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Links to installments
of the AUTOBIOGRAPHY so
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June 28, 2009
La Vie en Rosé PART THREE
The walls of the priest’s kitchen were stained brown and black - tobacco brown, soot black, with a patchy patina of grease like badly applied varnish.
“Like those old brown paintings by forgotten artists lining the walls of remote museums,” Susan said aloud, talking to herself.
Alcohol had always given her words and thoughts which she would never have expressed when sober, even if they ocurred to her. The priest did not respond, absorbed in ritual coffee preparation: the struggle to open the rusty lid of the tin, the search for the measuring spoon, never where it should be, the rinsing of the pan still ringed with the morning’s grounds, the boiling of the water and finally, triumphantly, the hot strong black grainy liquid poured into chipped, thick-rimmed cups.
“Voilà. You take milk?” He sat down at the rough wooden table. Susan’s eyes were searching the crowded shelves above the stove.
“Vous avez brandy? Le cognac?”
“Non,” the priest lied. His one bottle of Courvoisier was safely stored away to be eked out slowly on winter nights. He was not about to let it disappear down this woman’s greedy gullet. Susan smiled, reading his mind.
“I am a vampire. But I crave alcohol, not blood.” She leaned forward, inspired. “I am a vampoholic!” Susan laughed, suddenly unreasonably happy. “Vous comprenez? Vampoholique!”
Père Lafitte was not at ease. Such uninhibited behaviour, such joking, came from a world that was not his world. He smiled guardedly. “Oui, je comprend. But the couvent, the nunnerie, you were serious?”
Susan’s face darkened. She did not want to be reminded of George or of anything at all outside this reassuring room. She looked up at the halo of summer insects circling the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
“No. I was not serious. Well, yes, I was. But not now.” She wrapped her hands around the hot coffee cup. “Were you born in this village, Father?”
The priest sighed wearily. Here we go, he thought, la biographie obligatoire.
“Non. I was born in Toulouse. My mother became ill. I looked after her many years. Many years. Then she died. She left me un terrain, a piece of land, near here. I became a priest. I became the village priest. I am sixty-three years old. Voilà. C’est tout.”
June 27, 2009
La Vie en Rosé continued
Due to popular demand (well, seven or eight demands) I am going to continue and, hopefully, finish the story I started in the game of Consequences I participated in recently (see Part One on June 15). I'll try to keep each installment short and just see what happens. There may be some illustrations too but I'm just playing by ear.
Beth has very generously offered to host a cross-posting of six installments at her Cassandra pages when she can fit them in to her own time table.
La Vie en Rosé (tentative title) PART TWO
Marcel Lafitte’s immediate impulse was to pull away from Susan’s urgent grip but he had just been mulling over something he overheard earlier in the day, a couple of old parishioners talking about him.
“He’s so farouche, Père Lafitte. I always have the feeling he has to make a big effort just to say bonjour.”
“Beh! He should have joined the Trappists instead of coming here.”
Père Lafitte hesitated then took Susan’s hand and holding it in both of his, looked steadily into her tear-smudged face.
“Une nunnery!” she repeated, “Une couvent. Tout suite! S’il vous plaît.”
Père Lafitte’s English is slightly better than the French of les Anglais who gradually moved into La Rosière in search of a paradise which does not exist anywhere on earth. Although none of them are church-goers, he knows them all sufficiently to engage in minimal small talk whenever he sees them, thankfully not too often. Of course there is the gossip, dished out by the ladies who clean the church, but he pays no attention to it.
There is something about this Englishwoman’s tipsily desperate determination which moves him. She is middle-aged but seems childlike, bewildered.
“Would you like a cup of coffee pour le moment? We can talk about the nunnerie.”
“ Yes! Oh oui! Please. Thank you.”
“Come along, then. I will make coffee.”
Père Lafitte moved away at his usual brisk pace, Susan stumbling on her high heels several paces behind stopped to remove her shoes. Barefoot on the warm cobblestones she caught up with him.
“Padre,“ she whispered, “I am a bit drunk and I should not be.”
“Bon Dieu!” he thought, “I will have to listen to drunken confessing without the shelter of the confessional!” But when Marcel Lafitte decides to do something he does it, and in the past half hour he decided to be more responsive to people. Père Lafitte does not like people. He likes God who is silent and demands nothing. And he loves his land, the ten wooded acres which his mother left him outside the village of La Rosière.
June 26, 2009
COMING SOON: Pin-ups continued
The reason I've been procrastinating about blogging lately is because of major procrastinatitis about finishing a project I began a while back. All my projects seem to have begun 'a while back' - some time in the Neanderthal period.
Anyway this particular one is to make a video thingy to further explore those faces, my pin-ups, first posted on 23 March . I'm in the middle of working (euphemism for playing around) on it and it should be up soon.
It's a fascinating subject. What subject? Hard to describe exactly. Something to do with a specific arrangement of facial features (male, in this case) which certain individuals have in common, along with astonishingly similar psychological characteristics. It's as if they are from the same tribe, even though in reality they are not related. The other puzzle is what makes this type - or, as I prefer to think of it: this particular assemblage of features - so damned attractive?
