel the scurrilous rumors you may have heard in our absence from the grand stage of global brand capital management theater:

1. All of the very sharpest minds of our team have returned to the fold.
Despite a few dull-witted defectors, praise from our clients remains at an all time high.
2. Our portfolio of services is more hale and hearty than ever. (I dare say the dive gets deeper each day!)
3. Though it is true we cannot legally claim the fully mutual endorsement of our preferred brands portfolio, there is no crime in the form of free speech & well-deserved praise!
5. All court-ordered community service and ongoing reparations are being dispatched with the utmost concern.

Onward, now! The ecstasy of what’s to come:

* A robust and insightful stream of dynamic twitterings, not the least of which is complimentary 140-character consultations.
* Frequent electronic publication of the firm’s award-winning[1], nuanced thought pieces (provided gratis!) on topics most relevant to the post-idea economy, penned by our team as well as exciting guest authors.
* Become a vital contributor to senior-level insights by joining the The LaBar Partners Limited Street Team.
* The unfettered, remorseless routing of our lesser competitors and black-hearted critics[2].

Some have posited that after the traumatic events of 4/09 that we have entered the post-post-idea economy. Risible rubbish! Very little blue ocean has been mapped in this regard. All evidence, to be frank, suggests just the opposite.

We are constant in our assessment that the post-idea economy is thriving. Fear not, for we shall illuminate it for you here.

Your faithful guide & steward,



Pontius J. LaBar, CEO, LaBar Partners Limited


Legal Disclaimers & Editorial Notes

[1] Awards forthcoming.

[2] Be aware, loathsome spies and detestable moles, that we have consorted with those wizards at Google Analytics to trace you hither and yon, and will know of your each and every “Web 2.0 move.” If you are here from Canard Consulting, which some of you no doubt are (curse you!), I revel in the misery you must certainly be racked with as the elegant giraffe neck of LaBar Partners Limited casts its shadow across your threshold once more!

It is not lost on me that you have cloaked your own web presence (I am bedeviled to not find it online). I can only assume this means you have holed up for another run at us, (or is part of some anti-digital strategy?) which I find intriguing, but unconvincing, and this!: For your ill ledger, do not mistake my mild curiosity as a potential concession of one dirty dime in billable hours! RECOGNIZE that the Giraffa camelopardalis gallops TRIUMPHANTLY across the brand capital savannah!




Eric Raymond 'Live at 851'


Eric Raymond 'Exhibitionist'


Eric Raymond, The Great Overland Book Company reading 11/6/11




__________________




'Ana Carrete’s poetry plays with words. Her poems play with themselves. That sexual double-entendre is appropriate and typical of her work. The word “come” is always euphemistic in Ana’s poetry. Sex is on the brain, and the brain is a clever, punning, playing one, with a wry sense of humor. The twenty-five-year-old girl-woman who writes these poems is rarely without her sense of humor, even when it’s grim.

'Carrete, who lives in San Diego but has spent much of her life in Tijuana, where her family lives, is a bilingual poet, a gchatting, video-making, online-lit-mag-editing 21st-century poet. She is fun and sassy. We get to live in her head in this book, and I enjoy it and love that I can’t pin down her tone, I never know what to expect next. Her poems are blunt but subtle, they are playful but serious. She means it. But what is it?

'Sex and religion and family and pop culture and lots of thoughts are in these poems, poems with titles like “freudian clit,” “obedient riot girl,” and “download my pathetic soul.” Ana is a confessional or autobiographical poet in a sense, but she is so playful and creative, so aware of language, and so dexterous with it, that she creates a new world in and with her poems. She’s playing around in her head and she wants you to hear.' -- Stephen Tully Dierks, HTMLGIANT








Ana Carrete Baby Babe
Civil Coping Mechanisms

'The first time I heard Ana’s writing was 2 years ago. In November of 2010, I read at the ‘Ear Eater’ reading series in Chicago. Ana was another reader. She was reading via Skype. There were a lot of people at the reading. After I read, I walked out of the room and stood in a hallway, staring at the floor. After a few difficult conversations with people in the hallway, I heard the host of the reading talking to someone on the computer. It was Ana. Ana started reading. I laughed a lot and enjoyed her reading. Seemed like other people weren’t enjoying it as much as me but I was enjoying it a lot. I stood in the hallway laughing and shaking my head ‘Yes’ and people looked at me. I kept thinking, ‘I want to go into the room and watch her face reading’ but then I would think, ‘No, don’t do that, just listen.’ Not sure why I kept telling myself not to go into the room where she was reading but I stood in the hallway and listened and enjoyed it a lot. Two years later, Ana emailed me Baby Babe. I opened the PDF just to skim a few poems but then I read the whole book. When I was done reading the book, I thought, ‘I’ll be glad to have this book so I can look at it whenever I want.'' -- Sam Pink


Excerpts


women dance with cleaning products in commercials

i want to dance with a vacuum cleaner

walk backwards then towards your feet
inhale your shoelaces

make you trip

my organs are like external hard drives

some cables go up and occupy my throat

if you suck my tongue hard enough
you can keep it forever

my mouth is a vacuum cleaner

i can suck




so long suckers

the strangest things you hide in your fannypack
before you run away from home

pamela anderson
a cellphone
and mascara

can you run away when you’re twenty
five

is it still called running way or is it called
growing up




sometimes i feel free

between walls but i’m still terrified
of not being able to figure it out
on time

i’m trying

there’s soap in my eyes
and i cry and when i blink
soap bubbles come out of my eyes
and if you pop my tears well

you can kiss my ass



BABY BABE


pools swimming


mckanye




___________________




'A shamanic healer in San Francisco, who charges way more money than $12 USD, says we are always every age we have ever been. She promises to heal us of the behaviors that once protected us, at 3 and 8 and 13, but now no longer serve us. She will heal us with repeated sessions in which she asks ‘who is talking?’ and ‘what age is that person?’

'For $12 USD, Ben Mirov’s HIDER ROSER provides direct textual access to this sort of temporal and spatial inquiry. You can keep it in your bag. You can have it all the time. What’s more, the poet reveals his own story (or the story of a mirror character) (or many mirror characters) (who is talking who is talking?) reducing the feelings of aloneness we may experience on our own trips. He gives us his eyeball, still wet. He gives us his ID. I read this book during a week of bad panic attacks, or “death lite” as I like to call them. I felt understood by Mirov’s book. “If your wolf gets too heavy / don’t pop the flares,” he advises. “No one will rescue you. You are the rescue team.” ...

'There is a beautiful sadness in these poems. Mirov skillfully co-inhabits the realms of the physical and the metaphysical, the containment suit and the dark star. In a world both familiar and foreign, Mirov inquires as to the nature of the universe, as well as the absurdity of layering institutions over the void. We are keeping “busy all day.” We are running from something. What is it?

'This book isn’t nihilist and it doesn’t throw up its hands. Rather, it contends with what we can still do in spite of the strangeness of it all. Friends go bodiless and faceless, yet somehow they maintain the power to deliver us to the tangible safety of a “porch coated in rain.” There is still the ability to kiss, which brings on both an astrophysical journey through time and space as well as the spilling of a “mug of strong black tea” in this dimension. There are One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, which provide no consolation to “the soldiers / in Afganistan who spend their nights / shooting at the same five guys.” But when the speaker, as lost human, needs the consolation of “Wandering Ghost Bridge” and “snow-capped mountains,” One Hundred Poems from the Chinese are so there. Poetry is the bridge that makes the strangeness of this universe not only bearable, but meaningful.' -- Melissa Broder








Ben Mirov Hider Roser
Octopus Books

'Mirov's poems are like dead soul dispatches from an emotional robot. Contained in them is the terrible recognition of the mere materiality of the universe—and that somehow arising from that is an irrational attachment to friends, loves, and a man named Ben Mirov. The poems are an attempt to speak of these things, often opening into imaginative spaces tinged with the absurd. The continued disconnect between what the speaker describes and what he may or may not feel is funny, until it's revealed to also be sad.' -- Dan Magers

'It seems like HIDER ROSER was written by Ben Mirov. His name appears on the cover and in the poems the book contains. However, he did not write this book. I did. Ben Mirov's function in the process was more like an android, receiving messages from an alien source. If you ever actually meet the vessel I know as Ben Mirov, his personality and conversational capacity will underwhelm you. I hope these poems will not.' -- Ben Mirror


Excerpts


HIDER ROSER

You want to write about a horse
but you have written hose. Think of meat.
Meat thinking of jogging.
Meat going out on a date to see the water.
The water is beautiful and she allows you
to put your arm around her.
Smell her ear, part of a star
that exploded when you were negative
10,000 years old. It smells like vanilla.
In a few hours she is gone.
In four years, even goner
and Dan is telling you something about nothing
the sparrows in his tattoo
forever flying out of a rose
until Dan is dead.
Pretty soon you have a loft
and people are getting to know your work
rearranging the letters in horse rider
to get hider roser, which means something
you will never understand
with only a few minutes left
one end of the hose going into your head the other
going don’t know where




THE BRAILLE OF EVENINGS IS WRITTEN IN POEM

I stare out of my window with a flashlight behind each eye.
I do not know what I am looking for.
The bushes barely quiver in the wind.
A few people get into a mauve truck.
I return to my couch.
Darkness creeps into the corners of the microwave.
A river disappears into a plastic coffee cup.
I pet a moth as big as a baby.
The desert approaches
inch by ecstatic inch.
What did the lamp say?
Permission to drink ink from the sink?
I feel a vineyard growing inside me.
No need to be alarmed.
Shut the door. Glass of wine. Try to sleep.
My eucalyptus grove can hardly breathe.
Memories of pagoda duck-pond relief.
Diode, diode, nomenclature.
Nocturne for Susie.
The people return to the apartment complex.
Their suits and ties are torn to shreds.
Their cars are barely audible songs.
A grizzly bear snags a salmon made of dreams.
I remove the duct tape from my naked body.
If the sun comes up
I won’t be a different person.




I IS TO VORTICISM

as red leaves are to riverbanks.
As American History is to blackout drunk.
As blackout drunk is to flying away.
If you come upon a vortex in your laundry tonight
don’t be afraid.
Give it a name like Scheherazade.
Take it to dinner,
feed it oysters and champagne.
They don’t teach you this in college
or how to deal with moving faster than the speed of light
into a brick wall,
but that’s how I got my diploma
knocking around in the chrysalis
until they pulled me out
and the figment in my wings dried
and my tongue refused to bifurcate.
Mighty big snow-globe head.
Mindful of harmless laser beams.
Three or four ideas spinning around a coat hanger.
Lasso after lasso.




Trailer: 'Hider Roser'


Ben Mirov In Conversation


Ben Mirov reads at YesYes Books




*

p.s. Hey. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Cool, thanks for the choices. All good and noted. I don't think I'll get that Plush one, but I'm definitely going to go take a look at it in the 'flesh', I think, and it should win a prize for being a little too something or other. No, actually, weirdly or something, it's an homage to the Lush soap. It's a buche in the form of a weird soap. Strange, no? That Wilmotte one is really starting to grow on me. It doesn't seem to get much enthusiasm from my future buche co-eaters, but, yeah. Thank you, man. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, man. Good to see you! Yeah, I'm kind of particularly into the 'match' ones, and the firecracker one too. There's a toy thing going on that floats my boat. I hope the doctor visit was worth the no coffee. I get a headache from hell if I don't get my coffee within about 20 minutes of opening my eyes. I almost put a Driveby Truckers song in my portion of the drinking gig. I can't remember why I didn't. Variety reasons, I think? Still have never seen 'Boardwalk Empire', weird. It isn't here in France (yet). Probably will be, probably on cable, which I don't have. Oh, man, I'm happy for your dog, but I would have acted like Rita. Until recently, we had a bad mice problem here at the Recollets, and at one point there were four mice scrambling around my room, and, in that case, after a couple of weeks of enjoying their petite company, I could have used Beryl. You good? Got some sweet holiday plans upcoming maybe? ** Misanthrope, Oh, dude, thanks a lot for the you-know-what. I've got it down for Tuesday the 18th at the moment, and I'll let you know if it gets moved north or south for some reason. Sure, get over here and chew some Buche with us. Paris at Xmas is a guaranteed classic usually. ** Billy Lloyd, Hey! I did, and I do! Huh, I would have thought you could score a mass of burnable CDs for a pittance in this digital age. But an eZine plus eMusic would be enough. Whatever you decide, and whenever, I want them. No, if you believe the slave wannabes, and I kind of do in most cases just because I'm an optimistic, idealistic kind of guy, there are crazily good looking guys who want to be, oh, encapsulated in plastic shrouds in dark dungeons or rendered limbless and then raped every second for the rest of their lives, etc. I would think that such a slave would need to be quite a puzzle to keep some master that horny, so yeah. Thanks about 'The Sluts', man, of course. And for your buche votes. At some point, I'll decide and then you'll get to see me and other pals do autopsies on the chosen cakes and condemn them to the dungeons of our stomachs. ** David Ehrenstein, How did it go last night? Tell me, tell us. Sadly, I discovered yesterday that the Chanel buche is only on sale in Japan, so that one's out. When I first ran across Ed White, he was skinny as a rail. ** Allesfliesst, Don't think I didn't think about devoting my December to a nonstop buche-centric diet, but you nailed the problems: dough and getting doughy. Ah, so Buddha knows he's sweet and has the means and wherewithal to accentuate his sweetness when needed. I like that additional complication, naturally. Yeah, Joy Williams is manna. I wish she'd write another book. It's been fucking forever. ** Cobaltfram, Thank you for the buche picks. I'm writing them down. It's really impossible to know how I would be greeted by George's brother, which is quite nerve wracking. I keep thinking that he must know about the Cycle and about my vociferous devotion to George, but it's totally possible that he has no clue about that. He knows how very close George and I always were, but I don't know if he knows that we eventually became lovers, and, if not, that's a lot to lay on someone who's younger brother killed himself. I don't know. It's very stressful, but I will find out one of these probably near days. Happy to hear you've gotten up to 75%. I think I'm down to 40% as of this morning. I don't want to employ an elegiac tone or wax lyrical because those things are tricks and devices. They're the standard schtick that writers use when writing about something personal and tragic, and I've always hated that approach. It's purely manipulative, and it turns a unique tragedy into something general. I think it speaks far more of the writer's ego than of what he or she is trying to mourn and celebrate. I would rather fail than subject George's memory to that horse shit. That's why, ha ha. Flattening, interesting. What do you mean by that? Flattening it how? 'God Jr.' got cut down and didn't. In my original plans and notes and stuff, the novel was going to proceed further, and the father was going to turn the monument into a tourist attraction and hunt down the video game's designer to seek out 'the truth', but I never actually wrote those parts out. Later gator. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill! Welcome back! Of course I remember you! Thanks for your buche votes. Yeah, the Herme has a real pull for me, especially. Wow, that's an amazing story about your girlfriend/wife's physical battle. I'm hugely grateful to you for sharing that with me. It's very meaningful to me. And I'm very touched that it made you think of my posts about George and my great dilemma and pain about him. 'The terror of losing control of the story of my beloved': yes, exactly, so much. If I can write this book, or rather finish it in such a way that I think other people would find value from reading it, you'll see that what you said is so key and important to my experience, and George's too. Thank you so much, Bill. I'm very happy that you're back. ** Pascal, Cool, thanks for the heads up on the Riviere, man. Great day to you. ** Steevee, Very interesting report on 'Zero Dark Thirty'. Thank you. Hm, well, it sounds like something to definitely see. I see it won the NYCC (sp?) best film prize yesterday. Does that surprise you? ** 5STRINGS, Good, you're okay. Country living has its selling points, yeah. Well, hm, I guess I've never lived in 'the country'. The country of France? Nah. Good buche picks. It's hard to get away from nutty and fruity in buches, not that I want to. Yeah, I need to go concentrate on the ingredients. It takes me a while to realize that they taste like something specific. I just think that they're edible eccentricities for a while. ** SwAmPeX, Oh, gosh, thank you. Aren't you kind. You sound like you're doing all kinds of great. Wow, excellent! So, the writing is happening in a more pleasing way, good, good. What's the short film? It isn't online, is it? Boyfriend! Seriously, you are like the exciting success story du jour. That's so sweet. You have to -- well, you don't have to -- let me read some of these things you're making at some point when they're ready, okay? Being an adult is so weird. I still don't really know how to do that. I just try to stay the same and kind of reposition myself as appropriately as possible as things happen around me or something. 'Bachelorette', huh, I'll go check out what I can find about that. Yeah, you sound so great. That's so awesome! ** Pisy caca, You have a new gap in the middle of your name. It's interesting. Okey-doke, thanks for the buche votes. It's a hard choice this year. Hm. Yury's doing real well. He's going gangbusters on his fashion line and business, working hard almost 24/7 at the moment getting his designs made into prototypes and meeting with tailors and possible distributors and stuff. So, he's doing really well. Ah, I see, about the book you're translating. Yeah, it's great that you've got all that work. I remember when you were really fearful about getting enough work. What is the concentration of the online American poetry course? Is it a general overview thing, or does it concentrate on particular schools or types of poetry? Interesting. Poetry is the art form of the gods or something, I think, maybe. I don't know. So good to have you in reach again, my pal. Love and hugs like Xmas wrapping. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, it's like a designer cake. Cake as art in the best cases, I guess. They look more opulent in the photos than they do in real life. Saw that about Luke Fowler. Yeah, fuck it. I loved his film. Curious about the Elizabeth Price. It sounds interesting, and, yes, anything that uses the Shangri-Las as its noise has to be at least kind great or something. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Cool two. Buches, I mean. The only real reason I might not do the Michalak is that I did his 'toy car' one last year. But I don't know. And it's pricey. Not that that has ever stopped me. You're kicking ideas around in what form? Are you doing writing experiments? Or is it mostly mental at the this point, or ... ? ** David J. White, Hey, Mr. White! Oh, shit, 'Late Spring' is in my top 10 all-time favorite films, so a big high five re: that one. And I love 'Tokyo Twilight' too. Yeah, hope the Ozu post is okay. We'll see. Or you tell me. Well, yeah, your 'OT' film was fucking great! I don't know if this'll mean anything, but the French director Christophe Honore watched it when I linked to it on FB, and he told me he really loved it. I'm sure whatever you do with 'TBotFL' will be fantastic. No worries. And, yeah, if you end up wanting to try 'Try', just let me know. And for sure on the NYC meet up and real world friendship. As soon as I get plans in place, we'll sort that out. Great! Sucks I can't friend you on Facebook due to that place's stupid friends limit. I wonder how that 'Subscribe' option works. I don't know why people can subscribe to me but not to you, for instance. That place is so weird or not weird enough or something. Everyone, David J. White, who directed the terrific short film based on my short fiction piece 'Oliver Twink' that I directed you to the other week is on Facebook if you want to friend an awesome artist and guy. He's here. ** Rewritedept, Hi, pal! Never saw 'The Upsetter'. Need to. Definitely. I wish that new Orb/Perry collab album was better. Ellis is an awfully good writer. Dude really knows his way around the sentence. Your love is very understandable. My favorite Rimbaud translation by far is this one. I've been okay. Had jetlag, but it's gone. Trying to get back into the novel and enjoy pre-Xmas stuff. No December trips for me. I've got a bunch in January, but I'm home free for now. Favorite punk albums '77 - '81 ... man, that's a tough one. It gets into what counts or doesn't count as punk, I guess, too. I'm going to need to think about that one. Give me a day. I'm too into best-of lists to toss one off without thinking a bunch first, but ... Everyone, Rewritedept would be very interested to hear what your favorite punk albums are, dating from the years '77 to '81. You want to toss some faves his way? Would be cool. His picks, if you missed them, are: wire - pink flag. bad brains ROIR tape. minor threat s/t EP.' Have at it, folks! Slow and great at the same time. That happens. So, have you made peace with the drummer? Yeah, fill me in re: band or writing progress when the time is right, please? ** Foggy Sapphires, Well, hey there, Caroline! How very lovely to see you! Oh, yes, I know Peter de Rome's work. I saw a bunch of his films back in the '70s when such things were only viewable in stinky, dark theaters, and his stuff made quite an impression. I didn't know he was still alive! Wow. I'll hit those links and read those interviews this afternoon, thank you! And let me know, if you don't mind, when your interview with Nick is available. Everyone, here are a couple of big treats for you from d.l. Foggy Sapphires. First, here is a trailer for Ethan Reid's documentary 'Fragments of Peter de Rome' about the legendary, great gay porn pioneer and auteur Peter de Rome. And here is an interview with Ethan Reid about the documentary. Really fascinating stuff. Go check it out. Love from rainy, foggy Paris to you, my friend! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks for the buche picks. I don't know, I'm torn about what buches to pick. I think I'll need the input of my fellow buche eating friends to make the very final decision. Yury really likes the Marcolini, so that might be the Xmas day one, we'll see. I think I might be leaning towards one of the Hevins or the Roussel or the Herme. Don't know. Thanks about the wishes re: my novel, and the same goes double for yours. Flatness is a real problem with mine right now too. Or seeming flatness. It's really a different kind of huge problem than 'TMS' was. With that, it was whether my art was up to the massive task I wanted from it. Here, it's more ... how do I possibly represent something so extremely important to me and real. How do I diminish and destroy my art in honor of it without losing readers' absorption. Very, very hard. Still trying. No, I haven't read that Aira novella, but, and this pretty weird, I picked it up in S&;Co. the other day and came 'this close' to buying it. It seems like your recommendation in combo with that near miss must be a sign. I will purchase it when I next go over there. Thank you, Jeff, and, yeah, best of the best getting your novel fully into your hands. Obviously, I'm very interested to hear anything about the work that you want to share. ** James, Hi. Thanks for your choices. Yury likes the Laduree one too. As I said above, I did Michalak last year, so that's a strike against going back to his well. Yes, I was sorry to hear that you didn't get the Santa Fe job. Maybe it's a blessing? Living in Santa Fe ... I don't know? My fingers are very crossed re: Ventura and/or Berkeley, be assured. 70,000 nice going. Oh, right, that ridiculous Mayan thing. I can't people are actually freaking out about that, but I guess it's fun or something. People are so freaked about the 21st in Russia that the government had to issue some sort of statement assuring the frightened masses that the world won't end. Of course, if the Russian government says something, you can immediately assume they're lying, so maybe there is a reason to freak out, ha ha. Much love back. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, J. Thanks for the choices. Herme is a real possibility. It looks so fucking chocolate. And the Pouchkine, yeah. It's hard. Yep. ** Esther Planas, Hey again! I did check out the website. It looks super interesting, even when not understanding the language well and all that. Fantastic idea and thing! Yay for you and for them for yaying you! Love back in bunches. ** Bill, Nice batch, right? Yury in fact nixed the Hediard one straight off. Actually, it was his first pick, but when I told him it was the Kremlin clock, he absolutely refused. His Russia phobia is quite a thing. I think I'm going to go do a tour and look at them in person. Big up to you, B. ** E., Hi, e.! Happily obliterated, ah, that sounds so nice. I can't remember the last time I was happily obliterated. Dang. Hope the all-nighter isn't too all. Saskia rules, yes! Yeah, hm, if I come across or remember things that are that good, you'll get s telegram-like comment from me. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Wonderful to see you! Okay, cool, another vote for the Hugo & Victor. That's like the dark horse buche. Macarons, growl, yum. I'm actually going to go buy myself some today. Tennessee Williams, interesting. How did you happen into his work? Great stuff, obviously. Great about you not having to teach! That is exciting! ** Okay. Three more books I've loved of late for you today. All of them are highly lovable, trust me. Check them out. See you tomorrow.

'While you could say that language is Frances Stark’s primary medium, Frances herself is Stark’s primary subject matter. Taken individually, most of her works are self-portraits of some kind; put together, they fan out into full-blown autobio-graphy, featuring not just the central protagonist (in her various roles, professional, intellectual or domestic) but also a supporting cast of favourite authors, friends and collaborators, gallerists and curators, musicians, cats and kids. Invariably riddled with self-doubt and well-articulated anxiety, their cumulative effect is an oscillating image of what it means to be a practising artist (or, for that matter, a woman or person) today.

'Born in Newport Beach, California, in 1967, Stark studied at San Francisco State University before attending the Art Centre College of Design. She says she had been obsessed with language from an early age so it isn't surprising to find that many of her influences are literary and that she has published a series of collected writings. She wrote recently: "I am envious of those who can deliver nuggets in tightly wrapped packages. The economy of Emily Dickinson is a huge inspiration."

'Stark's practice – whether it is drawn, written, painted or filmed – is about the laborious process of making art, detailing its frustrations with a wry humour. It is possibly best summed up in the collage Still Life with IBM Cards and Violin (1999), a parody of a Picasso cubist collage, in which she sends up the limitations of being an artist, unable to compete visually with the emotional impact of music. This issue has also led her to use soundtracks from Throbbing Gristle to accompany home videos that are as banal as the rock band is outlandish.

'A see-sawing between conceptual inquiry into the nature of an art work and its production, and attention to the mass of details that constitute daily life, is at the heart of Stark’s practice and is well demonstrated in the show’s dense, a-chronological hang. Avoiding the easy elegance that a sparse and spacious installation of her largely white, often delicate, mostly paper-based works would offer, the artist has opted instead for the concentrated effect of many works, hung close together. The blank expanses of her earlier works begin, over time, to accommodate more text, imagery and pictorial elements until we reach recent collages such as Foyer Furnishing (2006), in which large Mylar and paper cut-outs form a two-dimensional interior with dresser, mirror and handbag. The role of language modulates from subject matter to means of representation; a favoured effect is to compose words or sentences vertically, stacking carbon-copied typed-out letters while repeating them horizontally, drawing lines from letters to form undulating landscapes or endless horizons while scrambling the viewer’s usual means of deciphering both text and image. Much peering, squinting and head-cocking are required to make out the tiny, faint, dislocated, rotated and repeated words in her works. In every case, however, the textual elements act like a thought bubble, as a cerebral way out of the two-dimensional picture plane.

'Stark's well-articulated personal anxiety encompasses George Orwell's statement that "each life viewed from the inside is a series of small defeats". In her quiet yet persistent inquiry into the human condition, she delivers, with devastating candour, the poignancy of human failure.' -- collaged


____
Extras


One Question: Frances Stark


FS: CalArts, School of Art visiting artist lecture (excerpt)


In conversation: Frances Stark, Dave Hullfish Bailey, Jimmy Raskin


_____
Further

Frances Stark Website
Audio: 'Trapped in the VIP and/or In Mr. Martin’s Inoperable Cadillac'
FS @ Marc Foxx Gallery, LA
FS @ Gavin Brown's Enterprise, NYC
Frances Stark @ greengrassi, London
'On Frances Stark' @ Art in America
'Structures That Fit My Opening and Other Parts Considered in Relation to Their Whole'
'Frances Stark's Best Thing' @ T Magazine
'THE LETTER WRITER, FRANCES STARK'
'Frances Stark: Artist uses her personal life'
Video: 'Frances Stark in Her Studio'
Buy books by and about Frances Stark



_______
Interview
from Blouin




Banal household tasks and high-minded ruminations are twinned in your work. To this end, what did you do today? And also, what are you reading?

Today I avoided the studio, the excuse being that some long-overdue personal paperwork that is overflowing out of my handbag needed attention. I have recently dipped into In Praise of Folly by Erasmus; an old Richard Hamilton catalogue; also On Being Ill, by Virginia Woolf; and an interview with Malcolm McLaren. And I’ve been voraciously reading about all things related to the upcoming US presidential election. It’s an ugly addiction at this point. But I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of a recent eBay purchase, A Happy Death, by Albert Camus. I am hoping this book that I loved 25 years ago (gasp) will be just the thing to wean me off the politics.

You once wrote about someone who, when he asked Dorothy Parker if he could see her manuscript, was presented with a box containing a pile of unanswered letters and unpaid bills. In the collages that present the detritus of your daily life, how do you decide what goes in and what stays out?

I’ve used mostly studio and art-related promotional printed matter that I receive in the mail. My use of printed matter that comes through my mailbox isn’t interesting because it’s mine, but because there are a lot of other people who receive that same stuff. It ends up being just material, like paint.

You show your work in galleries as well as publish books. Can you talk about how preparing for each is different?

I haven’t published that many books, but I am often shocked at how increasingly intuitive the process is for making work for exhibitions, and that seems to also be the case for the books. Only writing is just very, very different in the sense that I can’t hire an assistant to help me move or glue down some unwieldy scrap.

You’ve quoted Thomas Bernhard’s novel Old Masters, in which the main character, Reger, is chastised for being neither a philosopher nor an author but accused of having “sneaked” into both. What do you think one gains by straddling two disciplines, as you do with art and writing?

