Olivier jardins Bagatelle

Music a good feeling

A year or so ago now I heard an interesting radio interview with the actor Martin Sheen, talking about music he says:

“I can not bare to stop when Mozart is on. So I continue driving till the end of the song.”

I know what this particular feeling is like when listening to a favourite artist and I am sure you the reader have experience this too. Music can give really good feelings, but it needs to run its full course.

My weekend exploits involved seeing a gig at the Fleche D'or on Friday which was cool, and following these good feelings the next day starting some compositions, and recordings with a friend and now music and creative partner as part of an obscure new artistic direction for myself and them. Time will tell, if such a concept is liked, but there is no reason for it not to be. I can hope then in several hundred years to be appreciated in the same way as Mozart living in a previous age could never have conceivably imagined. 

My Spirit

If my spirit where a cat it would patiently wait to jump from the fence to catch the pigeon swooping bye, and if my spirit was the pigeon it would at the right moment dart away from the lethal claws, with complete ease.

Awakened from deep sleep

There are moments when we can be totally surprised, at such time we laugh and enjoy the moment, embracing the absurdity and the unlikely nature of the event. It can be a moment of awakening or inspiration. Of the two most recent such events, the first one had me compose a song for the first time in 10 years, I was particularly happy with such achievement, the song to me after re-listening was average at best, but accomplishment much more pleasing. The second has let me tell you about the first and bring this blog entry into existence. It had not been a conscious decision to stop writing entries or drawing sketches, all though admittedly my art has taken a different route of late, it has just slowly arrived the hibernation of this blog, so following literary inspiration from an out of know where, not so unrealistic source, but a seemingly improbable scenario, I feel obliged to myself now and to perhaps you the reader to not let what I have started fade away and die (that being this blog), which is also an easy option it seems for me, decided by at this moment by my strongly controlling non consciousness. So I re-awaken  this blog, and thank very much these two moments of wonderful surprise I have had of late. 

Parc Monceau

Knowledge

How many generations to loose knowledge not written down. Does this come about for reasons to do with human historical archiving or a fundamental genetic impatience for guarding old information for long periods of time. How long in the future will my scientific discovery or work be forgotten and when will this work not be known and I will have to start all over again at a basic level. Does the process of cyclic human life times reflect our growing knowledge and then the total loss, and if it does, will a combined human race succeed in elevating this problem through multiplication to a level where the more we learn the more we are constantly loosing. Is the loss of information, that which is not store or guarded to be passed from generation to generation, just but a requirement of the necessary evolution to a high state of being and will this continue indefinitely?

Square Rene Viviani

Battle of the bands

Battle of the bands for the best spot in Paris. Corner of Cathedral St Germain Du Pres, opposite Le Deux Maggots, Old boys get kicked out of their usual place by young hipsters, playing louder more energetic but less cool music, trying to be cool with non-fashionable fashionable clothes and coloured sun glasses. Old boys band is playing 80 yards further down the street with no crowd. The place the old boys usually are and where the young ones have stollen is a corner of a street which means when a few people have stopped to watch no body can get past and it becomes a bottle neck. What they play is not a bad effort but the music is lacking a particular edge, like a stuck record with no structure/form.

Le parc des impressionnistes

Drawing your thoughts

What if we could use brain power to trick itself to write down the processes it makes and the connections in the brain, noting it continuously on paper. We would be able to map out our mind and could discover who we really are and what goes on in our brains and therefore what controls us.

Jardins du Luxembourg - statue

What can I say

It is tricky knowing how much to say, not wanting to give too much away, but also to get your thoughts and opinions across that are brewing or developing in your head.  The next challenge is to say it out loud exactly how you’ve got it stored in your head; the replication of it exactly in the words how you have thought of it. Finally and probably most challenging and often I find the most useless part of the whole scenario is that you have to get the person or parties to understand these words in exactly the way you believe them, and want them to sound. This may never work as it is evident that everyone has different associations with words you say, and language in general. It could be true that two people could share the same associations with some words; however it is unlikely that these words would be many. Therefore the level of words importance, the type of emotion captured and the reaction and consequences can vary significantly between two people. For these reasons maybe talking out loud and off the top of your head are potentially very risky and bad ideas. Despite this, spontaneity does offer the advantages of quickness and it provides realism and genuineness to a scenario, where any long delay might signify editing or thinking too hard, which would in sinew some form of grading and competition or value system added to a conversation or series of thoughts, finally spontaneity means you haven’t got time to get muddled in your head and say the wrong words.

I don’t know what is better, to understand your own head, or your own words, as my head and words tell me different things. I keep having to rely on my brain and hope that my words and speech come back to me like some re-awakening volcano.

Don’t fret too much because by the time someone has understood your words another person who has translated them differently has forgotten the beginning parts and in all this time anyway the song has certainly moved on. 

Parc de Bagatelle

Jardins de Reuilly

Pont de Puteaux

Ile de la Cité

Jardins Luxembourg

St Germain des Pres

Parc Monceau tree

Paris Etoile bench

Museé Rodin

Jardins Montmatre

What time left?