June 15, 2009
CONSEQUENCES
6
This is the sixth
post in an online game of Consequences. Each successive entry
begins with the closing lines of its predecessor. Entries are
250 words long and are linked thematically. The series started
with Hydragenic and
was followed by Patteran
Pages , Porous
Borders, The
Middle Westerner , Feathers
of Hope and herewith,
moi, Blaugustine.
The series will continue in a day or two at Small
Change.
Expats, or: La Vie En Rosé
“We gulp what is here and
ours and nobody’s and nothing’s” George
said, handing her his glass of rosé.
That’s
how
he
talked.
She
couldn’t
understand
him
half
the
time
but
he
was
a
poet
so
she
had
learned
not
to
ask
for
explanations.
“Guard
it
with
your
life,” he
added, “I’ll
be
right
back.”
Nothing
he
says
ever
means
what
it
sounds
like,
Susan
thought.
'Right
back'
could
mean
ten
minutes,
three
hours
or
even
three
months.
She
surveyed
the
drinks
table:
two
bottles
of
the
local
wine,
two
Perriers,
two
Evians
and
fourteen
cans
of
sugary
fizzy
kid
stuff.
Their
hosts
were
strictly
teetotal
and
stingy
to
boot
but
the
isolated
expat
community
never
turned
down
an
opportunity
to
socialise
so
the
room
was
buzzing
with
familiar
talking
heads.
Through
the
window
to
the
garden
Susan
could
see
the
teetotal
host’s
teetotally
blonde
wife
in
intimate
tête
a
tête
with
George.
Susan
leaned
back
and
tipped
the
wine
down
her
throat.
Three
years
on
the
wagon
and
five
years
of
compliance
suddenly
vanished
as
she
poured
the
remains
of
the
first
bottle
into
her
husband's
glass,
drank
it,
then
dispensing
with
formalities,
expertly
guided
the
rosy
stream
into
her
mouth
straight
from
the
neck
of
the
second
bottle
.
Oblivious
to
the
guests'
shocked
stares,
Susan
stumbled
out
of
the
house
and
down
the
village
street
just
as
Père
Lafitte
was
passing
by.
She
grabbed
his
arm,
shouting:
“ Portez-moi à une
nunnery! “
June 14, 2009
A FUTURIST-ISH DAY
Yesterday I walked from London Bridge Station and joined the hungry crowds milling around the market in Green Dragon Court overflowing with delectable Jamaican, Turkish, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, German, English delicacies then along Bankside in the warm sunshine, past the Globe Theatre and down to Taste Modern where surprisingly no one at all was queuing for tickets to the Futurism exhibition. Ended up making my own humble Futurist-ish speedy little movie which you can see here and now. The soundtrack is mine, made up from loops in Garage Band.
The Futurists themselves did not impress me, apart from their typography, Balla, and a few others who were more Cubist than Futurist. So much more attractive when reproduced in coffee-table-size art books, the actual Futurist paintings are mostly dull and formulaic, never achieving the grandiose aims of the infamous Futurist Manifesto of 1909. Leaving aside the manifesto's glorification of war and militarism, its vilification of all art, literature, women and pasta, the paintings completely fail to convey the Futurists' declared exhilaration about modern life. What's the big deal about breaking shapes up into kaleidoscopic jigsaws? Hardly breathtaking or revolutionary. Even Severini's huge Dance of the Pan-Pan at the Monico left me indifferent. Yes, it's clever and pretty and looks like an advert. I'm hard to please, sorry.
Food market in Green Dragon Court,
London
Gino Severini, Dance
of the Pan-Pan at the Monico
Millenium Bridge, London,
near the Tate Modern
June 12, 2009
ELABORATED LOODLING
I worked on these with acrylics after the initial fast line drawing with felt pens and added metallic colours, green and gold, but the shine doesn't really scan well. I've also done some digital reworking on them so they probably don't qualify as doodles, lucid or otherwise.
June 5, 209
MORE LUCID DOODLING
The felt pens encourage spontaneity and a nicely flowing line. Very enjoyable. The washable felts made for kids are no good. They dry up after about five minutes of heavy use, but the permanent markers are fine as long as you can stand the smell. Here are some more of my recent fishing expeditions in the stream of consciousness.
I've also added more bookworks so please go and click on the links you haven't seen before in the blue and red sidebars here .
New York Couple.
Slav Couple.
Ophelia.
June 3, 2009
WHERE DO IMAGES COME FROM?
You're looking at a blank sheet of paper with no thought in mind, no desire to draw anything you see or anything you remember, and then you pick up a pen and start drawing. Lines and shapes emerge as your hand moves across the paper and pretty soon there is an image: something that didn't exist before, something that you didn't plan or intend and perhaps don't even understand. What's that all about? Is it like dreaming? Is it lucid dreaming? Lucid doodling?
Whatever you call it, isn't it wonderful and amazing that there really is another way of thinking which is not thinking at all but a kind of blanking? A sort of meditation which squeezes pictures out of you like toothpaste from a tube?
I've been drawing like that recently with felt pens on A3 sheets of paper. Here are two of them. The only digital alterations I've done are to add a black background to the bird of paradise drawing; the original is on white.
Paradise Detained.
Words, Words.
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