Arise, arise, ye subterranean winds

Hurry up, planes, the winds are getting insane!


Both Orly and Roissy Charles de Gaulle airports will be closing at 20:00, because of the upcoming tempest. Paris will become an island on which no ship shall land.

Next the Seine will be coloured in blood and it will rain frogs and locusts.

No movie going then, it's a stay-at-home night. I'm debating with myself whether to watch Dial M for Murder on Paris Première or to start reading Henning Mankell's last novel, Kennedy's brain.

I have vague memories of Dial M and as I really enjoyed watching Shadow of a Doubt that was showed weeks ago this might be a fitting evening for some tense Hitchcock flick .

Hopefully soon, following Ariel, we'll sing along


Dry those eyes which are o'erflowing,
All your storms are overblowing.
While you in this isle are biding,
You shall feast without providing,
Ev'ry dainty you can think of,
Ev'ry wine that you can drink of,
Shall be yours and want shall shun you,
Cere's blessing too is on you.

Botox movie

The strange case of Benjamin Button is...boring. No, I don't think it's a masterpiece at all. The idea of the man born old and aging backwards was an interesting premise but the film doesn't deliver. The actors do their best but all those special effects and heavy makeup that disrupt time, and distort flesh and bodies, actually make the film as expressionless as a lifted face. It was often pointless and obvious.

Besides there was something I didn't like at all but I can't really put my finger on it. I have yet to read Fitzgerald 's short story but I think that David Fincher indulged in a soppy fantasy fable, a sentimental movie borrowing from too many genres at once, but eventually he missed the true tragedy that lies in living à rebours.

I found much more poignant the story of the girl suffering from the Merlin syndrome that Dan Simmons told in his Hyperion Cantos. I even cried reading it.

Slumdog Millionaire and Milk are next on my to-see list.

Mi-temps 10-13

Ireland is leading but Sébastien Chabal was this close to score a try !

He looks really elegant when he's running. Must be the hair...and the long legs.

So far it's a good match but they all must be very tired.

Now no more mistakes and let's have some French flair! Really I should coach the team...

Addicted

I could blog about the opera I saw yesterday evening at Bastille, Lady Macbeth de Mzensk, and how Shostakovich composed in 1934 a musical work about a russian desperate housewife decades before American tv writers thought that housewives might be desperate; how Stalin hated the work and thought it was both impenetrable and pornographic (the association of those words sounds weird, doesn't it?) while some American critics talked at the time of "pornophony". I could write about how good the soprano and the chef d'orchestre were yesterday; that the tenor flashed his bare buttocks; that the mise en scène was interesting...and that the line "make the icons fall down kissing me" was spot-on and kind of cool, but hard to reuse in a non-Ortodox context.

I could blog about it, sure, but frankly, all I want to say at the moment is that I need the next episode of Battlestar Galactica and I want it NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ETA: Composer Bear McCreary(I wonder if Bear is his real frist name) has updated his blog about his work for the last episode, "The Oath".

PS: In case you don't know, the picture above was the promo poster for season 4, Last Supper-style. Battlestar Galactica is television at its best. A must see!

La république de la vertu

A dear friend of mine often says that he's an atheist because he can't believe, implying that he wishes he could. I'm not appalled by supernatural, I could even say that I have a soft spot for mythologies and fantastic elements in literature. I am an atheist because I don't need any god.

Also, I don't think that human beings made up religions and gods for they feared death or wanted an explanation of the mysteries of the universe.

I think they created them so they'd have something sacred and untouchable, and thus, according to some bizarre cosmic balance, they could do anything, touch anything else, destroy anything including their kind.

In a way, venerating gods allows vices and the worst behaviours, not because gods in question permit so– sometimes they do but most of the time they are supposed to forbid crimes and sins–no it's because it reinsures men about their finiteness. It gives mankind bounds. The most destructive and violent people are often the most devout, whatever their religion is. We can indulge in harm and wicked ways provided we still have something that is beyond us, above us, unattainable. The sacred.

Such gods used to be ancient principles, immortal entities, revered spirit of the dead, then came the time of the omnipotent demiurge who moved in mysterious ways, and ruled over three religions. Calvin even put it farther, out of reach, with the theory of predestination. That god still works nowadays under various masks (sorry Nietzsche), but other religions appeared in modern times. Some, like Nazism, have failed; others expanded undercover.
Lately the gods of free market messed up– those are really flawed like Greek gods used to be and just as unchanging and unrivalled. People are greedy, selfish and self-destructive, but the gods, as imperfect as they are, keep on ruling the world and they can't die, can they?

