Adventurous

There is this strange notion that there must have been a past where the future wasn't viewed with such a great anxiety.

Innocence

Those days of youth, when everything was just play-acting.

Today I came across the profile of a man I've known when he was still a boy. The most vivid memory is how on the day they celebrated their final day at the primary school my oldest daughter and some of her friends including this boy came by and asked if I had something that looked like a tutu. Remembering that I had sewn a princess costume for my daughter for carnival some time ago I suggested this. The girls were having a field day dressing the boy up, as had he. Sadly of course his performance as a ballet dancer later on didn't come as such a surprise to me.



Actually, he features in the video.

Little Rascal II

I also like the movie, Turquaze, because essentially it tells of how cultural differences may be overcome and that music and art could be a key. On the other hand it never denies the difficulties the immigrant is facing and the troubles that might ensue for both sides, the allochtoon and the autochtoon population.

Little Rascal

"It's Very Difficult

...to be a hero in real life."



- Gene Wilder - and being the writer and director he surely is to be credited with this line.

And as the director with this incredible wonderful spoof of a fight that nevertheless manages to oscillate so brilliantly between the pure histrionic and a horrible reality - drawing red and drawing blood.

Two Years Ago

...I received an envelope containing a signed cover of The Adventures of  Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother for my son. Thank you for so many, many wonderful moments.

The Bad Thing

...about Heidegger is that his thinking is often brilliant and I have to admit it though I do not like him as a person.

His thoughts about religion are spot on and yet that everybody is insane, is something Rhenish people have traditionally been aware of.

Equilibrium

Looking close there are interesting details...

and turning it around it may become something else.

Inside Out

unermeßlich - measureless

My Lovely Gangsters

- a gang of about a hundred sparrows having a party every evening in the Virginia Creeper ooutside our house

It's good to observe creatures who so much enjoy to bond.

There Are

...so many things I like about Michael Kiwanuka.



I even marvel at the fact that his record company is called Communion Records, which fits so very much.

Laughing With God

and I really dig this one and I'm glad it translates.

"Tünnes, last night I dreamt I was in heaven and met the dear Lord and I asked him: Dear Lord how long is a million years to you?
The Lord stroked his beard and answered: Just a minute.
So, dear Lord, how much is a million Euros to you?
As much as a cent.
This challenged me and so I continued: Then, dear Lord, would you please be so kind and give me a cent?"
"And what was his reply?"
"I go and fetch it. Just a minute."

Take Care

"Who is going to take care of the children
Who is going to plan tomorrow for them
The little urchins keep on whining
Because in the closet there sits Frankenstein's monster
And the rats are crawling behind the walls
How long will this injustice last
It will pass if you do not move
If you remain silent it will pass
And who will later on take care of Granddad
Who will hide the bottle from him
Who will change his diapers
When all young villains are old
It will pass if you do not move
If you remain silent it will pass
Slaughter the calf with the golden balls
Break down this stuff, live in sin
Rub salt into every wound
But save yourself for the final round
It will pass if you do not move
If you remain silent it will pass"

Gorki

A Sense for the Drama

great version of  Jacques Brel's 'Ne me quitte pas' by a fellow-countryman

Be Careful

sly old dog

Rampensau - Stage Hog

I like the fact that some ideas translate themselves so well, "Rampensau" and "stage hog" or "Schlafzimmeraugen" and "bedroom eyes"!

And I love and admire the positive side of stage hogs. They are enjoying that they can expose themselves and with this attitude they drive and encourage the other actors or musicians to do their best as well. And to the audience this will prove highly entertainig and an actual experience.

Go Bent!!!



But admittedly this is the downside at least according to Bent Van Looy.

Pinned II

Ever since I first heard it on the radio I've been privately thinking and singing "Try to pin me down." ;)




There are always people who cannot be pinned down in any way ;).

Pinned

Pierce right through me.

So is there any place  left for a decent person to feel intimate?!

Dimension

 Colour running through...

Sympathy

"Love is too young to know what conscience is;
 Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?" - Sonnet CLI, William Shakespeare

What's the Point

...of stating the obvious?!

Last year when I was rushing back from the beach in my shorts, an middle aged woman whom I never met before yelled at me out of her car while driving by. "You've got ugly legs!", she shouted. I had to laugh because at the age of 45 I had not dreamt of evoking such envy, especially when I never was aiming for it ;).

Decor

Though it might just be perceived as decorative, some features add so much more. For what is life without the colour?



And the seemingly simplest musical instrument might add the most, if played by a master!

