I believe that many people who live with some sort of “feeling of destiny” can be just as far off their track as those who never had a “life-project”. What if we place ourselves everyday, with full commitment, in somebody else’s “thing”? Is the enthusiasm, the anticipation, and the amount of sweat we produce really enough for our quest to be justified?

We should be terrified by the possibility of us sitting in an alien’s life-plan; while our very own “thing” lies in a heavenly limbo, watched over by a drowsy angel – an old store keeper with dusty wings, snoozing in his chair. Waiting for nobody.

PS: Charlotte Gainsbourg‘s new album IRM is unbelievably good. Beck‘s contribution – as a songwriter – is of course substantial, but just like it happened in her previous collaboration with Air, she makes the music she sings seem surreal, subtle, sensual and yet dramatically serious and somehow threatening.  “Heaven can wait” , one of the most pop-friendly songs on the album, would have made the perfect soundtrack for the previous post. I’m keeping “Trick Pony” for today’s post (chilly lyrics, alarming beat), but I won’t say a word yet about my favorites on the album.

I love music demos. A demo gives you space to grow and develop as a listener. It’s a promise. And a test for your senses. A demo trusts you, a demo relies on you, it says: “look, I might not sound awesome right now, but have a little faith, OK? Think positively. Be open. This line, this note, this pause…”. Thereupon, a music producer is a believer. A very religious man, with a complex sense of future .

PS: …and I say: God bless Tony Visconti because he did all those wonders with Morrissey’s Ringleader of the Tormenters that, for some reason, I can’t stop playing. Oh what a believer!

And the recommended rough art for today is: Harrison’s demo of “The Art of Dying”, Matisse’s volume “Dessins – thèmes et variations”, and Franz Kafka’s diary.

The hands of growing-olders. Hands attempting to pick up a magazine, but, to their own surprise, ending up grabbing it; hands still longing to be tender, but ending up being austere and autocratic. Crossed hands in a rigid, marble-like pose, discretely showing their spots, like cinnamon sprinkling. These are melancholic hands that still have troubles with  calling time by its name.

And you can’t look at these hands without betraying our little teeny world. And they can’t stand being looked at without  anywhere to hide. They disappear in pockets, or cross over chest and lock up under arms, they bury themselves in gloves or simply move faster than required, nervously telling amazing stories about the one who dragged them all the way to here. They have their pride and stubbornness and no intention to drop the case.

Aging hands are very much like the two broken arms of a working clock. They never show time. They fumble with it.

PS: Beautiful Rufus Wainwright doing a Judy Garland, accompanied by his mother. May Kate McGarrigle rest in peace…

Life is often offered to us in a killer tandem: reality+dream; each reality backs up a certain kind of dreaming, each dreaming stands up for a certain kind of reality. Each reality promotes its specific dreams and vicerversa. An unshakable, unalterable tandem. One packing case, served together. And most importantly, each of the two becomes bearable thanks to the other one.

I would be very disappointed if you’d contradict me by invoking Jung, Laplanche, Pontalis, or, God forbid, Freud. Or Sartre. Or romantic poetry. Or Breton’s surrealism. They have nothing to do with this snowy morning of January. The coffee machine’s still snoring and I’m rushing to a conclusion: one man, one tandem.

PS: Erik Satie, Gnossienne no. 1 today.

The sudden, wild,  hysterical throb of optimism felt by him who realizes his hopes begin to melt.

PS: we’ve got a great song here.

Take the golden middle road, they say. But everytime I do it, I feel the urgent, alarming heaviness of both extremes pressing against my power of judgment. I couldn’t acquit of my existential and professional obligations with walking the middle path. As I work almost continuously these days, I am often pulled to one extreme side.

There’s nothing static or regular or “average” about writing or painting. The spectrum of failure borders on infinity, and there’s nothing you can do for you, as an “author”, to secure your creative “business”. There’s actually a cold war going on between your imagination and your intelligence that, occasionally, erupts into a full scale conflict. Either way, you end up a prisoner. A miserable slave of either your brain or your heart. In time, you learn to take this  tyranny as a mark of existential competence that every now and then turns into a moment of creative bliss. That you can use. And that only.

As for the peaceful middle road where everyone feels at ease, I’d take it as a mark of pleasant nothingness and decadent “democracy”. That’s where strategy is mistaken for approval, opinion is mistaken for judgment, emotion is mistaken for poetry, arrogance for wisdom, and Manhattan for art.

PS1: “Spiderman”, ink and pencil on paper.

PS2: Norah Jones. I liked her very first album back in 2002.  Somehow it was OK to think about Norah being warm, shy and impersonal, since she didn’t pen the songs on Come Away With Me. Then Not Too Late came out and noticed that somehow, it was already too late: her writing skills were vague, she seemed to have lost the grip. Now, that she tried her hand again with The Fall I have to say I can’t surrender to her music anymore. No thread to follow, no point to stick with. She’s sweet, but unspecific, soft, but not subtle, pleasant, but not imaginative. I have my little favorite though: “Young Blood”.

Cheese and almond pie anyone?

For a start, grind 300 g almonds in a blender and add them to a classically made pie dough (300 g of very cold butter blended together with about 3 cups of whole wheat flour, very cold water, salt and sugar) and mix everything gently (small pieces of butter should be visible in the dough – they’ll be responsible for the crispy texture of the baked crust). Refrigerate it for about two hours.

Preheat the oven at 250 degrees (Celsius). Flatten the dough with your hands and arrange it in the buttered pie pan. Keep it in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the filling: mix two yolks, two spoons of honey and a vanilla stick together. When blended, add 250 g of cottage cheese and stir well. Put 150 g of low fat cooking cream and 2 teaspoons of sugar in a blender, beat on low to blend then increase the speed until smooth.  Add the cheese mix and beat on low. Finally add two beaten egg whites and blend a little more.

Take the pie crust off the oven (it should be yellow-ish already) and pour the filling on top. Reduce the heat to 150-200 degrees and keep it in the oven 10 or 15 minutes more.

If you will, you can decorate it with slices of orange. No fresh mint leaves for me this time, which I think it’s a shame.

Bake your pie and let the first 2010 weekend come in peace (unless a war starts over who should clean the mess.)

PS: …but what’s a Friday pie without Humble Pie’s “Hot ‘n Nasty“?

If humans would only want necessary things like food and motherly affection, they wouldn’t be humans at all, but dogs. It stays in human’s power  to actually want the impossible with the same ardor and  confidence needed for a  very thirsty man to reach a can of  soda on a supermarket shelve.

Reasonably enough, there’s always someone or something to interfere brutally between us and our wildest dreams: mountains with their water gaps, people with their carelessness, years  with their endless seconds, kids with their video games,  operated hearts with their hesitating throbs, women with their marriage certificates draped in gold, warm waters  with their pools, noisy nights with their New York, world wide webs with their spiders, and well, everything  else that necessarily comes and
takes
the grace
away.

For the very most part, this world is about everything except our wishes.

PS: Speaking about the moon, listen to Small Faces‘ “Happiness Stan” from Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake (1968); this is their best album, undoubtedly.