The 2 Big "F"
By Adela Toplean | April 27, 2008 - 1:55 pm - Posted in life 'n art
I often talk to people that tell me how much they hate definitions, logic, the rules and  the regulations. They want “freedom”. They want to think with their “hearts”, not with their brains. They are guided by their “souls”, not by their reason. They enjoy telling you “that’s how I feel, and you can’t contradict my feelings”. Sure, who’d mess with one’s feelings?!…

I can’t tell you how much I despise this empty discourse on “freedom” and “feeling”. It is a perverted understanding of both.

And it conceals just about everything that’s hard to admit: lack of commitment, laziness of the reason, social misleading, (or better said, an intricate hide ‘n seek with one’s own social tasks), emotional tergiversation, an unstoppable desire to do something wrong things without taking the responsibility for it (in short: an arbitrary morality), an approximate understanding of what’s important for one’s self, a fundamental lack of existential honesty and, finally, an absolutely chaotic and discretionary knowledge of history, religion, literature, art and daily living.
The world’s not at one’s will. You can’t take the liberty to understand liberty in whatever sense you like. Freedom has its own routine, rules and regulations. And rituals. And of course a long and well-defined tradition. So no inner freedom operates in a social, historical, cultural and emotional void. Or viceversa. And therefore, freedom also deals – we like it or not – with a harmonious living. And it’s mostly about 1. a very sharp sense of initiative (intended to fit the outside world) and 2. an updated version of the self (intended to meet the most subtle requirements of self-evaluation).
Neither the “freedom” nor any other “humanistic concept” can make you somebody that matters. Take any possible liberty and you will soon hate yourself. Learn every possible definition and you will hate knowledge for good and all. Follow your egoistic heart till the end of the road and you’ll lose your friends and family in less than one year. Stick to rigorous logic and see yourself losing the precious sense of spiritual and emotional nebulousness.
The rules and regulations are not the antonyms of “freedom” and “feeling”. That might sound commonsensical for a well-intended philosopher. But this is certainly something hard to instill for most of the people around me who arrogantly reject the logical thinking. Well, if you ask me, I’d say that just one thing can be more harmful and more inopportune than the excess of logic: the complete lack of logic. And that’s precisely what I see around me, every single damn day: a frantic exposure of chaotic thinking and a circus of crisscrossing bouncy feelings. It’s a mad-house of free clowns out there.

PS: Music? No iPod today. I will play and sing instead. I’ve just learned to play Wainwright’s “Going To A Town” and Hegarty’s “Hope There’s Someone”. On the piano. Oh it’s lovely to be at my parents’. Not to mention all those home-made cakes…And somebody please stop my father from playing those “Hotel California” country variants…

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We The Living
By Adela Toplean | April 21, 2008 - 9:38 am - Posted in life 'n art

God is anything but autistic. We are all invited to extroversion.

PS: A canvas becomes the canvas only after being painted the second time. And so, after 20 more hours of work, “Diana with the black sun” has become “Diana with the black rabbit”. I’m proud of her.

PS2: I’ve just seen Du levande (“You the living”) , the new Roy Andersson movie. Apart from the fact that it could have been just as well named Sånger från andra våningen (which is “the other” movie he has made in 2000), and that one could have been easily named Du levande, there’s not much left to say about it. Everything has been already said back then. However, some scenes were good. But some were bad. And most of them were banal. Just banal. No wonder about it, Andersson didn’t want to make a banal film, but to make some art out of daily Swedish banalities. Which is theoretically possible. And practically doable if he’d only have Bergman’s artistic intelligence. Unfortunately he doesn’t. So watching this film has been – for me at least – close to a complete waste of time. At the same time, I admit it might have been the perfect Friday evening catch for the grossest snobs. Those who (genuinely?) believe that the right measure for an art movie is the amount of boredom per minute. Today’s artists must understand that the simple reproduction of the banal is NOT automatically interesting and certainly NOT automatically art. Now you’ll reply that Andersson doesn’t reproduce any banal reality, not without previously distorting it, not without transforming it into a paroxysmal attack. I agree, that’s what he does. How? Stereotyping the stereotypes, banalizing the banal, reducing to silence the silence, reducing to tears the tears, and killing the dead. Why? Because this is supposed to generate metaphors of existential insecurity. Well, believe me, it doesn’t. It’s just a slideshow of depressing and – way too obvious – scenes of quotidian decomposition. Every single word and every single image in this film is flat. And tautological. It is that kind of film you’d like to overestimate, just to justify the great effort you’ve laid in trying to find deeper meanings behind all those obvious connections: Anna’s (however beautiful) dream and the lack of the Swedish emotional commitment; the electric chair scene and the typical Swedish conformism and fear of open conflicts; etc. The movie is a rhetorical parade of just about everything that’s wrong and Swedish. A slideshow of self-obvious images. And all of them are exceedingly moralizing – another symptom of pretentiousness. The prayer-scene and the psychiatrist’s monologue ended up by being embarrassing. However, I’d like to salute the humor. It was good humor.