Because I am a complete pessimist, it’s hard for me to admit I do gain anything besides anxiety and perpetual self-doubt. At the same time, I am not so naive to acknowledge that without my writing, my artwork might not have an audience, and vice versa. I see my own straddling as very specific to the support structures of the artworld and not nearly as impressive or significant as the kind of cross-discipline straddling (and waffling) that occurs in Bernhard’s characters. But I identify with the process of deferral at play in these characters who are never able to complete that pure text on music, or philosophy, or whatever, and this is not about a kind of interdisciplinary utopia, but psychological despair and human failure. In fact, that Dorothy Parker reference above is a perfect metaphor for my own straddling technique.



____
Show


Videos


My Best Thing, 2011


Frances Stark transcribes Gaga's 'Telephone', 2010




Nothing is enough, 2012



Writings

'Notes Towards the Eroticism of Pedagogy'
'Always the Same, Always Different'
'At the Rim of the Fucking Paradigm'
'A Craft Too Small'
'I’m taking this opportunity to feel some holes in addition to filling them: On Raymond Pettibon'
'The Architect & the Housewife'
'Professional Me'
'Knowledge Evanescent'
'Pull Quotable'




Drawings, paintings, collage, sculpture



A woman and a peacock, 2006




The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, 2004




The old in and out, 2002




Underliner, 2002




Understater, 2002




The Golden Auditors, 2004




Prefiguration, or something to happen with this eventually, 2010




Bird and Bricks, 2009




By way of digression, 2007




Foyer Furnishing, 2006




Get on the fucking block and fuck, 2005




Image Proof, 2002




In and in, 2005




Phone, 2011




Poinsetta Tree, 2004




The New Vision, 2009




Underdeveloped Development, 2008




Who's on the other side, 2006






Wisdom, Stupidity, Ugliness, 2008






*

p.s. Hey. ** Wolf, Hey. Cool, flashback. Speaking of, I had my first deja vu in years yesterday. I forgot how weird that feels. Anyway, you, chuffed in London! I knew it. Nothing is ever fully a fuck up, pal. Or else fuck ups are as rich a source of wisdom as anything or something. Wow, profound, ha ha. Mm, the Buches might be a little less wild in form this year. I sort of felt that, but I think the fancy is still happening maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I think the Marcolini is rising to the top. But it's definitely a matter of how it looks in person, and I guess what it's made of. Gonna go peruse. Fully and utterly enjoy London while it's still fresh and replete with possibilities galore in theory! And welcome sort of home! ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! I saved my macaron trip for today. It was too rainy. I guess they're slightly less expensive here maybe. I need to use my currency converter. I do like Tennessee Williams, yes, although I haven't read him in ages for no good reason. I'm not as into his fiction as his plays, but I guess that's the general thought. Ed White is good at directing one to interesting writers, for the most part. He does like some pretty bourgeois stuff sometimes, though. Yes, the 'TtO' post will be appearing here tomorrow! It's a beautiful thing, no worries, and thank you again so much! ** Billy Lloyd, Oh, right, of course, it's making the CDs look cool. I spaced out on that part. I agree about the physicality of the zine, yeah. And physical zines seem to making kind of a comeback. So, I guess you could do that thing where buying the eMusic entitles you to a zine in the mail? It's too bad that the technology that allows there to be playable music files embedded in greeting cards, i.e. so that when you open them they play music or say 'happy birthday' aloud or whatever, isn't better, unless it is. I haven't opened a greeting card in years. It would be cool to have a zine whose pages double as, like, stereo speakers or something. I don't know. I'm just mentally riffing. Yeah, the fetishes on those slave/master sites can get pretty unrealistic. That's why it has to be mostly just guys parrying their fantasies back and forth. Like it's extremely common for slaves to want to disappear from the world forever and live isolated in some master's basement, which, you know, would, if it actually happened, lead to all kinds of missing person reports filed by family and friends and cops searching and stuff, not to mention how living blindfolded in chains in some guy's basement would be way, way boring after even a day or two. Lust sure has an interesting effect on the imagination. A Buche eating video? Hm, I haven't done that before. Maybe if I can figure out how to upload iPhone videos onto the net/blog. I'm much more analog about the internet than I probably appear. I'll try. Is it okay to say that it's nice that the blog obsesses you? Is that too selfish of me? Maybe. Is it cold and dreary where you are as it is here? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. I love Book Soup, but sparse attendance is a real problem there in general, I think because 7 pm is an intimidating time to think about getting there through all the traffic around and leading up that place. I'm glad and completely not surprised that those lucky ones in attendance enjoyed themselves. And yay about the brisk sakes, natch! ** Pisy caca, That's so weird about Blogger forcing you to split your name in half. Blogger is getting weirder and weirder, I must say. Middle to late month for the buche eating slideshow, I think. Yes, Yury's still working at the salon, but, of course, he's hoping his fashion line is enough of a success that he can quit. Me too, obviously, for all kinds of reasons, one of them being that he wouldn't be tied down to Paris, assuming he's granted French citizenship and could finally enter the US for even long lengths. I know that name Al Filreis. I don't remember from where, though. I'll google him. There's so, so, so much better American poetry than that produced by the Beats. But I'm not a big fan of the Beats. The New York School, see, now you're talking! The New York School was the Alt Lit of its time. I hope your class went super well. Love, me. ** Steevee, Ha, yes, at least 'Lincoln' didn't win, definitely. Hugs about the therapist transference stress. Obviously, just try not to get too stressed before you actually talk to her and find out what the possibilities are, if you can. ** Grant Scicluna, Hi, Grant. I will watch that Haneke. I think it's probably watchable on mubi. I'll go check. Oh, well, of course I'm very, very happy that you like 'Au Hazard Balthazar' so much, Bresson being my ultimate god and all. Maybe you found it, but Bresson's book 'Notes on Cinematography' is a total revelation, or it was for me. His notion of 'acting' and about how emotion should be conveyed was the most important influence on my work of anything ever. Very wise, and, yeah, absolutely true what you say about 'finding a way to make the emotion take place outside of yourself'. You do that just wonderfully in 'The Wilding'. I think that's a big reason why I, who am rarely actually physically moved by films, was moved by yours. Thank you for your belief in me about this George book. I'm trying very hard, but I don't know yet. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. Oh, the three punk albums thing, right. Interesting picks, of course. If I was going to just do a top of my head three, which I guess I will since I didn't dwell on the question as I should have, uh ... 'Entertainment!" (GoF), 'Chairs Missing' (Wire), and, uh, boring choice, I guess, but 'Bollocks' (Pistols). I think my favorite punk album ever, and an album that would be in the running for the greatest rock album of all time, in my opinion, is the first Ramones album, but that was '76. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Nice picks. Yeah, as soon as I saw yours, I started questioning my three. Way too many to edit down to three. Btw, your email was a wonderful big boost to wake up to this morning, man! Thanks for the good thoughts re: my novel. Well, yes, Malick, and 'ToL' in particular, is a big instructor re: that tone/style problem. Ozu, Bresson. The novel is very dialogue heavy and talky, at least in this early draft, so I'm thinking a lot about Rohmer in that regard. I've written a lot of things/fiction/poems that have been elegies to George, whether directly by name or not, but they overly bury him in my emotional ruminating, for better or worse, and I want to cut through that overlay somehow. Not sure I can do it, though. Gotta try, though. ** Paul Curran, Yes, there was a label-mate of yours in there! Wow, that novel idea you have is pretty amazing and fascinating. Wow. It kind of made my mouth water, actually. You have something coming out in Cityscapes? Cityscapes is a really terrific new project. I've been really poring over it. That's fantastic! That's a very, very interesting mag/site. Heads up, of course, when it appears, okay? ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. I don't anticipate George's brother and I becoming friends again. I'm imagining he would allow me one conversation/ interview at best, but you never know, I guess. Thanks much about 'Period' and 'TMS', but, unfortunately, whatever skills I developed to make those books are no help whatsoever with this one. I don't know. I just have to try. But thank you. Interesting, I see, about how your thing is progressing. Yeah, that's quite intriguing, and I think I do understand about the duality you're going for. Thinking about the possible advance while working on a book must be really confusing. I've never done that. But then the nature of what I do makes a big advance out of the question. I think I probably told you that Grove Press wanted to pay me a bunch of money for 'Try', but I refused that and made them pay me less because I didn't want the novel to lose them a lot of money and thereby harm my relationship with them, and not just with them but with publishers in general 'cos publishers look into stuff like that when they're considering whether to buy a book by a known writer, and there are many writers out there who took big advances for books that didn't do that well and had their publishing trajectories really fucked up by that. Not to scare you, though, ha ha. Also, I knew 'Try' wouldn't be a big commercial hit. It's just kind of weird that Grove didn't know that too, I guess. Re: 'God Jr.', I decided while writing the novel that it would be better if I didn't head too far off in the direction of the father's obsession. It just became clear for whatever reason, so I just discarded the plans very easily, I guess. This weekend? Nothing in particular other than working, I don't think. So I think a Skype confab would be cool ** 5STRINGS, You're a country boy at heart, eh? See, I don't know if I would have guessed that. I guess I see you as a kind of 'all things to all situations' kind of guy. Yeah, Paris is the big French shebang. It's NYC/LA/SF/DC, etc. rolled into one. I mean there's Marseilles. People want to move there sometimes. Not really to Lyon. Lyon is kind of in between small and big. Lyon is kind of pleasant. I wouldn't want to live there. I have to give a lecture there in a week and a half. That's it of the TV goods? I usually just turn on/leave on SyFy in LA, but I like that kind of crap. What about 'Hoarders'? I liked 'Hoarders' when I saw it. Butor's kind of a weirdo, I guess, and kind of really not a weirdo too. Or he's sort of one of the least weird of the Nouveau Roman guys. But he's great, though. I don't know. ** Misanthrope, Curses on your car. Nice that you get to do the NYC Xmas thing again. You're always inspired, you just don't know it. I think if you know you're inspired, you're not inspired? I think maybe you only know that afterwards? I don't know. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill! Yes, I understand completely, I think, about the offense and fear. My bones felt your words. Oh, actually, our Steevee is the other Steve Erickson. There's the novelist and the critic, and I'm sure they're always getting mistaken for one another, which must be odd. People still sometimes think I'm the Dennis Cooper who wrote and sometimes directed TV shows like 'Miami Vice' and 'Chicago Hope'. Glad you liked the Mirov. It's a wonderful book, yes. A very fine morning to you! ** Pilgarlic, Great food made you sick? Sorry, man. Well, rich not great food, is what you said. Different, presumably.  Yikes, about your tremulous state at the show. Yes, I think it would quite freak me out if Beryl swallowed a mouse whole in front of me. Jesus. Talented creature, that creature. That I will fully admit. What a character. I hope I get to met him someday in a context without cute little, catchable creatures in the vicinity. ** Frank Jaffe, Hey Frank! Yes, I woke up to an email from Luke, and I will hit him back as soon as I launch this thing. It's real good that he got the foreign data plan, as you know. Even that can make the difference a great trip and one where you're rudderless and spooked. I've heard of 'Fun House', yes, but I don't know much about it. I'll peek at it, at least. Or peek at some scanned pages online or something. Awesome that you get to be at Art Basel and see all your artist comrade dudes. Hug Scott for me. Love love love right back at 'ya. I'll do my best to see that Luke has a good time. ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, the Kremlin is like whatever the opposite would be of what they offered the Pavlov dog for Yury. You and length, man, ha ha. Someone ought to write their Phd thesis on 'Bill and the epiphany of concision'. Not a bad band name either. Well, you could vote for 'Singles Going Steady'. Is that too easy? Top of the morning to you! ** Okay. Today my galerie shows off the doings of one of my very fave artists, and, lucky for me, an old pal and comrade, Frances Stark. Dig it. See you tomorrow.

The intoxication of leaving himself, of slipping into the void, of dispersing himself in the thought of water, made him forget every discomfort

That would surely have been the moment to stop, but a hope remained; he went on swimming as if, deep within the restored core of his being, he had discovered a new possibility. Under the giant microscope, he turned himself into an enterprising mass of cilia and vibrations.

The temptation took on an entirely bizarre character when he sought to slip from the drop of water into a region which was vague and yet infinitely precise, a sort of holy place, so perfectly suited to him that it was enough for him to be there, to be: it was like an imaginary hollow which he entered because, before he was there, his imprint was there already. And so he made a last effort to fit completely inside. It was easy; he encountered no obstacles; he rejoined himself; he blended with himself, entering into this place which no one else could penetrate

Turning toward the infinite sheet of water reflecting the sun

There was in this contemplation something painful which resembled the manifestation of an excessive freedom, a freedom obtained by breaking every bond. His face clouded over and took on an unusual expression

The day was about to end; scarcely any light remained, but it was still possible to see certain details of the landscape fairly clearly, in particular the hill which limited the horizon and which was glowing, unconcerned and free

In front, in back, overhead, wherever he put out his hands, he collided brutally with a surface as hard as a stone wall; on all sides his way was barred, an insurmountable wall all around, and this wall was not the greatest obstacle for he had also to reckon on his will which was fiercely determined to let him sleep there in a passivity exactly like death

What dominated him was the sense of being pushed forward by his refusal to advance
His first observation was that he could still use his body, and particularly his eyes; it was not that he saw anything but what he looked at eventually placed him in contact with a nocturnal mass which he vaguely perceived to be himself and in which he was bathed

Naturally, he formulated this remark only as a hypothesis, as a convenient point of view, but one to which he was obliged to have recourse only by the necessity of unraveling new circumstances

Repulsive fantasy. Soon the night seemed to him gloomier and more terrible than any night, as if it had in fact issued from a wound of thought which has ceased to think, of thought taken ironically as object by something other than thought. It was night itself

Images which constituted its darkness inundated him. He saw nothing, and, far from being distressed, he made his absence of vision the culmination of his sight. Useless for seeing, his eye took on extraordinarily proportions, developed beyond measure, and stretching out on the horizon, let the night penetrate its center in order to receive the day from it

And so, through this void, it was sight and the object of sight which mingled together. Not only did this eye which saw nothing apprehend something, it apprehended the cause of its vision. It saw as object that which prevented it from seeing. Its own glance entered into it as an image, just when this glance seemed the death of all image
Thanks to these beings which indulged in acts which escapes all interpretation, edifices, whole cities were built, real cities made of emptiness and thousands of stones piled one on another, creates rolling in blood and tearing arteries, playing the role of what Thomas had once called ideas and passions

And so fear took hold of him, and was in no way distinguishable from his corpse. Desire was this same corpse which opened its eyes and knowing itself to be dead climbed awkwardly back up into his mouth like an animal swallowed alive

Alone, the body of Thomas remained, deprived of its sense

Tactical errors, no doubt about it, unfortunate move: the result was immediate. Everyone, as if offended by a foolish action which could be tolerated by ignoring it, closed themselves off in a reserve against which nothing could be done

As he listened, he thought about the distance of all these people, their absolute dumbness, their indifference. It was sheer childishness to hope to see all these distances suppressed by a single call. It was even humiliating and dangerous. At that point, he raised his head and, having assured himself that everyone has departed, he in turn left the room

The pleasure in fact became very great. It became so great, so pitiless that he bore it with a sort of terror, and in the intolerable moment when he had stood forward without receiving from his interlocutor any sign of complicity, he perceived all the strangeness there was in being observed by a word as if by a living being, and not simply by one word, but by all the words that were in that word, by all those that went with it and in turn contained other words, like a procession of angels opening out into the infinite to the very eye of the absolute

His eyes tried to look not in space but in duration, and in a point in time which did not yet exist. His hands sought to touch an impalpable and unreal body. It was such a painful effort that this thing which was moving away from him and trying to draw him along as it went seemed the same to him as that which as approaching unspeakably

One moment, the one thought he had triumphed and, with containable nausea, saw the word “innocence,” which soiled him slipping down inside him

I am already darker than the shadows. I am the night of night

I begin to see a landscape. As the darkness becomes more oppressive, a great pallid figure rises before me. I say ‘me,’ guided by a blind instinct, for ever since I lost the good, straight tail which was my rudder in this world, I am manifestly no longer myself

The tomb was full of a being whose absence it absorbed

This grave which was exactly his size, his shape, his thickness, was like his own corpse, and every time he tried to bury himself in it, he was like a ridiculous dead person trying to bury his body in his body

And it was not a misunderstanding. He was really dead and at the same time rejected from the reality of death. In death itself, he was deprived of death, a horribly destroyed man, stopped in the midst of nothingness by his own image, by this Thomas running before him, bearer of extinguished torches, who as like the existence of the very last death. Already, as he still leaned over this void where he saw his image in the total absence of images, seized by the most violent vertigo possible, a vertigo which did not make him fall but prevented from falling and rendered impossible the fall it rendered inevitable, already the earth was shrinking around him and night, a night which no longer responded to anything, which he did not see and whose reality he sensed only because it was less real than himself, surrounded him

He went forward, passing beyond the last shadows of night without losing any of his glory, covered with grass and earth, walking at an even pace beneath the falling stars, the same pace which, for those men who are not wrapped in a winding-sheet, marks the ascent toward the most precious point in life

It was, on her (Anne) part, a way to act which was difficult to justify. From one moment to the next one might anticipate, between these bodies bound so intimately together by such fragile bonds, a contact with would reveal in a terribly way their lack of bonds

Now that she was sure that, pitilessly unrelenting as he was, if he spoke he would say everything there was to say without hiding anything from her, telling her everything so that when he stopped speaking his silence, the silence of a being that has nothing more to give and yet has given nothing, would be even more terrifying, now she was sure that he would speak. And this certainty was so great that he appeared to her as if he had already spoken

He did not deceive her, and yet she was deceived by him. Treachery revolved about them, so much the more terrible because it was she who was betraying him, and she was deceiving herself at the same time with no hope of putting an end to this aberration since, not knowing who he was, she always found someone else beside her
She found a necropolis of movements, silences, voids; she hurled herself against the extraordinary sonority of nothingness which is made of the reverse of sound, and before her spread forth wondrous falls, dreamless sleep, the fading away which buries the dead in a life of dream

For lives on end she had to polish her thought, to relieve it of all that which made of it a miserable bric-a-brac, the mirror which admires itself, the prism which its interior sun: she needed an I without its glassy solitude, without this eye so long stricken with strabism, this eye whose supreme beauty is to be as crosseeyed as possible, the eye of the eye, the thought of the thought. One might have thought of her as running into the sun and at every turn of the path tossing into an ever more voracious abyss an eternally poorer and more rarefied Anne

At the heart of nothingness, she intruded as a triumphal presence and hurled herself there, a corpse, an inassimilable nothingness, Anne, who still existed and existed no longer, a supreme mockery to the thought of Thomas

There was in fact something terribly suspicious about her mutism. That she should not speak, that in her motionlessness she should retain the discretion of someone who remains silent even in the intimacy of dreams, all this was, finally, natural, and she was not about to betray herself, to expose herself, through this sleep piled upon sleep. But her silence did not even have the right to silence, and through this absolute state were expressed at once the complete unreality of Anne and the unquestionable and indemonstrable presence of this unreal Anne, from whom there emanated, by this silence, a sort of terrible humor which one became uneasily conscious of

How beautiful this night was, beautiful and not sweet, a night which fear did not render opaque, which put phantoms to flight and likewise wiped away the false beauty of the world. All that which Anne still loved, silence and solitude, were called night. All that which Anne hated, silence and solitude, were also called night. Absolute night where there were no longer any contradictory terms, where those who suffered were happy, where white found a common substance with black. And yet, night without confusion, without monsters, before which, without closing her eyes, she found her personal night, the one which her eyelids habitually created for her as they closed.

Fully consciously, full of clarity, she felt her night join the night

From the heart of shadows a voice told her: Go

Her room became uninhabitable: given a northern exposure for the first time, with a single window which admitted only the late afternoon sun, deprived, each day of another lovely object, this room gave every evidence of being secretly emptied in order to inspire in her the desire to leave it as soon as possible

All these deceptions failed

But now, she hardly suffered any more at all; her body attained the ideal of egoism which is the ideal of every body: it was hardest at the moment of becoming weakest, a body which no longer cried out beneath the blows, borrowed nothing from the world, made itself, at the price of its beauty, the equivalent of a statue
Then, in the form of this primordial passion, having now only a silent and dreary soul, a heart empty and dead, she offered her absence of friendship as the truest and purest friendship

Destruction of something nonliving, empty entities awoke

She also heard Thomas; in fact, she knew now what she had to say to Thomas, she knew exactly the words she had searched for all her life in order to reach him. But she remained silent; she thought: what good is it----and this word as also the word she was seeking----Thomas is insignificant. Let us sleep

My word, as if composed of excessively high vibrations, first devoured silence, then the word. I spoke, I was by that act immediately placed in the center of the intrigues. I threw myself into the pure fire which consumed me at the same time it made me visible. I became transparent before my own sight. Look at men: the pure void summons their eye to call itself blind and a perpetual alibi exchanged between the night outside and the night within permits them to retain the illusion of day throughout their lives

In the depth of myself, at the end of the day, strange emotions are deposited which take me for their object. I love myself with the spirit of revulsion, I calm myself with fear, I taste life in the feeling which separates me from it

I can no longer name a single feeling

Everywhere hardness, diamond, pitiless fire, and yet the sensation is that of foam. Absolute absence of desire

The perspective in which I fade away for my eyes restores me as a complete image for the unreal to which I deny all images. A complete image which reference to a world devoid of image which imagines me in the absence of any imaginable figure. Without color, inscribed in no thinkable form, neither the product of a powerful brain, I ma the sole necessary image. To the prism that I am, a prefect unity restores the infinite dissipation which makes it possible to see everything without seeing anything

Night, your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates

Through an all-powerful ambiguity, the uncreated is the same word for it and for me. For it, I am the image of what it would be, if it did not exist. Since it is not possible that it should not exist, by my absurdity I am its sovereign reason. I force it to exist. Night, I am itself

Out to the horizon, inaccessible shores of stone were seen rising slowly, impasses which led to the cadaverous apparition of the sun

But when from the deepest of the shadows there rose up a prolonged cry which was like the end of dream, they all recognized the ocean, and they perceived a glance whose immensity and sweetness awoke in them unbearable desires. Becoming men again for an instant, they saw in the infinite an image they grasped, and giving in to a last temptation, they stripped themselves voluptuously in the water

Thomas well watched this flood of crude images, and then, when it was his turn, his threw himself into it, but sadly, desperately, as if the shame had begun for him







*

p.s. Hey. Today the very fine d.l. Un Cœur Blanc offers all of us a very beautiful culling and array of pieces and clouds from the ultra-great finesser and wreaker of thought and prose Maurice Blanchot, specifically his novel 'Thomas the Obscure'. To scroll and read is to luxuriate, so I hope you will. Thank you, folks, and very heartfelt thanks to the kind and wise UCB. ** Misanthrope, As long as the writing doesn't feel like a chore, all bets are wonderfully off. So, eating and shopping, sure. The neph must have some targets in mind. Not to mention you. What G-rated spots are you angling towards? ** Wolf, Hey. I sort of like not knowing what they'll taste like in advance. I sort of like the idea of eating something based on looks alone, like you kind of said, especially since all the possibilities seem somewhat guaranteed to be veggie. But I think my fellow Buche diners are more sane and have their taste buds more in mind. I think most of the buches have something weird in them. Weird meaning not chocolate. Gosh, I don't know. Yeah, the main thing the deja vu made me think about is how long it had been since I'd had one. The rarity of it was kind of eerie. Where's my brain been? That Hofstadter does sound really intriguing in its Wiki edit. Major cool. I'll look for an online excerpt or something. Huh. Great! Geez, it's cold here. It's supposed to go down to - 3 during the fucking daylight hours later this week. I guess that 'worst winter in forever' hype might be right. Is London icing over? ** Allesfliesst, Okay, it looks like I'll have to video the buche eating. It seems like a potential charisma wrecker though. But I guess that's okay. Oh, doing that as a prelim to a lustful eating day. Huh. That's kind of an interesting idea, isn't it? Let me see if the internet lets me sort that excellent idea out. I think we're supposed to get a shred of snow tomorrow. It's cold enough to. I grew up in LA, so weather is totally bizarre to me. We've talked about how my novels have no weather in them. I couldn't even finesse that rainstorm scene you wanted from me. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, Billy. Well, there's a kind of amateurism that's really cool on the eyes, but I guess you have to not be amateurish when making something amateurish? It's a weird, fine line, I guess. You can always go minimal and all Joy Division-y which always works and I guess could be simple to do and cheap? I don't know. You'll ace the perfect form. That's all I know. Magcloud, no, I don't know it. That sounds really, really useful, though, so I'll go hunt down what it is. Oh, right, the headphones problem. Maybe they've figured out to do complex things with that primitive technology/magic trick where all you see is a little dot until you add water, and then it unfolds into whatever, a rabbit or something. Maybe it could unfold into earphones. Probably not. Oh, well. Oh, but a headphones port is what you're talking about. Hunh. I guess if the card or zine had really thick pages, right? But then it would be hard to read and more of a bitch to ship out. Yeah, Yury told me that uploading a video from iPhone to youtube is a total snap. Duh. I just don't know how things work very well. I just concentrate on handling things that already work. Make your day count, man, whatever its temperature is. I will too somehow. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Actually, Richard Hamilton is currently more au courant than he's been in a while, partly due to the big traveling retrospective that, as Tosh pointed out, was nixed by MoCA. So, I suspect you'll start hearing more about him once that retrospective hits the US. I haven't seen 'Triple Agent'. Sounds very curious. I'll do a search. Great about that Trintignant retrospective! The NYT best books list is so, so tiresomelessly predictable and out of it. Thanks, David ** Foggy Sapphires, Hi! The interview and clip were very interesting. I'll hope the film gets over here or ends up online in full. Glad to hear you're busy and writing and so well friended-up. Everyone, Foggy Sapphires, and I as well, recommend that, if you're a Londoner, you go see the legendary Jeremy Reed and his band Ginger Light perform at Horse Hospital on Saturday, December 15 in the company of writer Jake Arnott. Here's the info, and here's some info on Ginger Light's new CD, again recommended. ** Tosh, Hi, Tosh! What are you doing in NYC? Good stuff, I presume. Much love to you, man. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Exactly. The more Steve Ericksons, the better. Pretty interesting group of namesakes you've got there. Not bad or unremarkable at all. I might even check those guys out, ha ha, seriously. Some of my other namesakes that I know about include a, I guess, famous harmonica player named Dennis Cooper, the Harmoniac. And there's this couple who have a baby named Dennis Cooper who keep uploading video after video of their kiddo doing whatever. And a mayor of some town in the midwest. And the main character in Monty Python's 'Jabberwocky'. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Yeah, I see, about the advance thing. Well, you also have to hope for editors who have their fingers and instincts trained on the public's pulse, but I guess that's their job, and they're the writer's only entrance to the book reading hordes, so, yeah. Mm, I'm not sure why Grove thought 'Try' would be a hit. Maybe you're right. Gay fiction was kind of biggish thing in the early 90s, but, about the time that 'Try' came out, gays stopped being into fiction and non-gays got less interested in learning about gays via fiction, and the fad was dying out. No, not six figures, yikes Not that big. But it was really big offer relative to what I tend to get. Yeah, I'm pretty proud of the big snowman thing in 'GJr.', and it felt like the best ending I could have come up with. Thanks for the Yayoi Kusama link. She's great, and I hadn't seen that. Everyone, courtesy of Cobaltfram, here's a video interview with the amazing artist Yayoi Kusama that is definitely worth your time. Well, hopefully we'll talk over the weekend then. Best of everything with your work in the meantime. ** MANCY, Hey, man! Really glad you liked Frances Stark's stuff. She's great. Oh, I miss doing my Artforum Top 10s. That was fun. It was sad when they stopped asking me to do that. Thanks! ** Steevee, Cool that you're so close to finishing the piece. Maybe you're even finished it by now. 'New York Tendaberry' is among my all-time favorite albums. I think it's incredible. It makes me cry, even. ** Pisy caca, Thanks, and, yeah, fingers crossed for Yury. And for me by proxy. I'm glad you like Frances' work! I checked out that Al Filreis online class a little bit yesterday. It seems interesting, the whole set up of it too. Dickinson is great. And a big fave of Frances Stark, as you might have seen yesterday. 'Billie the Bull' is superb. You will definitely like it, I'm pretty damned sure. xTX is great in general, but I think that might be my very favorite work of hers to date. Love from me. ** Grant Scicluna, That's so interesting about that scene at the end of 'The Wilding'. I mean, it really teared me up, so there you go. Your instincts were majorly right on. In fiction, there's a similar situation, but it's also very different because of the great difference between how images and texts work. I'm having a serious quandary about that issue right now re: the book I'm trying to write about George. Over the course of our friendship, there was a lot of crying. That we cried when things were difficult or confusing or painful was very important, and it needs to be there, but representing it is something I'm still trying to figure out. It's tough. Gosh, it's a great pleasure and source of fascination for you to 'blurt' your thoughts and ideas here, be very assured, my friend. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I think you'll find Frances' very worth your time, or I hope so. Great day to you! ** 5STRINGS, Well, everything's on the internet now. Even people. The real world feels like being backstage now. It's where real people pick their noses and stuff. According to porn, your theory about country boys is true. Of course porn is not exactly the bastion of truth, but maybe in that case. TV is so much more sober over here in France that it's easier to know what do with it. Or, rather, it's either really sober or really silly. No in between. Kisses back. ** Polter, Hi, Polter! Hi, buddy! No, they're cakes, they're just theme cakes. Fancy theme cakes that, once upon a time, were supposed to look like pieces of wood. They're cakes the same way that Black Metal is Metal, I guess, or something. Strange teacher you had. I always think it's strange when teachers use the word 'okay.' I could never believe them when they used that word. It seemed condescending or something. But maybe I expected too much of teachers, or they wanted me/us to expect a lot of them. Weird relationship. I love 'stranged out'. I'm going to use that in something. Is that okay? It's really cold here, even if it's probably not as cold as where you are. I know, they say it's supposed to be cold like this but much worse even for the duration. I have to buy gloves, I guess. I hate how, when you have an iPhone, you have take off one of your gloves to answer a call. Otherwise, it's just like touching a window. I'm okay, I think. Really frustrated with my writing, but that happens. No real holiday plans other than eating those cakes and going out to look at what Paris has done to itself to make me and other Parisians believe Xmas is special. No big plans. You? Tomorrow's your birthday? Happy birthday! You really should do something extra, shouldn't you? I have my scariest ever birthday coming up in January, and there's nothing I'll be able to do because all my friends are going to be away. It's going to be really sad and weird. I hope yours isn't. You are great, and you are loved by me. ** Paradigm, Hi there, Scott! Great to see you! Cool, glad you liked the posts, thank you. Oh, I think you're probably really right about the proximity of 'the death of the novel' and late capitalism. I think that's really true. I don't know anyone under, oh, 40 who thinks that. Thank you for thinking about my novel dilemma. Yes, there is a real ... problem or difficulty in working through my present emotion to represent the emotionality of the time and the relationship specific to him, and I'm making that a big part of what the novel is about because that's all I can do, but it's making the novel very confusing to me, which is okay, although I'm coming around to and trying desperately to evade the conclusion that the novel is a failure for that reason and many others. Re: your thoughts on the elegiac, yes, and something that's very ... important or difficult for me is that I don't take ownership of George's memory, even though no one else knew him, or at least knew him like I knew him. I want him to exist for others as he did for me with the novel as the favorable excuse. I don't want to use him as an excuse to explore and expel my notion of love, and yet the relationship was about nothing but love, and I only understand mine for him, but not his for me. A lot of problems in this project. I just don't know if I can do it. But I'm trying as hard as I can. I've set out to do the most important thing that I, as a writer and as the person I am, could possibly do with the thing I know how to do, and I think I'm asking too much. I don't know. I'm a weird spot at the moment. Anyway, thank you for thinking and caring about that, and love to you, man. ** Bill, Ha ha, yes. And the opposite of ha ha about Brubeck and Niemeyer, both of whom, I'm embarrassed to say, I thought had been dead for a while. ** Sypha, Hey. James, thank you so much for the Xmas card! It's awesome! Banjo-K! You're the best, man, thank you a lot! Shit, I hope you feel much better as quickly as humanly possible, J. ** Jebus, You know Frances' work! Awesome! Dust up the nose is evil. It's one of those lowkey evils that are too underrated. I hope your buzz filtered back in. I ended up using recent work by Frances for utilitarian reasons: there were almost no decent sized jpegs of the older work online that I could use in a proper way. That's the reason, basically. Did you ever hear the single by her short-lived early 90s band Layer Cake? Probably impossible to find, but it's very cool. Very Pavement-y. Next time I'm in LA, I'll figure out a way up upload the songs from the 7". Yes, I do really Elfriede Jelinek, and I would totally love to have a guest-post on her by you. That would be amazing and very kind, if you don't mind. Thank you! She's the one doing that 'Lost Highway' opera? Holy shit. I read something about the opera, but I didn't know she was behind it. That's insane, not to mention that a 'Lost Highway' opera is such an incredible idea. Wow. Thanks for everything, and for missing my Artforum Top 10s. I miss 'em too. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Stark is great. And one of the coolest human beings out there too. Yeah, 'Holy Motors' is imperfect. I was okay with that. Sort of like 'Enter the Void' or 'Tree of Life'. A film like that will have problems due to its very nature, and the thrills are so thrilling that the overreaches are understandable or fascinating or something. Or to me, obviously. I don't know. I'm trying to catch up a little bit now on films I've missed 'cos I'm putting my little best of list together. Yeah, there are a bunch I wish I had seen. None of the usual listed stuff. I finally watched 'Oslo, August 31st', which I thought was fantastic! For instance. Are you making a best-of list in your head if nowhere else? ** Casey McKinney, She is! Hey, Casey, old pal. What's the haps down there in the big A? I need an intern too. Maybe not with a gun. Maybe with, hm, a line of coke. That is what it's all about, yep. I'm good enough, I guess. I hope you're gooder than good. ** Postitbreakup, Dude, don't delete those paragraphs. They're really good. Get that knife away from your back, man. Their goodness is only proving my point, buddy. Everyone, quick, quick, go read two new paragraphs written by Postitbreakup before he deletes them, as he is threatening do, 'cos they're really good. Okay? Go. ** Bollo, Hi, J. No, we haven't chosen the two yet. I need to poll my fellow eaters. I guess we should do that soon, soonish. I'll let you know. And I'll try to find out where that Plush one is on public display so I can get the eyes-on scoop. Cool. Yeah, Stark rules, yeah! ** All right. Please go up to where Un Cœur Blanc has beautifully positioned Blanchot and pore, drift, hunt and peck, skim, or whatever you like. It'll reward you, however you proceed. Until tomorrow, goodbye.

