Generally speaking, we don’t tell the truth.
Our ways of dealing with people consist of a variety of – let’s call them – “operable statements” that facilitate our emotional and social non-implication. Should we call these “operable statements” lies? Not really. We wouldn’t even bother to lie. We just stick to the standard talking that prevents us from getting involved, getting wrong, or getting to the point.
We compliment each other, yes, but we couldn’t say a single warm thing to anyone without immediately being perceived as “obtrusive”. We turn our back to each other, yes, but we couldn’t say a single harsh thing to anyone without immediately being accused of annihilating his/her identity.
We went to a very bad school of Management of Fear. We haven’t been taught to handle our panic and our embarrassment, but we have surely learnt all our lessons of emotional inactivity. Moreover, we were taught that the sense of reflection is ridiculous, and the in-deep approach of other people has to be scary or vulgar.

Do I encourage a barbaric vehemence? Not at all. But a normal social life involves taking the risk of getting specific. There is no other way of getting advantage of our living in a living world.
We are risk capable, we are feed-back capable, we are empathy capable, we are horseplay capable, we are goof-up capable; and blushing is allowed. For God’s sake. Get specific, get wrong, get real.

PS: New canvas. Sort of. “The Dog of the World”. Some say it’s good and everybody agrees that the real painting looks much better than the picture.

PS2: Antony Hegarty is part of a new project. I suppose you already know about it. You have probably heard it as well. It’s more the DJ Andrew Butler’s project. I’ve heard about Andy B. before, while passing time by reading reviews I wasn’t really interested in. So no wonder I never paid attention to his name or his deeds. Once his name appeared close to Antony’s, my neglecting attitude towards him has turned into humble consideration. You are correct, I am talking about Hercules & Love Affair. Which I am downloading right now from iTunes, piece by piece. I only heard snippets by now, after noticing the “Blind” video on VH1, not long before Easter. So there’s not much to say yet, except from this quick note and an overall feeling of having to face a purely classic disco project that I will perhaps love it in the iPod while jogging, but never really putting it in the stereo, on Fridays, when home with my boyfriend. But that’s just me. And I haven’t even downloaded it integrally, and I’m simply too married for having a boyfriend.

I don’t understand feminism but I won’t complain.
I know a woman who addresses all men in low tones and calls them “Mr.”, and all women in high-pitched voice and calls them “yo”. Now you decide whether she’s a feminist or an anti-feminist.
The poor woman using discriminatory appellatives, as well as feminism in general is full of tragic paradoxes of this kind. Another tragically funny paradox is that modern woman ended up copying man’s weak points rather than his more valuable attributes. She’s clumsy, egomaniacal, vulgar, ill-mannered, tactless and kitchen-phobic. She’s like the worst man ever; without the testosterone aura that makes even a nasty man looking adorable now and again.
Of course, being ourselves is a luxury nowadays, we all know it, we all feel it. We live in a largely shared absence of specific qualities – sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of snobbery, sometimes out of sheer small-mindedness, sometimes out of…feminism.
I’d avoid getting commonsensical on this topic, since everybody’s quite aware of the qualities and limitations of women movements nowadays. I would only like to stress out the totally uncool blend of tragedy and comedy of turning women into men and viceversa, so that none of them is really coherent, none of them is really doing “serious business” and none of them is looking really “finished”.
I would even say that each aspiring person to the facilities of the other sex (I mean gender) will sooner or later get stuck in the tragic conflict of having to worship what they once used to hate most. None of these persons will EVER have access to the others’ elite representatives. So most of them will look like JOKES. The sophisticated privileges of being a man/woman are VERY unlikely to be transfered from one gender to another. No woman will EVER become a record-breaking man. And no man will EVER know what a woman knows and viceversa. In spite of whatever Mel Gibson might believe.
On the other hand, no woman and no man will ever get back to their very own primal and serene idiocy. Which is of course something to be thankful for. So we won’t go back, but we can’t go on either. As long as the woman and the man are uncapable of legitimating each other, we’re bound to linger on, looking and acting like mutants. Mutants suffering from social insecurity and sexual fright. But how tactless of me to say it!