What time have we left? Can we add a value to this time remaining? The value being a non monetary description of quality of life and well being. Should we be able to assume theoretically that no uncertainties or surprises we will meet in this time, entire predicability is planned / foreseen. With these factors in line a scenario will arise when we see as clearly as we look along the train tracks at nothing, that complete emptiness of any illness or a bad situation, leaves us stranded but happily stranded maybe completely remote from everyone else, lost in another world of beauty and fun, the elusive Utopia, a mythical Atlantis, mentally lost drifting through a Nirvana, Paradise forgotten. Can we then transmit this world of amazement we have glimpsed to another body a mind outside our own, where brain is built similar but does not follow our rules and paths, and must decide for itself. If transmission without loss in originator can be made to involve another on the journey, then they themselves, seemingly lost to certain chaotic and random futures aligned  and divided into possible illnesses and bad situations, can flatten the mountains of complexity and troubles and start to build the tracks of their own nothingness / emptiness and look into a future direction of happiness where the value of the moment is understanding of the value of the time they have left.

Palais Royal

Hypocrisy, War & Protest

It is not my business or care to create controversy. I try to keep away from political discussions, which quite unfortunately due to everyone’s belief that their opinion is the most important, seems only to stir up non-rational and unnecessary anger and hate in even the most usually calm and relaxed personalities, quite often out of nowhere at the drop of a hat. I am not bothered about this side of peoples personalities, which is boring, predictable and is not clever. So I must now go against my own rules and possibly cause controversy, tempting you to react as above, and bring anger and hate towards my name and this blog. You may ask why I would bother to do this, it doesn’t seem logical. The only explanation I have is that perhaps it is important sometimes that we should break our own rules, as the hypocritical is surely part of human nature. So here goes an article I wrote a while ago.

The Hypocrisy of todays world was no better illustrated than this Saturday 3rd Jan 2009. Israel has been bombing the Gaza Strip for over a week, trying to destroy the government and stop them firing rockets, over the border onto civilian settlements. So Hamas the government may be linked to terrorism and funded IRAN and SYRIA two countries both seen as axis of evil by the USA and Western governments. However as grown ups you should understand that by abusing your power over people less stronger than you, for this example kids, you are most probably creating a whole another problem in itself. Kids grow up, sometimes people never forget, like witnessing your parents and sisters and brother being blown up by laser targeted bombs or dying in the back of a school bus targeted by a suicide bomber. Wars should not be fought amongst the kids and family’s of this world, but among the men on battle grounds using respectable and honorable tactics where everyone is on a level playing field, such as sports like darts or touring car racing, where disputes would be decided by chance as in some football matches e.g. penalties, or by skill like a Maradona or Pelé goal, or in by a manoeuvre such as Nelsons at the battle of Trafalgar. The Hypocrisy is Israel bombing civilians, because Hamas is bombing their civilians, and Hamas to complain about it because they took on a better equipped and more superior country with a better army and better weapons. The other hypocrisy is that this war has just erupted and got all the worldly attention it may or not deserve, where as in the Congo, DRC, Zimbabwe, Chechnya, Darfur, Nigeria all these wars are forgotten, they are dropped, like they never existed. This is just my impression of what I notice, perhaps this is not the case, and I am wrong, but I feel it is the most disturbing aspect of our culture at the moment, this is worthy of a real protest. If we rate news stories on the number of dead then Israel or Hamas war wouldn’t get a shoe in.

What annoys me is the protest that happened all over the world in particular London, thousands of people turned out to support the over use of force by the Israelis on the Palestinians. Where are all the other protests for all the other genocides, Africa, China, Tibet, Indonesia, Iraq. I’m not against protests, I think they are very important, but please have some respect for the other stories you have kicked off the front pages. We are just all so selfish and believe our story or crisis is more important that another.

It is important to understand that I abhor all forms of violence and we should never condone any acts, no matter what the circumstances. It is unsophisticated, barbaric and intolerable that the Human race has risen from such basic animalistic levels to the achievements and levels of today, in such a short time period, but yet most people are still so pathetically feeble in mind and most notably just wrong in their beliefs that violence or  the use of force will solve a situation or put things right. I don’t care for the counter arguments, they are all crap, I just wait patiently it seems with those of a few, but which I do hope is those of many for the awakening of most peoples minds to the clarity that the genocide of our own people is not right and never will be, no matter which government or organization, no matter in the name of any religion, no matter in the name of any ideal or any belief or misguided understanding.

Cimetiere Montmatre

Parc Monceau

Etoile - Arc de triomphe

Clothes Shop

Brasserie - La Muette

Chair & tree Jardin Tuileries

Montmatre tree

Stairs at Montmatre

Why Technology won't work

Technology has no:

Texture

Smell

Feeling

Warmth

It doesn't reflect any care or have any heart, and has no love, or will ever replace the truly human qualities we posses and create in life, naturally on canvasses, on paper, with an instrument in time and space. Which can be unique emotional and careful. Technology is not instantaneous there is a process for everything, there’s no spontaneity or mistakes, or interesting unusual combinations created by chance. Everything has to be thought of before and created. The revolution is coming and its not in government / religion or any major idea its in need and demand for human originality and interest. George Orwell was onto it and so am I.

Justify Religion

Why do we try to always find a way to justify religion? For so many to feel this way must make this inherently a human characteristic. Notably an evolutionary or biological scientific reason underlies the actual understanding of religion. So the very ideas inherent to religion that contradict the laws of science, are those themselves existing and the system of religion, on the basis of science. Therefore perhaps religion is the feedback and allows us to question our science; a sort of natural checking and doubting feature.

View of Paris

Foot bridge Canal St Martin