*

p.s. Hey. ** Wolf, Sandals, what?!  It's cold, Wolf, cold. Not deathly, but still. Even the bum-rush of your sarcasm hasn't raised the temp. It kind of snowed for a bit last night while I was zzzz, apparently, given the crusty looking world outside. Well, I'm so happy for you that you're so equipped against the chill. Your hypothermal death is one less thing for me to worry about in advance then. Excellent. I can layer, and I will, as the situation warrants. I'm tougher than I sound. No, buches are never gross. They can be interestingly failed experiments in taste at worst. To me. Michael spits out anything that doesn't taste like milk chocolate into a napkin, so he's the one who wants an ingredient list pre-purchase. Awfully delish meal you cooked and had there. I ate veggie dogs, what else? ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Thank you again so very much for yesterday, and I, of course, was most pleased by the positive response. Beautiful further thoughts about 'TtO', my friend, thank you. I think you have suitably aroused interest in the book, yes, certainly. 'Slow Slidings' is lovely. I think it was in one of my '3 books I read ... ' posts. I don't know if I know of Anne-Marie Albiach, but what you included by her was very beautiful, so I will go investigate further. Your new cloud sounds most wonderful. Thank you for everything, of course. ** Allesfliesst, Hi. No, LA actually has ever changing and very interesting weather. It's just more subtle. It's sort of like the difference between a vegetarian diet and a meaty one. The weather in LA just doesn't have a crassness or hard edge except in very rare instances. It's complex and kind of weirdly minimalist and maximalist at the same time. Writing a novel set in LA with a concentration on the weather patterns and effects would be an interesting challenge. Mostly, novelists just write about 'the Devil winds' aka 'the Santa Ana condition', which is LA's unique and special and very unpleasant weather thing. We got a bare snow-dusting in the dark. Something to notice, but nothing on the order of yours. Nice pic. Hope you got to Hamburg okay 'cos that seminar you're doing sounds extremely interesting. Report back if you make it there and if your mood and fingers align appropriately. ** David Ehrenstein, Yeah, I think Hamilton's particular thing is starting rhyme with younger artists and those who think/write about art, which is really nice, I agree. I ... don't think I've seen that Malle film. Interesting. Obviously, I missed the reference. I'll try to go find it. Thanks! ** Cobaltfram, Hi. Oh, I think if I sat down and ruminated, I could think of a bunch of authors who've written very well about gayness, and perhaps I'll do that. Well, I guess you just have to let your book be as gay as you are in a casual way. Like it's just there and understood and whatever. As you know, I'm not interested in gayness and gay identity much at all. The only time that word ever comes up in my stuff is when the rare character quibbles with the identification. That's my only guess at how a writer ends up a crossover type like Burroughs or Genet or Killian or whoever as opposed to an overtly gay-categorized one like White or Leavitt or whoever. If 'Dark Souls' is online, I'll check it out, although the 'difficult' thing makes me wary, if you mean difficult due to difficult battling. Not into that. Difficult to solve strategically I like. But fighting-heavy games just frustrate and bore me. It'd be nice to have an Xbox, but there are a ton of games I've yet to tackle on the Wii, so I'm cool. I've never wanted at PS3 for some reason. No interest. Anyway, if you get six figures, it's a deal, you bet. Weekend seems pretty free, I think. I'm hoping to get back into my novel this weekend, if I'm lucky, so I should be around-ish in general. I have to do an interview about JT Leroy for some Discovery channel documentary about that bullshit, but that's mostly my only obligation so far. ** SwAmPeX, Hey. Even with English as your primary language, Blanchot is a challenge, so no sweat. Yes, I remember that you're in Argentina. I was just being greedy. If you do end up translating, just know I'm very interested. Same, of course, about seeing the short film if you upload it, with subtitles or not. I can try my rusty Spanish on it, and maybe I'll get a little cross-polinated understanding. It sounds very cool. A scholarship thing in France of course sounds like something to definitely strive for to me, so I'll hope that works out. A noir detective thing in a Wiccan setting, wow. That sounds super fresh. Yeah, that idea woke up a bunch of my brain cells. Wanting recognition is completely cool. I mean, artists who say that's not a factor in their wanting to make things and have people like their things must be lying. You should be positive. Being cynical and hopeless is really just self-defeating and about insecurity and bullshit. Optimism and self-belief can really make the difference between the talented guy who never employs their talent and the artist at large. Those qualities are as important as talent, I think. Anyway, you sound really good, man. That's awesome! ** Will, Hi there, Will! Good to see you! I hope you aced the exam. Did you? Since it's the final one, what now? What've you got planned? ** Sypha, Ugh, James. Yeah, check that shit out if it's still bad today. I'm glad you're enjoying 'Against the Day' That's cool. Well, you know, it's all taste and what you want and need when reading. Others' opinions are just like road signs or roadside ads or something ultimately. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, Billy. A CD printer, right, that's a good idea. Seems like they'd have a reduced sales price these days? You never know, though. You'd think turntables would be really cheap these days, but they sure aren't. I looked at Magcloud a little. Yeah, very interesting. It made me want to do a zine or a chapbook. Maybe I will. A really ltd. ed. booklet or zine could have a been a good Xmas present or something, but it's too late. Two new songs! Great! Are they on your soundcloud? I'll go check. Nope, they aren't. Will they be? Wow, ha ha, about your rival doing a 'Flood'-like track. Yeah, top him. So to speak, ha ha. Weather's icy here, but it's okay. It just takes a while to get used to it, you know. Winter, what can you do? My day was okay. Yours seems to have been. Now there's today to conquer. Vexing challenge. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Oh, yeah, I wouldn't put 'HM' up there with 'EtV' or 'ToL', but it was very appreciated. 'Turin Horse' was a 2012 movie in the States? That lag is weird,  It was a 2011 film for us. You should see it. If you like Tarr, it's fucking gorgeous. Me being me, yes, I did know that about Pollard and Big Dipper, I'm kind of embarrassed to say. I'll write you back via email today or tomorrow at the latest. Good day! ** Steevee, Good, on finishing the piece. Do you know when it goes up? Oh, so you'll get to keep seeing your current psych due to the upfront paying? Is that what you mean? Well, that worked out okay, I mean other than the added expense. I still think/ believe that BEE's Twitter outrageousness is a calculated performance/ project by him. That's what makes the most sense to me, but who knows. To be factual, Bret wasn't entirely in the closet before he copped in public. I'm hardly a close friend of his, but it wasn't a secret or even something he kept secret if you knew him. So, maybe he was sort of in the closet or, rather, in the closet when he talked to the media, which isn't the same thing. ** Pisy caca, 'BtB' is great, and it's kind of formally different than the work you've seen by xTx so far in a very exciting way. It's even cold in Barcelona? I guess I think of it as being LA-like, or like LA with a higher temperature. It's chilly here. Nothing too scary so far, but it does put a crimp in the normally lovely idea of going outside. Love! ** Oliver, Hey! Oh, man, if you can and want to make a post, that would be crazy wonderful. Thank you so kindly for thinking of here. ** Foggy Sapphires, Good morning, if it's morning. It seems to be a degree or two warmer here today, so fingers crossed. Yes, I'm very interested to read your talk with Nick, of course. Very nice combo of minds there. And thank you a lot about the blog on behalf of the good people here who are largely responsible, and that includes you, so give yourself a hug. ** Misanthrope, My writing is a chore right now, unfortunately, but that feeling always passes, or it has in the past, so, gulp, and bright eyes. I know that brain dead look well, I think. Or I think I know what it feels like from the inside. Sort of how I feel when I finish the p.s. Your NYC targets sound fun. There's a 1D store? Well, yeah, I guess there would be. I remember the Menudo store. Just above 14th Street near Second Avenue. God, it could still be these. That would be weird. So, are you one of those girls who are clawing out Taylor Swift's eyes in their daydreams? Panchitos! What I wouldn't give for a Panchito's plate right about now. Sigh. Donut Factory! You'll see Alan, cool. I guess the zoo would be open. You mean the one in Central Park? I've never been to the Brooklyn Zoo, which is, I guess, the real one. ** 5STRINGS, So, I guess since my face on Facebook is still yawning as usual, that means my wall posts are just figments of my imagination? Could be. How would I know? I'm just the crane operating the fingers that type the code that constitutes me onto the world. Porn can make the dumbest theme seem transcendental. Sex is so weird. Telemundo used to be real, but I don't know now. I don't think they have Telemundo here. No, they must. I don't think I'll try to go find it. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill. Ha ha, I did check out a couple of your namesakes for kicks. They aren't so bad. You definitely are the guy who owns the name, though. Lovely thoughts on the great Blanchot. Thank you. You're writing again? Well, that's great, that's big! What are you writing? What can you say about it? ** Statictick, Hi, N. You don't seem fuzzed out to me, but I'm kind of fuzzed out over here. That always happens at first when it gets so cold that you have to keep the windows closed. Stark rules, baby! No, I didn't see 'American Horror Story' while in LA. Sucks. I did hear some of it in the next room while Joel watched it and while I did whatever I was doing online. It sounded kind of austere/horrific, which was good. Book I'm reading? I wonder what it was. I'm almost always reading something. If you remember, ask away. ** Jebus, Hi. I'm like the opposite. Well, no, I used to be the opposite in that I read almost only French fiction dudes. Nowadays I seem to read almost always American dudes and dude-ettes. If Alt Lit had been around back then, it would have been different. Anyway, I, of course, highly recommend the French dudes. They made me whatever I am today. So, there's a plus or a minus re: them. Yeah, she sang in the band. I think she might have played some kind of instrument, but maybe just a tambourine, ha ha. Yeah, Pavement-y. Back then, Frances was all about Malkmus and Jason Lowenstein of Sebadoh. I hear the US has been getting a warmish winter in general. Whereas they're saying Paris is going to be architecture inside an ice cube soon. Global warming is so bizarre. ** Totaldepravity, Hey there! Welcome! Now, there is a Dennis Cooper I didn't know about, and that one would seem to be my biggest competition. Weird. Thank you, depraved one. Come back any old time. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh, Gathering that stuff is a great idea. I'm happy to hear that. Yeah, you wrote, and who cares if it's a bunch of stuff or some labored over tome. Send it out, or you can join the self-publishiong eBook phenom. Really, self-pubbed eBooks are, like, 70% of what I read these days. Anyway, good move, man, and, again, excellent paragraphs yesterday. ** Okay. I got a bunch of Xmas tree close-ups for you today. Advice: scroll in a relatively slowish manner, and you will find some cool hidden things and secrets. In any case, see you tomorrow.

Recently I've become aware of the fact that Nothing Lasts Forever, an unreleased 1984 feature by Tom Schiller is up on You Tube.



(Tom Schiller)

Re Schiller Wiki sez:

“Tom Schiller is an American Emmy Award winning writer best known for his eleven-year stint writing and directing short films for Saturday Night Live (following the show's original short film makers Albert Brooks and Gary Weis). His films, often featuring members of the original SNL cast, aired on the program in a segment titled, "Schiller's Reel." Schiller was part of the original 1975 writing team when Saturday Night Live debuted on NBC. Notable films included the Federico Fellini send-up "La Dolce Gilda" and "Don't Look Back in Anger", which depicted an elderly John Belushi as the last living "Not Ready For Primetime Player" and dancing on the graves of his deceased castmembers. (Belushi would become the first SNL cast member to die, four years after the film first aired). Another favorite was "Java Junkie", a send-up of a 50s style cautionary film about a coffee addict (played by Peter Aykroyd). Schiller wrote and directed the short film "Love is a Dream" for SNL with Phil Hartman and producer/cinematographer Neal Marshad. Schiller also wrote and directed a unique feature film, Nothing Lasts Forever (1984). The film, which was unreleased at the time and featured Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Zach Galligan, Sam Jaffe, Mort Sahl, Lauren Tom, Imogene Coca, Apollonia van Ravenstein and Eddie Fisher, has gained a cult following and influenced a number of young directors in recent years.”


Starring Zach Galligan at the apex of his loveliness



(Zach Galligan)


Nothing Last Forever suggests what Joseph Cornell might have made were he put under contract by MGM. Enjoy!



(Nothing Lasts Forever Tom Schiller)





On an entirely different yet somewhat related level, Twice a Man by Gregory Markopoulos has also become YouTube available



(Gregory Markopoulos)

About Gregory, Wikie sez:

“Gregory J. Markopoulos (March 12, 1928 - November 12, 1992) was a Greek-American experimental filmmaker. Born in Toledo, Ohio to Greek immigrant parents, Markopoulos began making 8 mm films at an early age. He attended USC Film School in the late 1940s, and went on to become a co-founder -- with Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Stan Brakhage and others -- of the New American Cinema movement. He was as well a contributor to Film Culture magazine, and an instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1967, he and his partner Robert Beavers left the United States for permanent residence in Europe. Once ensconced in self-imposed exile, Markopoulos withdrew his films from circulation, refused any interviews, and insisted that a chapter about him be removed from the second edition of Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney's seminal study of American avant-garde cinema. While he continued to make films, his work went largely unseen for almost 30 years.”


When it premiered in 1963 Twice a Man was well-regarded by critics and popular with audiences - many of whom compared it to Alain Resnais. But Gregory (who felt Resnais had ripped off his earlier filmSwain for Last Year at Marienbad) had very different ideas about the cinema.

The Summer 1963 issue of Film Culture (number 29) contains excerpts from Twice a Man's original screenplay. It apparently began as a “coming out” story in which a handsome youth (gorgeous fashion model Paul Kilb) goes to visit his mother (Olympia Dukakis in her motion picture debut) to discuss his relationship with his lover, identified as an “artist/physician” (Albert Torgessen)

Mother: Why do you keep seeing the physician?

Paul: When you get to like a man's face there's nothing you can do about it.

Clearly Markopoulos changed his mind mid-production. And so instead of post-synching dialogue we get fragments of speech only. It was the impact of mages alone that interested him - especially at the start when after several minutes of solid black we see our hero on the Staten Island ferry. Though widely seen from 1963 to 1968 or so, Twice a Man, like all of Markopoulos's work, was withdrawn from conventional exhibition after he and his lover Robert Beavers moved to Europe. It's such a delight to see it today once again.



(Twice a Man)






Wiki sez:

“Robert Beavers (born 1949) is an American experimental filmmaker. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he attended Deerfield Academy which he left before graduating to move to New York in 1965 to pursue filmmaking. He lived in New York until 1967 when he and his partner, Gregory Markopoulos, left the United States for Europe, where they continued to live and make films until Markopoulos' death in 1992.

Both filmmakers restricted the screenings of their films after leaving America, and instead held yearly screenings of Markopoulos' and Beavers' work from 1980-1986 at the Temenos, a site near Lyssaraia in Arcadia, Greece. After Markopoulos' death, Beavers founded Temenos, Inc., a non-profit devoted to the preservation of Markopoulos' and Beavers' work. Beavers has worked extensively on re-editing his films to create the larger film cycle My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure."


Beavers made his first appearance, stark naked in Gregory's rarely screenedEros O Basileus





Here he is today speaking of their Temenos project.



(Robert Beavers on Temenos)


And here's a clip about Temenos



(Temenos)





Last but not least.

It's a great point of contrast to Twice A Man AND Nothing Lasts Forever







*

p.s. Hey. This weekend, Mr. E is back to turn the blog into a cinema with very cool programming. Please de-glare your screens, settle in/back, enjoy the rare and savvy triple feature, and pass your thoughts along to our special host and programmer. Thank you, and very heady, hearty thanks to the d.l. in charge. ** Wolf, No, you weren't being a ... wow, you did just say that, and God love you, ha ha. I like the cold too, or I like it more than the hot. I still have a Los Angeleno's sense of wonder about the lower temperatures. It's mostly just my feet and hands that object to them, but I'm just going to tell/telepath them to pipe down on the whining and man their goddamned posts. Well, enjoy the next three days then. Gosh, it might be only two now. Maybe the fourth day will surprise you with its welcoming attitude? I got a softy of a heart when it comes to Xmas trees too. Nah, we're not getting one. You've seen our cramped, stuffed place. Even if there was somewhere to put one, it would just look like a green article amongst our junk heap. Sad. When do you guys split for China again? That's so amazing and crazy that you're going there. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, B. Geez, that's expensive. Wtf?! Yeah, I've been eyeing those digital turntables. I need to see one in the flesh. Definitely alluring. I might just make a zine, and the trade w/ you is more weight on my jones to make one. I need to figure out some way to mark the occasion of my upcoming, scary birthday, and maybe a zine would be the ticket. Hm. Oh, right, about the rules re: internet uploading. Yeah, makes schoolish sense. Ooh, your secret Soundcloud. I won't link everybody up since that would make it unsecret, I guess, but I'll do an auditory devouring of the contents with your reminder of their unfinishedness in mind. Thank you! Ha ha re: the 'he's going down'. All is fair in love and war or something? What did you eat? Did it bring you peace? ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you ever so much for the great weekend ahead, sir! I don't know if it's a generational thing. I know people of all ages who feel the way you do and even a few who are in relative line with my pov. And your generation and mine are pretty close in time. Ever since I realized I was gay as a kiddo, I've always felt my gayness spoke only to my personal romantic and erotic leanings. That's just always been the only thing that rang true to me. But that's just me and mine. To each gay his own, is, I guess, my attitude. ** Steevee, Cool, heads up when it goes up, please. Bret is still coy and a bit all over the place publicly about his being gay, so the confusion about that makes sense and is likely the way he likes it. Well, I guess what I was saying is that it's possible to view my books as housing mostly gay characters living in phobia-free realistic worlds the way you do even though I don't intentionally build books thinking about the characters' gayness or about making worlds that are gay-exclusive. To me, the sameness of their romantic and sexual leanings is just part of the importance to me of being honest and personal in my work, and their worlds are highly edited constructs that allow me to study and represent my ideas. On rare occasions, the characters acknowledge and play in different ways with the fact that readers might well identify and pigeonhole them as gay in a collective identity sense. The fact that the books can be interpreted in both and different ways might explain why I have as many straight readers as gay ones, is what I was saying. ** Kiddiepunk, Ha ha. Thank you. You got a teeny tree? Take a teeny photo and put it on teeny Facebook. And I will see you downstairs in just a few hours! ** Casey Hannan, Hi, Mr. Hannan! Oh, you should. What would you make the tree out of? I mean, would you try to do nature one better and construct the perfect tree using the tree's natural ingredients, or would you ... gosh, I don't know, make a blown glass tree, yuck, or a paper mache one, hm, or ... ? Sorry for the impossible question. You got my imagination riled up. That makes total sense about the toenails thing. What an interesting way to secretly gain a deep understanding of your visitors. The 40s. Okay, rather than tell how cold it is here and how cold it can get, I'll say I know that's cold. I do. In LA, where I come from, people die en masse of frostbite when the temps are in the 40s. What kind of blanket? I mean, what will it look like? Will it have a pattern or ... I don't know? I do eat pastries here much more often than I do when I'm anywhere else, yes. Oh, let me see if I can find a photo online of my favorite pasty of the moment. Hold on. Oh, I did. If you click this, it's the pastry in the middle, the silver one. It's crazy good. I would dematerialize it and have it materialize on a plate in your kitchen if I could. ** Mark Doten, Hi, Mark! Oh, okay, I'll go check my email then. Happy weekend! ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Mr. P. You told me about your writing, cool, thank you. Yeah, you've got to get round that self-defeating nerd for sure. Blind fatigue is an interesting weapon. I tend to mostly write in the mornings while my coffee is still kicking in, which might be a related way. Okay, those fragments sound quite interesting. I.e., I'm definitely still with you. I mean, sometimes ideas play out really fast, and you end up just belaboring them if you try to push them to traditional lengths. And flash fiction has become a totally legit form in these past years, so there's really no need to overbuild your ideas. So, I think a piece that consists of somehow interrelating fragments is a great way to go. I do those kinds of pieces, at least. There are a bunch of similar kind of short burst pieces in my book 'Ugly Man', and most of them were originally going to be the beginnings of longer things. I don't think there's anything artistically lazy in that approach. In the US, there's this kind of fascist idea that the longer something is, the most important and weighty it must be, but that prejudice is not so in play in the literature of most other countries. I say go for it, in other words. Diane Williams, exactly. There are many great examples. If you want to try out the connected fragment thing, you could always put it in one of my blog's writers workshop posts and get some feedback and responses, if you want. I'm staying warm whatever it takes so far, thank you. Plastic Xmas trees are totally legit, yeah. Much better than those horrible tinfoil and wood fake trees you were mostly stuck with when I was a young lad. Any photos of yours? Okay, a fine weekend to you, man. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. It was nice having you here many times. Fake gun, yes. There were all kinds of things hidden and blurred out in there. Some of the images were sort of like those Magic Eye posters that were a fad ten years ago or whenever. I do like that Rimbaud translation a lot, but it's controversial among Rimbaud scholars. Happy weekend! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I know, me too. The only Xmas I have in my room is Sypha's Xmas card, but that'll do. A Unica Zurn intro sounds like a most excellent piece, of course. Kind of hard to tell about the work from a quick glance at those Trisha Baga show photos, but I'll look more carefully later. Jury duty, yikes, or maybe not yikes, I don't know. I've always thrown away summons when I've gotten them, and I'm still not in jail as far as I know. ** 5STRINGS, Ha ha, dude, wow. I think I'll pretend to yawn 24/7 and see who follows me home. Is that a real word: coherentist? I got a red line underneath it when I typed it, so maybe not, but I like it. Elektra Blue? Don't know that. Looks like Bill Kaulitz? I will most assuredly check it out. Or at least google-image-search that name. What are Charlie Brown Xmas trees? I'll google-image-search yet again. Much love backwash, buddy. ** Misanthrope, Well, if the greatest gay person ever doesn't know even know what gay identity is, then I'm sated. Either sated or a monkey's uncle, depending on which d.l. is reading this sentence, ha ha. Bret was trying to score coke off one of those Xmas trees, yes! Good eye. Oh, the 1D store is a giant, flashy thing. That is gross. The Menudo store was tiny and sad looking. Anyway, you are so going to go back home from NYC with a tube of 1D toothpaste in your suitcase, don't lie. I've never heard a Taylor Swift song as far as I know. I know she's the one who Kanye West was rude to on the MTV Awards or something, and since I don't like Kanye West, I'd hoped she was actually sympathetic. She seems sort like a cross between a pure celeb/Kardashian type and Lana del Rey or something? I have no idea. The Natural History Museum is really cool. Yeah, I recommend it or whatever. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, man. About the stack/scroll. That was actually one my favorite of my stacks even if it didn't seem to bring the house down. Great to hear that about 'Django Unchained'. I'm excited to see it, for sure. I haven't yet seen that last Tarantino, whatever it's called, the long one, weirdly, but I really like his films pretty much always, except for maybe 'Death Proof'. That wasn't so hot, although Kurt Russell was awesome in it. No Xmas tree for us, no. No room at all. So, I'll just go look at the ones that the public gets to look at. That's fine. I don't really know if Parisians buy Xmas trees that much anyway. I've only ever seen one Xmas tree lot in Paris the whole time I've lived here. You have a silver one? Take a pic! Show me! ** Postitbreakup, Yeah, man, like I said to Bill P., do the fragment connecting up thing. It's a heck of a form ,really. And, oh, wow, thank you the Xmas carol! That totally warmed my heart. You're so nice. ** Jebus, Holy shit, Jebus, that is fucking amazing! That's kind of like the ideal ultimate destiny of that stack with the unexpected huge honor of your of your sonic genius input. Holy shit! That's fantastic! I'm going to ... hold on. I just put it on my Facebook wall, and now I'm ... hold on ... going to embed at the bottom of the p.s. for everyone. Hold on one more time. Everyone, mightiest d.l. Jebus took my humble tree stack yesterday, worked in a great cover version of -- and here I quote him -- '"You and I" from the Twin Peaks series (that scene in season one where Maddy, Donna and James are singing together on the floor)' -- by his magisterial music project New White Light, and created the stunning video you see just below you. When you're not clicking on the movies in the cinema up above this weekend, click it. It rules. Wow, really, that is such a total treat and boon and everything else. Thank you so much for making wine out of my water and so on. You have an especially great weekend, okay? ** Sypha, Sorry about Harry and Taylor. :-( Well, you know that I think you will be glad that you finished 'IJ'. Are you feeling better, I hope? ** Bollo, Thanks, big J. Yay about your mental work planning, obviously. Well, I do occasionally get a wish going on about making a zine, and the Magcloud thing really pushed it to the forefront, so, yeah, maybe so, yeah. I need to dwell in zine head and see what happens in there. I saw The Wire's list too. Yeah, some surprises. Trying to branch out or something? Curious. I just finished my 'best of' lists for my annual blog post, I think, barring any masterpieces that come out between now and next, uh, Wednesday or whenever it's set to go. Great freelance weekend of frolic and finery to you! ** Right. Intermission is over. The house lights are flashing. Back into Mr. E's theater now, please. See you again come Monday.