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Fight Club 1
By Adela Toplean | April 18, 2008 - 7:15 am - Posted in life 'n art
The dressing room of the swimming club. No one in there. Except me and a 35-and-something lady looking irritated. I was about to undress, she was about to get dressed. Have you met that woman who tries to ignore your presence by looking pissed off? Well, it’s her. She throws her things in her sport bag, she combs her hair as if she’d want to pull off her head, with every look, she’s telling “and now YOU, as if I haven’t got enough to put up with!” You reduce your moves to the minimum necessary. You feel however guilty for breathing. You just don’t walk here and there through the room for no reason, you find the safest corner and you undress there, silently, carefully. You hate the plastic bag where you keep your flip-flops because it makes uncontrollable annoying sounds that immediately reaches the oversensitive auditive receptors of the lady who turns right to you for 2 intense seconds with that look in her eyes “oh, so it’s YOU again!?” You excuse yourself with a smile, but a smile never works for a woman, and it’s an absolute “DON’T” in a dressing room when the only rule seems to be hate-and/or-ignore. You should have learned that by now, you’re 30. Stop trying to make other women like you. It’s against nature.
I found a good moment when she was looking down busy to double-knot shoelaces and I’ve found my way to the mirror trying to hide as much hair as possible under a swim cap. I’ve seen her in the mirror leaving the dressing room, without a single “bye”, just a door slapped and a breeze of fruity perfume that I’ve always found unacceptable for a grown-up woman trying to get by in this highly competitive world. God, it felt good to be alone. I’ve started my usual dressing room- humming that I particularly enjoy because of the nice echo I get from the empty lodge. This time I got considerable pleasure from the “shhh” of Bowie’s “China Girl”.
Back to my corner, ready to put my swimming glasses on and find my way to the pool. Surprise. My brand glasses were missing. They were right there, on the bench, before my moving 5-meters away, to the mirror. I checked my sport bag knowing for sure I ain’t gonna find them in there. I didn’t. I looked under the bench. No. Suddenly I knew that my life, from that point on, won’t be the same. I had two possibilities, both extreme, both unacceptable for a socially phobic AND narcissistic human like me: 1. Go and swim without the swimming glasses and ruin my contact lenses that cost me a fortune, or 2. Go and find the pissed-off-lady – unless she didn’t find her way to the parking place and drove home for good – and humiliate myself by asking her to give back what’s mine. For a second or two, none of these two options seemed probable to me. But a few moments later, there I was, rushing down the corridor in my swimsuit, having people looking at me, excusing myself for bumping into a bunch of kids, freezing, trembling, slipping, and there she was, waiting for her guy to get dressed in the cloakroom. She looked all shined up, smiling and talking to the guy who was still fumbling with his pants down under his knees. She looked like someone else. Could you imagine the embarrassment, the guilt, the humiliation I was going through while trying to open my mouth and explain my presence there? When she saw me, she became once again irritated. This time she finally had a reason to study me and declare herself unsatisfied right away. I could see how deeply she detested me. My words could only make things worse. I looked like a victim, I behaved like a victim, I talked like a hopeless lamb caught by an wolf. I could hardly hear my own voice explaining, excusing myself “by mistake, if only by mistake, I mean of course you didn’t intend to…erhm…you know…if only by mistake, I’m very shortsighted you know I wear contact lenses, without my swimming glasses…is a disaster…would you…please…check…if…by mistake…”, etc., etc. My speech lasted an eternity. She smelled blood immediately. She raised her voice like a thunder. “How dare you…” and such. Her (still pantless) boyfriend seemed to enjoy the moment. He just sat there and stared. She pulled out her own swimming glasses. She had them in her bag. Good brand, I have to admit. They weren’t mine, I admitted that too. She was all red with anger. I was red too, mostly because of my red swimsuit, because I was however ready to faint with shame, I could however guess that my natural color was white. She was about to make a point and leave the room (leaving her pantless boyfriend there, in disdain) when I’ve spotted my swim glasses in the pocket of her bag. I must admit I couldn’t believe my eyes, because I was just beginning to accept the fact that some extraterrestrial powers have made my glasses disappear. The guilt is a strange mechanism, isn’t it? In that moment, I would have given ANYTHING for her to be right and me to be wrong, and simply acknowledge the unfortunate paranormal event. I felt comfortable with my being silly and irrational and suspicious. I felt completely lost now that there was no doubt about her culpability. Like a Messiah, I would have taken everything upon me, just to know her clean and innocent. Crucified, yes, if needed. I even loved her for a moment. I forgot how she made me feel unwelcomed in the dressing room, how she left without a bloody greeting, how she took my swimming glasses and put them in her pocket while I was fixing my cap in the mirror. I wanted to free her. She murmured something between her teeth that could have been a “sorry”. I am not sure. I took my glasses and left.
I might have got drowned as well.

