November 2009 Archives

Glazart. Paris. Port de Villette.

Riding my bike to the venue - never been. Took a wrong turn. Lost at Barbès. Trace the Peripherie. One way streets. Running reds. Slight Drizzle. Check the Metro station map. On course. A few more minutes. Check the next Metro station map. Still on course. Hastily scribbled instructions (to myself): Cross Canal, After Bd. MacDonald, Before Peripherie. What? Only thing there is a bus station and a police station. Relent. Asking the person working the desk at a crap Hôtel. Walk in with vélo. Yelled at. "Get out! Get out! with that bicycle!" Coming back in, Pardon Moi, Messieur, je suis un petit perdu. Savez-vous `ou se trouve le club, "Le Glaz'art?!" He's answering in English. "Big Pink Wall! Good bye. ". The daily confirmation that my French is crap. Looking for this pink wall. There's no pink wall. Just a police station and a bus station. Rolling into an anonymous.. driveway? Meeting up with three backpackers, high on very very bad things. "Bonsoir!" (They answer back). What? in the bus station? In the bus station. The club is there.

The doorman telling me to lock up my back in front, on the pole. "La! La!" (pointing). Checking my bag, letting me in.

Immediately run into Brian. Watching/Listening to the current performers. They're done. I ask Brian - "you go on yet?" "Nope - nope, we're headling". Feel less of a loser for missing the first band, because of leaving late and becoming lost. Talking to Brian - after introducing myself - met him a few times before - Rose for Bohdan , they did a strange cover of Peter and the Wolf, if I remember (that was a long time ago). Find Josh and we're catching up. I'm now (in the present, as I write) embarrassed to get into how intensely admirable I am of Josh and - if I was him, I'd hate to read my gushing, but Josh knows himself pretty well and we'll leave it there. Exciting to see so many familiar faces.

Foot Village setting up and ready to play. Telling everyone watching to climb onto the stage, since - that's just Comment ils font.. Promoter freaking out. Paris manager freaking out. Brian and Josh handling things - got the OK! They say. So they say - people climbing up - but only a few. Me of course. I'm well and truly ready for Foot Village, from past experience. The drums - four sets all face each other. Lots of thrashing/yelling/pounding. The crowd needs to be around to simply contain them.

Starting, never to stop. Bang bang bang BANG.... Squelch! YELLing. We want it all! We are human. We are animals. We are ugly. We are worthless. All we do is fuck! The Parisian crowd - impossible for me to completely understand. Pensive is a nice word. They are very intelligent. They're taught art, music, forms and lack thereof. Deconstruction. This is very obvious. Cultured. It's true! It must be a different trait to just let yourself go, since I have no problem - I'm just, shaky-shaky-shaky, starting to sweat, moving around, taking pictures, taking videos - even with few on the stage, I'm running into Brian, stepping on lights. Promoter tells me to not, please not - the lights - stop stepping on the lights. Moving out of the way. A few leave the stage and then a few more. Ending of the set, I'm with the four people in the band and just one or two others from the crowd. They crowd likes to just watch. That's OK. The crowd basically thinks I'm part of the band? That's far removed from the truth.

Josh is saying, thanking me for staying on the stage. Where else would I have gone? Apolgizing for messing up a few times - as if I would know. Know? Yay-No? Hanging around as the band packs up and I get a few more scant minutes to talk to the band, before they pack up in a little minivan and go go go. Just fun to talk. Amazing to think back to Monkey Mania and Friends Forever - but easy to do, when it's been so long and you're so far away and quite isolated, but still, little wondrous pockets of the past and past-current friendships come rolling through this huge city you've found yourself in - in your complete anonymity. Someone knows your name. I give the best account of what I think Paris is about to everyone, found out about someone else touring through (perhaps?) and say goodbye. Hug hug. Bisous.

Cycling home. Getting lost, again. It's an easy city to get back home, I said.

A collage of street art, near to my place of residence:

What caught my eye was, Zilda's wheatpaste of an old etching. I obviously have made it clear I really like etchings, but what's interesting about Zilda here in Paris (I'm assuming they're from here), is its completely transparency here. There's drawings, paintings, sculptures, anything - everything of robed figures everywhere in Paris. Why does Zilda appropriate these images, and have them write "Zilda". You know, I don't know.

The other pieces, I will just list:

• A penis without a body, pointing down, towards spread legs.
• A message that reads, "Mickey Mouse is Dead" (In English). If you look closely, there's a picture of Mickey Mouse, dead in a coffin, underneath the text.
• Various Tags
• And leaving the frame, a big face with what looks like cartoon scars.

It's just... everywhere.

This floor had me more captivated

It's a similar pattern to a skateboard company I was infatuated with. I used to draw it in all my notebooks in high school. I had t-shirts with it. Many. T-shirts.

It's also similar to something you'd see in Victor Vasarely's work.