New White Light 'Dennis Cooper Xmas Trees'

Redeemed Area
by John Ashbery


Do you know where you live? Probably.

Abner is getting too old to drive but won’t admit it.

The other day he got in his car to go buy some cough drops

of a kind they don’t make anymore. And the drugstore

has been incorporated into a mall about seven miles away

with only about half the stores rented. There are three

other malls within a four-mile area. All the houses

are owned by the same guy, who’s been renting

them out to college students for years, so they are virtually uninhabitable.

A smell of vitriol and socks pervades the area

like an open sewer in a souk. Anyway the cough drops

(a new brand) tasted pretty good-like catnip

or an orange slice that has lain on a girl’s behind.

That’s the electrician calling now

nobody else would call before 7 A.M. Now we’ll have some

electricity in the place. I’ll start by plugging in

the Christmas tree lights. They were what made the whole thing

go up in sparks the last time. Next, the light

by the dictionary stand, so I can look some words up.

Then probably the toaster. A nice slice

of toast would really hit the spot now. I’m afraid it’s all over

between us, though. Make nice, like you really cared,

I’ll change my chemise, and we can dance around the room

like demented dogs, eager for a handout or they don’t

know what. Gradually, everything will return to normal, I

promise you that. There’ll be things for you to write about

in your diary, a fur coat for me, a lavish shoe tree for that other.

Make that two slices. I can see you only through a vegetal murk

not unlike coral, if it were semi-liquid, or a transparent milkshake.

I have adjusted the lamp;

morning’s at seven,

the tarnish has fallen from the metallic embroidery, the walls have fallen,

the country’s pulse is racing. Parents are weeping,

the schools have closed.

All the fuss has put me in a good mood,

O great sun.





Ranting
by Megan Green

ranting, pathetic insecurities, overwhelm the Christmas tree, and you promise
     me a utopia, a sort of subsequential America,
where we’ll fuck & eat & play the craps, Las
     Vegas is the only place it’ll happen, &
yet the nameless, intrude like a swarm of fucking locusts
     feasting upon the Satin drape of my finest
face, I believe your chest most of all, that’s where
     the dragon begins, & the sigh
spills from my eyes. Dead petals favour the corners. Gathering
like they have plans.





Making the Best of the Holidays
by James Tate

Justine called on Christmas day to say she
was thinking of killing herself. I said, "We're
in the middle of opening presents, Justine. Could
you possibly call back later, that is, if you're
still alive." She was furious with me and called
me all sorts of names which I refuse to dignify
by repeating them. I hung up on her and returned
to the joyful task of opening presents. Everyone
seemed delighted with what they got, and that
definitely included me. I placed a few more logs
on the fire, and then the phone rang again. This
time it was Hugh and he had just taken all of his
pills and washed them down with a quart of gin.
"Sleep it off, Hugh," I said, "I can barely under-
stand you, you're slurring so badly. Call me
tomorrow, Hugh, and Merry Christmas." The roast
in the oven smelled delicious. The kids were playing
with their new toys. Loni was giving me a big
Christmas kiss when the phone rang again. It was
Debbie. "I hate you," she said. "You're the most
disgusting human being on the planet." "You're
absolutely right," I said, "and I've always been
aware of this. Nonetheless, Merry Christmas, Debbie."
Halfway through dinner the phone rang again, but
this time Loni answered it. When she came back
to the table she looked pale. "Who was it?" I
asked. "It was my mother," she said. "And what
did she say?" I asked. "She said she wasn't my
mother," she said.





I’ll Be Me and You Be Goethe
by Heather Christie


I want it to be winter and I want to change
the color of this room This room should be
a blue room and it should be freezing
but ventilated and I in my medium snowsuit
irresistible I know because everything I do
I do to get more beautiful so you will want
to love me in the cold and indoor morning





What I'd Like For Christmas, 1970
by Ted Berrigan


Black brothers to get happy
The Puerto Ricans to say hello
The old folks to take it easy &
as it comes
The United States to get straight
Power to butt out
Money to fuck off
Business with honor
Religion
& Art
Love
A home
A typewriter
A GUN.





Advent
by Rae Armantrout


In front of the craft shop,
a small nativity,
mother, baby, sheep
made of white
and blue balloons.


*


Sky
           god
                     girl.

Pick out the one
that doesn’t belong.


*


Some thing

close to nothing
                          flat
from which,

fatherless,
everything has come.





Look at My Head, It's a Pumpkin with a Candle in It
by Keegan Crawford

    What is on your bed right now?
I laid there for fifteen minutes with my face down into the pillow.
I imagined how I looked from another person’s point of view
and I looked dead, in a humorous way.
    What is your favorite holiday?
The tree was fake and everyone was acting like the tree.
    If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
The drop was five stories, so I didn’t look down. I just looked forward.
    Have you ever been camping?
I don’t know why people are scared of wolves. ‘Blood thirsty killing machine’ is a false phrase. They are not robots and they drink water.
    What was the last thing you ate?
I am not a blood thirsty killing machine. I just wanted to clarify that.
    Do you have any regrets?
Flowers die 100% percent of the time. I still like flowers, though.





Season’s Greetings
by Ron Padgett


The holidays are said
to give one a chance
to get in touch with others
but what held back that chance
the rest of the year?
What it means is
that the holidays are a time
when we should behave
like other people, as if
in junior high school,
jury duty, or the Army,
whereas what Philip Whalen
wanted was to take a holiday
from holidays, and then
he wavered, beautifully.





Kage’s First Xmas
by Ben Mirov


I am thinking of him and her having sex. I am thinking of them having really great sex, probably in front of a mirror. I am alone in the house. The TV is on, but everyone is asleep. I am about to turn twenty-one. When I turn twenty-one I am going to put on snowshoes. I am going to put on snowshoes and walk as far as I can into the snow. Once I am out in the snow I am going to sit down. I will probably sit in the snow for a long time. I’ll bring a sandwich and some juice. When I return to the house it will be Xmas morning. I will take off my snowshoes and I will tell my family my new name. I will say, On advent of my twenty-first birthday I have taken a new name. Henceforth I shall be called Kage. Kage with a K and not a C. From now on I will only answer to the name Kage. Thank you very much, and then I will walk out of the room. Then I will probably take a shower because I will be cold from sitting in the snow. I will walk into the bathroom and take off all my clothes and look at my body in the mirror. I will probably flex a little. Kage likes his new body. Then I will take a long shower. I will wash every part of my body, including my asshole and my ears and toes. Every part of my body will be clean. Then I will get out of the shower and go have Xmas. I will open my presents and say, Kage does not want this. Kage has no use for a Playstation. Kage does wear sweaters.





untitled
by Megan Boyle


everything i touch is going to be a fossil some day my dad still hasn’t taken down his christmas decorations

i walked to his refrigerator and immediately unwrapped and ate a square of american cheese

if i drop a toothpick i’m pretty sure it will remain where it fell for three days

not sure what happens after that.





Xmas Poem: Bolinas
by Robert Creeley


All around
the snow
don't fall.

Come Christmas
we'll get high
and go find it.





Love Poem
by Louise Glück


There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits.
She turns out scarves in every shade of red.
They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm
while she married over and over, taking you
along. How could it work,
when all those years she stored her widowed heart
as though the dead come back.
No wonder you are the way you are,
afraid of blood, your women
like one brick wall after another.





All the Lovers
by Kevin Killian


Outside the Disney Concert Hall,
Kylie has summoned a clutch of cold models in white underwear,

They clamber on white boxes pitching for the sky

Somehow she appears in a dream sequence,

Boys and girls kiss and poke and struggle for love

In California, where the major candidates for governor and senator
live the lavish lives of Roman emperors,

Carly Fiorina, like Nero, bought a violin
for everyone on her Christmas list, from Cremona,

her wood golden and thin as hair,

81 per cent of voters don’t care how wealthy a
candidate is

You have to be rich to flourish

What came first, the wifebeater or the social system
that allowed ever and ever more flourish

In the face of a liverish social despair
all the lovers who have gone before

they don’t compare to you





i am a big dumbass bear on christmas morning
by partrik


holy shit a house

im gonna look inside the fucking window

who the fuck is this dumbass family in this house

if i wanted to i could bust in there and eat every one of these fuckers

look at this little fucker opening a present

oh look its a fire truck big deal ass monkey

when are these shit hats gonna fucking notice the bear at their window

hey bitch you forgot to look in your stocking

there you go

lol bubba wubba and chocolate give her a fucking toothbrush mom and dad

when are they gonna see me and chase me away

damn thats a lot of wrapping paper

lol that kitten is playing in it what a retard

oh shit they see me

“im not gonna hurt you or eat you”

but it sounds like “roar roar roar” to them cause im a big dumbass fucking bear

dad thats a big ass gun

dont shoot me think of all the fun times

like when watched your lovely family open presents on christmas

oh shit he took a warning shot im gonna run away

there is no presents under any of the trees of the woods of the world for me

why arent i hibernating





in a string of christmas lights that is blinking all year long
by Diana Salier


for christmas i get a new magic set and a big plastic stealth bomber that opens up and holds fifty little metal stealth bombers. i wear footie pajamas that zip all the way to my neck. the big plastic stealth bomber has a runway to practice takeoffs and landings. i sit on the carpet in my onesie and make the grey and green stealth bombers crash into each other so that all the pilots inside will die. i can't finish card tricks or make the red balls disappear so i wear my black felt magician's hat and walk around pulling rabbits out of things. i drive to my first girlfriend's house. we drink wine and leave the bottles in the door of her parents' car. on the way back to my house i text her all i want for christmas is you. at home a string of christmas lights blinks erratically. i fall asleep clearing the rubble off the runway.





December
by James Schuyler


The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound,
this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center.
I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs
the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments
recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey.
Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event”
and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance
to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all
the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops
and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation
of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids,
Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends
It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West
Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it.
A smile in the street may be loads! you don’t have to undress everybody.
                                  “You didn’t visit the Alps?”
                                  “No, but I saw from the train they were black
                                  and streaked with snow.”
Having and giving but also catching glimpses
hints that are revelations: to have been so happy is a promise
and if it isn’t kept that doesn’t matter. It may snow
falling softly on lashes of eyes you love and a cold cheek
grow warm next to your own in hushed dark familial December.





That night with the green sky
by Tao Lin

It was snowing and you were kind of beautiful
We were in the city and every time I looked up
Someone was leaning out a window, staring at me

I could tell you liked me a lot or maybe even loved me
But you kept walking at this strange speed
You kept going in angles and it was confusing me

I think maybe you were thinking that you'd make me disappear
By walking at strange speeds and in a strange, curvy way
But how would that cause me to vanish from the planet Earth?

And that hurts
Why did you want me gone?
That hurts
Why?
Why?
I don't know
Some things can't be explained, I guess
The sky, for example, was green that night





"Shhh"
by Eileen Myles


I don't think
I can't afford the time to not sit right down &
write a poem about the heavy lidded
white rose I hold in my hand
I think of snow
a winter night in Boston, drunken waitress
stumble on a bus that careens through
Somerville the end of the line
where I was born, an old man
shaking me. He could've been my dad
You need a ride? Wait, he said.
This flower is so heavy in my hand.
He drove me home in his old blue
Dodge, a thermos next to me
cigarette packs on the dash
so quiet like Boston is quiet
Boston in the snow. It's New York
plates are clattering on St. Mark's
Place. Should I call you?
Can I go home now
& work with this undelivered
message in my fingertips
It's Summer.
I love you.
I'm surrounded by snow.





Music
by Frank O'Hara


          If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf's
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35¢, it's so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,
          I must tighten my belt.
It's like a locomotive on the march, the season
          of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter's
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.
As they're putting, up the Christmas trees on Park Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!
          But no more fountains and no more rain,
          and the stores stay open terribly late.





on sunday we took the train to the city and we each went home for one night and i saw my parents and my bedroom and my cat and you saw your ex boyfriend and his parents and his bedroom and his dog and when i called you i heard you ask me to go back to sleep and i said is everything okay and you told me to please go back to sleep
by Spencer Madsen


not sure if you
ever told me how
you felt about
christmas lights

i said i’d wrap them around our room
and put popcorn in your mouth

a few weeks ago i
walked onto a street
and sat prepared

lets
sleep like two hands
caught
in each other’s fingers

lets be demonstrative
of that image
in an earnest way
lets forget i wrote it down
or else it won’t feel genuine

yesterday i googled:
homemade fleshlight





Is This a Poem For the Year 2219?
by Mike Young


Yes, this is a poem for the year 2219
about the fact my bathroom is above
my neighbors’ bedroom, and I sing
Roy Orbison songs at immaculate volumes
during my routines, which is partly my love
of song and partly my obsession with the idea
of audience. Dear 2219, a bathroom is a private
chlorinated water repository filled with hair gel
and other methods of impression insurance,
like sleeping pills. Neighbors are people who
lock the downstairs door just because some
random bro started fingerpainting their door-
bell Sunday night. Oops, he said. You’re not my
parents. Neighbors leave notes asking you to park
considerately and curbside boxes of giveaway bins
to judge them by. In bedrooms, 2219, what you do is
sniff a cowboy shirt you’ve plucked off the floor to see
if it’s okay to wear for teaching the kids I guess you call
First Moroccan Restauranteer in Space and Single Season
Small Needle Home Run Record Holder. You leave the mandarin
peels on your bed after having awesome sex with your girlfriend
but throw them away when she leaves for work. In 2219, you may
instead want to rub the peels all over your chest. If so, history
repeats itself. Golly. Singing is a method of generating inside
you a logging road, dawn-ish, swards of sugar beets, after driving
all night, knowing it’s about to rain but it’s not raining yet, thanks
sky! Singing may also be catalogued as Christmas underwater
and hiking slowly along the railroad ties with the best candy bar
but no home. For the sub-category of song known as Roy Orbison,
ditch your footnotes, 2219! 1936-1988, popular for soaring R&B
and indoor sunglasses: that’s not Roy Orbison! Roy Orbison is a
naked knee so lovely you’d cry if you weren’t afraid of the knee
getting wet. Other things you need to know, 2219: I am afraid of
everything. We would rake the stars into piles to say what’s after
us. Happiness without certain phone calls is impossible. Your father
will die. Last Christmas, I ran into my friend Reggie at the cineplex.
His kid was cute. Me and my other friend were making fun of the movie
Reggie wanted to see. Reggie and I cussed together for the first time I can
remember, but I think we’re made of different smoke. 2219, I might be
above you or something. But I’m probably just below you. I take so many
multivitamins. Sometimes I try to make sure the best songs in my iTunes
have the most plays, but I don’t know why. Carolyn’s a better singer than
I am, and Dorothy told me that when I sing Bridge Over Troubled Water
it sounds like I’m falling apart. Is that a good thing? Wouldn’t it be more
considerate to just spend my time recycling cartons of apple cider for
you, 2219? Instead I carry a pillowcase full of laundry to the laundromat
and try to memorize my life enough to remember my life. I walk streets
named after people too dead to meet and try to sing loud enough to get
stuck in strangers’ heads. Carolyn and I go down on each other to hear the
other make their sounds. One time I saw my downstairs neighbor in a
line, and she smiled, waved at me. I couldn’t remember who she was.
She left her place to come talk. Then I remembered. 2219, they just
found water on the moon. Your love will only count before it’s gone.




*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, and thank you again tremendously for fitting this space with your marvelous projector this weekend. Well, yes, in that, i.e. French things being where you learned of your desire and love, we are the same. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, Billy. Oh, gosh, I didn't even think about what I would use mine for, I just want one. For ... everything or nothing? Simple things, and as an open door for who knows what, I guess. Oh, shit, the scary birthday. Uh, 60. Ever since I was very little, I was always scared to death of the age of 60. It always seemed like the point where you turn into an old person and get thought of and seen as an old person. Of course, it isn't quite as drastic technically as I imagined it would be, but it has some kind of horrible symbolic weight to it or something. But I'll get over it, I guess. You're almost post-teenager? Ah, not to sound like an old guy, ha ha, but the 20s and 30s and even most of the 40s are awesome. You'll see. I love those secret tracks. They're real beauties, man. What is it about 'Cycles' that you don't like now? I liked it a lot, and I love the encroaching denseness and texture in it. But, yeah, only the artist ever really knows what's possible and not yet accomplished, I think. 'Cracked Lips' is really something, and 'Stranger' too. What will you do to them that will take them from the secret realm into the public one? That food you made sounds very yum. Love the fake sausage input. I'm a vegetarian, and fake sausages are probably the most successful faux-meat product out there, I think. So, how many hangovers did you get this weekend? I don't know whether to hope you had a ton or none. ** Tosh, Hi, Tosh. I understand the ambivalence about online film watching, but, yeah, what can one do? The access is incredible. God, if I'd had so many great films at my fingertips when younger and even more hungry for such things, ... it would have been nice, although the poetry of waiting and searching and hoping and darkened theaters is also something I wouldn't give up. ** JS, Hi, JS! Welcome, and very happy to have you here. Please come back. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Oh, I guess we didn't Skype. I was a bit scattered on my end. But we can soon, I guess, yes? For me, there's certainly no question that growing ups sans religion and in the relatively cool spot of LA helped me with my sense of self vis-à-vis my gayness a lot, but, on the other hand, becoming gay was a lonelier thing back in the 60s pre-internet and pre-liberation and all that, even if there was a poetry to that relative solitude. Hard combat is a red light for me, as I said. Sounds like something that I'd like to watch someone play, or play in proximity to someone more skilled who would be willing to take over the controller every time there was a battle. I thought the 'Silent Hill' games were playable on computer too. I guess not. Ah, one of these days. I missed the 'Silent Hill' movie. Did you see it? ** Wolf, No Xmas tree, no. There's not even room for a tiny one. The Recollets never gets a tree. I did half-think of buying one and donating it to the lobby, but then I got over that. The cafe had a tree last year, but it very minimalist and suave in an un-Xmasy way. I haven't checked this year, so maybe that'll be Xmas central in the complex. Peanut butter by the mouthful, fuck, yes! Dude, I went to Laduree this weekend, and, oh my God, the salted caramel macarons there are in-fucking-sane. I'm going to go buy a big box of them and get obese. The 23rd, cool, soonish, but not stressfully soon. Wow, really, wow. I assume the authorities will get over themselves and stamp you inside. ** SwAmPeX, Hey. Oh, it's okay, there isn't really a late around here. I do totally think the idea is fresh. It's a new one on me, and my imagination started percolating wildly at the thought. Me? I'm trying to get back into working on my novel after a lengthy break, which is pretty hard, but I'm starting to add full sentences and even paragraphs to it now, so I guess I'm on my way again. Other than that, and because of that, or whatever, I'm fine. I'm good enough. ** Casey Hannan, I totally remember how cold 40 felt. It felt like 0 degrees does now. That's the thing. Feeling cold is feeling cold. The temperatures themselves are just relative. A knitted tree! Wow, I didn't even think about that. That could work. Like a salad, ha ha. Nice image. Fiction-worthy, no? The silver pastry tastes a lot simpler than it looks. It has, like, a basic cookie thing and then some chocolate mousse and some caramel things, like, pieces, and this kind of weird vanilla system thing going on, like it if were a body, the vanilla would be the circulatory system kind of. Hard to describe. Which is what makes it special, I guess. Anyway, after this weekend, I'm all about salted caramel macarons. Nothing else matters. The silver pastry is yesterday's drug. ** Will, Thanks about the trees. Cash is good, and jobs are the way to get the cash, so, yeah, I hope you get a non-annoying, cash spewing one. How's it looking? Nice, and high five about the Poe final! How did you celebrate your B? B's are good. B's are fine. Fuck A's. ** Hyrule Dungeon, Hi, Jose! I'll try to keep the blog's flowers freshly watered. Excellent about the thesis work critiques. I did like that Martin Arnold piece, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. Oh, as hopefully you know by now, I saw your comment here and sent in the rec. letters, and told you I did via email, and hopefully everything is cool now, and apologies for my spacing out. And now I'll expect my smashing blog post, ha ha. Never seen even a fraction of a second of 'Game of Thrones', no. I will though somehow someday. You be well as well. ** 5STRINGS, Ha ha, man, I hope you're not to be too disappointed when you find out that French guys are as hard to get laid by as almost any other nationality guys in the world. 'Assembled Philosophers', intriguing. I clicked, and I will click and hold a bit later. You do sound like you're gay, man, yeah, ha ha. What newness did you get to reading precisely? Xmas memories! Sweet! Everyone, here is/are 5STRINGS's Xmas Memories. Check them out. See how your memories match up. ** Jebus, I did so very, very much like it! And it got a bunch of FB likes, even from people who never like the things I put on my wall, so victoire! As labor intensive as I usually am, yeah, there are definitely times, and not so infrequent ones, where something that lands on 'the page' in ten or thirty seconds is much, much better than the thing that spent six months being whittled onto 'the page'. It's interesting, isn't it? I guess our 'geniuses' have a 'pedal to the metal' mode too. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! There are a handful of people who I think identify as lesbians on the blog, but most of them only comment here once in a while. I had a macaroning weekend too! Courtesy of Laduree, the holy land of Parisian macaron makers. As I've telling a few people today, I am now very in love with salted caramel macarons, and it might end up being a week of macaroning for me. Mallarme's letters sound very tempting. I will look for that translation. Very nice about your upcoming visit to NYC! And, yes, bring warm socks and maybe gloves too? I wish you all the luck in the world, which I am sure you won't need. Love from me. ** Steevee, Excellent about the near completion, and interested to hear your thoughts on those two films, as I intend to see both. I have personal knowledge of BEE to some degree, and I would say that tagging him as merely a self-hating gay is taking the way he plays with his public persona and his interest in antagonizing people too much at face value, based on what I know. I think his sexuality is far more complex than that. ** Misanthrope, Kind of doubt it about the Harry dildos, yeah, but give it five years when he's a washed up reality show regular signing old CDs at nostalgia conventions. Ah, gotta disagree with you about 'Single Ladies'. Awesome video and a super swell pop hit calculation, I think. I'll take your word for it on Swift. I've probable heard her stuff being piped over the Monoprix muzak system and didn't even know it. I don't know who Ed Sheeran is. Who is Ed Sheeran? Wow, I am the greatest gay person ever, aren't I? I just realized that right now. How crazy is it that I wouldn't have realized that before. Now, what to do with my newly realized superpowers. Hm. Any suggestions? ** Rewritedept, Hi, Chris. Actually, man, there was a smokeable tree in there amongst the other trees. Speaking for myself, no, it isn't even remotely weird that you get turned on by Richard Lloyd's photo. I place him in the very upper tier of all-time rock sex gods. '82-'86? Wow, that really is going to require some thought and memory scouring, so give me a day. Everyone, Rewritedept is back with another musical question for you, and here he is: 'mine for yrs: fave punk albums '82-'86... CRASS - christ the album. dead milkmen - beelzebubba. minutemen - dbl nickels on the dime. honorable mentions to descendents - milo goes to college and DK - bedtime for democracy.' Answer up please. Thank you. Nice thing about living over here and having all my local friends go away for Xmas and having a Russian boyfriend who grew up without Xmas being celebrated is that I don't have to buy a single gift for anyone, although I'll probably get Yury something anyway. Your chapbook sounds very cool, yeah, and a superb Xmas gift idea. I would love a collage, man, gosh, thank you! Oh, bass player not drummer, sorry. I spaced. Cool about the EP, naturally. Very cool, in fact, obviously. 'Lucifer Sam' seems like it would be a very hard song to play, but maybe it isn't? One of the greatest songs ever written, that one. Thanks a lot about 'MLT', man. I liked what Mould said in my interview piece too. He now renounces everything he said in that article, for better or worse, and is a rainbow flag waving bear, and best of luck to him with that. ** Brendan, Hi, B! Great to see you, buddy boy! You did Miami! Pretty successful sounds really good knowing how you downplay things. LA art people hanging out time, sigh, nice, sweet. And you're inspired by being at the Fair? That's crazy, amazing talk! That's, like, as good as it could possibly get! ** _Black_Acrylic, Cool that you got the Zurn piece done. Excited for the new Y'nY, man, for sure. I have 'Heroines' coming to me by the post, and I'm greatly looking forward to it, so that's very good to hear. She's cool. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Ha ha, very nice! The Xmas tree photo. Super melancholy yet oddly hilarious in its flavorsome aftertaste. Everyone, Go look at Bill P.'s Xmas tree. It's as easy as clicking this, and you will see why I sent you over there a mere second post-click. You should continue with your blog. Just be careful. I started mine by just sticking up a photo and look what happened. Yes, the blog workshop will be yours if and when you ever want it. First week of January. Okay, I have picked up the whip, and I am holding it in a not quite threatening but mildly intimidating manner. ** Frank Jaffe, Hey Frank! Things are good. Yeah, Michael and I got to have some quality hanging-out time with Luke this weekend, and, yeah, I believe we will be doing more of the same on this very day. He's great, of course, and no surprise at all. Glad you got to Art Basel, even if it was uneventful. An uneventful art fair is probably for the best. Did you see your fellow artist pals? Orlando. So, are you hitting up any theme parks while you're there? Are any of them having any kind of not-to-miss Xmas makeover or festivities or whatever? I hope my books made the test waiting time less stressy. Oh, geez, the cover of the reprint of 'Idols' is not just my worst book cover ever but maybe the worst cover in the history of the known universe. You are here in spirit, my friend. We can feel you, be assured. ** Paradigm, Hi, Scott. The writing problem sharing is a nice thing. It works that way for me too. Well, the ownership thing/ problem is huge, and, thus far, I feel like I can only address that and explore it overtly in the novel, but I'm yet to feel much confidence that this book is going to work at all as I've conceived it. Well, yes, precisely about the death of the novel. You put it about as well as it could be put, I think. The entrenchment and defensiveness and, well, utter selfishness of vision that so often comes via the combination of aging and becoming established is one of the stranger phenoms, I think, even if it it has a kind of ugly logic to it, I suppose. That swimming you did sounds pretty heavenly, even if the 40 degree weather that I fantasize had occasioned it makes the chilliness here feel a little less cumbersome. Enjoy everything, Scott. ** Okay. I've got Xmas poems for you today. A veritable Xmas-themed poetry zine, or, I guess, more like a poetry cyber-broadsheet. Hope it gives you reveries. See you tomorrow.

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Tunnel of Love
'The so-called “Tunnel of Love” is located in a place called Klevan, the Rivne region, Ukraine. In a warm season green leaves appear on the trees, they form a fairy-tale green tunnel around the section of the railway one kilometer long.' -- English Russia









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Tube
'Tube is built using the same material that artist Zilvinas Kempinas usually uses, magnetic tape from old VHS. Tube was created in Atelier Calder, Saché, France and then was set up for the Lithuanian pavilion in Venice, 2009. Tube installation offers an optical experience to the viewer creating lots of different moire visual effects, and as well as a perception of the body and architecture.' -- Triangulation Blog

'I am attracted to things that are capable of transcending their own banality and materiality to become something else, something more. I like the way that videotape is simultaneously delicate and durable, since it’s meant to last. I can rip it easily with my hands because it’s so thin, but I can also stretch it. Videotape is made to present the world in color, but it appears purely black. It’s supposed to be this safe container of the past, but it is destined to vanish like a dinosaur, to become obsolete, pushed away by new technologies. It’s a familiar mass-produced commodity, but it can be surprisingly sensual and can look almost alive if set in motion. It can be seen as a solid, thick, black line, but it can also disappear right in front of your eyes if it’s turned on its side.' -- Zilvinas Kempinas












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Ancient Tunnel Through Solid Rock Above Cuzco, Peru





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Bund Sightseeing Tunnel
'Located in the diamond area of Shanghai, the bund sightseeing tunnel connects the north side of Chen Yi Square at the bund and the Oriental Pearl Radio and Television Tower at Pudong. the bund sightseeing tunnel has a total length of 646.7 meter. modern high technologies are applied in the decoration of the interior walls of the tunnel, providing the passengers with pictures, patterns and views about yellow sea stars, pink flowers, strange geometric figures, which are full of dynamic power and full of enchantment. the environment-friendly non-driver traction whole transparent sk compartments make tourists feel as if they were right at the scene.' -- shanghai highlights.com












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The Dark Hedges
'The Dark Hedges is a unique stretch of the Bregagh Road near Armoy, in Ireland. Over the past 300 years or so, the Beech trees guarding either side of the lane have reached up and across to each other, becoming heavily intertwined to create a natural arched tunnel where shadow and light plays through entwined branches.