PS: Music? Well, that’s a hard one. As I will be heading for the super market in a few minutes, I will make my option for a well-balanced Rolling Stone playlist. Something new and something old. Something cheap and something exquisite. Something borrowed (“Paint it Black”?) and something original. The perfect bride for a Friday wedding.

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Low Tide Zone
By Adela Toplean | April 14, 2008 - 12:20 pm - Posted in life 'n art
Not everybody’s able to learn from mistakes and bad lucks. To some of us, the consequences of a mistake can be paralyzing. At the same time, I have to mention that people who get a kick-start from something they’ve done wrong would have get kicked anyway sooner or later, out in the blue, or for any other reason.
Learning from your mistakes is actually a rare thing, a real inner adventure. Some have died on the way. Some returned empty-handed. Some gave up. But most of us never tried.
The process through which one’s life evolves from a misfortune to a bright future is extremely complex and more rare than journalists and biographers actually believe. One would be a fool to assume that one’s weaknesses, mistakes and misfortunes will, just like that, become qualities and luckiness. Everything’s possible when it comes to humans, except magic and alchemy. That is, trash will never turn to gold. Disguising weaknesses into qualities and errors into triumphs is an extremely popular move among humans. But no alchemy is involved here, just a mental subterfuge and some drama education; however, disguising is just one of the many ways of digesting indigestible happenings in one’s life.
Another one is – you wouldn’t believe it – giving up. More exactly, some people simply decide they cannot live “up” to their own mistake standards. So they walk out on themselves, this way hoping to escape the self-reproductive capacity of their errors. Here we deal with the – literally – “pathetic losers”; such losers make no difference between themselves and their mistake; so they end up denying the whole package instead, and take considerable pleasure from whining and cursing themselves for failing again. And they’d just love you to pity them too.
But how many of the people you know actually dare to confront their own mistakes and misfortunes, and then act accordingly to this confrontation? Very, very few. And they are not alchemists. They’re “oceanologists”. When a misfortune happens, when the whole world falls down into pieces, then, and only then, everything will become clear and stark for a couple of hours; days maybe. This is the low tide. The moment when you can finally look below and find animals hiding there, shells and seaweed sticking out of the sand, the slippery stones, and all that golden mud… It’s an otherworldly silence down there. And you finally understand. There’s no sense in hoping to turn a bad luck into diamonds and pearls. It’s mud and you don’t even have to take my word for it. Just kneel down and look closely. It’s low tide. And you’re the oceanologist.

PS: new canvas above. I really love this canvas. It’s called “Sleeping drunk” and I think is among my most underrated paintings :) .

