samedi, juillet 31, 2004


Alberta's blade Posted by Hello
I love this picture of my father with our dog, Skippy. It was a few days before he met my mom, who had fallen in a crevasse nearby. The next picture is an ex-lover of mine, a woman called Alberta, who used to work in lavender fields in the south of France. She had a beautiful body, but she also had something scary in her smile. I was always fearing her blade.

vendredi, juillet 30, 2004


This is not a Disney world. Posted by Hello

jeudi, juillet 29, 2004

LP back cover

Final back cover says "music written by Toog" instead of co-produced. It is an original Remi Gerard-Marchant design, he also designed the TO poetry magazine (themittensbrigade.org). You can see the lines on the right, which lead to the front cover of the burning city drawing, by Florence Manlik. She also designed the strange butterfly that Remi used for carrying the barcode. I love the opposition front/back, there's nothing written on the front. Back looks like a movie poster, and this is a movie-album by Toog with Asia Argento.





LP back cover (demo) Posted by Hello

mardi, juillet 27, 2004


la pomme et sa queue Posted by Hello

Stalking the fruit

I wonder if an apple is being sold with its stalk only in France. Or do they sell apples with stalk everywhere. I also wonder if the stalk if part of the apple or part of the apple tree. Where does the apple start, beyond or beneath the stalk? It's very important, since the apple is supposed to be the legendary forbidden fruit. If the apple stalk isn't part of the forbidden fruit, we can hold the fruit and watch it, desire it, without offending God, which is a new freedom.



lundi, juillet 26, 2004


Pascal of Bollywood Posted by Hello

Sur la place du village

I love the story of Pascal Heni, aka Pascal of Bollywood. He's a french who's now becoming popular in India, by singing old indian classical Bollywood songs.
He was a french chansonnier in Paris in the nineties. He also was a huge fan of Bollywood songs during this period. And now, he is making music in India.

He's able to sing in bengali, tamoul and hindi. He has recorded and released an album in India and he 's playing shows there. When the show's outdoor, "sur la place du village",  everyone can come, watch and listen. It's simply free.



dimanche, juillet 25, 2004

South butter

I checked two magazines at the Palais de Tokyo bookstore. One is called HOBO. In its last issue, Hobo's having fashion pictures mixed with a photo reportage in Afghanistan. I imagined the meeting when they decided to do that: "We're a north fashion pubication conscious of the south, aware of the world's rules". It's what I call obscene... Then I opened BUTT, a very nice gay magazine. I love this magazine, BUT I don't like to have to face human assholes and half erected dicks, while reading a Stephen Merritt's interview.

samedi, juillet 24, 2004


fashion and poetry Posted by Hello

Haute Couture

This morning I woke up hearing the butcher's cleaver on the first floor. I imagined he was cutting people in pieces instead of animals. Then selling it "rue des martyrs".
 
We already talk about the second issue of the TO poetry magazine. What it could be. We think of adding visual material, fashion photos, and a conversation with a personality.

 
Mallarme had a poetry/fashion magazine. It was called "La Derniere Mode" and it was published in 1874 (9 issues). Mallarme said "nous vivons dans la mode". I will go to the BNF and check it.

vendredi, juillet 23, 2004

Aphorism for french, italian and english goths.

La vraie noirceur est grise.
 
True blackness is gray.

La vera oscurita e grigia.






"Volute", by Florence Manlik Posted by Hello

jeudi, juillet 22, 2004

A private concert

Wave Lab for adding effects, Sound Forge for recording, Acid for assembling the tracks plus the Motif sequencer, are enough to try something new. Strange how the "new" sounds old: a song. I lost my complex about songs by listening to the new Magnetic Fields. They don't change anything and they remain fresh.
 