'This avenue of beech trees was planted by the Stuart family in the eighteenth century. It was intended as a compelling landscape feature to impress visitors as they approached the entrance to their Georgian mansion, Gracehill House, which is now a golf club.

'Legend tells that a supernatural "Grey Lady" haunts the thin ribbon of road that winds beneath the ancient beech trees. She silently glides along the roadside and vanishes as she passes the last beech tree. Some say the specter is a lost spirit from an abandoned graveyard that is thought to lie hidden in the fields nearby. On Halloween night, the forgotten graves are said to open and the Grey Lady is joined on her walk by the tormented souls of those who were buried beside her.' -- collaged











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Bat in a wind tunnel





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Nike 6.0 Tunnel Jam
'The tunnel where the comp was held is basically in the middle of nowhere and some locals have used it to house a few things to ride. Fast forward to now and Nike is in the picture, willing to build ramps and hold a contest. Ultimately, workers laid down tarmac and built and amazing set of ramps which will stay in the Tunnel for the local scene to manage and enjoy. You know how it’s a bummer when contests end and they tear everything down?? This is the opposite of that. If you were wondering about the secrecy surrounding this event, it was with good reason. Due to the nature of the site, there was no room on the course for people to chill besides the beginning and end quarter decks and there was limited parking. The majority of the people watched from outside on a jumbo screen.' -- Hype Beast












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Wisteria Tunnel
'A member of the pea family, wisteria is an ornamental vine with around 10 different species, wildly popular in both Eastern and Western gardens for its graceful hanging flowers and its ornate, winding branches. Easily trained, the woody vines reach maturity within a few years for some species, or up to 20 for others. Once maturity is reached, the reward is cascades of long, lavender raceme blooms of varying pastel shades creating a natural chandelier of color and beauty.

'The Wisteria Tunnel, which is part of a display of botanical delights that include zen gardens and a cherry blossom festival, is located at the Kawachi Fuji Gardens in Kitakyushu. Different types and colors of wisteria have been woven through a cylindrical lattice that during the blooming months of April through May, become a fantastical flower-draped tunnel during the yearly "fuji matsuri", or "Wisteria Festival".' -- atlas obscura









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The UX
'The obsessively secretive members of an underground art collective have spent the last 30 years surreptitiously staging events in tunnels beneath Paris. They say they never ask permission - and never ask for subsidies. The UX are a loose collective of people from a variety of backgrounds. Not just artists but also engineers, civil servants, lawyers and even a state prosecutor. UX is so secretive, it is hard to define. Tristan (not his real name) says it is "a heterogeneous grouping of diverse informal entities... more a sort of collective phantasm than a real group".

'Paris has an unrivalled network of underground tunnels. The city itself was built by quarrying limestone from the soil underneath the buildings themselves, so there are hundreds of miles of quarry tunnels alone. Add to that all tunnels used for the underground metro system, telephone cables, sewers and so forth and you can travel around the entire city without ever seeing daylight.' -- BBC





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Tunnel 228, Jersey City





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Cu Chi Tunnel
'Situated in Cu Chi, Vietnam, this giant labyrinth of tunnels played an important role during the French Indochina War and the Vietnam War. The size of these tunnels range from 75 miles to over 150 miles. The Cu Chi tunnels have been a popular tourist destination in recent years, enabling visitors to travel through the cramped spaces, check out deadly booby traps and even travel to an underground command center from where the Tet offensive was planned. Tunnel size varies from a few feet tall to larger ones refashioned for accommodating larger tourists.' -- mishalov.com










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Your Blind Passenger
'Olafur Eliasson's Your Blind Passenger is a 90-metre-long tunnel installation is a densely fogged environment, which provides visibility at just 1.5 metres. This calculated circumstance forces visitors to use senses other than sight to navigate and orient themselves in relation to their surroundings.' -- olafureliasson.net





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Winter Illuminations Tunnel
'If you happen to be in Japan from now to March 31, 2013, make sure to check out one of Japan's most stunning displays of light called Winter Illuminations at Nabana no Sato, a botanical garden turned light theme park on the island of Nagashima in Kuwana. It's been called one of the best winter light shows in all of Japan. The park really outdoes itself by using millions of sparkling LED lights all over the vast grounds including on the water and in the gardens. The stars of the show are the famous walk-through tunnels of light that completely envelop the viewer, making it seem as if they're walking through bright, magical portals.' -- My Modern Metropolis












*

p.s. Hey. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, Billy. DJing, yeah. I really wish I was a DJ sometimes. I was a DJ at my university's radio station, and I found that really exciting, even though I had the 6 to 9 am slot and played lots of early punk rock, and the phone was constantly ringing with listeners yelling at me for playing the wrong thing at the wrong kind of day. So, that's probably why your suggestion hit me where I live. I'm not grumpy, I don't think, so, yeah, maybe I can be a good ad for turning 60 unless I instantly turn grumpy and start hobbling around, etc., on my birthday, which I guess is remotely possible. You want to move to the States? Why and where? Oh, I get you about the refining. I trust your instincts. Oh, wow, sorry about the boyfriend issues. Surely, he'll see the err of his poor judgement of you any second. Or maybe it's all for the best? Hard to tell about these things. You're vegan, excellent! I go vegan every once in a while for six months or so at a time to clean myself out and get that weird heightened energy effect of veganism, but mostly I'm just veggie 'cos I like cheese too much. Never had Linda McCartney sausages. I don't think I've ever even seen a package of them in a store. Hunh. Maybe I can order some online, although I guess that wouldn't work. I will look for them. Is her face on the package or something? ** Wolf, I had never read or heard of 'Rudolf, He Had a Nose' before and it is truly some Nobel Prize winning level stuff, yeah. I spoke too soon: the Recollets did put a little Xmas tree on the counter in the office and even strung up some Xmas lights. It's pretty-ish. I'll take a photo maybe. Well, the cafe here, as I think you know, has become one of the trendiest, fashionista-favored cafes in Paris, so I guess the cafe higher ups are trying to give the chic something they think is suitably chic or something. Bad call. It just looks like they added a tree. I agree with you entirely about Xmas and cozy funkiness. The Xmas Village on the Champs Elysee is pretty funky. I walked through it yesterday. It was homely and stinky and good. ** Misanthrope, Then disagree agreeably we will. Not only is Ton still out there and looking pretty fine for his advanced age of 21, ha ha, but he's kinkier than hell now. He's even a little too kinky for me. Or maybe not. No, on second thought, he's not. Not sure if my magic gay wand would get used on him first, though. Kyler Moss has gotten slightly kinky too. Might use it on him. I don't know. A lot to think about. Well, in this post-American Idol age where a mere ability to sing and a passion to do so and a modicum of charisma and lots of media exposure are considered to be a legitimate substitute for actual unique talent, you might be right about Mr. Styles. In an age where Bon Jovi are serious contenders for induction to the Rock n Roll Hall of fame, any fucking thing must be possible. ** Allesfliesst, Thank you multiple times, Kai. The seminar does sound to have been most rewarding. Yeah, very interesting. How come you never do seminars in Paris? Germany vs. France rivalry fall out or something? ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you. Yeah, my 'I Remember Xmas' is in LA. Lovely little thing. Oh, a new and no doubt wonderful piece by you to read, and I will mostly certainly do that very shortly. Everyone, the one, the only David Ehrenstein has a new article up at Fandor where he will introduce you to a number of unsung, under-known musicals. If you're like me, and you sort of are like me because I'm sort like you, you need this knowledge, not to mention needing the experience of Mr. E's way with words, so, yeah, click this and go read 'Unsung Musicals: Singing the praises of ten great but lesser known movie musicals.' ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. So glad you enjoyed the Schuyler. He is a sublime god. Are you in NYC now? ** L@rstonovich, Hi, L Man! Oh, wow, Skullcrushing Hummingbird returns! Yes! I will flush that Hummingmix into my consciousness via headphones shortly. Everyone, if you're like me, and you must kind of be like me since I'm kind of like you, you sorely miss the airwaved stylings of Skullcrushing Hummingbird, the little radio show that could and always did and that was masterminded by d.l. L@rstonovich. Well, it's kind of back in a different but most welcome way in the form of a Hummingmix, as it's being called, and you might very well want to click these words and go listen to it while you're reading this or doing something else entirely. Do it. Do you know why? Because you're kind of like me, and I know why. Very nice, man. How's Xmas shaping up? ** SwAmPeX, Sentences including 'or whatever' are often very good sentences. They can be like secret weapon sentences. Uh, my reentry into the novel is going very slowly, but I guess I'll be back up to speed before too long. It's partly or even mostly slow/ difficult because writing this novel makes me depressed and cry all the time, and, you know, it's hard to deliberately want to do that again, but, yeah. You're translating your writing. That's so cool of you, thanks, and I hope it's an interesting thing for you to do as a writer. It seems like it could be. Thank you, man! ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Today's maybe baddish, Skype-wise, I think. I've got a bunch of theater stuff to out there in the cold. But maybe tomorrow or whenever/soon. I kind of figured that the 'SH' movie would be an okay one to miss or to save for a plane trip, so, yeah. All right, bring your XBOX over here then, cool. I would say it would be easier to borrow an XBOX here, but the American games don't play on the French XBOX and vice versa. I will tell Yury he has good taste. Since I turned him on to Crystal Castles, I will tell myself I have good taste too. Sure,'Stalker' is great, sure, you bet, yes. I like the first 'Santogold' album quite a bit, but I didn't like the recent-ish album ('Master of My Make-Believe') much at all. Okay, see you here or talk to you there or something on that order or both! ** 5STRINGS, I only have a cute rafter living in my ceiling. You're lucky. Malibu Rum, not Malibu Barbie? I always thought it would be really fun to learn the Death Metal growl, but maybe you're right. More fun than learning the Axl Rose screech. Being gay has its pluses for sure. Kristeva sounds like a good brain companion. Maybe I'll put her out. Wow, Sartre? That old thing? Aw, thanks about 'Them' and all that, man. ** Heliotrope, Markster! Glad you liked the poetry pile. Xmas tree! Photo it, put it on FB, come on, let me see. I bet she could so totally make great veggie enchiladas. Damn. Browbeat Joel and I to come over and force her to do that next time I'm in the hood. Well, no browbeating required, and Joel eats bird, so revise that sentence accordingly. Mixed news there about your physical possibilities, but it's probably good that the foot is the better of the two contenders if there only has to be only one, no? Is that too logical or not logical? I'm glad you're doing that. What's the rehab? What do they do to you? Ah, man, that Joshua Tree thing and the hotel commandeering thing, man, that sounds ... man, sweet. I had a dream that I actually remembered the other night in which George Davis was the star, but I don't remember anything else about the dream, just that he was the star. Free-climbing, I know what that is. I have no idea who Alex Honnold is, though. I'll fish around in his videos, though. Cool. Maybe I can do a Day on him. That would be a nice surprise for my blog readers, I think, no? Interesting. Okay, the love is literally hurling itself from me to you. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks. I tried to mix up it, generation-wise. Glad it worked. Nice Tate poem, right? He rules.  He really does. He's been a big fave of mine since he started, and I still can't figure out why he's so great, but he just is. Feel better, man, seriously, do. Lee Fields ... wow, that must have been amazing to see. Nice, really nice. Got your email, emailed you, hope you got it. ** Steevee, Hi. That's more than enough to get me to see 'Tabu', thank you. I'll find out when it's scheduled to appear in France's docket. And thank you a lot for previewing your 2012 top ten! Exciting! We share four films on our best of lists. Nice to see 'Django Unchained' ended up on there. I'm getting more excited to see that. ** Statictick, Hi, N. Glad you liked 'em. You moved on up on the Lamictal front. Your typing and thinking seem to be in fine working order, so I hope your sleeping patterns follow suit. But I will watch for fuzziness, and I will treat that effect like an old friend, should it encroach. ** Sypha, Other than the stomach part, obviously, your day sounds pretty A-okay. You want mine? Was that a yes? Okay, uh, woke up, wrote some, did the blog, showered. Met the writer and zine editor and cool guy Luke Munson, who is also the significant other of Frank Jaffe, at the St. Paul metro station. His dad, whom he's traveling with, was there too, as were Kiddiepunk and Oscar B. Plan was to go to Victor Hugo House. Walked there. It was closed. Walked to Le Notre. Bought pastries. Walked to a cafe in the Bastille. Drank coffees and ate pastries there. Got bitched out for eating pastries there by the waiter. Wanted to go to either Maison Rouge, Jeu de Paume, or somewhere else, but they were all closed. Decided on the 'Boheme' show at the Grand Palais. Kiddiepunk and Oscar B left because they'd seen the show already. Metroed to Concorde with Luke and Dad. Went to Laduree so they could buy macarons to take back to Florida today. Walked through the Paris Xmas village, nice. Saw 'Boheme', nice. Parted ways with them. Was supposed to meet with Gisele and watch/ supervise the guy who is doing the special effects for our new theater piece, but they up finished early, so I missed out. Came home. Emails. Was informed that a film crew from the Discovery Channel will be coming over to film me talking for the JT Leroy documentary show that they're doing. Ate. Watched my new favorite French TV show 'Le Meilleur Pâtissier', which is like Top Chef but concentrating on desserts. Stuff I don't remember. Sleep. ** Jebus, Hi. Nice that you liked the poems. Yeah, I think you're right about the 'being an artist' thing. That makes sense. New video collages, cool. And to Bela Tarr tracks. I will watch them in just a few minutes when I'm out of here. I won't get sick of you linking me up to your work, be assured. Everyone, Jebus, master music maker and creator of that awesome Xmas trees video of the other day has two new music/visual collage videos up, and you really, really want to go check them out, I'm pretty absolutely sure. Here's one, and here's the other one. Very cool. Can't wait. Thanks a lot! Bon day! ** Bill P. in Chicago, I did. I did oh so much. Tate, yeah. Tate is so, so good. He's a magician. Oh, 'Gerald's Party', that's interesting, yeah, I can see that, huh. Good one. And Mike Young is seriously good too. One of the very best of the up and comers, that guy. Ha ha, I forgot about that Voyager 2 representation of us. It just kind of says it all, doesn't it? Wow. ** Bill, No, unfortunately, one can not have sex with John Ashbery no matter how much you pay. Or, well, actually ... Here's where David E. will remind us that he could have had Ashbery in a heartbeat. Wouldn't they have made a nice couple, though? I've always thought so, although Bill is the best. Yay, the Tate poem is getting all the love it deserves. That is a weird Berrigan poem, but I think, ... yeah. I'll give that 'Hellstorm' thing a serious going over with my ears, thank you, sir. ** E., Oh, thank you for that, pal. About my Xmas trees. What are you listening to? Oh, wait, hold on, I'll copy and paste the address. ...  Ry Cooder at his very best! Nice listen. My living situation: It's kind of like a college dorm room-type room but with a really high ceiling and a little loft where the bed is. It is crammed with too much stuff, mostly books and Yury's clothes, that we have acquired over the seven years we've been here. So, it's kind of like a cave now. Oh, in general, where I live is an artist residency building. Artists and scholars and so on live here. The building is an old, converted monastery from, like, the 17th century or something. It's nice, and it's affordable, but the room is small. A leaf?  Yeah, maybe a Xmas leaf. Maybe I can fit that in here somewhere. What is your living situation, may I ask? ** Done. I was on an 'interest in tunnels' jag one day, and I made the post today, and that's almost the whole story behind it. Hope there's something in it for you. See you tomorrow.

Ezra Matthew Miller (born September 30, 1992) is an American actor, known for his roles in the films City Island (2009), Another Happy Day (2011), and We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011). He starred in the 2012 teen drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and has signed on to play the role of Léon Dupuis in Sophie Barthes' adaptation of the Gustave Flaubert novel Madame Bovary.





Miller was born and raised in Wyckoff, a community in Bergen County, New Jersey. His mother, Marta, is a modern dancer. His father, Robert S. Miller, was senior vice president and managing director of Walt Disney Company's adult book publishing division, Hyperion Books, and is a publisher at Workman Publishing. Miller has two older sisters, Saiya and Caitlin. He considers himself Jewish, and "spiritual" (his father is Jewish and his mother is from a Christian background).





When he was six, Miller started to train as an opera singer, to help him overcome a speech impediment. He has sung with the Metropolitan Opera. He performed in the U.S. premiere of Philip Glass's contemporary opera White Raven. He attended The Rockland Country Day School and The Hudson School, dropping out at sixteen, after the release of his film Afterschool.





Miller is a drummer and a singer in a New York-based band called Sons of an Illustrious Father.





Miller has described himself as queer. He has stated "The way I would choose to identify myself wouldn't be gay. I've been attracted mostly to 'shes' but I've been with many people and I'm open to love wherever it can be." He has also detailed, "I've had many, you know, 'happy ending sleepovers' in my early youth... my period of exploration. I think that's essential. Anyone who hasn't had a gay moment is probably trying to avoid some confrontation with a reality in their life."

-Wikipedia





























Have you always wanted to be an actor?

When I was very little, I was sort of consumed by a love for opera. Weirdly enough, I went from being really enthusiastic about construction vehicles at the age of seven to being really passionate about La Traviata by the time I was eight.

Then I also maintained the thing which every child has; which is that as kids we all run around and play make believe. My mother took me to a lot of operas and when I was eight I got the opportunity to be in one and I realised that transformation into these make-believe situations was possible. I decided that was essentially what I wanted to with my life. Then I read this film when I was 14 [Afterschool] and it hit so many nerves at the same time and I’d discovered this ultimate form of make-believe; no singing, you just simply had to pretend to be someone else. It was kind of like love at first sight.





You’ve also played a gay teen and a weird boarding school kid. Do you think you are drawn to ‘troubled’ roles?

I’d say I’m drawn to characters that ring true to me. Adolescence is a troubled time for everyone, so a lot of those characters have been troubled, tortured people. It’s been a great way to navigate my adolescence by having these more troubled kids as an outlet.





You’ve spoken quite openly about smoking marjuuana. Are you still a strong advocate?
[Ezra was arrested for possession last year while filming The Perks of Being a Wallflower, he said in an interview after “I don’t feel like there’s any need to hide the fact that I smoke pot. It’s a harmless herbal substance that increases sensory appreciation.”]

I never intended to be a strong advocate of smoking pot. I certainly don’t condemn it — it’s something that in its nature is different for each individual. It’s something that grows out of the ground and when you smoke it all sorts of things happen. It’s something everyone has to decide whether it makes sense for them, but I don’t think we should fill jail cells with people for smoking the equivalent of rosemary.

-Ezra Miller: A friend told me “I love you but I can’t look at your face anymore”





“I’m queer. I have a lot of really wonderful friends who are of very different sexes and genders. I am very much in love with no one in particular. I’ve been trying to figure out relationships, you know? I don’t know if it’s responsible for kids of my age to be so aggressively pursuing monogamous binds, because I don’t think we’re ready for them. The romanticism within our culture dictates that that’s what you’re supposed to be looking for. Then [when] we find what we think is love -- even if it is love -- we do not yet have the tools. I do feel that it’s possible to be at this age unintentionally hurtful, just by being irresponsible -- which is fine. I’m super down with being irresponsible. I’m just trying to make sure my lack of responsibility no longer hurts people. That’s where I’m at in the boyfriend/girlfriend/zefriend type of question.”

-Ezra in OUT





Ezra Miller.net





We Need to Talk About Ezra Miller (one of the million tumblrs about him)





"Ezra Miller and the perks of being a new kind of pin-up"





Ezra Miller IMDB







*

p.s. Hey. Today the mighty scribe and d.l. Postitbreakup would like you to center your attention on this guy Ezra Miller and then ruminate accordingly and form thoughts relative to Mr. Miller and, if the mood consequently strikes, share said Millerisms with him and the gang around here, and that would be very cool, so please do those things. Thank you, and thank you ever so much, P. Otherwise, I'm going to need to be kind of quick and short with you guys today, sorry, because, as I had completely forgotten until last night, I have to take a train to Lyon to do a talk at an art school there today. But I'll be back in Paris and my usual talkative self tomorrow, and I'll have my 'favorites of the year' lists in tow, so, if you don't mind, start thinking about your favorite stuff of 2012 and then share your bests with me tomorrow. Cool. ** Kiddiepunk, Thanks, man. I'll give you a buzz tomorrow so we can get on the buche narrowing and scoring. ** Ian Tuttle, Hey, whoa, hi, Ian! How incredibly cool to see you! Sorry to be in a rushing state on the day of your ultra-welcome return. Why are you in Barcelona? Nice place to be, by the way. 'Fresh Acconci', yeah, excellent thing. You good? What's been going on? Really swell to see you, pal! ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. That is a beautiful text re: the Wisteria Tunnel. Even when reading it with hurried eyes that are insufficiently coffeed-up. Thank you a lot for sharing it. Oh, well, you can write to me, if you want. You know my email address, I think. Love for now. ** Katalyze, Hi, Kat! All these nice returns on a day when I have to be a fidgety host, sucks. Thanks for storing up the tunnels for me. Send them, if you like. There can never be too many tunnel days. You good? What's new? Love, me. ** Billy Lloyd, Yeah, I guess punk rock at 6 am just sounded like an alarm clock, especially in 1976 when the airwaves were full of prog and fusion and country-rock and punk still had sledgehammer effect on the unsuspecting. Oh, you're from Pittsburgh. See, I did not know that. I think a cross country road trip is a super great idea. Done a few. US road trips are the best. You probably don't need any itinerary tips, but, if you do, say the word. Very cool about 'Stranger'. Very cool. Oh, I don't know, I get super sped up and feel like a million bucks when I go vegan, but I also tend to get into eating almost nothing when I do that, and I get skeleton skinny as a result, so maybe the rush I get is more akin the rush that I guess anorexics supposedly get. Definitely haven't seen those sausages before. But there's a big UK-only food store on the Champs Elysee that might have them and where I've been meaning to go anyway because I'm jonesing hard for a scone. ** David Ehrenstein, I want to see 'Cloud Atlas'. It isn't here yet. Early next year, I think. Well, it was that party where Allen saved you from the Ash that I was thinking about. I'm sure that you and Allen did the right thing. Very interesting sounding Gus party. Gus and his newbies and his promises ... some things never change. Nice about the Matt Damon face to face. He always seemed like he'd be a fine fella. ** xTx, Hey! Oh, gosh, thank you, pal! How the heck are you, maestro? Love, me. ** Cobaltfram, Hi. I don't know, I just remember that latest Santigold sounding blah. But I'll try listening to it again one of these days. If you put your XBOX in your suitcase, no one will be the wiser. I've never seen a single passenger arriving in France ever have their bags more than glanced at in a bored fashion by the customs guys. Thursday ... that might work, yeah. I'm too rushed this morning to figure out a time right now, so let's check in about that tomorrow here or somewhere. Yeah, celebrate what she's done, man. Aging is a fucking creep, and it grabs then does its ugly number on even the best of us. The JTL thing ... the preliminary phone interview made them want to film me for the documentary, so they're sending over a film crew, I'm not sure when yet. ** 5STRINGS, Maybe Gisele's dolls are the French Barbies, but I think there are French Barbies maybe? Sebastian could totally wipe the floor with Axl in a gargling contest. Weird about your black out. We had a big one here in Paris yesterday. Everything in my area of Paris went pitch black for about twenty minutes. I was in the train station. If it had been the US, we all would have been robbed and killed by each other. But no one broke a sweat. They just pulled out their copies of Le Monde and read them contemplatively by the lights of their cellphones. ** Robert-nyc, Hi, Robert. Nice to see you. It's true about that Bund movie idea. It's true. Thanks. Oh, uh, I guess you can just wait and send me the galleys in March, if you want. Whatever you want. Whatever is best and easiest for you, in other words. Yeah, use the dcooperweb address if you write to me. It looks good about the French citizenship. Right now, he's gathering up the official documents he needs and stuff, but it should go well, I think, I hope, and take three to six months to process, and then, theoretically, he could go to the US at last. He'll still need a US visa, but it'll be the kind that they basically just hand out without hassle. We'll see. Yeah, an LA trip would probably be the first thing we do. Take care, R. ** Rewritedept, Hi, man. Makes sense, yeah. Oh, the albums ... okay, I'm in a rush, so, totally off the top of my head, I'll pick, uh, The Replacements 'Let it Be,' Sonic Youth 'Evol', and, uh, yeah, I think 'New Day Rising'. New job in what realm, do you think? Is working on The Strip ever an option? Like as a black jack dealer or something? Hm, yeah, that's tough about your friend the bass player. Aesthetics vs. friend-love, man, I don't know. I won't belabor the topic for reasons of my sped-up brain and so I won't stretch your bad mood out any longer, but, yeah, ugh. Well, since Debbie says she didn't play a single note on the new MBV album, I wonder how reliable her prediction is, you know? Nah, I think Kurt could've done even better, and I bet he knew that somehow. I think doing better just wasn't important to him anymore. Saw your email. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to open and read it and respond, but I will, of course. Glad you dug the Mirov poem. His new book 'Hider Roser' is awesome. ** Hyrule Dungeon, Hi! Excellent, man, thank you! ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Hi, Glove, superb to see you! Cool that you liked the Kempinas, and you're welcome, and thanks. Ouch. Yeah, swimming is real good for the back. Take it from a weak-backed guy, and I think you'll be doing the butterfly and backstroke and all that fancy stuff before you know it. They say the body's memory is better than the mind's, even though ... well, I don't know, but that's what they say or what somebody says. Have a bon, pain-free day. ** Misanthrope, I had this feeling you'd have some kind of rectum spin off thought. Oh, you know, I don't really give a shit about Beyonce. I just like that song/video. Sometimes a calculated poppy thing works on me, that's all. Like Ke$ha's 'Die Young'. Dig it, but don't have any Ke$ha love. I've never heard or seen 'If I Were a Boy', as far as I know, although I've probably heard it a hundred times without thinking about it. I think Ton is still peaking, but you know me. Seems like Morrissey is right about that one, from what you say. See, yesterday they announced the new Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame inductees, and my point was proven a thousand times over, i.e. Heart gets inducted and they pass over Kraftwerk yet again? That's so stupid that it's way, way beyond madness. ** Will Decker, Well, hi there, Will. Thank you about the tunnels, and thanks for your related memories and thoughts. That Chicago Project things sounds very interesting from the quick skim that I have to give it on this hurried morning. That sounds how they do things over here as a general rule. Everyone, interesting possibility/plan re: arts funding in the US passed along by Will Decker yesterday if you want to go back into yesterday's comments and find it. It's nearish the bottom. Thank you a lot, and take care. ** Sypha, Well, I'm glad you did, and I'm glad you asked just following a day when I had actually gotten out of my room and done things, ha ha. Those cookies sound quite delicious, yes. I think they stock Hersheys products over here. I'll go look. That would explain the headaches, I guess, ha ha. 'The Tunnel' has been on my must-read list for far too long. ** Steevee, I've seen a little bit about the 'ZDT' controversy welling up online, yeah, but I haven't delved into it too much because, yeah, I just want to see the film and not have to go into seeing it having pre-set ideas about its politics or morality or whatever. I'll check into that stuff once it's under my belt. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Ha ha, yes, nice. About Voyager 2, I mean. No, I don't know know what that tunnel pull is about. I'm definitely resisting the 'return to the womb' explanation. I like the mystery of the pull, I guess. It's certainly true that the characters in 'TMS' are a space rather than a destination. I think that's true in all of my work, but especially or more overtly in that novel. Sorry to have be swift today. More tomorrow, man, and take care. ** E., Wow, perfect, that's awesome, thank you on behalf of the tunnels. Nice about your trees folder. A trees post would be a cool thing to do, come to think of it. Hm. Oh, yeah, your living situation sounds okay. In my brief university stint, I lived in the 'apartment living' dorm. Nice idea with the shared living room and kitchen and stuff, but everybody in my group just stayed in their little bedrooms, including me, so the purpose was utterly defeated. Oh, yeah, sorry, I tend to use shorthand about stuff, and I forget that the backstories aren't famous or whatever, ha ha. I do dislike carbonated drinks with a passion. We're total weirdos, you and me. High five. Mm, this place where I live is very quiet. People keep mostly to themselves, and the walls are wonderfully very thick, so I rarely even know who's staying here. Occasionally, an artist I really like will stay here, and that's cool, obviously, because I have an excuse to meet up with them and become friends. But mostly you just see people in the halls and the elevator and wonder who they are. ** Bill, Hi, B. Oh, I wondered if, since you've visited that part of the world on occasion, if you'd been in the Bund tunnel. I guess not? It kind of tripped me out in a marvelously cheesy way. No, I haven't been to any UX events, which is stupid. When I get back from Lyon, I'll see if there's any left, and I will. ** Okay. Apologies again for having to speed along today. Please take Postitbreakup's tip and make Ezra Miller your icon for the day, okay? Okay. See you tomorrow.

