vendredi 2 avril 2004

Falling for ... ouch! When somebody I've been wanting to see before I go back to work said my last day off would suit her fine, she pleased me so much that I very nearly passed out. Well, that's almost how it was... While the physicists assure us that it is possible, and conceivably quite probable, to be in two places at once, I haven't mastered the knack of it. To have lunch on Monday with a delectable demoiselle would mean missing the last of a string of medical checks. After rushing to bloghero Yang's place to change the time of that rendezvous, I failed to spot a ventilator grate which some oaf had removed from a wall and left on the pavement. When my toe struck it, I flew headlong so fast I didn't even have time to stick my hands out before I was almost as flat on my face as the metal grill. I couldn't have hit the concrete harder if I'd tried, but my right knee seems to have taken almost all the blow, which was extremely painful and much amused a couple of teenage boys on the other side of the road. Being nearer the flat than the surgery, I limped home to rub some arnica ointment into the bruise as fast as I could, forgetting that you're not meant to use the stuff on broken wounds. That was when it really hurt. I managed to get to the bed in time to flop on to it before I fainted with the pain, but the nausea lasted for more than an hour... By half past eight, I was able to bend the leg again properly and complete the previous entry, but that's it. No more "chores". To each day this week, I've allotted a sizeable task: spring cleaning, long-postponed shopping and appointments financial as well as medical, more of my overdue correspondence and even buying a few clothes. Yesterday I spent little time online and missed out on any tomfoolery, apart from the mess Google made (Reuters/Yahoo). When I asked Francis if he'd noticed anything especially good in the papers he sells, he showed me a handful of "poissons d'Avril"; they were uniformly mediocre. The one that took me into was the musical report on 'Today' which seamlessly brought Brian Eno and Eddie Grundy together in plans for a "new and updated Archers theme tune" (Real audio clip, direct link, 7'00"). 10:31:07 PM  link   your views? [] Deconstruction sites On Monday, I was roundly defeated at the Canteen in a lunchtime debate with Jacques the Neighbour, the fellow who lives directly above my favourite eating hole. Jacques is well to the right of centre in politics, so when we broach the subject, it's usually a case of "irresistible force meets immovable object". He had me against the ropes defending my decision to sign that petition opposing the war against intelligence I've written about here, objecting to the text primarily for economic and business reasons where I'm ill qualified to fight back. But while he delivered some skilful blows on this front, I managed to hold my own when it came to cultural and scientific issues. I might have managed better had I then read an outstanding interview in 'Les Inrockuptibles' with the philosopher Jacques Derrida ("Deconstruction on the Net"), who had also signed the magazine's petition. That link comes from 'The Hydra,' an appropriately named network about eight influential thinkers. The Derrida article is 11 pages long, but not too conceptually difficult though it's pretty dense. Having digested most of it, the one film I'm determined to see before I go back to the Factory is 'Derrida' (French official site) -- which happens to be showing at L'Entrepôt right around the corner. At 'Derrida - the Movie', it's introduced thus: "What if you could watch Socrates, on film, rehearsing his Socratic dialogues? What if there was footage of Descartes, Thoreau, or Shakespeare as themselves at work and in their daily life? Might we now look at these figures differently, with perhaps a deeper understanding of their work and lives? Filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering Kofman asked themselves these questions, and decided to team up and document one of the most visionary and influential thinkers of the 20th century, a man who single-handedly altered the way many of us look at history, language, art, and, ultimately, ourselves: the brilliant and iconoclastic French philosopher Jacques Derrida." The first painting illustrating this entry is Amateur Philosophers, by the latest guest on 'Desert Island Discs'. When I last called my mother, she said she didn't mind turning the radio down because she was listening to this and disliked both the guest and his choice of music. I certainly wouldn't choose a Francis Bacon painting as my one island luxury, even if the 1973 Triptych of a lover's suicide would make a "good windbreak". That apart, I heard nothing exceptionable in this morning's repeat of the programme with castaway Jack Vettriano and his eight discs. When his host Sue Lawley suggested that "to like Vettriano is to lack artistic judgement", he was as uncharitable about certain art critics as Jacques was about some "intellectuals". When the best-selling painter got a royal award, 'The Observer' ran a story about Vettriano and the "snobbish elite": "In a rare interview, Vettriano said: 'The art world is not a lot to do with art; it's to do with money and power and position. Annually the national galleries are given a budget of taxpayers' money and they should spend it on behalf of the people of Great Britain, but I feel they don't. 'If they've decided you fit what they like, you'll be in; if they've made up their minds otherwise, you never will be. I appear to be in the latter category. If they were truly buying for the people of Great Britain then they would buy my work, that is as clear as day. But they don't. 'I have days when I couldn't care less, and other days when I wonder why the gulf exists. There's a snob association: when something's too popular it's regarded as a bit trashy. But I would rather my paintings sold to ordinary people, rather than being stacked in a store house at the National Gallery'." There, Jacques would agree. We compared notes again today over coffee, but he was keener to get away for a weekend in his country cottage than he was to come along with me to get an eyeful of Derrida. No matter. I'm hoping for altogether sexier company -- with or without make-up. Vettriano expressed a fascination for the application of female extras, but the women I find most attractive look every bit as good without them. But I agreed with the painter of Only the Deepest Red when he said there's something sensuous about simply watching a woman putting on lipstick. Whether I'll write up the movie, which I plan to see tomorrow, I don't know. My interest is stimulated not only by the interview, but by the way in which the film seems to be either loved or loathed at both 'Rotten Tomatoes' and the 'IMDb'. That's not an unfitting tribute to a man who has had a lot to say about living with contradictions. 8:47:21 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.