PS: New drawing above. I haven’t drawn in months because I don’t particularly like it. But I’m out of oil colors, my espresso machine is out of order, so I felt like having no conditions at all for shouldering a 36-hour-long painting session. Anyone knowing unconventional ways of descaling espresso machines? (apart from vinegar, pulp-free lemon juice that haven’t helped at all)? And by the way, the drawing is called “In Wonder”.

PS2: The musical recommendations below stay actual for this week as well. No one competes with Merz.

PS3: If anyone’s wondering about the title of this post, I should probably add it’s a song by The Kinks that never leaves my iPod. The lyrics are closely connected to the blog theme.
And happy Easter all. Mind the weather.

Friday’s coming down on us, all wrong and warm, just like someone’s body. Friday’s not like the other days of the week, it can’t be ignored, it can’t be pushed aside, it can’t be worked away at the office, it just has to be embraced. Friday is so alive, it is almost human. It weakens our sense of time, it stirs our sense of eternity. Friday is (religiously) heavy, (socially) relieving, (astrologically) erotic, (superstitiously) frigid, (culturally) equivocal. It is “somebody” to challenge. Somebody to conquer and take over. Or somebody to surrender to. Either way, Friday requires a personal treatment; the holy, disharmonious “bodily contact”. So can you feel it?

PS: Was this Friday post a pretext for introducing as soon as possible the very-very new Merz album Moi et Mon Camion? Perhaps it was. But this music is, nevertheless, just like a Friday: ambivalent, heavy, evocative. And it has become, under the latest 36 hours, stronger than me. Merz has an unique gift of making the complexity and simplicity meet within a 4-minute track. His music is just as much folk-music and rock-music, as it is ambient music. And it opens and closes, like a rhythmic, untiring valve; the oriental touch, which I find annoying in others’ music, is something that I totally embrace in all Merz albums. I have never heard such a multidetermined music that is also brilliantly coherent, technically perfect but still very warm and emotionally charged. His sophistication simply borders on Beatle-genius.
Does these lines sound to you like empty, inarticulated words maybe? Check for yourself his myspace and pay particular attention to “Lucky Adam”, “Malcom”, “Cover Me” and “Call Me”. And don’t forget to buy his previous album Loveheart as well.
Such music makes you take the risk and blame the present music industry for all the human failures of our poor anorexic and bipolarly disordered century.

PS2: For those wondering about the picture: taken in our very beautiful central Europe, Teplitz, Czech Republic that is.

Time’s like a bee. Flying, fuzzing, buzzing, nagging, stinging, honeycombing. Everything it touches turns into cells, lumps, caves, hollows, riddles, wax and honey.
Time’s the eternal pollinator. Haven’t you noticed your time-adherence? Haven’t you felt the thrill of having your stamina touched by its little hind-feet, and seen your memories bursting into honey? Haven’t you witnessed its overwhelming fertilizing power? Haven’t you looked back into your life and realized how sweet the sting of time was every so often? How weirdly attached you’ve become to its cataclysmic effects, how dangerously dependent on its rigid nest architecture? Time is all about meeting your life’s pollination needs. And look at all these seconds, minutes and hours pouring down like honey…

PS: Check out the re-done canvas above: “The Nap”. It needed more significant colours. And a fancy blanket. As a bonus.

PS2: Have you seen Anton Corbijn’s Control? You really have to. To me, it was THE Cannes movie of 2007. Way better than Mungiu’s acclaimed masterpiece. Perhaps more subtle and more tender. The film grows from minute to minute. It is, yes, a little bit out of focus in the beginning, but it gains in relevance and intensity, just like a rolling snowball. The film is also a delight for the admirers of Corbijn’s photographic work – you will feel the need to pause the DVD player every other second and worship the still frames. Sam Riley makes a devastating Ian Curtis, the ladies (Samantha Morton and Alexandra Maria Lara) are not as good as expected, but they were however meant to be played down by Ian’s profile. If you care about rock, Manchester, art devotion and the late 70s, this film is a must.

Time is just as poisonous as an Apis mellifera tonight. I am strongly needed at the pool. I spent the whole day sitting. Can you imagine anything worse?