____
Music
in no order

1. Death Grips No Love Deep Web(Death Grips)


2. Scott Walker Bish Bosch(4AD)


3. Raime QuarterTurns Over a Living Line(Blackest Ever Black)


4. Guided by Voices The Bears for Lunch(Fire Records)


5. William Basinski The Disintegration Loops(Temporary Residence)


6. Pinback Information Retrieved(Temporary Residence)


7. Flying Lotus Until The Quiet Comes(Warp)


8. Détective However Strange(Burger Records)


9. New White Light Bela Tarr 7-13(bandcamp)


10. Swans The Seer(Young God)


11. Robert Pollard Jack Sells the Cow(GbV)


12. Japandroids Celebration Rock(Polyvinyl)


13. Grimes Visions(4AD)


14. Spiritualized Sweet Heart Sweet Light(Fat Possum)


15. Actress R.I.P.(Honest Jon's)


16. Tame Impala Lonerism(modular)


17. Julia Holter Ekstasis(Rvng Intl)


18. Los Angeles 555/666/777(Mountain Fighting)


19. El-P Cancer for Cure(Fat Possum)


20. Crystal Castles III(Fiction)







_____
Fiction
in no order

1. Frank Hinton Action, Figure(Tiny Hardcore Press)


2. Blake Butler Sky Saw(Tyrant Books)


3. Richard Chiem You Private Person(Scrambler Books)


4. Trinie Dalton Baby Geisha(Two Dollar Radio)


5. Edouard Leve Autoportrait(Dalkey Archive)


6. Sean Kilpatrick fuckscapes(Blue Square Press)


7. xTx Billie the Bull(Nephew)


8. Nikanor Teratologen Assisted Living(Dalkey Archive)


9. Kevin Killian Spreadeagle(Publication Studio)


10. Eric Raymond Confessions from a Dark Wood(Sator Press)


11. Luis Chitarroni The No Variations(Dalkey Archive)


12. Scott McClanahan The Collected Works of Scott McClanahan Vol. 1(Lazy Fascist Press)


13. Blake Butler/Christopher Higgs/Vanessa Place One(Roof)


14. Shane Jones Daniel Fights a Hurricane(Penguin)


15. Stephen Michael McDowell Treees(treees-smm)


16. Matt Bell Cataclysm Baby(Mud Luscious Press)


17. Hilda Hilst The Obscene Madame D(Nightboat Books)


18. Brian Evenson Immobility (Tor Books)


19. Michael Seidlinger The Sky Conducting(Civil Coping Mechanisms)


20. tieLindsay Stern Town of Shadows(Scrambler Books)


M. Kitchell Slow Slidings(Blue Square Press)







_____
Poetry
in no order

1. Jon Leon The Malady of the Century(Futurepoem Books)


2. Ben Kopel Victory(H_NGM_N Books)


3. Joyelle McSweeney Percussion Grenade(Fence Books)


4. Joe Brainard The Collected Writings (Library of America)


5. Ben Mirov Hider Roser(Octopus Books)


6. Ana Carrete Baby Babe (Civil Coping Mechanisms)


7. Paul Cunningham Foamghast(NAP)


8. Emmanuel Hocquard The Invention of Glass (Canarium Books)


9. Guillaume Morissette I am My Own Betrayal(Maison Kasini)


10. Melissa Broder Meat Heart(Publishing Genius)


11. Ariana Reines Mercury(Fence Books)


12. Steve Roggenbuck Crunk Juice(self-pub)


13. Eileen Myles Snowflake / different streets(Wave Books)


14. Justin Carter Trill(Reality Hands)


15. tieKeegan Crawford Stealing Things(self-pub)


Walter Mackey mysapcedotcom(judge judy etc.)





___
Film
in no order

1. Wes Anderson Moonrise Kingdom


2. Leos Carax Holy Motors


3. Drew Goddard Cabin in the Woods


4. Joachim Trier Oslo, August 31st


5. Michael Haneke Amour


6. Jeff Nichols Take Shelter


7. James Benning The Second Cabin: Stemple Pass


8. Luke Fowler All Divided Selves


9. Pip Chodorov Free Radicals


10. Michael Salerno/Marcus Whale Middle of Nowhere


11. Adam Humphrey Shitty Youth


12. Frances Stark My Best Thing


13. Stanya Kahn Stand in the Stream


14. Grant Scicluna The Wilding


15. tieMojtaba Mirtahmasb & Jafar Panahi This is Not a Film


Chris Butler & Sam Fell Paranorman





__
Art
in no order

1. Aldo TambelliniThe Tanks/Tate Modern


2. The enlargement of Palais de Tokyo


3. O Novo OficioMuseu Colecção Berardo


4. Guy Maddin SpiritismesCentre Pompidou


5. Daniel Buren Excentrique(s)Grand Palais


6. Edvard Munch L'Oeil moderne 1900-1944Centre Pompidou


7. Ken Price Retrospective LACMA


8. Torbjörn Vejvi The Object Without is the Object Within Glendale Community College Art Gallery


9. Robert Crumb Crumb de 'Underground a la GeneseMusee d'Art Moderne


10. Notorious (Christian Leigh)Castillo/Corrales Gallery


11. Alex Rose MONO NO AWAREEnvoy Enterprises


12. The world as will and wallpaperLe Consortium


13. John Williams Record ProjectionCentre Pompidou


14. Chris Burden Metropolis IILACMA


15. Mike Kelley: Themes and VariationsStedlijk Museum






______
Internet
in no order

espresso bongo
Alt Lit Gossip
LIEF+
i am alt lit
Fuck Yeah Pierre Clementi
Montevidayo
THE NEATO MOSQUITO ALT LIT FIREWORKS SHOW
{ feuilleton }
Isola di Rifiuti
Metazen
bright stupid confetti
POP SERIAL
MUBI
UbuWeb
Bright Lights Film Journal
Joe Brainard's Pajamas (The Sequel)
Muumuu House
Beach Sloth
judge judy etc.
If we don't, remember me
Art Fag City
Pangur Ban Party
KALEIDOSCOPE
prosthetic knowledge
the tape
Dead End Thrills
Pank
HTMLGIANT




*

p.s. Hey. So, tell me yours. Obviously, you don't have to be all formal and lengthy and make numbered lists and categories and stuff. But I'm very interested, if you're interested to tell. ** L@rstonovich, Hey! Dude, the mix was very sweet. I listened to it and didn't do nearly what I'd planned to do while listening 'cos it was too transporting. RIP: Ravi Shankar, yes. Really interesting that you were in his presence. Nice photo. I saw him from a distance on a couple of lit stages back in the day, but that's it. So, you're doing a nice, alert Xmas, basically. Sounds quite all right. Me too, I assume. ** 5STRINGS, They're for sale, but you have to buy all of them together, and they're pricey. Electronic toothbrush is like an electric toothbrush? I always found the latter to be totally useless and weird. I guess in theory they'd be magic like vibrating dildos or something, but they just seemed a gag gift or something. Gare du Nord is cool but it's very, very cold inside in the winter. GdN is the one that goes to England. Gare de l'Est is the best train station. Swear to God.  Even people who don't live across the street from it like I do think so. ** Misanthrope, Has anyone ever seen you and Morrissey in the same room together? I haven't, that's for sure. The RnrHoF is a joke. You last long enough, you're in. That's pretty much it. I mean, the word 'Fame' is in the fucking title, so why am I or anyone surprised. ** David Ehrenstein, Ashes is hanging in there. Did a reading somewhere last night. New book of poetry coming out next week, and his new work is as great as his old work, so I guess he's doing pretty swell. I think maybe I heard that he can't really walk anymore, which is very sad. Whoa, you completely changed the visual look of the FaBlog. It looks all moody and serious now. ** Cobaltfram, Hi. Yeah, so maybe later then. I have a phone thing I have to do at 5 pm. Errands. Otherwise, I should be around. So, yeah, let's see if we can find each other. ** Billy Lloyd, Okay, cool, when you start making your trip plans and taking notes, I'll weigh in. I always drive from LA outwards, so I know and am into the stuff that's in the kind of lower-mid parts of the US, like southern Utah, which is insanely beautiful, etc. Uh, I'm weird because I don't like SF very much. But apparently an SF dislike comes with being a born and bred Los Angeleno, and I think the SF people have the same sort of inbred LA dislike. You know the NYC problems: expensive, intense. SF is, of course, mellower but still expensive. Dare I suggest LA as a possibility? It's the best place in the US of A by far in my opinion. Oh, well, I trust your instincts on 'Stranger', of course. Yeah, when you can't get a scone, you can jones for one, or I can. Food has weird superpowers sometimes. Food's sociopathic, manipulative evil nature is very underrated, which is undoubtedly all in food's evil plan. ** xTx, Hey! Yeah, I'm getting a cold, though. From standing around in freezing train stations too much yesterday. You know that dreadful feeling when you can feel you're getting a bad cold. Like a really, really less obnoxious variation on what I must feel like on death row on the day you're going to be executed maybe. I'm trying to get back into the novel. I am, but very slowly. I took too long off. That was a big mistake. I was in this intense spell writing the novel, and now I need to find my way back into it, and I haven't yet, But I will, I guess. I'm trying every day. You're pecking away, yes! So we're both pecking, but my beak can't find the food morsels yet and yours probably can. Oh, I would love to get the 'Billie' here in Paris, but if it's easier to send it to the LA address, that's totally cool, of course. It must be coming out any second, right? December is running out of days. Love, me. ** Antonio Heras, Hi, Antonio! Really nice to see you! No problem, of course, on the disconnection. There are infinitely bigger things at stake. Good question about 2013. Things don't seem as totally fucked up from the top down here in France as I think they are in Spain, so there isn't a feeling of impending disaster and/or pre-boiling public outrage and action around here, at least that I can tell. Could be, though. Being an American here, I don't think I can completely understand the situation or read the collective European mind very well. There might be only more more Xmas-y blog post coming, if that, so no worries. ** Patrick deWitt, Hi, Patrick! I miss you too! Hey, what happened to Deopening? I was all over that daily and then ... it didn't exist. I'm okay. It's cold here. It's pretty and cold. Trying to get back into my novel but not so successfully of late. And you? What's up with you? Come back to the Recollets maybe? Would be sweet, man. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi, good morning, and how are you today, my friend? ** Sypha, Howdy. ** Pisy caca, The talk in Lyon was kind of a total waste of time. It was Gisele and me talking about our collaborative work. The students hadn't seen our work and seemed lost and uninterested. Gisele did almost all of the talking, and I said about 15 words. Kind of pointless maybe. But it was nice to get out of town even if, as I said, I think I'm coming down with a bad cold from lengthy freezing train station inhabitation. Thanks about my poetry post. Fave books on your blog! I must see this. Hold on. Oh, I don't have the link at my fingertips, so I'll look later. Yum.  Oh, yes, Frances is a major Malkmus fan. Malkmus and Jason Lowenstein of Sebadoh were/are her gods. Love from me. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill. Enough people whose opinions I respect have told me that I would hate the 'Kevin' movie that I'm avoiding it since I don't enjoy feeling hate. But there are obviously those with taste who like it. And how are you today? ** Postitbreakup, Thanks so much, Josh. It was a very well liked post, obviously, so hooray for everybody and for you especially. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thanks for your lists. I will seek out what I haven't heard and seen from it, you bet. Need to see 'Room 237'. I love that kind intricately interpreting, clues-impacted of thing. I guess who doesn't. ** Steevee, Donna Summer is a good add. Is Giorgio Moroder in the RnRHoF? If not, that would be weird. Or, rather, predictable but ridiculous. ** Robert-nyc, Hi, Robert! Yeah, hopefully the exile will be finally over, and then we'll see. I think a half and half-ish, back and forth between LA and Paris situation is the outcome we'd most like, assuming he likes LA, of course. Lyon was okay despite the blah event we did, thanks. Okay, great, about the email, thank you! I'm excited to read it as soon as I can, of course. Excellent day to you, sir. ** Frank Jaffe, Hey Frank! Things are good, kind of, even though I'm getting a cold, but yeah. It was super awesome to get to hang out with Luke, and I'm really glad he enjoyed it too. He's really great, as I don't need to tell you. Right, Luke has all kinds of sisters, like four of them or something? Cool that you'll get to meet one. You guys have plans? I hope to get to see you soon too! Like I told Luke, you guys should definitely come over and do a Paris trip together, no? Like once it gets a little warmer probably. You have the most fantastic day as well, buddy. ** Rewritedept, I guess you'd have to live way outside of Vegas to find the tourism job biz exotic like I do. Nice about the jamming. Sight reading, really? You're like a real musician. Bummer about Ravi Shankar, for sure, but, yeah, he did a lot. You didn't sound beat, but, assuming you were, I hope you aren't now, for your sake at least. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Hope you're getting everything done. I have things to do, but I'm not. Par for the course. Yeah, want to know your year's faves, if it's easy. Final buche decisions will probably be made in the next couple of days. I think it's down to about six or so. And I can't find the store where the Plush one is on sale. I'm starting to think maybe it was a prank or something. Big day to you, man. ** Okay. Pony up with 2012 faves now, if you don't mind. Whether or not, it seems that I will see you tomorrow.

_________________



Pokepoke, 18
Cardiff

maybe.............yes.....or..........maybe........not

4.you.nothing abouth me.just you

Dicksize No entry
Position No entry
Kissing No entry
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Fetish -
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



__________________




mr.simple, 24
Boston

beautiful caucasian at your disposal..
i am only top facesitting master...
very hot on faces..
i chalenge, u wud love me on your face......
i fink i can be good enough at everything u like on your face..
i want to help me to my problem..
wana be my ... face?

Dicksize XL, Uncut
Position Top only
Kissing Consent
Fucking No entry
Oral Bottom
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Rubber, Boots, Uniform, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



_______________





fucking_hart, 19
Paris

do you know how to fuck?
contact me please...
thanks

Dicksize XL, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty WS only
Fisting Active / passive
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Leather, Skater, Underwear, Boots, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 100 Euros
Rate night 350 Euros



________________



GrabtheSteelDick, 22
Tirana, Albania

I'm actually here for friendship more than anything else. I'm a very friendly person. I'm not choosy with friends. But I hope to meet friends who'll always keep in touch and not just park their names on my friends' list. I mainly like moustached highly educated high class man, but who doesn't?

Dicksize XL, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 80 Euros
Rate night 250 Euros



_______________



Exqusit, 23
Fort Lauderdale

Hi, I’m Exqusit, friendly young smooth. I AM LOOKING for funny and nice time. Want me in your bed??? Not so easy. This is going to be a costly affair. But things will be ok.

Dicksize S, Cut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Yes
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Bottom
Dirty WS only
Fisting Passive
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Sportsgear, Underwear, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



______________




PanteraForever, 19
Chicago

bang me harder than you can

Dicksize M, Uncut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Yes
Fucking More bottom
Oral Bottom
Dirty Yes
Fisting No
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Drag, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 50 Dollars
Rate night 500 Dollars



________________



hotgaypornmodel, 22
Frederiksberg, Denmark

I am a young, dashing boy, with a very nice body. I like to work as pornactor in gaymovie, I have a big cock, but normaly I am bottom and are going to be fucked of a big dick. I take deepthroat and I like when my partner spank me. But before you make your mind up, allow me to tell you just a little bit about myself.

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Yes
Fucking No entry
Oral Bottom
Dirty No
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night 300 Euros



__________________



LoveNiceGuys, 20
London

My name is Keky and i'm a younger Romanian singer!
I am hard of hearing person, as against the old notions generally not a problem!
It is a nice and friendly and smiles a lot!
I am looking for someone for fun or ETC. (to be quality)!
I am a straight guy which is curious in everything like the world of the homosexuality!
I don't want to tell stories!
It just want to explore things!

Dicksize XL, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Top only
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Active
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 120 Pounds
Rate night 450 Pounds



________________



beautifulmyangel, 21
Bucharest

wil suck if u hav small dick
wil hav a lipkis if u dont hav beard and ur lip is pinkish
wil alow u to fuck only if ur dick is small
sensitive to tickling so licking body should be adjusted

Dicksize XL, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Consent
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish -
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 150 Euros
Rate night 600 Euros



________________




justjustin, 22
London

young fun and full of ****
dont do last minute meets because i generally find thats when I end up finding idiots
i blow big things

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Consent
Fucking Bottom only
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish Sportsgear, Underwear, Uniform, Sneakers & Socks
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 130 Pounds
Rate night 350 Pounds



______________



rodneyrawr, 20
Kansas City

names rodney rawr i done some things i'm not happ about i dont do much i get yelled at a lot ppl dont talk to me they just bully me all day i get mad fast so sorry if i yell i dont mean it o and ill never fall in love with anyone i'm not gonna do it i hate love i go to clubs when i'm sad and let ppl do things i'm not happy about....

Likes: video games, drawing,
Dislikes: bullys, sun light, mean ppl, pink, cats, happy really happy ppl, love, hugs, my life, sex (sometimes) ,

Dicksize L, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Consent
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish -
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



______________



LoVe_Iz_BeAuTiFuL♥, 18
Indianapolis

well im nice person dont hate me if i dont meet your standards , who cares at all ? if you don't like about my profile , it's OK no problem . all i want is to earn money .

Dicksize L, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking No entry
Oral Bottom
Dirty No
Fisting Active / passive
S&M No entry
Fetish Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 20 Dollars
Rate night 100 Dollars



_______________




...................., 21
Manchester

all rubbish really

i mean other escorts

they all take the piss don't they

not me

Dicksize L, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish -
Client age Users between 18 and 50
Rate hour 150 Euros
Rate night 500 Euros



_________________





1_GUY_AND_5_GIRLS, 23
Dusseldorf

1 GUY AND 5 GIRLS....offers all kinds of service only for matcured chuby Hairy and/or bearded guys and only if youre looking for something of special

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position No entry
Kissing Consent
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty WS only
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Fetish -
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



_______________




LOL-yta, 19
Lille

hi my name is JOSH but you can call me JOSHUA
-----Touch My Dick
-----------Feel My Lips
---------------Smell My Skin
--------------------Lick My Hands

Dicksize M, Cut
Position Bottom only
Kissing Yes
Fucking No entry
Oral Bottom
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish Underwear, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



__________________



Open_the_Door(hehehehehe), 21
Lodz

Every person is precious like diamonds that are very rare to find like me. I'm a simple human being, with a simple life, simple family and a simple friends, living with a simple dreams, one who is scared to laugh when someone is crying, afraid to smile when someone is lonesome and a person who gave life to every simple little things the world has done, that's somehow i can be one of the reason why this world was made to be a better place to live with. So I wait for the right person like you..... and a lot more.

Dicksize L, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Passive
S&M No entry
Fetish Underwear, Formal dress, Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 1 Dollars
Rate night 24 Dollars



_______________



PUNKBUTT, 21
Lyon

French pervert young smelly punk neurotic masochist...Loving smart-mental BDSM...Long and sleazy encounters...Slowly building up submission and humiliation by any possible means...Could as well spend two hours just discussing french litterature and radical politics...I also have a bull dick and I fuck like a damn devil...It's up to you...

Wishlist :
http://www.amazon.fr/registry/wishlist/2FZ9R4VTSAE4D

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position More bottom
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty Yes
Fisting Passive
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Drag, Worker
Client age Users between 18 and 99
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



________________



Joop_Joop, 24
Priština, Kosovo

Fuck me to the end... i like being fucked by u maybe?

IM MYSTERIOUS GUY YOU WILL NEVER KNOW ME!!!

NICE ZOO:
FARM CROCODILE, FARM TIGER, FARM ELEPHANT
GURANTEE GOOD SHOW

i will try to talk some foreign man, i really love talking foreign man, it makes me smart always!

I like to be more older, clever and onestly.

Dicksize M, Cut
Position More bottom
Kissing No entry
Fucking Bottom only
Oral No entry
Dirty Yes
Fisting No
S&M Yes
Fetish Underwear, Formal dress, Drag
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 30 Dollars
Rate night ask



_________________





sampoo, 20
Prague

Everybody calls me "gAp" which happens to be my nickname that was taken from my last name. I dream of becoming a model and fashion designer, well known not only here in my native country but also around the globe. I have a strong head and I don't struggle to make conversation with anyone. I am financial markets literate. I am impressed by just about everything. You will have an amazing, uplifting time as I bring an exciting atmosphere with me wherever I go. I am a Romeo and student that is horny as fuck. Kiss me and I'll kiss you.

Dicksize No entry
Position Versatile
Kissing Consent
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Underwear, Lycra, Formal dress, Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



______________





ElectronicFuneral, 22
Helsinki

Sun young in the time to come here, you still etc. What, if you can, please stretch out your hands, take me with a right, I am skin good, character is good, I inflame as fire and I am difficult for extinguishing. With me you will flare, with me you will be another, as long as you are willing to, I will be better.

Dicksize No entry
Position Versatile
Kissing No entry
Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Sportsgear, Formal dress
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



______________



Ineedthat, 22
Bournemouth

i love money
money is my love
ill do anything
for money
i love being
dicked
i have a chubby
and here I am

Dicksize No entry
Position Versatile
Kissing No entry
Fucking Versatile
Oral No entry
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M No entry
Fetish Sportsgear, Skater, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask




