Deadline reached. Yesterday, at 4.43 a.m., I wrote the very last word. I wish my life were just a little bit simpler now, that I took a (kinda well-)deserved 10-day break. But it’s not. Not at all. Everytime I get something finished, I anguish over suddenly finding myself at an end of a road. In about 15 minutes after writing the last page, I became strangely  uninterested in the outcome. My completed work is no longer an “achievement” or a “culmination”,  it’s sheer cessation. With every completed project, one dies a little bit more. It is the daily routine and the hope that keep one going; all the good, rewarding things  actually happen along the way, in the exciting process of creation, in the little amazements of a day to day writing, in finding one’s way out of the terrorizing moments of non-inspiration, in the ups and downs of one’s inner drive that either gets fueled too easily or at all.

Finding a new routine is harder than coping with a difficult , but known routine. There’s nothing sweeter and safer than the devil you know. I would trade 4 brand new angels for 1 old familiar devil. I was born exorcist.

PS: I was so musically deprived lately, but I will soon come up with some totally unexpected musical tips, it’s a promise. No. It’s not a promise, it’s a threat. For a start, I bought  tickets to see Marky Ramone live no later than next week! May God help me!!! Hey-ho etc…

Women believe they get visibly older with every passing day. Men, on the other hand, genuinely think they actually get younger with every passing minute. Obviously, women and men have different manners of relating to…Time?

Women, in many ways, are born old. In no Time at all, they also become bored. They look around with distaste and distrust and then go on flipping through their magazine, either frowning or yawning, cross-legged or lounging. Their own body is their only object of study and concern, the only thing in the world that could constantly stir their interest, their love, their hate, their joy and anxiety. Apart from that, they’re quite deaf and idle. No wonder that Time treats them badly. They have no respect for Time, no recognition, no awareness, just a hurt look in their eyes: “look what you’ve done to me!”

Men, on the other hand, are born (to be) babies. After a while, they become fighters. They fight their own immaturity.  Someone wrongly told them that they need to “grow up” if they really want to mate. Therefore, they try to resist their own  constant regressive impulses. However, sooner or later, they give up.  The fighters turn, slowly but surely, to losers. Men are the best Time losers. This is what they do for a living.  And they genuinely enjoy it. The older they get, the more innocently they relate to their Time. They  actually take every imaginable opportunity to get silly on Time’s nerves. Their Time is their playmate, it’s “somebody” to hang around with, somebody to tease or simply ignore. Old age (that is, reasonably dealing with the lack of Time) is rather too much for their comprehension; they have Rolex and Panerai watches, so they surely know what the Time is, but they never quite know for how long, or why. No wonder that Time never actually lowers itself to fight a man back. It just smiles and passes him by. Sometimes it stops and drinks a beer with him; and then the man goes: “aren’t you supposed to be working?”

Indeed, Time’s a sexist: it never bothers with liking men, but it openly dislikes women. And who would venture to say it’s politically incorrect? Or rude? You would get shut down before you ev……………………..

PS: I am waiting impatiently for the new Nina Persson project. I haven’t heard the single yet,  I just ordered the album (Colonia) and I would bet beforehand on this January release. Do the same!

The fly is, perhaps, the most despised creature in the world. In spite of the winter, I saw one the other day. I heard the throbbing buzz, then I spotted it: a black, hysterical fleck, a panic point caught between two windows.

Most books I am expected to open day after day have no substance.  They are ridiculously useless, plainly empty, like blank pages sewed together. No, they shouldn’t have been written at all.  Furthermore, most music I hear everyday shouldn’t have been composed, or sung, at all. You know, everything can be cured, but the artist’s pride… The world got so crowded with “crucial” writers, “crucial” causes and “crucial” chef-d’oeuvres, there are fewer and fewer relevant things to be noted, embraced, loved, taken home.

I believe the fly has never been the subject of overestimation. The fly alone. Everything else is protuberant, tumescent and ready to burst like a severe abscess. One day, every single swollen bubble will burst and the loathed flies will leave the corners of the windows, buzzing all over, feeding on sore flesh. That would be very comical. And certainly hurtful.

PS: Jane Birkin has always been a favourite. For some reason, I have never paid much attention to her album Rendez-vous (2004), I must have been too much caught into her “true” Gainsbourg times… Now, that I listened to it carefully, it seems to me that she herself is caught in the past. She needs to be part of. The duo formula provides a sense of belonging. Her voice and her musical personality goes half-way, therefore she expects “the man” to carry the song on, all the way to the other side. She has an essentially feminine approach of music. I cannot think of anything more valuable in these completely ridiculous “unisex” times. My favourite is Roxy’s “Every Dreamhouse a Heartache”, sung, of course, with Bryan Ferry. The song sounds less “made-up” than others, the delivering is magic, Ferry goes hazy and Birkin goes dreamy. The Roxy lyrics are priceless and the melody is heavy. On the whole, the album reminds me, somehow, of Nancy Sinatra’s Nancy Sinatra that was also out in 2004 and ranked high in my personal top from day 1: the same superposition of classic delivery and modern arrangement, the same duo-oriented approach, and the same vibrant, velvety and husky voices that have to be listened in stereo, not on some lausy laptop speakers. I promise they will make you ask for some wine and some company.