jeudi, février 23, 2006

Today I was having a meeting in the 93 suburb, in a remote street, at the very end of a yard, an old red brick building, the red door to the left, the last floor. Meeting with a young producer and talking with him about an other documentary I would love to make. It's my second script, the first one is being circulating now in the french tv's. I don't know what will happen with it, the subject is fascinating but it's difficult for its politically uncorrectness. We cross fingers, the director, the producer and I... This red house was a strange place for a sudden and unexpected time trip. I was sent 20 years back in the late eighties, being a young and quite lost man selling appartments in Paris.

My ex-boss was the owner of this brick house, he was visiting his property. He had a triple huge belly and didn't remember me at first. It was strange for my ancient and almost forgotten life, to face my possible new life, all in a sudden...

I'm not stopping creating music, but music has never been my only activity. I'm a third-time musician, this is why I'm only getting the one-third success and money I would (maybe) get if it was different. It's not a choice to be split in pieces like this. The poet Max Jacob, who also was a painter, said that it is painful and hard to manage. It's probably more comfortable to have one only passion to work on. Things are going on more quickly. It takes 3 times more time. This is why I made Lou étendue in 2004, 3 years after my second album. The next one should be finished in 2007. I would like to go back on tour with this album. At the end, when I will die, if I die, who knows, I am sure that I won't be late anymore, I will be 3 hours too early.

mardi, février 21, 2006

thisisnotinparis

Dear american friend, yes, you should definitely come to Paris, make love to your lover in a hotel room (expensive), then, crossing the bridges above the river Seine, walking in the beautiful streets of the 6th arrondissement, seeing the beautiful decor we live in, you should express over and over your real sentiments... This is what this place is made for. It's good to dream about France, about Paris. But remember: France is old. And probably, your love has something which is kind of old in it; maybe the way you love, or the way you make love. If your love was a post-modernist love, you'd have choosen Jakarta, Shangaï or Alger as a love place. But you chose Paris, because you're an incorrigible romantique, even if you know you'd better fight against this tendency. And do you know what? You're the last romantic in Paris... So you should definitely come.

debug99

French electonic pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey's (76 years old) doing the cover of feb 2006 issue of cult german genial electronic music magazine DE:BUG, after his lecture/concert in Berlin.

lundi, février 20, 2006

raymondscott

"Music develops what I call a satellite, or orbital, effect. It keeps going round and round in your mind and heart."

Raymond Scott (1908-1994)

(but music is not enough: see the second guy dancing on this video ((thanks, James Harvey for this video: you're the best living electronium)))).

vendredi, février 17, 2006

albi montana la courneuve

In the sixties we had the french nouvelle vague, in the seventies we had Gainsbourg and Cloclo, in the eighties we only had ads, in the nineties we had Air (seventies again?) and Daft Punk, in the oo's we have hip hop and rap from our well knowned suburbs. This singer (Albi Montana) is in his right, even if it's not interesting to insult the ministre de l'intérieur Sarkozy (our futur President?). He sings that all what he's deserving is a kick in his ass, having talked in La Courneuve about massive Kärcher action against the bad boys (the poors?). The singer is threatened to be prosecuted for his freedom of speaking... I know this area. In the past, I used to be teaching french litterature there, lycée Jacques Brel (!). La Courneuve is part of this exploding suburbs belt from the last november. I remember to have prepared a course about "the Bible in poetry"; some young muslims said: why the Bible, why not the Coran? One girl said: it's forbidden for our poets to rewrite a sourat and make a poem from or about it. An other girl said that it's permitted. I told them: I'm not used with this culture; if you find the original and then a rewritten version by an arab poet, bring it here. But they didn't know their culture enough to find something. Later, some of them were horrified by our poets freedom: Pierre Bettencourt, for instance, writing a blasphemous (and funny) version of La Samaritaine. I loved these girls, they were extremely reactive and quick minded. They kept saying to me: monsieur, go faster, monsieur, bring la suite. I said: we are not in a restaurant. A difficult but nice experience, one of the most interesting of my life. In this all rap suburb, a young man even asked me about Bobby Lapointe, saying that it's great stuff...