"Ik voel me

...het best tussen een trantje en een glimlach/ I feel best inbetween a tear and a smile." - Toots Thielemans




Adding a wonderful colour to life.

Il Faut Bien Manger*

* Well, one has to eat. - Jacques Derrida

Eating as a social event, as sharing, gathering, communicating, communion, symposium, has always been of cultural shaping importance. It has always been so much more than mere ingestion.

To the Full Extend

and beyond

"It's not over it's just begun."



Happy birthday Joe!

Let's Go - Let Go

and let's also embrace the unwitting happenstance.

Ecce Homo

Instant Joy

Madder Red Deep

Because I Was Reminded

...of it this morning.



Great movie - great scene. This is what I like about silent movies, especially directors, actors and even audiences trained in producing or watching them: There is so much that can be told without words, just by images. Hitchcock btw wanted the ending to be more ambivalent, especially concerning the Lodger's innocence, maybe that would have been owed to him being Roman Catholic ;).

Reflex and Reflection

Mirror, mirror...



























A reason why I love the experience of theatre and cinema a lot is that in the best cases it forces me to reflect. The main conflict - and surely there has to be one - should be presented in such a way that one can witness it slowly building up and both sides should be presented in a congenial way so that in the end both positions are valid. And if the audience later on realises at which point exactly it started to go all wrong, maybe they've learned something and maybe it will help the individual to act more on reflection and less on reflex.

Well ...

it's not that alien an idea to me to have a painting of a pope accompanying oneself. Only I chose this one ;)! The great pope of transition and the one who finally put down the tiara, I guess, because he had enough personal authority to get rid of this requisite. Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli!

MIracles and Wonders II

a happy take on something slightly morbid and macabre ;).

Two Highly Gifted People

...joined together.

The one is gifted with an ear for music, the other one with an eye to perceive and apparently an inobtrusiveness that makes people not much aware of the fact that she is filming them. Even in the rare instances that one may realise this happening they only wave at her.


The 8mm Films of Vivian Maier accompanied by Chilly Gonzales' melodies from lnelola on Vimeo.

Morbidity

a strange sensation and much akin to depression

It hit me in a strange way when I was rewatching Juno by Geppetto and the Whales and I realised that they have the habit of carrying around a painting of Pope Pius XII. It seems like an odd choice to me, but then one hardly ever chooses a lucky charm consciously. Regrettably it made me dive into Pius' biography and apart from the fact that he is a much disliked pope - especially Francis Bacon seems to have been obsessed with him -, the other item that caught my eye was that he obviously was the first pope to die publicly due to an excessive media coverage.

Luckily Juno is a song that cheers me up again.

The Histrionics of Forgery

I never knew I had hit the mark this precisely ;). Beltracchi together with the gallery owner who represents him actually worked out a label for his painting calling it "Free Method Painting" - the allusion is intended. Apart from the "Free" I absolutely agree.

That there might be a totally different attitude to forgery and one that I perceive as less damaging in lots of ways, can be seen here.



Maybe there is even a noble element in it. At least Tom Keating does not despise the artists he is copying, quite to the contrary.

The Great Pretender

Though I would challenge that he possesses any personal greatness apart maybe from a great hubris that shines up ever so often.



Though he fancies himself an artist, all he was ever good at is impersonating something; and that people seem to go for this impersonation seems telling. The point where it turns into impertenance is where he like he often does, challenges the artists he faked by giving expression to the idea that he complemented their works by adding some of his ideas. Now play-acting is a wonderful art and I suppose he would be good at it, but an artist's oeuvre goes beyond a lot of things he would ever be capable of understanding. To the artist his work is reality and it the best cases it is a reality they worked pretty hard on and against a lot of odds.

Seeing the self-confidence and boltness Beltracchi still displays, it is no wonder that he was rewarded appropiately and got himself a show on the German, Austrian, Swiss tv channel 3Sat, where he portrays prominent people in classical styles, e. g. Christoph Waltz.

Some side note: Beltracchi grew up in my vicinity, the neighbouring town of Geilenkirchen ;).

Divisive - Decisive

Citius, Altius, Fortius - Faster, Higher, Stronger

These days I wonder if this is possible without some illegal enhancers. A possible alternative would be to measure more precise those fractions that would allow one to be perceived being faster, higher or stronger - and a split second must feel like an eternity under such conditions.

Highly Dangerous and Infectious

Be warned! After the first time listening to this I had an earworm and the tune stayed with me for the rest of the day ;).

