We went to the Michelbach pond, an artifial lake which diameter is about 4 km. Since the soil was frozen, I said bye bye to the people, bye bye to the regular path through the forest and decided to walk alone along the shore, which is impossible when it's hot because your shoes are trapped in mud. I was happy like this, having always enjoyed to walk my way in the unknowed unpath. Sorry to bother you, heron, hero with a N. After 2 kilometers, as I approached a magnifique reed bush, beautiful straw forest with floating feathers hats, a wild boar unexpectedly went out of it running towards me before turning 90° right along the shore, so that I could see his ass and gentil balancing tail. My panic turned into wonder when I saw a full pack of boars all in line, appearing from the reed forest and escaping my dangerous presence. What an incredible experience it was, to witness alone with no gun or camera, the wild & free in its pure essence; I said thanks.

This morning I visited an arcade game shop in Paris and bought a Nintendo history book by a french man called Florent Georges. Galaga was my favorite arcade game when I was a teenager. During holidays, I used to play it in Uzès, in a bar called Bengali and when I was back to Mulhouse, I used to go in an arcade game center called Le Manhattan, a huge room filled with video games & flippers (pinball machines). I could play Galaga for about one hour with only 1 franc, which was a very cheap otium; I was the best in town! Jean-Jacques Perrey spirit must have been very inspirational for early video games music. An arcadisiac year 2009 for all!

Je vous souhaite une très bonne année 2009 et vous invite à lire le discours de Le Clézio lors de la remise de son prix Nobel.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/
laureates/2008/clezio-lecture_fr.html

Visiting Yemen in 1989, one year before the reunification. I went there with a blind man, a friend of my brother Julien who's also blind. The strange thing was about verbalizing the trip, which is like living the trip two times, formulating what will become memories in the present. We couldn't go to Aden and it was sad, since Aden is the place where Rimbaud lived. I've just red the best biography I've ever red, Vita di Moravia, which is a 350 pages dialog with a journalist. Alberto Moravia says that Rimbaud probably stopped writing because of his precocity. Moravia who had the same experience of precocity, had to wait almost 20 years to be able to write something as strong as his first novel. Yesterday evening, I watched this short documentary by Pier Paolo Pasolini called the walls of Sana'a, in which he asks the Unesco to protect the pearl of Arabie heureuse. When I was in Sana'a, I remember having seen scaffoldings against the old walls. Sana'a was declared world heritage in 1986.

Since my career as a radio singer has stopped, I had to redirect quickly to a new activity. This time I've chosen to run F1 cars in lettuce fields. Some of you who like to eat lettuce will rave but I've never damaged any lettuce, even in the shapest bends. This is the result of hours of practice in front of my Mattel Auto Race handheld. Car race in lettuce racetracks is not dangerous; if you're making unintentionnal somersaults, being threwn out of the car, the lettuce leaf welcomes you with une grande douceur. This is why I've decided to not eat any green anymore; call me a carnaterian if you want.

This song by Jacques Dutronc is called Le petit jardin and it's my favorite Dutronc song; this is why I wrote a cover called Le petit jardin bio. In the Jacques Dutronc song, the jardin in the city is going to be destroyed by the promoteur, who wears a cement flower on his jacket. Since we are in 2008, in my song the people living around the garden gather and decide to protect it. Eventually, they grow bio vegetables in it... Listen & enjoy!

This is what we call a pot d'adieu, a bye bye drink at Point éphémère, after our last France Culture radio show there. Last one was about... death and it was really interesting since we had the directeur des pompes funèbres de Paris and also a young pompes funèbres boss (funeral companies). Both of them were very friendly, happy people, who consider death seriously but not in a morbid way at all. I wrote two songs, one was a cover of Francis Cabrel 'Je l'aime à mourir' turned to 'Je l'aide à mourir'. As you can see on the photo, Toog looks really sad with his Champagne cup and his head full of hair de toutes natures. I will record the songs created for the radio program since I was totally free and it was so inspiring, to write under constraint. About 15 songs should be part of an album that I'm planning, which is not Goto (Goto is not as sad as Lou étendue, but it is still sombre & slow; while this new musical project is happy & charming). I hope to go on stage with this new project in 2009, because these are songs that I would enjoy to sing live.

We're lucky to have a Werner Herzog retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. Not sure that there has been such a full retrospective as the one we have in Paris before: 55 films; look at this amazing program! I only miss Werner Herzog as an actor in the program, since he's amazing in Harmony Korine's movies and I would have liked to see him acting in other films. It's good to hear Werner Herzog speaking on France Culture (by the way, bye bye Toog on France Culture, due to a program switch!). I red that Werner Herzog is finishing a Bad Lieutenant remake without having seen Abel Ferrara's master piece; this is the only bemol.

obama à walden


voilà c'est fait le nouveau président
a pris ses fonctions
il s'est installé dans le bureau ovale
il a regardé par la fenêtre

peut-être essayer d'arrêter de fumer
une présidence sans tabac
exemplaire dehors une voiture passe
thoreau, emerson et hawthorne

le président fait route vers concord
à l'étang de walden il pêche
- on lui dit - monsieur le président
votre mandat a commencé

il observe les bulles d'air prisonnières
de la glace dans la partie gelée
les médias commentent avec colère
et honte la taille de ces bulles

le président sarcle des haricots
qu'il échange en ville contre du riz
j'ai un grand projet pour l'amérique
dit-il: cet étang, son histoire

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

(traduction attempt -thanks for correcting)


obama in walden


here it is done the new president
has taken his functions
he settled in the oval desk
he looked by the window

perhaps to try to stop smoking
a presidency without tobacco
exemplary outside a car passes
thoreau, emerson and hawthorne

the president travels towards concord
in the walden pond he's fishing
- one says to him - mister president
your mandate started

he observes the bubbles of air
captive of the ice in the frozen part
the media comment with anger
and shame the size of these bubbles

the president weeds beans
that he exchanges downtown against rice
i have a great project for america
he says: this pond, its history

Original songs

1. Action Painting
2. Chateau Marmont
3. Comment partager l'Afrique pour les Nuls
4. La beauté des femmes
5. Le grand saut
6. Pompon
7. Sisyphe architecte
8. Le théatre et son double
9. Rio Gringo
10. Le procès
11. La bulle éclate
12. FC Pougues-les-eaux
13. Cinq corps
14. Carton Moulding
15. The Dark side of the rire

Covers

16. Cosmic trip Malawi (Serge Gainsbourg)
17. Dans le regard d'un chat (Jean-Pierre François)
18. Sans la nommer (Georges Moustaki)
19. Sésame peint (France Gall)
20. Nous les femmes (Julio Iglesias)
21. Nyctalope (Elsa)
22. Le petit jardin bio (Jacques Dutronc)
23. Mourir sur scène (Dalida w / Kumisolo)
24. Les vendanges de l'amour (Marie Laforêt)
25. Diplomaten Jagd (Reinhard Mey)
26. Détective (Gérard Presgurvic)
27. Belle des champs (Richard Gotainer)
28. Je l'aide à mourir (Francis Cabrel)
29. X'tern 08 (Toog)

Here is the list of songs and covers I did for the radio program Zone de libre échange, a collaboration between Toog & France Culture that will last until the end of december. I wrote a lot of new songs within 4 months, having a 100% carte blanche, playing with the weekly theme, choosing the covers, perverting their lyrics. For instance, the next saturday theme being le rire (laughing), I've just finished a song called 'the dark side of the rire' (on myspace, link on the right), which is an oxymoron. This was an exceptional free music journalism experience, thanks to Xavier de la Porte who asked me to join the crew (right on the photo).