mercredi, février 15, 2006

Le Quartanier 5

Some of my poems will be published in the next issue (6) of a great and beautiful poetry magazine: Le Quartanier. Since this fabulous publisher is based in Canada, it will be possible to buy it in France and also in North America, from the Gallimard book store in Montréal. Let's go back to poetry. La poésie vaincront!

mardi, février 14, 2006

chicago

Chicago Police department. What happened? During a tour, a man broke the rear window of the car and stole boxes of records in the trunk, for selling it and buying crack. I remember our label manager (Matthew Jacobson from Le Grand Magistery) saying that the thief stole many Toog and Kahimi Karie records, but not so many Momus records. This was the first time I was feeling like: I have a real future as a musician. After that, thinking of the poor man in jail, I was thinking that he didn't make the right choice. It wasn't the right artist, the right car, the right place.

dimanche, février 12, 2006

passage piéton

Art history (of all the arts) is the history of the smart ones. I hope that one day, someone will write an art history of the idiots of all the arts. I'm not talking about the fake idiots, who are the smartest, the slyest ones. Faking idiotism is often the best way to make the people think you're a genius. I'm talking about genuine idiots, the ones who get crumbles. I'm getting crumbles. God, who's a genuine idiot, is getting crumbles too. Dear God, I'm like you!

Thinks are gonna change!

We will get apple crumble.

Soon.

samedi, février 11, 2006

damnationDevil and Yoghurt: we were used to the words péché, tentation... Here is a new yoghourt called Damnation by a ridiculous brand called Delisse. It's a new ad in the metro. I don't think that people will buy this yoghourt, even if we are not in religious times... Later we went to an excellent take away pizzeria called Il Diavolino (near the jardin du Luxembourg). The devil and the pizza: this is a relationship which is more predictable than devil and yoghurt (flames, oven, and pitchfork).

vendredi, février 10, 2006

Some people tell me why don't you have your myspace space? I tell them that I have enough computering time in my life through music, writing and checking emails and websites. It's enough. And I don't like their use of the word friend. Friend is more than a link. Friend is always more but what is friend? Friend is the history of a friendship; friend has something to do with time...

A chronicle about my poetry (L'égalité des signes) by a cult french poetry publisher: Le Corridor Bleu

L'égalité des signes turning into politically correctness gives: l'égalité des chances.

The less you do, the more you're busy.

I'm a protestant, a puritan; this is why I am sexy.

In fact I would love to be on myspace, but I will never do it by myself. Que celui qui a des oreilles pour entendre...

vendredi, février 03, 2006

Sensei talking

The young poet Philippe Soupault was introduced to the young soldier André Breton by Guillaume Apollinaire, during WWI. It was during Apollinaire's wednesday gathering at café de Flore. They became close friends and decided to destroy l'ordre bourgeois de l'art, de la poésie, to destroy all, like the punks later did in 1977, with the help of Dada. They co-wrote Les Champs Magnétiques in 1920 (The Magnetic Fields), in the hôtel des Grands Hommes, Place du Panthéon and launched the movement. It's important to recall this, because what they created, surrealism, was an unconscious dream of a lyric poet. Apollinaire created the word surrealism itself, in 1917 (Les Mamelles de Tirésias, un drame surréaliste). Later, surrealism, the dream of a lyric poet, killed its father. I like to believe that Apollinaire is dead because of his disappointed love for Lou; then, dying, he met young gravediggers at café de Flore and asked them to bury Poetry with him. Poetry slowly disappeared from the western civilisation, becoming a private affair between poets. This story proves that Lou is non tantum responsible of the end of a poet sed etiam responsible of the end of poetry.

(For a better effect, you can read this article with a strong german accent, like Werner Herzog in his last movie.)