Beat

 "...the beat
   Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
 How passionately and irretrievably
In what fond flight, how many ways and days."

Graham Greene, The Confidential Agent

Balance (Sheet)

In so many ways economy should always be balanced, but would the people of high finance still heed this nowadays - a 'Hochseilakt'/ high wire act.When I recently I attended a performance, the tightrobe wasn't tight but sagging. I was genuinely surprised that this was possible.

Title Cities

Funnily they supply the title, but are never mentioned in the respective songs.




Balthazar - Leipzig (Official Video) from Play It Again Sam on Vimeo.

Miracles And Wonders

One of the most beautiful buildings I've ever been to; and also the place of an experience I cherish a lot, which is climbing underneath Charlemagne's throne like pilgrims have been doing for centuries, because at least in my diocese Charlemagne is venerated as a saint.



Of course, there is also some kind of local patriotism involved ;). Here can the homepage and the 3D virtual tour be found!

Hard(er) to Grasp

Far less known than the Seven Deadly Sins are the Seven Works of Mercy - until a visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam I was not actually aware of their existence, nor the fact that painters chose them as a subject.

The feature I like the most in Caravaggio's interpretation is the group of two angels looking down and here especially the way the angel on the left holds his hands.

Boundless

There's something puzzling me about the fad of colouring books, but then again I'm not a distinctively tidy person (at all) ;).

Who Wouldn't Believe

 There was a good grief?!



These conceptions leave me in a radiant state of mind.

Divide et Impera

Divide and rule - a pretty ancient concept even if it's true that Macchiavelli and not the Romans invented it.

It makes me wonder that it still works, that people do not see through this concept of sowing discord among them to make it easier for the rulers to implement whatever their (self-serving) politics are.

The Selfish Giant

Ever since I first read this story it has never failed to make me cry. I was kind of relieved when I learned that its author, Oscar Wilde, did the same. When his son inquired why he cried, Wilde answered: "Because it is so beautiful."

Do the Right Thing

I wonder if this is true, because the only source for this story is the newspaper article I've read this morning.

In this article on Neuschwanstein Castle it is claimed that when King Ludwig II - still  affectionately referred to as 'Kini' in Bavaria - ran out of money and already was highly indebted, he considered robbing banks in Paris or London.



At the time Ludwig's desire to build nearly brought about the national bankrupcy of Bavaria, but today it has proved to be a great revenue.

A Strong Incentive

As long as you do what's right...

This Happens

when a friend on facebook asks those people who liked his post against hate to provide a song by a performer that begins with a letter he provides.  I've been designated 'E' so it wasn't a hard guess 'Eels' and 'Elliot Smith'. A harder one would be 'X', so I started searching for bands with 'X' and this is the result: X-Legged Sally



Incidentally there is also a collaboration with one of my favourite 'D's ;).

How

would we look at each other if we actually believed in the existence of a soul?

Shatter My Defences

by making me feel the living, breathing being and I will engage.

Strange Fiction

A not unsympathetic charming devil, who is only after your very soul, releases a hermit who doesn't  agree with him from his spaceship on top of St Paul's Cathedral. The hermit in a wild act of faith climbs down the roof and in doing so starts a wild chase of two people, a Jacobite Catholic and an atheist, who have pledged to duel each other. - The Ball and the Cross

Yet Bent Again

and also the sense of possession and belonging - or rather not.

There's Always This Question

And it is something that occurred to me at various times, maybe whenever I got this strange sensation of a lot of things not truly belonging: Are you possessing the things or are the things possessing you?

Though on the other hand I'm definitely aware of the fact that there are some things I have acquired by working on them.

There might be some advice here.

Bent

The flipside reads "We don't need new animals. We love animals."

Northrhine Westphalia

Once Schäl wanted to visit Tünnes: When he arrives at his friend's house, he knocks at the door. Nothing happens. He knocks a second time: still nothing. After the third knock Tünnes yells from inside the house: "I'm not home." Whereupon Schäl responds from the outside: "Then it's just fine that I did not come to visit you."

If you are Rhenish you will have a good laugh at the absurdity of the situation, if you are Westphalian you are likely to bewilderedly argue that Schäl actually did go to his friend's house.

Please Refrain

from playing the piano after 8 pm.

Wander-/Wonderland: Great podcast about a hike through Paris - alas only in Flemish! As an aside: Interesting that Bent should be talking about London while walking through Paris and stating that he prefers London - though I do too.

Shakespeare and Company - Paris

Tap Tap Tap Tapdarap

Feeling sort of upside down at least.