No need to go to Japan for seeing a blooming tree: I met this beautiful one in the Parc de Sceaux, 20 minutes south of Paris.



I really love these geometrical pine trees, whose DNA was crossed with incence cones to form this new variety.



I joined an atelier called "share the animal spirit" in the Parc. I chose the "sloth experience". Our coach Marion Couchetot told us that "sloth's wisdom includes the value of laziness; understanding the tree spirits; ability to access the libraries within the trees where all Earth knowledge is held; seeing the world upside down; understanding when to use tenacious behavior". The atelier was only 50 euros for 15 minutes, which was pretty cool for such an amazing experience.

LES BONS MOMENTS: I spent very bons moments with this stuff, the last months.
1. Raymond Queneau, "Les Jeux du langage" (3CD): he's one of my favorite poet/writer. He wanted to create the "français" of tomorrow. His 60's vision of the future language is out of fashion, but his mind is so modern. He was at the starting of Oulipo. Everybody has heard of Zazie: he's Zazie's father.
2. Cherifa: 2CD box. I bought it in an algerian cd shop at Barbès. Her voice is like a blade, poignant.
3. Sembene Ousmane: "le docker noir " (book). Film director Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) is also a writer and he published this book in 1973. A very cruel story in which the hero, a black man working as a docker in the old Marseille, gives his writings to a white writer who steal it... It's a game on words since we call "nègre" (nigger) the one who writes behind the official writer. Very good.
4. Woody Guthrie, 2CD box: "this land is your land..." and other great songs by the papa of the 60's folk spirit. For me his autobiography ("Bound for Glory") sounds more genuine than Kerouac's "On the road". It is one of my favourite book ever.
5. "Moog: a documentary" by Hans Fjellestad (DVD). Thanks, Hans, to have filmed Moog one year before his death (august 2005). I like the movie because it's mostly now, not so many archives. Wendy Carlos refused to be in it, it's written on the liner notes...
6. Sylvain Courtoux: "Action-Writing" (book): my friend Sylvain is a poet turning into a punk, or the opposite; he is a man who knows everything in music. His book is genius and incredible.
7. Fabienne Raphoz: "Pendant, 1-62": an excellent minimal poetry book by an excellent publisher called Héros-Limite.
8. "Coming apart", Milton Moses Ginsberg (DVD): this 1969 movie is also genius. If you have never seen it, go find it!
9. "Rock Bottom", Robert Wyatt (CD). Very late listener, but I couldn't stand his voice in the past. Listening to this record with good headphones (Beyer DT 770) is like going to paradise. I wrote a song right after...
10. T.S. Eliot, "La terre vaine et autres poèmes". I am not a fan; it's too difficult and the translation isn't really good. Some incredible things like "who is the third who walks always beside you?" and following verses.
11. "Voyage autour de ma chambre", Xavier de Maistre. Written in 1794, this fabulous book is a satire of the "récits de voyage" trend of the XVIIIth century. The narrator makes a whole trip in his room in 42 days and relates it. X. de Maistre was the brother of Joseph, a very important man in the french revolution.
12. Amin Maalouf: "Les croisades vues par les Arabes". This book should be translated in every language and we would understand where the middle-east/occident difficulties come from. The crusades here are the real ones, described by arabian historians from the middle age. You cannot imagine how savage the christians soldiers were against the muslim civils and the jews. The père spirituel of Oussama Bin Laden and the kamikaze terrorism finds a place in this book: founder of the Assassins sect, Hassan al Sabbah.
13. Harold LLoyd (DVD): "Grandma's boy" (61 minutes) is an excellent movie.
14. Johnny Cash, "the very best of the sun years". Also something I didn't really know before. The movie, "walk the line", is too clean comparing to the sound of his voice.
15. Katerine: "Robots après tout": he proves that it's still possible to be an histrion in France and to have an immense success.
16. Sub Rosa: "An anthology of noise and electronic music, second a 1936-2003". It's a strange thing to mix "classics" and new ones... I bought it for Daphne Oram "Four aspects". What is also incredibly deep and mysterious is Alan R. Splet work; it's like after or before something. Something we don't know.

This is the tenth anniversary of a photo session I really like; it's called "Free Water" and it was published in Grand Royal (†), the Beastie Boys magazine. Spike Jonze is jumping from a hotel room in Los Angeles into the pool and Sofia Coppola takes the pictures. When you see the concrete corner near the splash, it feels like...

In this 1980 record, there is a dog barking for 30 minutes, a dog called Sebastian. I wonder what happened to this dogstar after he's released his first album. The problem with such a record is that you can't listen to it if you're having a cat. If you're more into dogs, if you're a dog person, this album will get your favorite animal mad. Maybe it's because of jealousy: the real dog would comment with his own barking "et moi aussi, je suis un artiste", like people say when they see a Picasso: "et moi aussi je suis peintre!"

Anch' io son' pittore!

Sebastian the Guard Dog: Sebastian Speaks! Your Watchdog on a Disc [Grr-r-records; 1980]

This is the best 100 cents I've ever spent-- its utilities are endless. Sebastian is a German Shepherd that barks, growls, whimpers, huffs, and grumbles for over 30 minutes on both sides of this record. He is a poor man's guard dog, you see. "He is an awesome defender," the liner notes boost, "although he never wantonly attacks, woe to be the foolish intruder who doesn't heed Sebastian's warning barks, his spine-chilling growl-- as menacing as the "clack" of a shotgun being cocked." If you leave your castle or see a crowbar's flash, you simply crank this up on the hi-fi. However, when the invader discovers that he feared a slab of vinyl, that situation is left up to you and your personal savior to resolve. Still, there are other novel uses: A masochistic Walkman soundtrack, a road rage inducer for freeway gridlock, or party repellant for those who only came for the free booze. --Cameron Macdonald - Pitchfork

Every man on earth knows that it's better to not talk about things before they are on the way to become real. So let's say: we go to America. We haven't been there for 4 years, right after 9/11. We do a guest appearance with a female poet who likes to read poems about roses and horses, during the Momus show at Tonic (5/20), New York. Then we go south, then we go west, then north, then east... Let's say it's a filmed trip and let's call this film Goto. Let's say it's a film that will accompany my 4th album which will also be called Goto. Goto is an anagram of Toog. If anagrams make you travel, anagrams are good. Anagrams make the people move; like the letters move inside the word itself.

The bird Cagesan is really cute and he is a remarquable singer. If you're in France, he's called a Diamant de Bicheno; in the USA his name is owl finch or Bicheno finch. His favorite sound is the garbage truck. When it's passing down our windows, he's singing a true love song: the love song to the garbage truck. He is a real sound lover and sings over all sounds. One day, singing myself above the car noises in a Paris avenue, I thought that the bird and me we both sing when it's noisy because someone could hear our test-singing, and we are shy. But it's not true, the bird also sings when it's quiet. There's one only sound Cagesan cannot listen to: his own voice being played by a recorder. He has reached the ultimate stage, the one only few artists are seeking for: modesty.