*

p.s. Hey. Two things: My cold is worsening, so there'll be some lag and other strangeness in this p.s., I think, and apologies. Second, the internet is out here at the Recollets, and I'm sitting in a hot spot with a bunch of other internet-impaired residents, and the signal is crappy, and having people all around me while I do this feels weird, so there'll be some effect from that too. Urgh. And here we go ... **
Josh Feola, Hi, Josh! Really nice to see you, man! Thanks about my music picks. Oh, I just discovered that Holly Herndon album two days ago, too late to get into my finished list, but, yeah, it's really good, and I'm going to have a bit of it in an upcoming post. Thanks much for the alerts on the Chinese standouts. I'll go read what you've written and make the discoveries a bit later. Everyone, d.l. Josh Feola, who's based in China, has written about a couple of his fave Chinese music makers of late on the great Tiny Mix Tapes site, and his tastes are impeccable, and no doubt his tips are great ones, so I recommend following his leads. Here he is on Snapline's "Phenomena", and here he is on Stalin Gardens' "Shanghai Void". Thanks again, Josh, and happy 2012 to you too! ** Ross Brighton, Hey! Great to have you here! Thanks a lot for coming in! Oh, yeah, that Goransson book is great. It only isn't on my list because it was published in 2011, and I forced myself to stick to '12 pub dates to make the list editing less unwieldy. But, yeah, terrific book. I haven't read Mike's poetry collections of this year yet, but I did have 'Slow Slidings' on my fiction list. I'll get on that. Thanks again, Ross. Much appreciated. ** Misanthrope, Oh, I think Morrissey would be all over you, man. Yes, your best music of the year picks will actually get a full 24 hours of attention here next week, so yeah, cool. You're sick too? Has it gone away? Mine is doing this slow, creepy fanning out thing. It seems to be camping in my head and lungs at the moment. Anyway, feel a shitload better. ** Jebus, Hi. It's there because it utterly and obviously belongs there, man, and the thanks are all mine. I've heard of xxyyxx, but that's all, and I've been intrigued, and I'll make a full-on investigation starting today. I don't know Sealings at all, but will. And the latest Grouper, yeah. That's one I spaced on while making my list. It could've been there. Nice, thank you a lot. And especially for the ingredients for your cold cure. I think you can get all those things in France. Yeah, surely, right? Cayenne pepper is the only question mark. I'll stumble outside and seek it. Cool, man, very kind of you, and I'll try to get that cure made and down my gullet today. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi. Thanks for the lists. I don't know Perfume or Kimbra, so I'll check them out. Or Tim Walker. Or other things of yours. Cool. And, yeah, the Ariel Pink and the Chromatics albums were very worthy, I totally agree. New stuff to tackle. Yeah, the Palais de Tokyo got hugely expanded. It's now the largest contemporary art space in Europe. It's gigantic and very raw and weird and is my favorite museum space in the world. You have to check it out sometime. Enough people swear by SF that it must be cool. The music scene seems pretty good there based on some of the bands and music makers I know who are based there, but I'm not sure how the scene actually is. Everyone, does anyone of you who is San Francisco-based want to tell Billy Lloyd what the music scene there is like? He would really like to know, and I wouldn't mind knowing either, frankly. Thanks! Oh, interesting about 'Stranger' becoming a collab track. Let me know when it's hearable. I jones for Mexican food constantly 'cos it's mostly either unavailable or shit in Paris, and I'm from LA, after all. But my biggest jones is for cold sesame noodle, which is my all-time favorite food, and which is basically impossible to find here without fish sauce involved in it, and I can't eat that. Grr. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Very, very interested to read your best films list, of course, so do hook us up. Yes, the new FaBlog has a very moody vibe, very different than the previous version. It's interesting. ** Will, Hi, Will. Great lists! Thanks a lot! Funnily or something, I just discovered the Shed and Silent Servant albums a couple of days ago, and they're really good, yes, and I did an upcoming post with things by them and Andy Stott and a few others. Great stuff. I really want to see 'Looper'. I missed it in the theater, and I really regret that. 'The Avengers' was cool, I agree. I'm a big Joss Whedon fan. So, you'll be leaving college in the dust soon? That must feel awfully nice. Then what? Making stuff, being stuff, ... ? Advance congrats! ** Scunnard, Hi, pal! Holy shit, that is some kind of best of something or other for sure, and I hit bookmark in a milli-second, so thanks bunches! Everyone, Scunnard suggests ythat our best of 2012 lists open up enough to accommodate this, and I have to say that I think I agree. You doing good, man? ** Alan, Hi, Alan! That site is most welcome, yes, thank you a lot! Mm, I don't have any regular, especially good French news go-to sites other than the basic ones like France24 and the newspapers, but I have a few French Facebook friends who use the site to regularly post alerts to interesting news things, and I've ended up relying on them. I don't have the sites' addresses at my fingertips, but I'll start bookmarking the places they send me to, and I'll try to remember to pass them on to you. Regular news sites-wise, I guess I mostly look at Liberation and L'Humanite. ** xTx, Hi! Well, of course it made the list. I ain't no fool. I have the Paula Bomer book, and I'm about to start it, and I've been meaning to get 'Fast Machine' for months and months. I'll finally order it today. Cool. Yury has beeb feeding me cold fighting pills and things of all sorts. I don't know what they are. He's the doctor of the family. They haven't cured me yet, but maybe the cold's weird, creeping slowly through me-style pace might be a plus, I hope. Bigger chunks, yay! My slivers are gradually getting chunkier. Thanks about 'Billie'! I can just give you the address here. It's c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 75010 Paris, France. Thank you, my dear comrade! ** Charlie m, Hi, Charlie, awesome to see you around here! Thanks, man. I'll def. check out the Umbertos. Cool. And the add you did on Facebook, whose name escapes my slightly ill-ed-out brain at the moment. I'm looking forward to new music from you! ** Patrick deWitt, Hi, P. Oh, interesting, mysterious, okay. I'll just keep clicking the link every couple of days. Great news that your novel is enacting a strong gravitational pull on you. Really great news! Mine was flying for a while, and I'm kick-starting it up again, and I guess it'll start idling at least, 'cos I guess novels always tend to do that, I hope, I think. Spring! That would be most ultra-cool. It's freezing and wet here right now anyway, and the internet is out again, and you're right to be where you are, ultimately. ** 5STRINGS, Need to see 'Sinister'. Have needed to, still do. I have to go find it somewhere. Uh, don't think so on the 'Twilight' thing, but you never know. Nice art list. I don't get many art lists or responses to the art picks when I do these list things. Sweet. There's a few blond dolls. I think I know the one you mean, though. I, of course, want the George Miles doll that she made based on photos of George and which really does have a big resemblance to him. Seeing that doll makes me misty. Water picks, wow. Do those still exist? I did use one for a while. It made my gums itch. I hated it. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Cool, lists, cool. Oh, I like that Forma album too, yeah. I was listening to it when I woke up this morning. Great lists, yeah. Wait, those are all beers at the bottom? Holy shit. They're very Black Metal. I guess I know where you drank most of them. Yeah, thanks scads, man! ** Bill, I got my 'Skysaw' in the mail from Amazon about 8 days ago, so maybe it's in stores. Ooh, a Bill list, very nice. I need to read 'Windeye'. Most people seem to think it's better than the novel? Great reads and listens. I haven't heard that Mika Vainio/Axel Dorner/Kevin Drumm/Lucio Capece. That sounds crazy. Or a bunch of your other music choices either. I'm off in search. Oh, right, you were in Hong Kong not Shanghai, right? I always confuse those two cities, it's weird. ** Sypha, I put off listening to the Swans album for a long time too, and it seemed weird that I had once I'd heard it. So, Chris Colfer is turning into a bonafide scribe, eh? Cuter than James Paterson? Impossible, ha ha. Yes, seeing as how a bunch of people put that news story on my Facebook wall assuming that I would cream my jeans or something, I do know about it. Yeah, I don't know, it's interesting, but, I don't know, not wildly so to me for some reason, I don't know. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Sure, you can list anything you like in your lists. Lists are promiscuous despite their uptight appearance. And an interesting list it was/is. I have noted the things I do not know, and thank you. Great talking to you too, of course! Let me know how it goes. ** Heliotrope, Ho ho ho, Mark! Okay, well, I would guess the treatment is supposed to have its sloggy phases, no? Be positive. I have no doubt in my usually spot-on-ish intuitive reservoirs that you will be shredding the notes and skipping up the mountain trails like a little girl on coke ere long. Ravi Shankar, yes, ugh. He did a lot, though. Amazing that you met him of course, not to mention with the Beatle. How did that happen? I looked at something of Honnold yesterday, and I have a lengthier exploration re: him on the cards for today. Yeah, scary. I have this fear of heights thing, you know. But at least he's not a spacewalking astronaut. Those guys are like bullets in my brain. If you have to hobble, hobble like the motherfucker of grace who you truly are. Love, me. ** Steevee, Thanks much for the list! I need to get that How to Dress Well, and I still haven't heard the Kendrick Lamar, which is kind of crazy. The James Benning film is his newest, I think. It's part of his Cabin Project. There are two films, with the one I chose being the second of them. Here's some info on the film. I thought it was amazing, obviously, I guess. ** Bill P. in Chicago, It sounds like you've entered the stage of enlightenment or something. I guess cling inside there. It sounds really nice. Don't be stressed about sending the writing. It'll be awesome for everybody. Guaranteed. I'm okay other than the cold interference and some writing struggles, but both will pass or maybe even are already, he said hopefully. A list, cool. Still haven't heard the Shearwater. Definitely will after all the props yesterday, and your kind linkage will be my entrances. That freeform podcast/radio thing looks excellent. I'll get my ears all over that. Ah, 'The White Album', you betcha. She's just ... whoa. Thanks a lot, Bill! ** Toniok, Hey there, man! Super good to see you! And thanks for your lists. I don't know a bunch of those things. I just scribbled down the ones I don't, and hopefully I'll be in the loop soon. Especially re: 'Slender' and 'The Eight Pages'. Those are completely news to me. I hope things are going well and better with you. ** David J. White, Hearty greetings to you, Mr. White! Cool about the teaser. Can't wait to see it. Everyone, here's a teaser for directorial maestro David J. White's next feature featuring those stars of my and others' 2012 favorites lists ... Crystal Castles. Check it out. Thanks about 'TMS'. Knowing Mr. Honore, he could well have been flirting with you. He's doing Ovid's 'Metamorphosis' as his next film, and there's got to be a part in it for you. I'll drop your name ever so subtly. The thanks are entirely all mine, man. ** Grant Scicluna, Hi! I owe you an email. Sorry, I've been a little colded-out ugh, but I will. I'm happy to make you beam, but, really, I was just the reflective surface that caught your beam. I'm without internet too. Sucks, right? But hopefully we'll be intergalactic again by the next time we intersect. Great day to you! ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Thanks, man! Oh, did I already tell you that Oren Ambarchi is coming to live here at the Recollets for a few months in March? I'm very excited to hopefully get to hang out with him. I can't imagine that you won't really like 'Bish Bosch'. It's pretty amazing. Don't know Russell Hoban's 'Kleinzeit'. Sounds really good. I'll definitely try to get it. And more. Thank you, Glove. You swam! And it all came back to you in undulating muscular colors? I hope it really helps. It can't hurt, can it? Stroke wisely, however one would do that, just in case. ** Oriol Rovira Grañen, Hey! Really nice to see you! Thank you a lot for the film list. I haven't seen a bunch of those, and I will see what I can find of them. I missed Wiseman's 'Crazy Horse', which I really want to see, given partly that I live near Crazy Horse itself. Thanks a whole lot! I hope you're doing great! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! Great lists. I need/want to get the Ty Segall and Laurie Spiegel things. Yeah, great stuff, top to bottom. Oh, yes, I did in fact limit myself to one GbV album because, frankly, all three of this year's releases would have been on there otherwise. I think I do like the most recent one the best, but, honestly, all three are genius-central, I swear. The Raime album is really great. I highly recommend it. I've listened to it as much as I've listened to anything this year. The Aldo Tambellini show was the big art revelation for me this year. Incredible work and amazing installation. They showed a number of the films in the installation. There's a great DVD of his films called Cathodic works 1966-1976 and another collection that I'm especially excited about that complies his great 'Black' films that's coming out soonish from the French company Re:Voir. They're mindboggling good, I thought. Very early montage films, psychedelic but poetic, kind of with a Kenneth Anger circa 'Inauguration of ...' thing -- Anger was very influenced by him -- but sans Anger's magic/mysticism thematic. Spectacular. There are some clips and bits of his films watchable online if you search for videos. Real knock out stuff, I thought. ** MANCY, Hey! Cool, thanks a lot for your list. Top notch, in my opinion. Right, that Raime is so good, isn't it? I just got into Andy Stott last week for the first time. Really interesting. Yeah, thanks, buddy. ** Roger Clarke, Hi, Roger! So very thrilled about he great success of your book! Fantastic! 'Moonrise Kingdom' was kind of ignored in the UK? How strange. That was my favorite film of the year. It's been very beloved over here. The French adore Anderson, understandably. So nice to see you! ** Chris Dankland, Hey, Chris! Great to see you! Belated congrats on the Pushcart nomination, and let me add my admiration to the bunch you've gotten for that amazing essay/statement you wrote a couple of weeks ago. You're working on a story. Exciting news, that. And, of course, much gratitude for your lists. There's a batch of stuff on your music list that I still need to investigate. And, shit, I meant to put that JDA Winslow book on my list, and I totally spaced. That was a real find, which I have you to thank for. I nominated it for an Alt Lit Gossip award, so at least I remembered it then. You're in the Metazan Xmas book too? Great! High five. I'm excited about that too. Have a superb morning, my friend. ** Statictick, N-ster. Gracias of the muchas kind for your lists. I noted those that I do not know and will hopefully know them soon. Best beyond best to you. ** Casey McKinney, Mr. McKinney! Thanks for thinking my stuff sorting was spot on, man. Wow, you liked a lot of stuff. I did too, but I got all anal about how many I forked out. Notations made on the many musics that have entered your ears pleasingly but have evaded mine thus far. Books too, although I knew more of those. Cool. Fanzine is kicking serious ass on the reviews lately. One amazing take after another these days. 'Skysaw' is crazed genius great, no surprise. I'm almost finished with it. That Blake is something else, boy. Love to you and Robin and that prodigal kiddo of yours. ** Pisy caca, Good morning to you too! I'm feeling kind of weird. Like in between good and bad. I think I'm probably going south, but I'm fighting back as best I can. Oh, sure, wow, thanks about my lists, but, of course, I just copied and pasted all the greatness. And thank you for yours. Shit, I forgot the Xiu Xiu! That always happens. Weird, no matter how well you think you're using your memory, it always hides stuff from you. Yeah, the Xiu Xiu, of course. Lots o' love! ** Changeling, Hi! That's that hangover from hell. I'm so sorry that it chose you to encroach upon. That's very evil of it. All you wanted to do was have a good time.  Hangovers are such vindictive prudes. Feel way better. Me, I have a cold. Not sure how evil it's going to be re: me yet. I'll know tomorrow, I guess. Other than that, I'm sort of all right. How are you other than the hangover? ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Thanks. How was that Vietnamese tunnel in person? How much of it do you get to crawl through? How are you? ** Joshua nilles, Hey, JN! Swell to see you and your lists! I'm noting the things on your lists that I do not know. Or I was a second ago. Now I'm typing. Drinks list was a nice bonus. That Realbeanz cappuccino thing sounds curious. What is it? What's the realbeanz thing about? Is that the brand? Oh, maybe. Right. Have a great, uh, Friday, yes, Friday! ** I made it. I got a little fuzzed out there towards the end, so apologies to the late breaking commenters. They say that there are some things in life you can always count on. People often say that, as you probably know. If that's true, and it probably isn't, it seems that one of those things you can count on is that this blog will fill up with escorts in the middle of every month. It is the middle of this month today, so, guess what? See you tomorrow.

'What everybody notices first in Ozu is the visual form. He apparently decided at the very beginning of his filmmaking career to adopt his own cinematic language, an idiolect that is both conservative and radical.

'It is conservative because the choices within his system are severely limited and because in some respects it is just a purification of the standard continuity system. Each scene follows the standard pattern: in, out, repeat if necessary. The scene begins with a long shot that establishes the characters, then moves into medium close-ups. If it is a lengthy scene, it will cut to the long establishing shot again and then back to the close-ups. At the end, it will return to the long shot.

'The average shot length in his films adheres closely to the norms that prevailed in Japan and Hollywood, and Ozu keeps the duration of the shots within a film remarkably consistent: there are no long takes and very few noticeably quick shots. Most of the cuts are ‘return cuts’, to borrow Klaus Wyborny’s term – that is, they return to a shot already shown.

'It has been written that Ozu pared down this system further by gradually eliminating camera movement, fades, and dissolves, but these figures appeared only exceptionally even in his first films. From this description an Ozu film might seem like a highly conventionalised TV series, such as Dragnet.

'But he does everything wrong; he breaks every rule of conventional cinematic grammar. He always puts the camera too low, but he doesn’t angle it up, so the subject of the shot always occupies the top of the frame. The eye-line matches are always wrong.

'A fundamental rule of standard continuity requires that the camera always stay on one side of an axis created by the actors’ gazes. Thus the camera may not be moved 180 degrees from one set-up to another; it must always stay within a semi-circle on one side of the axis.

'Ozu doesn’t simply violate this rule, he overturns it: every cut crosses the axis of the gaze. Every cut is a multiple of 45 degrees, most often 180 degrees (especially when he cuts on an action match) or 90 degrees. The standard continuity system was developed to make cuts invisible, to the conscious mind at least. Ozu denaturalises the cuts, making them as noticeable as possible.

'Then there are the shots of ‘empty spaces’: still lifes, unpeopled interiors, building facades and landscapes. They are Ozu’s trademark, the one part of his system that has been adapted by modern European and Asian filmmakers, and they have given his interpreters a great deal of trouble when they try to assign them a meaning.

'In his essential book on Ozu, David Bordwell calls these empty spaces “intermediate” because these shots generally occur between scenes (although sometimes as cutaways within scenes). But they are not establishing shots, although some shots in a series may serve that function. They have an autonomy that led Noël Burch to call them extradiegetic, that is “on another plane of reality”, although they exist in the same space as the characters. Perhaps it suffices to define them simply by the absence of the characters and the suspension of the narrative.' -- Thom Andersen, Bfi



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Tributes


Aki Kaurismaki on Ozu


Claire Denis on Ozu


Wim Wenders on Ozu


Hou Hsiao-hsien on Ozu


Stanley Kwan on Ozu



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Documentaries


OZU Yasujiro Story / 小津安二郎物語 #1


The Story of Film: An Odyssey - Yasujiro Ozu


Visiting Ozu's grave



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Stills































































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Interview: Donald Richie on Ozu
from Midnight Eye




It is now about 50 years since Ozu's heyday. What relevance do these films still have for today's generation of viewers worldwide?

Well I think that the strongest appeal of Ozu is, certainly one of the things he was most concerned with, was character. The way he worked, the kind of films that he made - the major interest was people, how they react, how they don't react. The way he made a film, for example, was that he and his fellow writer Kogo Noda would write the dialogue first, without even knowing who was going to say it. They wanted to create characters out of dialogue. Then they allocated the dialogue to the people who became the characters, and it was only later on that they decided the locations where this should happen. Usually most films are written the other way around: they get the settings and then they put the people in them and then they decide what's going to be said. Ozu's films are made completely backwards from that, so consequently there's a rightness, there's a logic, there's an inevitability, there's a reality about the character. The main thing we feel when we watch an Ozu film for the first time is that we don't want it to end. We don't want to leave these people. I've heard this from people over and over again. So since this is a universal thing, and since it never gets old-fashioned, and is the same thing we desire and look for in all films, no matter how new or old they are, I think that this is the strongest point. I don't think anyone in Japanese film could create character as well as Ozu does, and I think that through the characters the films remain alive.

In terms of the aesthetic then, there's nothing intrinsically Japanese about how the films look…

Certainly not when they were made, no. He was very careful. He hated locations. He liked complete control. Everything was a set. He did it because he wanted control to that extent. I mean when you compare the Ozu script with the Ozu film, there's no discrepancy. The script is a blueprint. Everything is already decided. There's not any room for spontaneity, or anything like that. It is going to be done exactly like it was in the script. So consequently he needed it to look as realistic as possible. And so, 1954, '55, '56 are there, preserved on the screen exactly as they are, forever. However, we're now in 2003, and there are no more interiors like that in Japan, and there are no more people who act like that in Japan. The youngsters don't act like that anymore. So what we have in Ozu appreciation in this country is a retro appreciation, like appreciating Andy Hardy or Doris Day or something like that. Abroad, it still doesn't look as exotic as it does to the Japanese. The kids know what it is because they've seen pictures, but where they live looks nothing like where the Ozu characters live. They don't have the tatami anymore, they don't have fusuma [paper doors]. Today these features of Japanese architecture are not included any more, and so we don't have that severity. So they can look at an Ozu film as a trip to grandpa's house.

You have labelled Ozu a "modernist". One thing that struck me, in terms of modern Japan, the surface details such as the costumes and the iconography seem to have changed, but the internal dynamics of the family are still very consistent with what Ozu was doing ...

Remember that when Ozu started making films in the 1920s, this was the time that Europe, and consequently Japan, was becoming interested in the possibilities of the new way of observing, which is much less fussy, much less Victorian, much less Edwardian, stripped down through the age of the century of progress, the new silver bullet train in Chicago, new techniques of air resistance in design. Everything was being streamed down. Art as well, with Art Deco. Art Deco is self-conscious about its own design in the way that Ozu's films are. Ozu was very fond of Art Deco. If you look at the number of his sets, they are very Art Deco, very modernist in their design.

He didn't know anything about mainstream modernism, by which I mean James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, all the other people who were doing modernist literature. He knew mainly through what he observed about what came in from Europe and America, the kind of modernism which you could see in Japanese cafés in Ginza.

There's this idea of cutting down, of restriction, of making things coherent by making them less, an avoidance of any redundancy and this great ability to make the continuity without all the links, leaving the audience the option, or the necessity to do this. In most Ozu pictures, for example, the wedding is left out. This idea of leaving out these links and testing your audience to make the links with you, or build the bridge halfway to you, these are all attributes of modernism as a literary form. And so, for these reasons, plus a tremendous influence of European photography - that is still photography, or art photography - on Ozu who would use these still lives to make something like he'd already seen in photographic magazines, all of this gives a modernist tinge to everything he did. So there are two things; he's a traditional artist and a traditional aesthetician, because he knew Japanese aesthetics. At the same time he was a real modernist. He used the modernist visual vocabulary, and would very often take the plots of American films. A lot of his best films take their inspiration from films he had seen.



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Further

A Website Dedicated to Ozu Yasujiro
Missing Ozu
Ozu Teapot blog
Digital Ozu
'Ozu's Angry Women'
'Yasujiro Ozu: an artist of the unhurried world'
Ozu vs. Avatar: This really is what cinema has come down to
Roger Ebert's 'Silence is Golden to Ozu'
'A Great Auteur: Yasujiro Ozu
Ozu @ The Criterion Collection
Ozu @ Senses of Cinema
Ozu @ Strictly Film School
Ozu @ mubi
Ozu @ The Jim Jarmusch Resource Page
Book: David Boardwell's Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
Video: 'Ozu - Color "Pillow Shots"'
Ozu's Lost Films
'The Films of Yasujiro Ozu'
'A modest extravagance: Four looks at Ozu'



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15 of Yasujirō Ozu's 53 films

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An Autumn Afternoon(1962)
'Yasujiro Ozu's last film, about a middle aged man who gives in to his friends' urgings to marry off his daughter, has me making associations with, of all people, Howard Hawks. Not only is the theme of individual desire subjected to communal duty typical of both directors, but this film delights in the nuances of human interactions much in the way of Hawks' late masterpiece RIO BRAVO; both films seem to treat narrative as an afterthought for the sake of exploring and celebrating the ritualized behavior that blossoms when old acquaintances come together. The virtues of Ozu's artistry may not be appreciated by most people, and even by those who do have trouble explaining his significance. It remains one of the great mysteries of the movies that Ozu's seemingly light, commercial entertainments can contain such an abundance of human experience, enhanced by an assiduously developed style that demands extended contemplation.'-- alsolikelife



Trailer


Excerpt


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Late Autumn (1960)
'A trio of old buddies intervenes in the affairs of their old college crush, now a recent widow, and her daughter. The daughter won't marry, afraid to leave her mother alone; the guys attempt to arrange a marriage between one of them and the mother, with near-disastrous results. Ozu's attentiveness to the pleasure of small moments shared between good friends is at its peak of perfection -- as in all his best films, one forgets that they're following a story and is just "hanging out" with the people onscreen. However, there's much more to this film than a matchmaking lark -- the pleasure that the viewer gets as a fellow matchmaker conspiring among the men gives way to the quiet pain of mother and daughter as they face imminent separation, leading to an ending every bit as heartbreaking as that of LATE SPRING.'-- alsolikelife



Trailer


Excerpt



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Good Morning(1959)
'The story, which at times feels incidental, centers around two boys who refuse to speak when their parents refuse to buy a television set. What appears at first to be a lightweight effort is actually a remarkable meditation on human communication in all its forms: the "good mornings" of the title, insidious gossip, fart jokes, hand signals and awkward romantic conversation all figure into the cavalcade of brilliantly rendered interactions between parents, children and nosy neighbors.' -- alsolikelife



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Equinox Flower(1958)
'Ozu's first color feature, following the harsh, pessimistic black-and-white worlds of EARLY SPRING and TOKYO TWILIGHT, returns to the more whimsical disappointments of domestic life, and the use of color adds to the film's soothing quality and delight in everyday details vibrantly observed, qualities that Ozu would continue to develop in his remaining color films. A father butts heads with his oldest daughter when she refuses to comply with his wish to arrange her marriage. Another quality to this film that Ozu would develop to better effect in his later works is a movement away from overt narrative -- things happen in this film in a static, almost incidental manner, which seems to reflect the experience of the father, insisting on things being the same as always, and yet perceiving gradual shifts almost in spite of himself.'-- alsolikelife



Excerpt



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Tokyo Twilight (1957)
'A deeply, uncharacteristically dark film, even among other "dark" Ozu films (i.e. A HEN IN THE WIND, EARLY SPRING) that may require a theatrical setting for the viewer to be fully absorbed in the strange, dark textures of the world Ozu presents. I myself was pretty alienated for the first 1/2 hour or so until the wintry chill of the mise-en-scene (brilliantly suggested in the slightly hunched-over postures of the characters) found its way into me instead of keeping me at arm's length. And from there this story builds in unwavering intensity as it follows a family on a slow slide into dissolution: a passive, judgmental patriarch (played by Chisyu Ryu, subverting his gently accepting persona in a way that is shocking), his elder daughter, a divorcee with a single child (Setsuko Hara, playing brilliantly against type -- who'd have thought the sweetest lady in '50s Japan had such an evil scowl?), and his younger daughter (Ineko Arima, a revelation), secretly pregnant and searching for her boyfriend, get a major shakeup when their absent mother, who the father had told them was long dead, re-enters their lives. A masterpiece, without question, one that throws all of Ozu's depictions of modern society in a beautifully devastating new light.'-- alsolikelife



The entire film



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Early Spring(1956)
'Ozu's longest feature is a tricky one to read, and quite possibly one of his best works. The running time would indicate some kind of epic statement being made, and Ozu is certainly aiming high by offering a comprehensive examination of how the corporate salaryman mentality has deeply affected the lives of ordinary Japanese people. The film, which centers around a frustrated salaryman, his failing marriage, his dalliance with a younger co-worker and his co-workers increasing concerns, is often solemn and staid but not humorless in the least; in fact I can think of few Ozu films that do a better job of capturing communal ritual in all its highs and lows, which the 2 1/2 hour running time accomodates splendidly. Typical of Ozu, the story moves in a ritualistic pattern through interactions between friends and family, in homes, offices, bars and group outings. There is the recurring instance of a group getting together to eat dinner, often breaking out into song as they celebrate each other's company -- these scenes for me are clearly a highlight of the entire Ozu oeuvre, they shine with spontaneity.'-- alsolikelife



Excerpt


Excerpt



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Tokyo Story(1953)
'Each of the three times I've seen this film I wonder more if there is a more perfect film out there. My latest viewing once again filled me with a dual apprehension: that this film in its two hour span states everything on my mind that I would want to say in a movie, so that there's nothing for me to say, my job has been done; and that I still need to say something anyway, but it will have to be in a way that stands apart from this flawless work of human beauty. No one can use the word derivative to describe director Yasujiro Ozu's style. His way of assembling a slowly unraveling series of carefully selected, unmoving camera shots explores film space in a subtle but powerful way that brings attention to the spaces between people and comments on the physical nature of human interactions. He sets a lofty standard for original, meaningful filmmaking.'-- alsolikelife



The entire film



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The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice(1952)
'An unassuming husband finds the nerve to employ non-violent resistance against his contemptuous wife after hanging out for an evening with a rebellious niece who skipped her own interview with an arranged fiance. I really could have cared less about the story as the characters were so lovingly drawn and their interactions were a joy to listen to, and that's really where the action is in Ozu movies, the sounds and spaces between people as they repeatedly bump into each other and modify each other's state of mind in ways both large and small.'-- alsolikelife



The entire film



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Early Summer(1951)
'I can attest that not only are no two Ozu movies the same, but that each marks a notable development along the continuum of one of the most formidable artistic visions in film. This mid-career masterpiece is no exception -- its unique qualities lie partly in its assiduous exploration of interior space in an ingenious opening sequence, beautifully capturing the rhythms and choreography of a family household as they go about their morning routine. It's no wonder that this is the favorite Ozu movie of formalist film scholar than David Bordwell -- Ozu frames and re-frames his compositions, reinventing spaces with each cut and shot, turning an ordinary house into a cinematic funhouse -- only PLAYTIME, IVAN THE TERRIBLE and LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD have offered similar wonders as far as I'm concerned. Neither is this style for style's sake: as we follow the story of how this family is pressured by social convention to marry off their daughter, the inevitable disintegration of this family makes the synchronicity and synergy of that marvelous opening sequence all the more poignant. In between, there is a rich variety of interactions between three generations of families and friends as they meet their fates, individually and collectively, one exquisite, fleeting moment at a time.'-- alsolikelife



Credits


Excerpt



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Late Spring(1949)
'Late Spring provided a chance for me to collaborate with Noda Kogo. Not since An Innocent Maid did such an opportunity present itself. If the director and the scriptwriter are always at odds with each, their work relationship is bound to collapse at some point. Say if one were an early to bed, early to rise type, while the other happened to be a night bird, they'd never strike the right balance, and would just let each other down. Whatever Noda, Saito and I did were in sync, even down to when we chose to take a break or have a drink. This was very important as Noda and I tended to think through every line or dialogue together when we wrote the script. Even without discussing details on props or costumes, there was an unspoken rapport between us. There was never a problem of disagreement, even when deciding to use an "oh" or an "ah" (wa or yo) in the dialogue. It was incredible. Naturally, there were times when we clung to our own opinions. After all, we were both rather stubborn and wouldn't compromise so easily.'-- Ozu Yasujiro



Excerpt


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Finale



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Record of a Tenement Gentleman(1947)
'Ozu's first film after the War is a moving and highly effective piece whose plea on behalf of the underprivileged feels remarkably akin to what the Italian Neo-Realists were doing contemporaneously. Choko Iida gives a marvelous performance as a dour widow who finds herself in custody of a stoic orphan boy with a nasty bedwetting habit. For much of this film Ozu is at his best, when narrative concerns take a back seat to the unbridled joy of witnessing the rhythms of human interaction with all its quirky mannerisms: you're no longer following a story, you're watching life unfold before your eyes. Towards the end, the social agenda upsets this rhythm somewhat, but the last shot of numerous orphans lying about in a playground has a deeply troubling quality that lingers in the memory.'-- alsolikelife



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Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941)
'The family atmosphere here is similar to that of The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice. For this very reason, I paid special attention to making material love the dominating theme. The final scenes were shot hastily. The company said, "if we don't wrap up the film today, we will miss the screening schedule." "Today" actually meant "two hours!". I had to resort to a long shot to finish up. Although this was not the most ideal way to film, one could not tell from the composition. If everyone got on well and had a good time during production, then I would become fond of that film, irrespective of the end result. In that respect, Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is a work I'm pleased with. I worked with Saburi Shin and Takamine Mieko for the first time. By the standards of those times, it was a classy production which perhaps explains why it become a box office hit and refuted the theory that my films could never sell. Ever since then, my films had started to perform better at the box office.'-- Ozu Yasujiro



The entire film



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The Only Son(1936)
'Ozu enters William Wyler terrain with a somber upscale family drama about a mother and daughter who are shuttled in unwelcome fashion from one family member's home to another following the death of the family patriarch. The thematic elements of displacement within a family unit anticipate TOKYO STORY -- there's even a bedtime scene between the mother and daughter that echoes one in the later film. There's a startling lack of music in this film, esp. during Ozu's normally music-filled transitional shots, that contribute to an overall sense of tense unease that touches on what might have been the general wartime state of mind among Japanese at that time.'-- alsolikelife



The entire film



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A Story of Floating Weeds(1934)
'Remakably similar in structure yet different in tonal effect to Ozu's more famous 1959 remake, this story of a travelling troupe's last days in a seaside village was one of Ozu's first forays into a quiet, rural background, though it still feels brisk compared to the more staid and sumptuous remake. The depictions of stage life are more slapstick-oriented than in the remake (most notably in Tokkan Kozo's hilarious turn in a full-sized dog costume), but are counterbalanced by sensitive portrayals of all the characters, especially the great, dignified lead performance by Takeshi Sakamoto. The romantic interludes are as powerful as in the remake, though without employing the overt sensuality of on-screen kissing; instead there appears to be the use of a filter or gauze to give the scenes between the young couple an otherworldly effect, which gives more emphasis of the idea of the actress employed to seduce the troupe leader's son enacting a "performance".'-- alsolikelife



The entire film



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I Was Born, But...(1932)
'Put in simple terms, this is one of the greatest silent movies ever made. Though the film was intended to be screened with live voice-over by a benshi narrator, this masterpiece works stunningly well without sound, because Ozu's unparalleled sense of visual rhythm, choreographed movement, and humor keep one's eyes dancing in delight. The story concerns two boys who fight their way to gain status and respect among the local bullies, only to realize that their father is a bottom-feeder among the adults. As such it's loaded with acute observations of Japanese society, and not without Ozu's penchant for subtle but potent criticism. For people who are used to the "slow" Ozu of the 50s, this film will be a revelation, inspiring speculation as to how and why he changed a style that already was exceptional.'-- alsolikelife



