Another long time between journals, I know, I know...
There's no way I can relate everything that has happened since (ulp) October 22, so here are the details of my two past weekends, and very wonderful they were too:
Saturday 23 October:
With EVK I visit the Son et Lumire exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, an investigation into the use of sound in the visual arts in the twentieth century. There are a lot of abstract expressionists, plus a bunch of experimental animated films set to music, some of which (Len Lye, Norman McLaren) are very good. Best of all, though, is the 'Dream House', a sort of sensory deprivation - or rather sensory concentration - room decked out with Marian Zazeela's pink and purple neons and one of Lamonte Young's extraordinary all-day drones that shapes itself to your mood, wraps you in coils of light, offers you a universe to live in. I come out feeling drunk, dizzy and elated.
After vegetarian pizza in the Marais, we struggle through the Saturday afternoon crowds at Louvre-Rivoli back to EVK's equally crowded apartment - but a different kind of crowded now, with books, paintings, unread magazines and bottles of perfume - where we take tea and watch Powell and Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going. Later still, we sample the sushi at a local restaurant where there's an over-friendly Tahitian waitress and an inexplicable shortage of rice, and where EVK asks all the right questions. It's the kind of day Lou Reed called 'perfect'.
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29-31 October:
Weekend with family and oldest friends including a jaunt to Whitby - home of Bram Stoker - for the annual Halloween goth festival. There are lots of corsets, canes and top hats, but my favourite sight of the weekend is a woman in a pin-stripe suit with pink hair who causes me involuntarily to crumble in her wake.
It's a fun weekend although the three days of solid drinking take their toll, physically and mentally. My friends laugh at my intentions to renounce my vices upon turning 30 - suggesting that I will turn into Ned Flanders - but my brain and body were so shattered by three days on the sauce that, on Saturday night, slipping in and out of fitful sleep, I had a dream of such horrifying sexual violence that I won't discuss it here, but it will haunt me for some time to come.
Luckily, salvation is at hand on Sunday evening with a video of K-PAX, which lives up to my memory of it to such an extent that I may have to elevate it to one of my all-time favourite movies. It's a sort of friendlier version of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and pretty much sums up my religious beliefs, as I have intimated on this site before. I may try to write something about it at some stage, but then there's really no need, since the film speaks for itself.
There's no way I can relate everything that has happened since (ulp) October 22, so here are the details of my two past weekends, and very wonderful they were too:
Saturday 23 October:
With EVK I visit the Son et Lumire exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, an investigation into the use of sound in the visual arts in the twentieth century. There are a lot of abstract expressionists, plus a bunch of experimental animated films set to music, some of which (Len Lye, Norman McLaren) are very good. Best of all, though, is the 'Dream House', a sort of sensory deprivation - or rather sensory concentration - room decked out with Marian Zazeela's pink and purple neons and one of Lamonte Young's extraordinary all-day drones that shapes itself to your mood, wraps you in coils of light, offers you a universe to live in. I come out feeling drunk, dizzy and elated.
After vegetarian pizza in the Marais, we struggle through the Saturday afternoon crowds at Louvre-Rivoli back to EVK's equally crowded apartment - but a different kind of crowded now, with books, paintings, unread magazines and bottles of perfume - where we take tea and watch Powell and Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going. Later still, we sample the sushi at a local restaurant where there's an over-friendly Tahitian waitress and an inexplicable shortage of rice, and where EVK asks all the right questions. It's the kind of day Lou Reed called 'perfect'.
**********************************
29-31 October:
Weekend with family and oldest friends including a jaunt to Whitby - home of Bram Stoker - for the annual Halloween goth festival. There are lots of corsets, canes and top hats, but my favourite sight of the weekend is a woman in a pin-stripe suit with pink hair who causes me involuntarily to crumble in her wake.
It's a fun weekend although the three days of solid drinking take their toll, physically and mentally. My friends laugh at my intentions to renounce my vices upon turning 30 - suggesting that I will turn into Ned Flanders - but my brain and body were so shattered by three days on the sauce that, on Saturday night, slipping in and out of fitful sleep, I had a dream of such horrifying sexual violence that I won't discuss it here, but it will haunt me for some time to come.
Luckily, salvation is at hand on Sunday evening with a video of K-PAX, which lives up to my memory of it to such an extent that I may have to elevate it to one of my all-time favourite movies. It's a sort of friendlier version of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and pretty much sums up my religious beliefs, as I have intimated on this site before. I may try to write something about it at some stage, but then there's really no need, since the film speaks for itself.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
Adorable pic, too! Garsh...
s
Actually the jury process kinda restored my faith in humanity a bit. 21 of the 24 people I sat with made intelligent observations and came to sensible conclusions. did meet a couple of the most stupid people I've ever seen though...