I've come to the conclusion that, basically, religion and morality are mutually exclusive. So my atheism has nothing to do with materialism, and everything to do with ethics, and probably with a little bit of ego.

Voix de femmes

Le Théâtre de l'Ile St Louis is a lovely tiny venue (about 30 seats)you may not see at all if you walk on the Quai d'Anjou by the river for it's located inside of an old builiding, in the depth of an alley.

A musical was showed in there yesterday, Hildegarde de Bingen ou le divin féminin. I knew that, as musicals go, this was not the Broadway-type or the dreadful Canadian style (I have nothing against Canadians but I can't bear the Luc Plamandon's musicals...and most musicals actually). On the small stage there were only a woman and a man, and many weird instruments. The woman, Catherine Braslavski, performed as Hildegard of Bingen; she was singing while sometimes playing drums and dulcimer. At first I wasn't impressed, but her voice slowly raised, filled the room and took me. I forgot all the religious stuff and enjoyed the musical journey.

Joseph Rowe, like many American artists, does everything. He's a musician, a composer, a writer, a translator and an actor. He played various instruments(Oud, Tibetan bowls, darbuka, mbira, tampura) and, between the songs, read or recited texts– extract from Hildegard's books, a letter she received from another abbess, letters she sent to advise and admonish either Frederik Barbarossa or the Pope.

There are extracts from the show on youtube. It is the same show as the one I saw yesterday evening, except that Joseph Rowe spoke in French yesterday. I wish I knew how to get the video embedded here.

Hildegard of Bingen had been forgotten for centuries until she became trendy at the end of the XXth, mostly for her music. I can't say that I care about her spirituality and philosophy much–although it's interesting to see how she managed to avoid being called a heretic at the time and how a few nowadays environmentalists take over Hildegard's veriditas–yes she was a mystic who thought she had visions, but she was also a creative person and a remarkable woman. She and another abbess of the XIIth century, the famous Heloïse, led the way for women like Christine de Pizan; she had balls!

PS: the picture is a scan of her famous Scivias that I got via the Heidelberg University website to which the title is linked.

PPS: I'd like to own a dulcimer, it's so pretty!

His Vampire Art

I should have known better, exibits at Le Grand Palais always draw loads of people, besides there was a lot of hype about "Picasso et les Maîtres"that started in October and ends on the 2nd of February.

I was bound to queue up outside for a while before entering the galleries, but brave enough to try. I don't usually run to the must-see exhibits everyone talks about, and I sensed the marketing behind the venture(because almost all the most famous painters were there) but still the idea of showing Picasso's paintings along with other works from famous painters he drew inspiration from was interesting.

Despite the cold feet and the crowd, I did enjoy it...a lot. Sometimes the method was a bit too systematic and convenient and the parallels were forced on us, but most of the time it was relevant and intriguing. The genius used to be a student and fed on art that went before him. Picasso called himself a Minotaur, and admitted to the predation existing in his portraits El Greco-style, in his tributes to Poussain, Goya, Ingres, Delacroix, le Nain, or obviously in all his variations on various famous paintings.

Of course, the confrontation leads to comparisons, not necessarily to Picasso's advantage. For instance his numerous (40!)variations on Velazquez ' Meninas are interesting; Picasso parses, dissects and eventually pieces the puzzle together, but Velasquez remains the Master and it's his painting we admire. However the series of Tarots, as Mallraux called them, Picasso's paintings inspired by gentlemen from El Siglo del Oro (by Velazquez again but also Rembrandt and Shakespeare even), often musketeer-like, were fabulous. I also loved his Chat et Homard which I had never seen until yesterday.

The exhibit is worth seeing if only for the numerous masterpieces on display. It exposes Picasso's artistic cannibalism but also reveals his ideal museum, or at least part of that one that lay in his imagination, and above all, his idea of meta-painting, when the painting becomes the subject of his painting. It shows us that canvas can be models just like any living person or any still life.

PS: Le déjeuner sur l'herbe de Manet et une des variations de cette toile(la plus réussie à mon avis) par Picasso.