I rarely listen to arty music more than one time. It's often surprising, like "poudre aux yeux" is, but it doesn't really touch me. I need to be touched by music...
Yesterday evening I had a guitar lesson with a bandit teacher, who also was an excellent guitarist. He showed me all his knowledge (funk, bossa, rock, jazz, blues...), I then applauded and payed 25 euros.   









mercredi, juillet 21, 2004

Between the brain and the dance floor

TOOG is romantic (50 %) , nostalgic (80 %) and the 40 % remaining are conceptual. The emotional balance makes a 130 % against 40 %.
 
It is almost a sin to show feelings today, because we have to fight the universal plague of pre-chewed emotions. Avant-garde music becomes puritan, it doesn't allow anyone to express emotions without using the second-degre , scepticism, auto-irony, cynism.

But there's still a lot of room for human feelings, between the brain and the dance floor.
   

 






mardi, juillet 20, 2004


meat me Posted by Hello

The silent meat

There's a new store on the corner rue des martyrs / boulevard de Rochechouart, it's open until 10 pm, which is kind of a revolution here. They created a sound environment in this place, birds are singing while you're choosing fruits, waves and seagulls scream when you're approaching the surimi and the breaded fish.  But nothing happens when you're approaching the fresh meat. Why?


Singers with words

TO is available in 4 bookshops in France (Toulouse and Paris). We will have Bordeaux and Lille pretty soon.

TOOG's new album LOU ETENDUE (produced by DIGIKI / TOOG, featuring ASIA ARGENTO) is about to be released, on both formats (LP/CD). The artwork is beautiful (if the colours are well printed). I only regret it doesn't come with a Digipack (which would have been more appropriate for a Digiki collaboration).
 
I am now starting a new musical work. It is an original soundtrack, it will be sold as a CD with the first Yvan Améry's novel, STYX. Améry is a young and super talented french author, who's also about to publish a bio of JEAN GENET in september. We first met at the CMJ Festival in New York, when he was a student at Columbia University.
 
 

lundi, juillet 19, 2004


banana peel  Posted by Hello

The peel proves that you had a banana.

Someone asked why there was none of my poems in the TO magazine. I wish I will have some of them translated and get them published in the second TO. I am writing series of poems since the early 90's and regularly have pieces of these series published in poetry magazines.
 
1994-1998:
"L'egalite des Signes" 
(33 poems)
in "Le Jardin Ouvrier" and "Petite"
 
This serie is part of "Noel Jivaro", which includes other series, which were published in other magazines, such as Action Poetique, Nioques.
 
and others...
and others...
 
The title of my next album is also the title of a serie of poems: Lou etendue.
 
...................
 
A G R E E M E N T
 
It is curious to see that many artists don't care about contracts. You have many labels who are releasing music without "signing" the artist. You don't ask for a bill when you buy a banana, so why doing a contract when you're releasing an album?  
 





dimanche, juillet 18, 2004

The beautiful colour of an eggplant

We had a nice launch party for the TO poetry magazine at the Galerie Nuitdencre. Some japanese friends came since they believed it was a Toog show... Ian Monk made an excellent performance, reading two different texts, the second one was extremely funny. Ian was coming back from an OULIPO atelier in Bourges. He gave me a copy of his new book, "Family Archaeology", published in Los Angeles by Make Now.

Noura Wedell red a few pages from "Freeland", the sci-fi novel she's working on. A novel about a fictional water war. During her reading, water spouts fell outside,  a sudden parisian monsoon that fitted very well with the subject. Florence red 2 poems of Evelyne "Salope" Nourtier, the famous nymphomaniac and mystic poet who died in 2002. We were honoured to have the legendary poet oulipien Jacques Roubaud in the place.

We went to the New Nouillaville in Belleville for dinner. Noura told me her recurrent dream in which she's masturbating young children. I was drinking a cold tea with milk and spit it all on the table. Thomas made fun of my haircut and white shirt as if he was jealous of it.  Florian sayed that his grandfather was Edith Piaf's bass player (before working with Jean-Claude Vannier, Melody Nelson) and he refused to have sex with the little Menilmontant's singing monkey.

