All That Glitters Is Gold

My professor, Jochen Zellman, was intrigued when I told him that in the English culture mediocre was a swear word, that mediocre things are considered worse than bad things. I wonder if this is still true, if it ever was. A failure could at least be an incentive to try again the next time. Some art students once chose Sisyphus for an emblem.

I Have Other Things to Fill My Time

...but still I care for you - at least when it comes down to the noose around your neck ;). Great song, especially the Aaaaahhhh. I had to sing along driving back from my brother-in-law's wedding.

Presence

Mistranslations occur and if somebody is talking of "postcontemporary art", it's incorrect to mingle "contemporary" and "present". An artist may not be interested in being contemporary. When Raimund Stecker asked us about this term and what it means to us I replied citing the title of a sculpture by Thierry de Cordier that I had seen recently: "Je n'ai absolument rien à voir avec le xxe siècle"/"I've absolutely nothing to do with the twentieth century." At the time the twentieth century was still contemporary. Being contemporary is thus a concept that artists may discard and have discarded.
Presence on the other side is hopefully a concept that will remain importatnt in any field of art because there's hardly any human activity that depends so much on it. I certainly love those works of art best that present something, that incorporate a presence. Something I strongly feel in Barnett Newman's works.
By the way "our minds function with a small delay".



The chess player is  world-renowned painter Luc Tuymans ;).

Benefits

The benefits of having announced on the radio that the following song will be by Rammstein

My life is too short to indulge in Rammstein. They sing the most ridiculous things and no, they do not break them by irony, no, they mean it, they are dead serious. I remember that their singer, Tim Lindemann, released an album with English lyrics some time ago and hearing somebody commenting on the radio that he found the English lyrics quite disturbing. Well, here is some news to you his German lyrics are just as weird. My favourite: "Willst du es nie wiederseh'n, lass es schwimmen in Benzin."/You don't ever want to see it again, let it swim in gasoline."
So instead I put on this beauty. My favourite of all the songs by this title - rather not lighting something up, but seeing the light, something truly to indulge in the Rapture.

Cover - Shelter

Sometimes watching pretty sensitive artists struggle with publicity or the public I wish I could provide a shelter, a sanctuary. The atmosphere is regretfully getting more vitriolic.

"For the love of god!"

Let Me Play the Lion Too

There is the wonderful book by Michael Pennington  - I always like the way he comes up with the lines that exactly fit his subject, but then he has a pretty extensive knowledge on Shakespeare. The wonderful image of the Athenian craftsmen that practice art simply for the love of it and that's how it should be, a field of actions that is not ruled by considerations or strategies outside itself, especially economic, a true pastime. Yet economists have discovered this field and have discovered how much money is to be made in it by apparently simple means. Regretfully slowly but decisively they are ruining this field of imagination, the last resort, by embracing the idea of turning shit to gold. An artist might by his imagination , but the economist is only able to take it literally.

Frivolous

While the cuckoo keeps calling all night long.

Frivolous is also slapstick and this song at least in this version makes me think of Buster Keaton - frantic, stoic, hilarious!

Tactical Frivolity

There's something pretty heart-warming, disarming and true in being frivolous.

Pheme or Rumour

Well, truth may and should speak up loud.

I definitely like Ovid's description of  Pheme or Fama or Rumour in his Metaphorses. She is depicted as living in a high tower in the middle of the world, her house having no doors and thus it is open to all sides, silence and calm one may not find because there is also a constant murmur and whisper, but no loud voice.
Her effects are described like this: "There bold misapprehension is at home and devout flippancy, empty joy lives there and horrendously shattering fears, suddenly aroused turmoil and whispers, one does not know wherefrom."


Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff from vk.pacan on Vimeo.

Honi soit qui mal y pense

I had this video in my facebook timeline twice. Interesting to see which sentence different people like to quote, which aspect they chose to emphasise.
One entitled it:"Stop the war!"
The other one rather heard:"I'm Arabic and I feel ashamed of the Arabic countries."
Honi soit qui mal y pense!

Hands

Because they are so expressive, because they could provide an insight into people's minds, because some stage directors used to have all pockets in the actors' dresses sewn shut to force them to use their hands, hands are so intriguing and yet still hard to draw. Dammit!

The great Terry Gilliam ;)

Antlitz - Countenance

Like in the German archaic expression for face the English one also resonates the other, the counterpart. To Emmanuel Levinas this countenance contains the absolute appeal of "Do not kill me!"

The four minute experiment

The Good Fight

"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." Chesterton

Being Provocative

Certainly a feature art used to aim for. And reading a little bit about Anne Sexton and how she was received, it surely worked the best when somebody was not intending to be provocative but rather told the truth.
My personal experience though is that the most harsh reaction to something perceived as being provocative I ever witnessed was when I was studying art and it was directed at the nun who was also studying art at the time. Especially one female person stated that she could not bear the looks of her and something about women being oppressed. Now the funny thing is that this person never talked to the nun, whereas I did and I found her a pretty realistic person who had just different priorities in her life. And why not btw?! Thus to conclude being true to yourself sometimes can be quite provocative ;).