PS2: I’ve been extremely musical through the whole weekend. I don’t even know what music to mention and what to leave out. However, among other exciting listenings and watchings, I’ve spent a whole Saturday evening looking (for the 100000002nd time) at Bowie’s Reality Tour DVD. I cannot think of any other better performer right now. The stage design, the outfit, the voice, the moves, the band, the playlist, the audience – how perfect can one be and still be human, I wonder??? And later came The Animals and some of their rare TV-shows. And then came the latest Cave & Bad Seeds album Dig, Lazarus, dig! that I absolutely enjoy but I absolutely don’t love it (except, perhaps, the song “Dig, Lazarus…”). What I always disliked in Cave’s writing and singing is the excess of pathos. I am not too impressed with his decadent lyrics, I am not necessarily moved by his comedowns…He’s simply too…obvious. There’s a sort of gratuity in all his music that, from time to time, makes me yawn.

PS3:…and please don’t call me or expect me to mail you back. I’m sick. I still don’t know how I managed to finish this post.

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…and then came the Cook
By Adela Toplean | April 9, 2008 - 1:50 pm - Posted in life 'n art
There will be a kitchen in every room of the house. That’s what I’ve read in a design magazine about the future design trends.
Nowadays, people love to cook; most importantly, they love the fact that they love to cook. If you’re a good cook, there’s only one thing which is more important than cooking: tell people about it. Live upon the gift of being handy in the kitchen! Make friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, get rich, get famous, get married. Look at all those famous handsome (dear Anthony Bourdain, would you have a drink with me?…) cooks on Travel & Living channel, look at all those spicy adventurous men – tough look, smooth feel – effusive and fluent, emotional and empathic, looking urban in the middle of nowhere, looking exotic in the heart of the city, they cook as they’d dance, they talk as they’d sing, they eat as they’d have sex.
As for the female cooks, have you ever seen one, just one, wearing boring white cook’s shirt? No way to spot a sloppy, sweaty or stuffy woman cooking. Oh, and the way they pick the wine, the way they hold the glass in their beautiful hand, the way they talk about it, you could swear they’ve just experienced their one and only authentic orgasm. The behavior in the kitchen has become a prolongation of the behavior in the bedroom. Cleverly moving the pan around the stove, spreading the spicy ginger, the whispering noise made by the opening bottle of wine, the candles, the glossy shells, the rosy lobster, the bon appetite. Cooking is not for housekeepers anymore, but for cosmopolitan people willing to mate! Knowing how to match a wine and some pasta has become an important chapter from the How-to-survive-in-the-sophisticated-urban-jungle handbook.
Those (modern) times when both men and women proudly admitted being helpless in the kitchen are gone. If you don’t care about cooking, you’re not only old-fashioned, but also passionless and indolent. You’re a waste of someone’s time! A disgrace.
We’re in the post-cooking-ignorance era. The pizza-guy is dying. And so are McDonald’s chicken salads. Baking your own bread is definitely hip. Eating well is one of the most distinguishable unwritten laws of our late-modernity: the excess of individuality (including the “do-it-yourself” trend), the obsession for health (including the “green” reasons) and the fashionable return to basics come first on the agendas of today’s supermen and superwomen. The ultimate luxury is not a banquet in an exquisite restaurant, but an intimate dinner at home within 4 fully-equipped kitchen walls. Not the expensive conformism, but the creative difference. So cook or die, my friend, cook or die…

PS: New laborious canvas above which, I must say, looks a whole lot better in reality than in the picture. It’s called “Ambiguous Thoughts”.

PS2: When it comes to after-dinner music, one could never go wrong with Serge Gainsbourg’s BO Cannabis. Not too sweet, not too obvious, not too definite. “Avant de mourir”, my favorite track, reminds me of a revelatory book of Georges Bataille that I have read about 7 years ago, L’Erotisme et la fascination de la mort – a reason to love or hate French philosophy and literature… However, Gainsbourg’s Cannabis stays the best half-instrumental album ever heard by my humble ear…

