Just an apple pie and a few words about… caprices. It’s a pity that no one talks about them.

One needs the disengagement of a child and the sophisticated history of a responsible adult in order to be credibly capricious. One needs the innocence of a child and the sophisticated openness of a responsible adult in order to encourage and satisfy others’ caprices. Amen.

PS: Regina Spektor’s “Genius Next Door” from her latest album Far was faultlessly produced by legendary Jeff Lynne (Tom Petty’s long-time producer). Have you recently heard anything more emotional and musically convincing? I wish you all a splendid Saturday evening.

It’s one of those dark mornings when you still manage to see through your sleep until far-far-far away in the world of dreams.

There’s nothing convincingly real outside your window. On your desk, the black coffee cup and the book on mourning of the death of someone’s mother remain – absurdly enough – the only available signs of life. Exploit them and live, or supress them and dream.

He who, in spite of everything, insists in saving  a dream, it is as if he has killed the whole real world.

PS: A stunning song sung by Nancy Sinatra, in 2004. The song belongs to Morrissey and you can actually hear him doing the backing vocals. I still remember when I first heard this song. It was back in January 2005 and my knees went weak.

PS2: I bet you don’t know what’s in the picture: milk, hemp oil, fish oil, blueberries and muesli. I guess I’m the only one finding the combination enormously tasty.

There is indeed a striking similarity between vice and virtue. They can even pass as the same thing as long as there’s no one around to carry out the according corrective rhetoric. Some of us seek to preserve such ambiguity so that choosing between vice and virtue becomes either difficult or impossible; if not simply unnecessary.

I admit I sometimes like to witness such fundamental process of twisting vices and virtues around until they become an admirable construct of human wisdom and cowardice.

PS: Speaking about perfect excuses, Bowie‘s “Cracked Actor“ is one of my all times’ favorites. And live it’s even better.

PS2: My weirdest series of drawings is finally done. They’re all cracked actors you’ve already seen in previous posts, but the cat is brand new. Ink on paper, 13/18cm, draped in glass.

We don’t fall in love because we managed to see (a lovable someone), we manage to see because we previously managed to love.

Jean Luc Marion wrote in Le Phénomène érotique that our desire wants to want better. And so the desire often falsifies the object of longing.

There’s no one more lovable than our beloved one. When our love unfolds, we die and rise again along with the longing, along with the kissing, along with everything that comes mostly accordingly to our own desire and less accordingly to the loved person’s specific attributes and demands. She or he is not a distinct human being anymore, but an object of desire. Jean Luc Marion calls it erotic reduction.

The eyes of desire are something different from the fleshy eyes. The first pair of eyes is THE initiative itself, an engine functioning on non-economic principles, and, quite often, even forgetting to ask for reciprocity. Whilst the other pair of eyes, the one made of flesh and blood, the “sane”, the “reasonable” pair of eyes, sees no more and no less than what the contact lenses, the light, and the optic nerve fibers placed on the underside of the hypothalamus allow it to see. To be frank, that can’t be much. And to be succinct, we deal with two wholly different phenomena. Allow me to sharpen the idea a bit:

Ask a kind neighbour and Sancho Panza to take a closer look at your girlfriend. They’ll  do their best to review  your Dulcinea’s physical and psychological features. They’ll measure hers against yours. They will most likely look for reciprocity, suitability, worthiness, and balance. Agreeing upon her exquisite qualities is however utterly unlikely. She might have some beautiful ears after all, but isn’t she just another Alonza? They’ll fail to see a point in choosing her over others.

The lover alone, by the force of his love, has the power of pulling the loved Other out of the reality field, reborning her again, by reason of her new prodigious role: that of being uniquely loved.

There cannot be enough qualities in all people of this world to make a single heart beat faster. There are enough natural resources of love in each of us for making gods and goddesses out of the least worthy of  all boys and girls.