It's always very queer to see someone take a similar shot, in the same city, in a similar date - and having just saw that person, but not really knowing who that person is (just as an audience member of a performance). The same tiles by Momus,

Some photos of said Momus from the BBMix Festival

I've known Momus for a while, but really never actually listened to his music. I think someone introduced me to him many, many years ago and his name was surrounded by bizarre wonderment, mystery and excitement. She would say,

"He's MISSING an EYE!"

"He's homeless in New York City!"

"He wears crazy suits!"

Only one of the above, I think, is true.

A nice performance, at a very strange venue. The space was a theatre, so the stage was set up for very... theatrical things: lots of fancy lights and smoke machine! A SMOKE MACHINE! Going on, full tilt, un-ironically. Words fail.

The set was good though. The song writing was great. The experience Momus has of playing live is very obviously felt, especially the music-show-as-performance-art aspect to it. And I don't mean that in a bad light.

It seems many current adventures of mine involve smoke machines.

A incomplete part of his, A Complete History of Sexual Jealousy (Parts 17-24)

Could you imagine watching Momus open up for Belle and Sebastian?

Mural on Oberkampf, Paris

I had walked around here the night before and a different mural was up. That sort of thing makes me excited.

Pictures from last night. Tops of buildings. So many people living so close together. Lights on. Lights off.

Looking down, instead of up, more street art:

I don't really know what it says - something like,

I don't let myself sleep in my dormitory.

But, the conjugation of, "Laisser" is.. wrong. Or, "Laise" is something, completely different.

People standing in bars. Flirting. Footwear is very important, here

Art Opening in Tours for Terrence Netter, surprisingly, these photos are basically straight from the camera

Got willfully taken to a discotheque, deep in the French countryside, afterward. The spectacle was incredible. Smoke Machines, again.

The bartender was giving away free shirts. Somehow, I received one. it said, "World Famous".

They sold liquor by the bottle. Not like, Bottle of Beer, like: bottle of Vodka. Dangerous.

I think we made it back to the quiet, country home not far from the discotheque by 5:00 am.

Mr. Netter, a man of 80, made a comment about how he thought the discotheque was a little, "Provincial". I mean, it was.

Took a walk and saw a rainbow:

Street artist on one of the bridges. He was pulling a fake turtle. I was excited for the Dandyism reference, although I don't know if that's what he had in mind.

I stayed for the performance.

If you were wondering, this street performer is running with Dura Ace components,

I took a small clip of this street performer, doing his circus bike act, and in the middle of the performance, walks in a pair of kids of fixed gears. Very pretty kids. The contrast of the circus performer with a similar type of bike - fixed geared, was sort of delicious. Doing fancy tricks on modified track bikes - similar to what the street performer is doing on a bike specifically made to do fancy tricks is sort of a, how would you say, big thing to do right now.

The carefully put together sloppiness of the performer and the carefully put together togetherness of the kids . All of them, color-coordinated in their own way. The extremely dramatic gestures of the street performer. The extremely nonchalant look of the teenagers. Acting. Spectacle. Smoke Machine.

On a été d'Halloween le samedi. J'adore Halloween! Je me suis réveillé dans la matin et
j'ai travaillé sur mon costume. Je me suis habillé resembler à Marcel Marceau. J'ai coupé et j'ai créé un costume "mime" avec les vêtements j'ai trouvé et acheté dans la friperies. Les propriétaires des magasins ont regardé se moi comme vous regarderez un personne folle parce que j'ai acheté seulement de femme vétements .

Je me suis maquillé de noir et blanc et j'ai mis sur un chapeau ridicule avec un fleur. J'ai regardé trés effrayant! Mais, j'ai voulu regarder amical.

J'ai sorti le maison et je suis allé à le boîte de nuit, "Nouveau Casino" et j'ai ecouté mon ami, "Picture Plane" et le band, "Health".

Ils ont joué musique sauvage!

La musique a été incroyable! Fantastique!

Dans le boîte de nuit, je rencontré une belle fille. Elle a porté un t-shirt rayé aussi! (Mimes port t-shirts rayé) J'ai voulu demander si elle a été un, "mime" aussi, mais, je ne ai pu pas parler - j'ai été un "mime", bien sur!.

Le tout band, "Health", "Picture Plane", la belle fille et ses amis avons quitté "Nouveau Casino" et nous ont allées dans "L'international" et nous avons bu de la bière plus. J'ai pris des photos de mes nouveaux amis. Ils ont porté mon chapeau avec une fleur.

J'ai sorti apres j'ai embrassé, "Picture Plane" et j'ai souhaité, "Bon Chance!". J'ai fait un vélo à une autre féte. Mais, j'éte tres ivre. J'ai fait beaucoup de bruit sur le pavé sur la Boulevard de la Villette. Je me suis blessé mon genoux. J'ai saigné partout mon pantalones blanc. En plus, j'ai été très perdu. Enfin, apres quelques heures, j'ai trouvé le chemin du retour. Je suis revenu et je me suis évanoui.

Bonne nuit!