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The Non-Conflict-Generating Generation
By Adela Toplean | April 5, 2008 - 9:05 am - Posted in life 'n art
I am not going to write about the conflict between generations. No. On the contrary. I am going to write about a scandalous way of making peace between generations: by limiting – or even erasing – the responsibility of the young individual for his or her own doings. The sympathetic smile of the grown-up confronted with the youngster’s aplomb. That’s the modern trend.
There’s something special about one’s mistakes that has been completely forgotten nowadays: their having concrete causes and concrete consequences. A mistake is “on its own”; amendable, but also repairable. A mistake is about acknowledging intricate human interactions: more blushing, more explaining, more learning, more restoring, more adjusting, more repenting; less excusing, less accusing.
Let’s have an example. Recently, someone I (kind of) know, has made one of the most perplexing statements ever made by a 35-and-something woman-therapist living in a post-psychoanalytic century: the youngster cannot be guilty of anything; if there’s someone to be blamed, blame the adult. But how can you possibly have so little respect for a young human being? How can you not count on his/her own living mind and living reasons for doing good, doing bad, or doing nothing?
When you’re young and you struggle to avoid juvenile behaviours, your effort is actually nothing more than a juvenile attempt. As a matter of fact, there’s no way to escape your age. Nothing is too paradoxical or too weird for the wise grey-haired people, they seem to have seen and heard everything, you’re just their replica after all, they’ve once had precisely your thoughts, your ideas, your amazements. Set back, it has been done before. Don’t matter what you do and how good you do it, you’re doomed to be “undeveloped”. If you’re overenthusiastic, your enthusiasm is a “lovely juvenile endeavour”. If you’re lazy and under-motivated , your disinterest is a “normal juvenile resistance”.
The adults’ warm understanding and their kind openness are truly overwhelming. You just have to be thankful. They just don’t think you are responsible for your freaky opinions, devastating ideas, sound decisions, long-term commitments, bold statements and hysterical yellings: these are nothing more and nothing less than passing symptoms. Nothing to worry about and nothing to be taken into account. They will talk down to your amazing initiatives and your goofy questions. They will excuse you. Till heaven and back. Don’t matter what you do, you ain’t gonna be a “safe bet” or a “guilty bastard”.
…Not until you reach a decent age of, say, 29. They’ve waited for so long in order to afford an open conflict! Everyone will queue to slap your face, and they will take considerable pleasure in doing it. Your enthusiasm will suddenly be called “mania”, your laziness will suddenly be called “social apathy” and your interest in punk music will be a sign of sexual retardation.
If the conflict between generations has been proved to be uncivilized and ridiculous, the conflicts within the same generation is not only allowed, but also encouraged. And no scruples in sight. No meaningful interactions. No place to hide. Kafka’s back in town. That’s it, you’re guilty, you’re sick, a bad model for your kids. I’m 30. Please kill me.

PS: By the way, try some Ramones for a change. Say, the 2nd album, Leave Home. Just to make sure you’ve heard some classics. A few years back I was completely addicted to “Suzy is a Headbanger”. It still has a strong effect on me.

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Between Me and Her
By Adela Toplean | April 1, 2008 - 7:24 am - Posted in life 'n art
Sitting here with one of Simone Weil’s books on my knees. It is a collection of letters written to Reverend Father Perrin. I must have read this correspondence three or four times during my ambivalent young life, during my latest 10 scandalously schizophrenic years as a writer, scholar, artist, woman and child. I can see the signs of my old crayons everywhere on its pages: brown, red, black. Signs of old coffee too. Signs of old thoughts, disagreements, amazements, fury, aversion, disrespect, contempt, envy, love and an old bus ticket from Paris.
I have nothing to do with this woman, so ridiculously rigid, so passionately austere (like all her fellow-mystics), so rigorously irrational, too close to God, too far from Him. But I have read her works constantly. No other woman, dead or alive, could possibly be this faraway from me. But I choose her over all the others. I choose her. I choose her for having been everything but what I am. I reject myself for being everything but what she was.
I couldn’t bear to see the world through Simone Weil’s eyes, not even for one day. And I don’t expect my feebleness to be forgiven.

PS: New canvas above. It took me about a month to bring it to this shape. I had serious problems with making the wind blow from within. It’s called “Almost Gone With the Wind”. Oil on canvas, as usual.

PS2: When it comes to music, “Mrs. Bartolozzi” from Kate’s Aerial is a safe bet today. Not exactly an April Fool’s Day starter, but what a lovely contrast after all. How can I make it up to you guys for having the patience to read a personal post instead of the standard text you’ve all waited for? Take this song wisely sung by two lovely creatures. A pretty fair reward, don’t you think?

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