A racing heart is still a miraculous counter measuring my finitude against my loved one’s infiniteness. And beyond.

PS: New drawing above, ink on paper, 18/24 cm. It’s obviously called “Bad News”.

PS2: Have you ever wondered what is the best  album by The Cardigans? Stop wondering. It’s Long Gone Before Daylight from 2003. “Please Sister” is not THE song of the album simply because there are so many others exceptionally written, sung and arranged, like, say, “Feathers and Down”.

I know a couple of composers and painters that admitted not to be able to live up to their own phantasmal standards; with every day, they sink themselves deeper into some sort of terrifying, glutinous ambiguity. Poor humans insufficiently convinced of their art; poor artists  insufficiently convinced of their humanity. I increasingly believe this is the normal state to be in.

PS: New painting, looking somewhat ready: “The Secret“, oil on canvas, 85/100 cm. Click on each picture of the gallery for a full-sized view.

One might be tempted to say there’s no vital need for appetizers, and then I will have to disagree.

Prosciutto and two mushrooms (previously cooked in brandy and butter) laying  on a large lettuce leaf, sprinkled with parmesan cheese and parsley will start you up not only for the main course, but most likely for the whole evening.

PS: And some Roberta Flack. Just in case.

Reading the latest Leon Wieseltier’s article about the death of celebrities (“we won’t quit until they’re all dead” says a website hellishly called Celebrity Death Beeper), I came to think about whether he’s right to say that celebrities are not people, except for themselves.

I’d rather say that celebrities are taken-for-granted people. People whose humanity IS there to be overlooked, arguable or denied/deniable, at any given moment. Celebrities’ humanity is something to play with, something to bring back to life  or or simply bury whenever their attributes as humans clash with their attributes as products.

I’ve seen non-famous people asking from famous people extremely human things. Those things were actually SO human that they couldn’t be asked from a certain someone ONLY by overlooking someone’s very humanity.

On the other hand, I’ve seen famous people encouraging the non-famous ones to make  full use of their advantage as “consumers of stardom” and make demands over and above what’s normally seen as “human”, but in total accord with what’s normally seen as “marketing”.

And finally I’ve seen famous and non-famous people using each other’s specific human attributes, thus encouraging an enigmatic confusion of identities and purposes often recorded by tabloids as “diva-like aura”, and by shrinks as “hysteria”.

Eventually, a(ny) relationship between famous and non-famous people is NATURALLY built on misunderstandings. It bears little credibility, and requires very little (if any) negotiation. It takes time, good will, and a mountain of wisdom not to lead to disastrous misuses.

PS: I wanted something a little less obvious than “Fame”, and so I came across “This is not America” with a stunning  Bowie, live in the 2000′s.  The ultimate level of stardom.

PS2: The crucified cock is the last but one from the series “Screw This Town”. The picture is lame, since the drawing  is already framed in glass. 13/18 cm. Did I tell you I´ll be exhibiting my paintings in Århus (Denmark) in July 2010? More details soon.

UPDATE: And I´m actually very pleased with Herta Müller receiving the Nobel for literature. Pleased and proud.

For years, I have this obsession that you’re bound to fail if you wait the wrong way.

Being in attendance is not an unfocused or ambiguous state, quite the contrary. Think about those natural born winners and their “waiting behavior”: they do not actually “sit and wait”, they assist themselves in the process of getting closer to the finish line of their race.

When waiting the wrong way, the distance between the moments of waiting and the purpose of waiting becomes greater and greater, until it gets immeasurable. It ineluctably leads to confusion; then annihilation; non-being; then void.  Moreover, an obsessive waiting is completely ineffective. One wouldn’t perhaps think about it, but there IS  a contradiction  between purposeful efforts and zeal in general. The first assures your freedom. The second makes you slave. You become an instrument for your own ambitions.

It is just so much waste of zeal in this world, so little honorable triumph, and so many racers that cannot find any healthy justification for their superhuman efforts!