The little miracle with Lana Del Rey is that without knowing me, she tells me that it's me, it's me, it's all for me, everything she does, she tells me all the time heaven is a place on earth with me, asking me to tell her all the things I want to do. I really don't know why she chose me as her special confident, this is the little miracle I was talking about. The Hollywood sad core singer with her home made song has almost 25 000 000 hits on Youtube. But this is nothing comparing to Justin Bieber and his 700 000 000. Toog is about to reach 1000. But I prefer to have 1000 different people watching one time my videos than the same 1000 watching compulsively 25 000 times the Video games song, or 700 000 times (Justin). That kind of compulsive fans are frantic and dangerous. The good thing about LDR is that, apart from telling me her secrets, she makes it possible again to deliver a slow and sad song while reaching a large audience. It seems that it hasn't been possible for about 25 years, since the end of the drama pop from the eighties. Does her success mean that the dictature of the beat is about to collapse? This is how Gerry Smithson, the famous Los Angeles Times music critic, interpretes the ouverture of Lana's video.

Why did it take so long to have my own website? Because I couldn't decide wether I should make a Toog website (music only) or a triple head website (music, poetry, film). Also because my poetry work is in French, while most of the people who know me as a musician are not speaking French... I could not find a solution by myself. Eventually we found it: thanks, John, who had the excellent idea to imagine a Gilles Weinzaepflen website with 3 different parts. The more simple, the most difficult.

Tiffany Koo aged 5, 7, 9.

I'm more Koo than Poon, she's more natural, less empruntée. Also happy to see some double oo's around, apart from T(oo)p, T(oo)l.

Listening to my oldies, I found a cover version of Woodie Guthrie's "This Land without smoke is your land" sung by Flo. Here it is with images.

« Mini don Grand don 3 » is the third 3 days event organized by the Japanese Parisians for the Japanese in Japan. On 13th january, you have « Tokyo Melody », wonderful documentary about Riuichi Sakamoto by Elisabeth Lennard, shot in a perfect time regarding his music career (1984). My musical set is also on friday and I'm bien entouré with Tujiko Noriko and also a theremin concert by Nori Ubukata. « Don » means bowl in Japanese, and donation in French.

« Picnic at Hanging rock »: on Saint Valentine's Day in 1900, schoolgirls and their teacher disappear in Hanging Rock. A true story? Filmed in 1975, this Australian movie by Peter Weir is really good; the leading role is played by a silent piece of rock. It must have been an inspiration for David Hamilton.

The new year smells like Scandinavia: watching the beautiful movie " Elvira Madigan " by Bo Widerberg, based on a true love story between a tightrope funambulist & a deserteur from the Swedish army, who commited suicide together in 1889, in Denmark. This excerpt is the best scene of the movie, with the forgive me message floating on the river. And look at the beautiful angel face of Elvira at 4'00"! The lovers are starving at this moment of their desperate story (Elvira eats red flowers & clover at minute 2). A tragic story sometimes has tragic bounces amongst the actors: the actress who played Elvira suffered anorexia after the movie. If she was knitting a red sweater that she will never be able to wear in the film, she has become a professional cushion maker in the real life. To sew is not a curse. This couple reminds me of the tragic couple in " Badlands " by Terrence Malick.

An other piece of Scandinavia: the Munch exhibition at Centre Pompidou. I forgot that Munch's Kristiania or Knut Hamsun's one (Hunger) is the same city as Oslo. A very intelligent & sensitive exhibition. Have you ever seen an exhibition in which the second room is (almost) a copy of the first one? A XIXth century painter who becomes after the visit, a pioneer of photographic self portrait, using the technique that we use with our mobile phones? Look at this B/W picture: this is Edvard Munch photographing himself. And so many extraordinary paintings, of course, but the one which imprisons this immense artist.

Munch is also present with his huge sun painting in the Oslo recital room, in many pages of the brilliant Norvegian novel " To Music " by the pianist and composer Ketil Björnstad. I was not able to read a novel for years, but this one changed my life: novels make me hard again! I finnish (ha ha ha) with Scandinavia with " How Come " by Hans Appleqvist, musician & super genius that I discovered through John Henriksson. Thanks, John!