Let's Replace

the thinker with the listener, introspection with being interested in the world.

What's heroic about a person revolving his mind around himself all the time?!

In fact this is so boring and it makes for very bad literature, where characters are not actually interacting but rather flattering themselves.

Hopefully

there's always somebody ready to speak up when somebody else is slamming the door into the faces of 1.5 billion people.

Life is Competition

or is it?

The Decameron is a wonderful source for stories. One I like in particular is the 3rd tale of the 10th day in which Mithridanes attempts to compete with Nathan in the field of generosity but each time he is generous to somebody he gets told that Nathan's generosity surpasses his by far. So one day Mithridanes sets out to meet his opponent in disguise and since there is no other way to win, to kill him. Nathan sees through this and he arranges for them to meet in solitude and addressing Mithridanes he tells him that he might take his, Nathan's, life now, for he knows his designs and since everybody gets what he desires Nathan will also please this special desire. Realising that there is no way to excel Nathan's generosity, Mithridanes rather befriends Nathan.

Humility

One of the stranger concepts: It's the liberal act of subordination, a servitude out of free will and choice and therefore displaying great inner and possibly also physical strength. Interesting that in the goddess Aidos the Greek link it to shyness and shame.

To the Victims of the Crisis

Let's exercise a little bit of Greek ostracism as suggested in the video , maybe this would help.
I like Daan ;)

Hardened and/or Softened

Chesterton again: "Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain."

Some Food for Thought

I must admit I like G K Chesterton and his wild excursions.

"There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect."

"Reason is always a kind of brute force, those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to the head but hit it."

"The guillotine has many sins, but to do it justice, there is nothing evolutionary about it. The favourite evolutionary argument finds its best answer in the axe. The Evolutionist says, "Where do you draw the line?", the Revolutionist answers, "I draw it between your head and body." There must be at any given moment a right and wrong if any blow is to be struck, there must be something eternal if there is to be something sudden."
The last quote reminds me of a French friend who also used to display these revolutionary ideas of demanding some people's heads.

Feel the Shame

but do not let this keep you from doing things.

A very dear friend of mine, whom I actually got to know because of this book, wrote a children's book and at the time he felt so ashamed of some of its features that he released it using an alias. Funny though that the actor whom he had hired to read the audio book immediately told him that he was well aware of the fact that my friend was the author.
So what was it that so much upset my friend? Well, the book is entitled "Jo Raketen-Po" which would translate "Jo Rocket-Bum". And Jo displays this feature of developing  expansive gases in his bowel everytime he is confronted with  know-it-alls, in German "Klugscheißer" - a more literal translation would be wise-shithead -, bloated and opinionated people who  believe that they know a lot about a subject whereas in fact their views are bullshit or in the worst case even chauvinist. Thus naturally Jo is farting a lot because he runs into a lot of "Klugscheißer" and sometimes when a lot of bullshit is said he would even go up in the air like a rocket, hence Rocket-Bum. So these farts would trouble my friend so much that he would not dare to give his real name. Yet this is such a wonderful book, not just for the farting which pleases a lot of children since this is something they love to talk about, my friend is also a poet. Therefore he explores the idea of wind in wonderful light and floating descriptions especially when Jo and his mother encounter a physician who specialises in windy conditions like the ones troubling Jo. I'm just glad that he published it.
Great art is probably always about crossing borders.

Mea Culpa

The evening before I read the tenth tale of the third day of Boccaccio's Decameron and the day after I had to introduce my son to this odd song.

Free Will

"Now, if  a man could constantly balance on the tip of the moment of choice it would be foolish to say it might be too late for a man to choose. But choice itself is decisive for a personality's content; in choice personality immerses itself in what is chosen, and when it does not choose it wastes consumptive away." - Søren Kierkegaard



For some reason Charles Bradley's song popped up in my mind while reading this quote.

Heartless or Hardened

Last week on facebook:

"Those who are heartless once cared too much" - Word Porn

vs

"Those who are heartless are heartless. No excuse!" - Truth Porn

And me: Yeah, Truth Porn! Go, go, go (for it)!

Even those with a hardened heart are only able to commit heartless acts, if they talk themselves into a blind rage, so they cannot or need not reflect in their minds what they are actually doing. A lesson one could have learned from Batman v Superman, if one had cared to see what was actually going on.

Sex

The best opening line for a song ever:



"I wish today was a very special day, but once again sex got in the way."

A song I also used to explain that "topless" is the correct translation for "oben ohne" ;).