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*

p.s. Hey. Shock, horror, disgust and everything else imaginable about what happened in Connecticut. Jesus. ** Misanthrope, I thought you were into being kicked in the balls. Huh, I guess I'll have to revise my whole concept of you. I didn't think you like getting kicked in the ear. Shit, man, how are you? What happened at the clinic? Ease my worried mind. Lots of love from here. ** Scunnard, I did. The site gave excellent investigation. Sorry you've been feeling shitty, man, and, yeah, you can never discount the effect that that kind of shittiness has on one's forward momentum. You're probably just waylaid. I'm all right, I guess. I seem to battling my cold into a tolerable stalemate so far. The day trip was essentially a wash. Fun kind of, but I don't think the lecture part accomplished much of anything, but oh well. I'm mostly just trying to get my novel up to full speed again and frustrated, but I'll find a way. And this and that. ** Billy Lloyd, Hey. Ah, two escort busts in one shot. Cool. I always kind of like the busts because wondering what they're trying to accomplish by faking their looks is always interesting, and I'm only really interested in their profile texts with the photos as window-dressing and/or contrast. Anyway, thanks for the debunking. A couple of people weighed in on the SF music scene question, at least initially, if you didn't see that. Yeah, come visit Paris. I'll buy you a double espresso or something. Lo mein noodles for sure, for real. Noodles in general and all over the place. Soba noodles, holy shit. Cool about the art gallery performance. What was it? What did you do? How did it go? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Whatever Yury is feeding me seems to be working so far. The cold's not dead, but it's sulking and looking for the exit maybe. Yeah, I was thinking the pink-mohawked escort into brainy lit might even be a silent blog reader, but no sign of him yet. Interesting, yeah, maybe so on the Anderson to Rohmer thing. You know the French are very into comedy auteurs, and I suspect Anderson has a big in through that interest too. ** _Black_Acrylic, Paris was like Scotland yesterday. Misery from the sky all day. I cancelled all my outdoors plans and stayed inside doing squat and trying to do more than that. Xmas shopping, sweet. I'm kind of missing doing that. I'm just buying pastries for the Recollets staff and higher ups this year. ** Cobaltfram, There've been some Texas escorts. Not lately, though. It's hard to find American escorts with interesting profile texts. American escorts tend to be very down to business and unimaginative, and they tend to keep their neuroses under wraps except for the occasional Emo escort's mixed-up catharting and the good old reliable ones whose bad English makes for accidental poems. I'll try to find you one next month, if I can. Did you get the story draft done? I've ended up working mostly on the computer for this novel, but not entirely, I think mostly because I want to write the first draft roughly and fast, and the computer adds speed and helps me not think too much about the prose. When I hand write, it's hard not to stop and fix the prose all the time. I hear you about the later drafts being the fun part. I hate first drafts to the point where I have to wonder why I became a writer at all sometimes. Have a fine weekend. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Well, exactly about the Bieber story. I find the irony and sadistic jokes at his expense incredibly boring and predictable and unpleasant. When people put that story on my FB wall, I feel like they think it'll give me a boner or something, and that misunderstanding of me and my interests just depresses me. ** Will, Hi, Will. It's a 'gig' post w/ tracks/vids by a small load of artists whom I'm soundtracking my life with at the moment like Shed, et. al., and some others like Natural Snow Buildings and Bee Mask and Forma and a few more, so you probably won't find any surprises there, but maybe it'll alert the unknowing to new, great stuff. Maybe there'll be a download of 'Looper' somewhere by now, but I wish I'd seen it in the theater. In theory, immersion seems like it would be the way to go with that film from what I know. So, job and writing. That does sound much easier. Are you looking for a job close to your interests or even to your writing abilities or something far away that won't encroach? My cold is staying lowkey, which is acceptable, and the internet is back juicing me into this place again. Nice weekend, man. ** Steevee, It does seem like sickness is gradually and lately swooping up the unwilling in relatively large numbers. Mine seems to have been a mild thing. Hopefully you won't even get that much. Thanks for the health wishes, and accept my warding off wishes. And, yes, about the shooting. Absolutely, yeah. Wtf?! America's system is so, so fucked up. ** Bill, I know, I kind of wish my Lyon trip had been an overnighter if you catch my drift, nudge nudge, wink wink. Hot ratatouille? That's interesting. I seem to be okayish. I would love to go to Shanghai. I wish our theater pieces were wanted there. I would really love to go there. I bet I would be able to get some pretty awesome cold sesame noodle there somewhere. There would have to be an outlet or two there. Oh, great, thanks for the Soundcloud tip. I just took a short listen, and I like it. I like the staticky thing, and I did like what I heard of the Vaino/Capece. Thanks so much for speaking to Billy Lloyd about the SF situation, man. Good weekend seemingly ahead for you? ** The Tsaritsa, Hello, welcome to here, and thank you so very much for speaking to Billy. Your blog/site looks really good, and I'm happy to discover it. Everyone, welcome the Tsaritsa to the blog and feed yourselves in the process by checking out her blog/site if you will. Thank you again. Of course, please come back anytime. ** 5STRINGS, Kind of fun when it's in that genre is fun enough, you know? That genre is inherently rewarding to some degree, and it takes less effort on its part to turn 90 minutes or so into a worthwhile visit. Go to that huge museum. I mean, really, do, and report back. What's the coolness about the shower head? Is it, like, versatile but mostly top? That'd be my guess. My toothbrush is red, even the bristles. Yury gave it to me. Red toothbrush, stylin'. Thought that Pantera escort might catch your eye. Punkbutt seems to have won the people's choice award this month. Thank you! Bon-er weekend to you, or even boner weekend! ** xTx, Hi! No, thank you. I think Yury's ministrations might be working. I'll let you know on Monday. What are you doing this weekend? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Unbelievable about the Connecticut thing and about the heavy grip that the NRA has on America and its politicians and its laws. For that to have happened, and to know that nothing is going to change. That the lack of change is all but guaranteed. To know and watch that from here where gun crime is so rare that even robberies at gunpoint without shots even being fired are big news. It's very sickening. Great that you managed to get the Tambellini DVD. I really don't think you'll be sorry. Extraordinary stuff. I seem to be one of the odd men out in that I wasn't that into the new Godspeed, or not so far. It just didn't take off for me. It felt kind of too predetermined and locked in or something. A lot of people like it a lot, though, so I guess you might give it a shot. ** Jebus, Hi. I'm feeling betterish, thank you. I'm happy that you're getting into the Tambellini work. It's kind of magic and dreamy or something. And so ahead of its time, I think. What he did with the limited tech available back then seems pretty incredible to me. And cool about you liking the Jon Leon. Awesome, so sweet to know that the tips were worthwhile. Have a great Saturday and Sunday. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill. Very, very true and wise what you say about Didion, yeah, I agree, and you put it beautifully. I still haven't seen 'The Master'. I don't know why I'm wary of it, but I am for some reason, even though I really like PTA's work. I'l get off my horse 'cos you're tipping the balance way in favor of digging into it. Ha ha, nice, about the elvish escorts. I got the feeling that you could even get a freebie from Punkbutt if your politics are radical enough. I should find out? Nah, but it's tempting. And yes about Connecticut. Oh, I'm sure the NRA feed will be up and running with its usual crap arguments and nose in the air tonality any second. Ugh. ** Bollo, Ha, yeah, nice. Thanks a bunch for the art list. I'm so pissed that I was in LA when Ikeda did that work here at the Pompidou. Grr. I'm going to go google those shows and see what trace evidence I can find. Aw, thanks about 'The Sluts'. Nice of you, pal. Here's to your weekend's greatness as well! ** Rewritedept, Hey! How's it? Thanks a lot for the list.  That new Danielewski is good? Hm. I always admire what he's trying to do more than liking what he actally makes, but I'll pick a copy up and page through it at the store. Raining in Vegas, wow. Actually, one time when I was there it rained what seemed like a moderate amount to me but it totally flooded and shut down the Strip. Weird. Paris is cold but not as cold as it has been. It is not raining today, although it has been raining a lot. So, all in all, it looks like it'll be kind of a doable, outdoorsy day maybe. De-ache yourself if you haven't already, man. ** Okay. This weekend my blog takes its stab at forefronting the work of one of the truly greatest, most sublime makers of film ever, and I humbly request your attention. Thank you. See you, of course, on Monday.

'At the Lycée Claude Bernard in Paris during the 1950s a number of 16-year-olds were fascinated by their history and geography teacher, Monsieur Poirier. He was small, with short hair and dressed in a dark suit. Punctual and efficient, no one ever thought of playing tricks on him. When his teaching was over he gathered up his papers and went away. The reason for the particular interest in him was the discovery that Louis Poirier, who has died aged 97, was in fact Julien Gracq, the novelist, who had won (and refused) the Goncourt prize in 1951.

'He had adopted this name from Stendhal's Julien Sorel and from the Gracchi, the Roman heroes, Tiberius and Caius Sempronius. For his pupils he was the world of creative literature. But more than this, he was spoken of as one of the surrealists. Surrealism meant eccentricity and extravagance. How could the neat and precise Poirier fit into such a movement? They followed him to the Place Bianche to see him among the surrealists, as they followed him about Paris, eating his solitary meals. He remained a subject of mystery.

'In his last years it was the population of Saint-Florent-le-Vieil who observed him with the same intentness. This village in Maine-et-Loire was his birthplace and, in his 80s, Gracq gave up his Paris flat to live there with his sister who, like him, had never married. The shopkeepers knew him well. One day he left his wallet at the florists, and she phoned Poirier before he had realised that he had lost it. When he came to fetch it he presented her with one of his books. Until then she had no idea that he was a writer.

'As a novelist Gracq was a creator of mystery. He set his first one in Argol on the Isle de Crozon, western Brittany. To its dark forests and deserted moors, he added a labyrinthine chateau of the title Au Chateau d'Argol (1938). In the irregular architecture of this building, where the light appears as if through a curtain of silk, the main character, who has recently acquired the chateau, is unable to respond to the affection of a guest and to break out of his coldness. Le Rivage des Syrtes (1951, the winner of the spurned Goncourt), is a haunting novel with characters marked by the shadow of a past. Only at the end, as the principal character says, does the decor fall into place. Un Balcon en Foret (1958), the most accessible of the novels, tells the story of the war which has not yet become a war, that of 1939 to 1940, when ill-equipped French soldiers wait on events. Then the waiting ends; the Germans launch their devastating attack. The ending is Wagnerian. It is typical that although the author served in the French army during this period, this book is in no way autobiographical.

'He believed in the importance not so much of style but of form. As his example, he gave the sayings of the countryside. Many of them are about the weather. These sayings are accepted. No one seeks to verify whether they are accurate. It is the form that makes them authentic.

'Gracq was also a lucid critic. Perhaps the novelist and the critic came together best in the pieces that he wrote about London, after a visit in the summer of 1929. For Gracq, London was unknowable. He would ride in a bus until its finishing point, in some suburb. Then he would continue to walk in the same direction. Yet he saw the Thames as a river that seemed to control London, from the sordid pubs of the Isle of Dogs to the sleepy teashops of Richmond.

'His refusal to accept the Goncourt prize was based on his dislike of the publicity that he saw surrounding literature in the 1950s. He has seen his fears confirmed by the role that television has played in making authors and their books the subject of commercialism. He refused invitations to appear on French radio and television and politely turned down three invitations from President Mitterrand to dine at the Élysée.' -- Douglas Johnson



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Extras


The heritage of Julien Gracq


Footage: Julien Gracq and Ernst Junger in 1988


Julien Gracq and Salvador Dali (in French)


'Julien Gracq: Entetien', a documentary in French


La mort de Julien Gracq



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Further

Julien Gracq Website (in French)
Julien Gracq Fansite (in French)
Video: Julien Gracq refuses the Prix Goncourt
'Julien Gracq is smarter than all of us'
'Anorexia of Literature: Julien Gracq's Refusal of the 1951 prix Goncourt'
JG obituary @ The Independent
Julien Gracq’s King Cophetua @ The Quarterly Conversation
Julien Gracq's A Dark Stranger @ 50 Watts
Julien Gracq's Reading Writing @ Isola di Rifiuti
'Rencontres avec Julien Gracq'
'Le Rivage des Syrtes de Julien Gracq'
'Manuscrits de guerre, de Julien Gracq'
'Le balcon, une théorie du lyrisme dans Un balcon en forêt?'
Julien Gracq @ goodreads
JG's books @ Amazon
Buy 'Chateau d'Argol' @ Pushkin Press



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Misc


Julien Gracq's house


Manuscript page from 'Chateau d'Argol'


Julien Gracq as a child (w/ friend)


Han Bellmer's portrait of Julien Gracq


Julien Gracq refusing the Prix Goncourt



___________
Back to Breton
by Julien Gracq


Julien Gracq and André Breton, 1939. Photo: GBertrand


I do not believe that Breton would have truly welcomed the celebration of the centennial of his birth. Even though he may, in his own manner, have had something to do with the sacred, he had little interest in official, commemorative rites. Forever at odds with History, Surrealism, from the beginning, was never friendly with Memory, that impediment to a total receptivity of what could be, the blank page where revelation alone can be inscribed with all its power of renewal. Breton was utterly prospective, tracking what was emerging, rarely inclined to recapitulate; he was not a back-seat rider. Come to think of it, was he actually born in 1896? What he had in common with Malraux (and this was about all) was that he appeared relatively untouched by his childhood, which he more or less rejected as shabby, failed, too immature. He was really born around 1916: that is when things began to happen for him, towards the end of his adolescence, and the years immediately following.

Breton died in September 1966: a Fall burial that left me with an almost spring-like memory. Considerably more people attended than were ex- pected, many lovers bringing a flower and holding hands. And, shortly thereafter, the dislocation, then, dissolution of the group marked the official end of the movement. And yet ...

... The black humor that sometimes nests within the dates of a biography alone prevented, less than some two years from then, an encounter which still leaves one imagining, that of Breton with May 1968. It is more difficult than one thinks to predict the opinion Breton would have had of the student uprising. Basically, Breton did not like success; he mistrusted it, he was born contrary (“All ideas that triumph rush to their demise”). He might have been violently shaken by the inimitable trivialization, indeed, caricature, of those ideas. From the start, moreover, he had structured his group, not in a way to enlarge more fully its communication, but as an order of chosen depositors, having taken an oath to “absolute Surrealism,” in a word, rather than as propagandists, an elite phalanx garrisoning around him the “château étoilé.” I do not believe he ever seriously took into account the possibility of an actual surrealistic wildfire, really putting the masses into motion. But it is certain that, without always knowing it, the unforeseen libertarian explosion of May ’68, which, more than a political revolution, sought to change life according to the law of desire, here and now—”immediately and without delay”—and which so strongly disconcerted the entire institutionalized Left, even so far as within the fabric of its language and formulae, had to do much more with Breton than with Sartre, or especially Aragon, both of whom attempted to have themselves anointed by the resurrected Sorbonne. One day, sometime after the “events,” Georges Pompidou told me, “Actually, what happened there was all about Breton.”

Has [Surrealism] finished its journey? The world which is now being made—or unmade—in front of our eyes, after having explored in vain the classic paths of political revolution, is no doubt one of those which Breton would have cursed with the least amount of reservation, and also with the most justification. The instantaneous monetary standardization of all human activity—the promotion of art on the market level—the advent of a society exclusively obsessed with “uses” of money and mer- chandise production, in which, according to Thomas Pollack Nageire in the Exchange (Claudel), “everything is worth so much,” headed, moreover, towards cretinization by the media and political economy, where both the unemployed worker’s daily news and the intelligentsia’s magazine, by the game of “supplements” which swell up and are transformed before the naked eye into a Small Echo of TV and Stock Market news, make it no longer unreasonable to imagine, in the face of such a situation destined to trivialization or rejection, that one day Surrealism will have an heir, a movement whose form we cannot predict, one undoubtedly rid of its small sins, which it had overly caressed, trinkets of a time that greatly contributed to its aging: Czarist proclamations (“oukazes”), puerile provocations, exquisite cadavers, metaphysical spoonerisms, letters to “voyantes” and other “gadgets” from the Irrational. How can we know? The lack of a response from religions has nearly become as obvious as the caricature of “cults.” Surrealism, which played a little hide-and-seek with history, and which history did not really serve well, has not “gone by” the cafe, as one used to think; rather, it has demonstrated an unexpected tenacity to survive while in hibernation. For Breton’s Manes, a century after his birth, a quarter-century after his group became officially deceased, the perspectives are wide-open.



____
Book

Julien Gracq Chateau d'Argol
Pushkin Press

'Julien Gracq's Chateau d'Argol, the author's first published work, appeared in 1939. In a lecture to Yale University students a few years later, Andre Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, cited the work as an example that summarized "the extent of Surrealism's conquest". By this, Breton was no doubt referring to two of Surrealism's great pre-modern sources of inspiration, the Gothic novel and Romanticism. From Breton, this was no scant praise. No doubt, however, that those who, like one reviewer below, have "studied Surrealism for six months" know better than Breton himself!

'Chateau d'Argol is a tale of three friends, and of a disturbing menage-a-trois turned violent. In good Romantic/Gothic fashion, the changes in the richly described landscapes mirror the turbulent alterations in the characters' inner states. The setting is a lonely castle in an area of Brittany that is simultaneously real and imaginary, in that Gracq unites disparate elements of the Breton landscape and situates them in a locale of his memory-based imaginings.

'The philosophy of Hegel also figures prominently in this story of doubles and opposites, of dialectical antitheses and syntheses. In addition, the author creates a strange mood of detachment through his use of third-person narrative throughout (there is not a word of dialogue in the book) that contrasts with the rich and opulent descriptive writing. Indeed, for me, the most striking and rewarding aspect of this work is its gorgeous, richly hued language, its superbly evocative and poetic narrative. Of course, there are false notes on occasion, some of which may be the fault of the translator, but, on the whole, Gracq succeeds in sustaining a hypnotically beautiful tapestry of language.' -- Pushkin Press


______
Excerpt
from 50 Watts


And perhaps it was not perceptible to him in the midst of his tumultuous agitation, how much higher than all the voices of nature resounded here with a dissonant clamour the glaring disappropriation of all things—of the altar all the more majestic for being abandoned, of the useless lance, of the tomb as perturbing as a cenotaph, of the clock ticking for nothing outside time, on which its gears had no more grip than a mill-wheel in a dried-up stream, of the lamp burning in full daylight, of the windows palpably made to be looked into from outside, and against which were glued all the green tentacles of the forest.

Then out of the depth of his disquietude there rose a sound that seemed instantly to fill the whole chapel and stream down the glistening walls, and without daring to turn around, so stunned was he by its inconceivable amplitude, he now realized that during his own silent exploration of the chapel, Herminien had mounted the stone steps of the organ loft which rose in the darkness to the left of the door, occupying a considerable portion of the chapel, but which, his own attention having been at once captured by the alluring light effect, had escaped his notice until now. Herminien's playing was stamped with a singular force, and such was his expressive power that Albert, as though he could read in the depths of his soul, divined each succeeding theme of this wild improvisation. At first it seemed that Herminien, with dissonant and tentative gropings, interrupted by reiterations and regressions in which the principal motif was repeatedly taken up in a more timid and, as it were, interrogative mode, was only trying out the volume and acoustical capacity of this perturbing edifice. And now burst forth waves of sound, as violent as the forest and free as the winds of the heights, and the storm which Albert had contemplated with such horror from the high terraces of the castle thundered out of those mystic depths, while above them sounds of a crystalline purity fell, one by one, in a surprising and hesitating decrescendo, and floated like a sonorous vapour shot with flashes of yellow sunlight, curiously following the rhythm of the drops of water that were dripping from the vault.

After these effects of nature came an access of violent, sensual passion, and with perfect fidelity the organist painted his savage frenzy: like a luminous mist Heide floated on high, vanished, returned, and finally established her empire over melodic swells, of an extraordinary amplitude that seemed to transport the senses into an unknown region, and, by means of an incredible perversion, to endow the ear with all the graces of touch and sight. Meanwhile, although the artist had already given full rein to a tremulous and incoercible passion, it seemed to Albert apparent from now on, that even in the full plenitude of his improvisation, whose curious arabesques still kept something of the tentative character of an experiment, Herminien was searching for the key to an even loftier soaring, the necessary support for a final leap whose completely decisive consequences were at once both forecast and unpredictable, and that he was hesitating on the very brink of that abyss whose glorious approaches he described with such wild enveloping grace.

Clearly now—and with every moment it became more apparent to Albert—he was looking for the unique angle of incidence at which the eardrum, deprived of its power of interception and of diffusion, would become permeable like pure crystal, and would change this thing of flesh and blood into a sort of prism of total reflection, where sound would be accumulated instead of passing through, and would irrigate the heart with the same freedom as the sanguine medium, thus restoring to the desecrated word ecstasy its true significance. A sonorous vibration, growing ever more concentrated, seemed the exterior sign of the sombre fever of his quest, and settled everywhere swarmingly like bees out of a suddenly shattered hive. Finally a note, held with marvellous steadiness, shrilled in incredible splendour, and taking off as from a beach of sound, rose a phrase of ineffable beauty. And still higher, in a mellow golden light which seemed to accompany the descent into the chapel of a sublime grace as an answer to a prayer, Herminien's fingers resounded, as if a light and consuming warmth ran through them, the song of virile fraternity. And the final breath that gradually left the lungs as it soared to unbelievable heights, let the salutary tide of a sea, as light and free as the night, rise into the completely vacant body.




*

p.s. Hey. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi. I think I'm fine now, health-wise, thank you. Yeah, I think you're probably right about the escort mindgame playing. Or I guess that makes more sense than the possibility that a couple of guys you know have secret side-occupations. Consider that future double espresso 'on the house' to be a done deal then. Slightly burnt does sound tingly, cool, I'll try that. The art gallery gig sounds really nice. Do you compose your songs and music on the piano first and then layer and dense them up? I did have some noodles since we last spoke. Just some Cappellini with a splash of Pesto Rosso and soy Emmental shreds and crumbled veggie burger, but, hey. What did your weekend do to you? ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you. A still from 'L'Avventura'? Oops. Any meta in that case was accidental, I'm afraid. My fave Ozu is 'Late Spring', as I think you know. Thanks for that behind the scenes Ozu info. Did not know that. Hm. ** Tosh, Thanks, T. I just got through/warded off a cold over here, so discreet hugs and an air-kiss in hopes you feel better. Here-here on a Tam Tam book in every Xmas stocking in the world. ** Cobaltfram, Excellent about the finished draft. Strange/ funny/ nice about mss. draft vis-a-vis the wind sneaking inside a house kind of draft. I wonder how that happened. Very cool pen. Very cool pen-giving friend. I think if I had a nice pen, I would be writing my thing by hand more. I found the pen I'm using on a floor somewhere. Obviously, I'm already fond of your main character with only those slight clues at hand. Dude, very happy if 'MLT' helped pry your language open. The Ozu effect is a great one, inspiring re: the creation of things, I think. Kind of a very emotional, serene, cleansing kind of effect. I'm pretty much feeling okay now, whew. Did the article get started? ** Steevee, Hi. Nice: 'Dragnet' like Ozu. If he was talking about the '60s TV show version. You know what's really Ozu: 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet'. That show is a very under-sung work of auteurish genius. I didn't get a chance to watch Benning's 'The War', damn. I'm not on Karagaraga, but I know someone who is. Maybe Mubi has it. I'll hunt. ** Misanthrope, That's what I thought. Castration in particular would do you a world of good. Shall I try to find you a slicing-and-dicing master? Sunday morning ... so, you've been to the clinic now, I hope? What's up? What's the deal? Going to that party is maybe kind of stupid, but there's the whole distraction as helpmate angle on the other hand. Was it stupid or totally awesome? I hear you about the numbness, but I'm refusing the offer from my brain to shut down emotionally 'cos that's what the NRA and their power-mongering lapdogs are counting on. Confusing is the word. One of the big problems is all the people drawing simplistic conclusions about something that is profoundly confusing. Ugh. ** 5STRINGS, Horror is a huge genre that, for all the zillions of horror movies and things, is still so untapped. It's like the World's Fair of genres maybe. Actually, I've noticed a definite uptick in the number of escort tops lately. Well, if you include 'mostly top'. Sex with Janes Addiction, yuck. Maybe that's just me. Romance seems like it's coming back in a big way. Maybe it's the looming marriage equality influence or something. Or at least bromance. Man, I hate that word. I bet Gawker made it up. ** Kiddiepunk, Ah, thank you, M-ster. You would know. It's fucking Buche day, man! Oh, yes! Talk to you almost quicker than quick. ** Paradigm, Hi, Scott. Ozu's amazing. Can be kind of life changing in a way. I worked a little but tried hard on the novel, and I am just having the hardest time getting back into it. Really, really frustrating. But all I can do is keep trying. A blog post, oh, thank you so very much in advance for that, man. That's really kind. Your swarm of ideas sounds great. Have you narrowed them down at all? Americans' love of guns and their defiance about the freedom to possess them is deep and very weird. I mean, to have put the right to bear arms in the Constitution shows you how deep that love/need is. A nation of paranoid hyper-materialists, maybe, and that includes the empowered and the powerless. I don't know. Maybe something will change this time. Change in some way, hard to tell how.  It almost feels like it might, which is a new feeling. ** xTx, Spending money is fun. Well, spending on the unnecessary is fun. I'm going to plunk down too much dough on a Xmas cake today, and I'm kind of digging how that'll turn my bank account into a roller coaster. So, did you manage to fight off the spending tickles and write and wrap on Sunday? Love, me. ** Brendan, Hi, B! You good? I love those photos of those sunset pantings that you slid onto FB, so I can only imagine how much I will love the actual paintings when I get close enough to smell them. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Aw, thanks, buddy. Right, your kiddo must have reached that age where Xmas' full-on genius begins its multi-year reign over the imagination. Sweet. My Xmas is likely to be super quiet. No plans whatsoever other than eating Buche #2 and probably taking a long stroll through deserted, prettified Paris if it isn't raining. Should be okay. I seem to have aced out my cold at the almost root, which has been a nice surprise. Sucks that they changed the name of the museum. America is such a creepy, far-reaching motherfucker. ** Allesfliesst, Hi, Kai. Oh, wow, about stumbling meaningfully on Ozu's grave. And I think you did say that about the Ozu museum. Damn far away, expensive Japan. That kindness story is so beautiful, and its warranted display, yeah. I'm going to demand of my New Years Resolutions that a trip to Japan is the least they can grant me, and we'll see what good that does. ** Scunnard, Hi, Jared. I never give lectures about my writing. I hate doing that, and I always refuse. I'll have a public conversation with some monitor or answer questions, but I can't do straight out talks. I just don't have it in me. In Lyon's case, Gisele did a kind of lecture and showed clips from our work while I sat beside her, and occasionally she turned to me and said, 'Maybe you want to add something', and I usually would. Yeah, I'm doing talks of different kinds about the work with Gisele fairly often now, but, again, q&a's or team efforts mostly. I have to do one about 'Jerk' and 'Them' solo in Poitiers and one about 'Jerk' with Jonathan Capdevielle in Strasbourg next month. I dread doing them. I do them because Gisele wants me to, basically. I like doing school gigs, though. I'm doing an occasional visiting artist thing at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and I love doing that. But I mostly like just getting to talk to students about their work. That I really, really like. Denis and Ronnell are there? Wow, very sweet for the students. But they probably don't have to talk about their work all the time, so maybe it's not so bad. Or maybe they love to talk about their work and not being able to do that during the job is really frustrating? I'd do that gig you mentioned. It sounds cool. I don't know, let me know it's a real possibility, I guess. Thanks for thinking of that. My cold's gone. How diminished is your malaise? A little bit at least, right? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. The YnY launch looks great. And Peter William Holden's show looks intriguing in that shot. Was it? What is that gift on your arm? I couldn't tell. A little building-y kind of thing? Everyone, witness the glory of the just-past launch of the new issue of the great Yuck 'n Yum by clicking this and looking at said festivity through the lens of _B_A, won't you? ** David J. White, Hi, David. Merry almost Xmas! Wonderful that you're a fellow Ozu lover, and a fellow 'Late Spring' lover to boot. Our filmic tastes are interestingly aligned. I will sneak you into my next conversation with Christophe indeed. Oh, that's very cool about Zadie Smith teaching 'MLT'. She's been really nice and supportive of my stuff, which is very cool since I don't know her personally at all. Thank you for the boosting info, man. Things really good? Really hope so. ** Bill, Well, Lyon's closeness and my birthday being on the horizon does seem like a hand of fate slapping me across the face kind of situation maybe. The 22nd is fairly soonish. Where are you leaving town to be? Not halfway across the world again? Not that that's a bad idea at all, jet lag notwithstanding. Cold sesame noodle is actually very hard to find here. I have never found it anywhere. Much less Szechuan style, which is my absolute favorite. Not even bland, half-assed cold sesame noodle. Stranger than strange. I might just have to break down and try to make some myself, which I suppose probably isn't so very hard. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. So very true re: Ozu and thank you. I'm so glad to hear your trip is filled with enjoyment. I was hoping. Too much caffeine has a really unpleasant effect. It seems like you would just get better and better the more you drink, but it doesn't work. I think the stomach is the problem maybe. It can't deconstruct caffeine properly. I don't know. I do remember that bookstore. It felt kind of nice, right? And it actually has a stock of excellent books too? I didn't get a chance to even look. Yes, Keith Waldrop is a lovely poet. Wow, I should read him. I haven't in a while. Interesting about Valery. Yes, he's really something else. Gosh, you've kind of inadvertently given my day ahead some clear reading choices. Thank you, pal. Keep enjoying everything. ** Alan, Uh, is that you sarcastically putting words I never said into my mouth, or are you proposing some bizarre new version of anarchism, or what was that? ** Bollo, Thanks a lot, buddy, about 'TS'. Yeah, I wish so about Artforum too, but I don't think I'm on the new editor's wavelength or something. Right, exactly, about the new Godspeed. That's been my reaction too. I will try it again at some point. I read The Wire's review after I'd already listened to it, and I thought that review was kind of spot on. Hope the getting done and seeing people balanced out in your total favor, man. You leave tomorrow? A preemptive bon voyage. ** Okay. Please begin your week by investigating today's post about the very great and too under-read writer Julien Gracq. He's really something, folks. See if you think so. See you tomorrow.