Incredible strangeness of Momus recordings of Tokyo life soundtrack, on his live-journal. Melancholic music for happy moments. How is it working? It sounds like faltering music for a new start, right after the end.

It's been four nights that I am dreaming of school environments. Almost nightmares in which I am a teacher overwhelmed by the chaos of children, coming too late, lost in elephant translation corridors, trying to escape the nightmare. In the last dream I could escape. Suddenly I was in a room in the top of a building, watching a movie that was being shot in a field. I saw strange accessories used for the film: 10 meters long eggplants lying in the field near the cameras.











mercredi, juillet 14, 2004


Tons of TO Posted by Hello

TO launch Posted by Hello

vendredi, juillet 09, 2004

Open me

My father used to (he's too weak now) tell me three things, alternately or together, when I tried to show him my art:

1. You haven't suffered enough to become an artist.

2. You haven't lived enough to become an artist.

3. If you want to become an artist, you have to find a subject. (in his mind, a subject which reaches the majority).

............................

He is absolutely right. There's nothing important in art that was made without pain (while doing it, and during the long process of becoming an artist). Pain is pain. I don't believe in art without pain. Art without pain is entertainment, which isn't art. I also love and need entertainment. But I need art more than entertainment.

To live enough means to experience enough, to suffer (again) enough, to fight enough, to get lost enough, to be poor enough, to belong to enough, to travel enough, to be rich enough, to fuck enough, to work enough, to be alone enough, to be in charge of enough, to love enough, to be betrayed enough, to be new enough to be able to provide the new.

The "find a subject" thing has always been more difficult to admit. The "subject" means the possibility of working with a special "me" that is enhanced by the others. It is an open me, able to share. This open me always pretends to be the real me, but it is only a trick. Only the open me can talk, and it talks the language of the others.


lundi, juillet 05, 2004


Mind the cow, Marlon! Posted by Hello

Dans les paturages suisses

Like Ben Hur, the Marx brothers or William Wyler, I also read in Marlon Brando's bio that he's having an alsacian origin (his grand father Eugene Brandeau). It wasn't worth moving to America, this region is close to Bollywood now. Many Bollywood films have been shot in the swiss mountains, 150 km away, recently.



dimanche, juillet 04, 2004


komodo Posted by Hello

Sugar box

One Komodo varan came out from the sugar box this morning, while having breakfast. I said to Florence that this is unacceptable. I will bring the box back to the supermarket on monday, they have to replace it and pick up this Varan, or ... or I don't know what I'm gonna do.

This varan isn't fooling around, it stays very calm, but we don't have enough room for it and we don't know how to feed it. They should be more careful when they pack sugar boxes.

samedi, juillet 03, 2004


TO Posted by Hello
Here is the cover of TO, the bilingual poetry magazine. Design by Remi Gerard-Marchant.

TO poets for this first issue are Evelyne Salope Nourtier (F), Ian Monk and Frederic Forte (F), Patricia Ferrel (USA), Vannina Maestri (F), Noura Wedell (USA). Noura is also the TO american alter ego.

It's so easy to make dreams come true, sometimes. Thanks lucky chance and thanks to the people who worked on it, especially Remi, who did a great job.

jeudi, juillet 01, 2004

www.asiargento.it

Asia's new website is online. I also love the other website, called "ode to azia", a regal for all Asia Argento's fans. I had a very good surprise, since it's the first time ever that she is mentioning the "Lou Etendue" work we did together. Her new site has a link to the Digiki's mp3 preview.

My new un-professional keyboard gave me two new songs, the cover version of "green door" and a french song. I will probably call it "les attentifs". It is a song about the beauty being a person itself. Beauty sometimes leaves the person, who's remaining beautiful without beauty. It has something to do with grace.

Beauty is about paying attention. You're missing many of these transitory states of beauty while paying no attention. Beauty is being captured by the lovers of the details. It is the reason why I loved Simone Weil's theory about grace and attention so much. I even met her confidant the very old blind "Pere Perrin" in Marseille, in 1993, to know more.