Ghost in the Machine

 Some neuroscientists believe that human beings are but ruled by the mechanism of their brain since apparently every emotion has a physical equivalent in the brain, but what if it were the other way around...

I love to listen to baritones.

There Are Some Things...

that simply make me happy, e.g. watching this. Long live diversity!



Lang leve Limburg!

From the same Belgian province of Limburg and it displays a similar attitude. Love it, love it, love it.

Bleeding

A lesson once learned is so hard to forget, though what once happened by accident, like the colours bleeding in quite unexpected ways when watercolours and felt-tip pen are combined in one painting, could turn into something deliberately sought-after later on.

Live and learn.

Subversive

One of my favourites from the 80s and a little bit subversive, though affirmative.

Happy birthday Pete Townshend!

Unconditional

Live performances display a presence, especially if it comes across so well.


And an interesting insight I came across yesterday: "It's the essence of science that we need to be uncomfortable."

Unpredictability

Just like spilling some water by accident, it is these unpredictable things that sometimes add meaning - the kairos.

Decades ago Raimund Stecker was talking about two kinds of art. First the art that draws its importance from art history, a sort evolutionary art, and secondly an art he termed "authentic". Now I was having great troubles with this word because what is truly authentic anyway, but then of all people an actor made me understand ;): Something that cannot be repeated.

Trust

We ought to believe that there is something that makes us all the same, that the things humanity has in common are much more important than the differences. And once we've realised this we should be able to finally celebrate and appreciate the differences, for these differences could be the means to make this life a wonderful and beautiful experience.


"You, me, them, everybody, everybody!"

>

even or especially the representatives of  Illinois' law enforcement community

Seriously, I sincerely hope and pray that there will be always people standing up against chauvinist hateful generalisations that will only serve to drive us apart.

 

Irony

There is this wonderful guy from Australia, who recorded a record in his friends' bedrooms and when I heard his "Coming Home" on Studio Brussel I knew I had to get a copy of his album.

Here you've got these wonderful songs about love and a couple of years later this guy gets famous and it's a song about splitting up and splitting up in a really ugly way ;).

Whatever Happened to Imagination?!

"...Be what it is,
The Action of my life is like it, which I'll keep if but for sympathy."

is taken from Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, probably my favourite one because it is so unexpected, unforeseeable, redemptive, full of wonder. This line refers to a book Posthumus, one of the main characters, has been given while in prison. This book somehow contains his fate and it basically tells him that soon his miseries will end. "then shall Posthumus end his miseries".
Once I told an American friend about the play and that I loved it, and to please me he got an audio version from his local library. The outcome was he did not get it, the two interwoven stories  puzzled him and he especially mentioned Posthumus' book. For him all suspense was gone because in his mind it foretold the happy ending. To which I replied that to "end one's miseries" does not necessarily mean to live happily ever after, but it could also mean something very darker, especially at a moment when Posthumus has already set his mind and actions into this contrary direction, to indeed end his miseries forever and for good. He's repenting a mistake he basically lacks the power to undo. And he will still get much more miserable in the further course of events.

I love this sinnerman though. And especially because he is not hiding but forced to expose his evil deeds very publicly, his initial and greatest wrong being a wager ;).



Much more than a dawn of justice, it's the dawn of mercy.

Temptation

Tempting, teasing and a great pick-up line in this case.

"I'm metaphysics."

Jacques Derrida's future wife, Marguerite, introducing herself to him and according to him she was very well aware of who he was at that moment.

A small edit and addition, it was suggested by Studio Brussel as it was the first song when I turned on the radio.



"Don't know the first thing about who you are."

Sex And Crime

In both instances only the moment counts, there is no past and no future, just now.

And the experience is likely to change a lot of things for good.



Sex changes everything

I'm in love with your bewilderment
I want to get lost in it
You are looking for food for thought
Shall I fetch something from the Chinese take-away
You say, Love is a predator from a different planet
I say, Call me if you've got another one as good as this
Sex changes everything
I'm in love with your bewilderment
I want to pay for it
I spotted you in magazines
The devil may take me
You say, Love is a predator from a different planet
I say, Call me if you've got another one as good as this
Sex changes everything
I'm in love with your bewilderment
I'd better repeat this
I know how you spend your money
You may determine this yourself
You say, Don't bite the hand that feeds you sweet cake
I say, Just bite mine then I feel that I'm alive
Sex changes everything
Check it out one time y'all

Depth

Isn't it a sign of depth of character if  actions and behaviour could be changing quite radically from one moment to the next given the right context?! Isn't that the sign of a rich inner life reacting to the things one perceives?!

Let's live and let the drama and comedy unfold, instead of the pitiable pit to always remain in character.

Judgemental

 I often wish that people were less judgemental about their fellow human beings, but I guess it's a habit becoming more common.
An alltime low in this respect was when I was working at the library of my children's primary school and in comes this boy. He was about eight years old and constantly commenting on the other children, for example the choice of the books they were reading, saying something like: This book fits you because it has little text in it. So finally I had to turn to the other children asking them if he can't just for once stop this. Here everybody is welcome and everybody may read the book she or he likes and I'm grateful for anybody who actually does read. Sad boy living a sad life.

BTW my first name means "God is my judge", a sentence I've been giving some thought to ever since I found out and it's been quite a while. Maybe it just means that one should leave the judging especially of people as a person to god ;)

Erotic Belgian Songs II

;) What I like about both songs is that a link to crime is suggested.

Absynthe Minded are singing about "splitting the money and seeing it through".


Absynthe Minded - Heaven Knows from Absynthe Minded on Vimeo.

Warhaus on the other hand have the police arrive at the "scene of the crime". I wonder though why both my husband and my son thought the two detectives were Mafia killers though there is clearly a blue light visible on their car ;). So the end puzzled them a lot ;).

Love Is My Sin

...and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving... - William Shakespeare, Sonnet 142

This masterful merry-go-round of ideas as opposite as love and hate, sin and virtue and then linking love and sin, and (dear!) virtue and hate. - Would we still be capable of creating something like it nowadays?!

Watercolour

To achieve very tiny lines in his paintings Jan van Eyck painted with watercolour into the oil paint.

The Passenger

Voyage, voyage!

Years ago at Raimund's seminar "Um den Punkt geredet" ("Talk around the point" actually meaning "to beat about the bush") as we were asked to present a work of art, I did and recited "To be or not to be". Because everybody was silent I began to argue that this to me is a perfect work of art. It has many layers and each time I revisit it I see a new aspect, somehow it appears to grow with me. And this was not nearly all, it has a perfect rhythm, a wonderful sound.
So Raimund felt challenged and began to talk about phenomenology and Edmund Husserl. According to Raimund this is the origin of Husserl's philosophy of phenomenology: When he was travelling by train his companion said to him: "Look at these black and white cows in the meadow." And Husserl replied: "From this side they are."
The whole excursion ended with Raimund addressing me: "If I understand you correctly then you believe that if I got into my car I can never be sure of reaching my destination." And we both smiled at each other and it was deep and thorough.

Well

Watercolours

Erotic Belgian Songs

This one is pretty new and with a funny twist at the end - my kind of humour. Some people compared it to Serge Gainsbourg.



But this one is even more erotic.



Absynthe Minded - Heaven Knows from Absynthe Minded on Vimeo.

Voyage

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see. - G. K. Chesterton

All you know is worthless in the end...I feel so satisfied right now cause every guarantee is gone. - History Makes Science Fiction

Synesthesia

There are of course the eyes that are smiling and mouths that are dreaming. By chance today I came across this one:

As an imperfect actor on the stage
Who with his fear is put besides the part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might.
O, let my looks be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd
O, learn to read what silent love has writ!
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 23

Lessons in Humour II

My former English teacher's reply to the invitation to the opening of my Examensausstellung - an exhibition one has to do as part of the exam at an academy of fine arts.

 

I've never dared to address him in any other language than English and always found it kind of odd when he was talking in his native German, but then he went as a teacher to Uganda twice, in the early and in the late 1980s. This had also the side-effect that sometimes some of his former students from Uganda would visit him and subsequently also our school. The greatest compliment he has ever made me, though another English teacher actually told me that he had told him, was that I was one of the few students who could understand a joke in English. On the other hand it might just be that a lot of  German people do not get the English kind of humour ;).

The All Together

For the one in a hide-out behind glass
For the one with the clouded window
For the one who believes he's alone
(You) must know that we are all together
For the one with the closed book
For the one with the quickly forgotten names
For the one on a fruitless search
(You) must know that we are all together
Sing, fight, cry, pray, laugh, work and admire
Not without us

For the one with the sleepless night
For the one who cannot grasp his luck
For the one who doesn't do anything but wait
(You) must know that we are all together
Sing, fight, cry, pray, laugh, work and admire
Not without us

For the one with his self-indulgent pride
in his risk-free high tower
on his risk-free high rock
(you) ought to know that's not the way we were born
Sing, fight, cry, pray, laugh, work and admire (3x)
Not without us

For the one with the open face
For the one with the naked body
For the one in the limelight
For the one who knows that we will come together
Sing, fight, cry, pray, laugh, work and admire
Not without us

Sensitiveness

I broke out of all social bounds, and rushed at the door of the room which I thought to contain the incredible creature. I burst it open; the room was pitch dark. But from the front of me came a small sad yelp, and from behind me a double shriek.
"You have done it now!" cried Dr. Hagg, burying his bald brow in his hands. "You have let in a draught on him; and he is dead." - from How I Found The Superman, G. K. Chesterton