Little Buddha on in the background and I am pondering the films of Bertolucci…. is he the triumph of style over substance? I don’t think so, but damn do his films just loooook pretty…. just as pictures that move, they are worth looking at…. a real beauty…. and Keanu Reeves, the Hawaiian Happa Howli…. is one fine looking Siddhartha the better half delights in informing me.
All this of course reminds me of a night in Paris:
Clap Sid Clap, drawing on Beneath The Underdog, by Charles Mingus, ITIN ’02
Now to further the answer on: “Why two titiles?”:
I suppose I am thinking of songs with these and music and so they are a sort of a play list but it might be fun to dj it and mix and match with the so called two turntables and a microphone approach.
Silly, but maybe fun. Karaoke can’t be far….
Sidcpr for Sid Ceasar, drawing on first aide illustration on script for “Pennies From Heaven”, ITIN ’02
So meanwhile back in Paris… I’d hooked up with this funny little gallery in Montmartre called simply: W…. like the hotel now…… Run by a funny little frog named Eric Landau….I don’t think you could be more French if you tried… I showed him a raft of photo collage drawings he offered me a show and he invited me that night to a strange underground cabaret. and talked me out of one of my best and first photo collages from the first day plane on Paris map from aiport to city…. “A gesture of good faith,” he called it. Ha!
London Crapper, ink on book page (ibid.) ITIN ’02
We met later that night at the Sancerre and he went around the corner to borrow his buddies Vespa. I hopped on the back of it and we tore down the long hill that is Montmartre… Past the still standing-red-glowing-veins-turning-neon Moulin Rouge and past Pigalle Whores, down towards the river and into an area of strange old high rise timber masonry buiidings. You climed up to the place through a courtyard garden and up old wooden exterior stairs…like midevil New Orleans. You rang a bell and money exchanged hands (and so he was paying and so I suppose he had that drawing coming) Up to the top floor, where it was all vualted ceilings with unfinished beam supporting the classic Parisean blue tile roof. Plaster and the tree branch like gothic arching made you feel Like Max in Where The Wild Things Are, when his room turns into a jungle…. It had that magical feeling too.
Autoportrait on Jung Dreams cover page, ITIN ’04 (from Mark Scwartbards work in progress event at IT IN space, SoHo)
Now the place was filled with artists of all different types… A violinist, circus performers, architects, painters, musicians, and me….. right?
The idea is to first all cook a Thai dinner together… making soup and having a nice rosé and cigarettes and laughter. It was sort of social and I was starved for conversation… or rather someone to talk to and I was just babbling my head off…..
Little Witch Flies Towards Then Man In The Moon For Marigolds, ITIN ’05
So the Dealer on my request had procured a whole bunch of various Newspapers – French, Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese, etc.. (like The drawings I’d done first in London with the Dog Fish Shark girl at The University College of London, where Coldplay went to School). I was talking and drawing on each person’s place , writing their name and ouline a place for glass and plate and fork, and soup spoon, etc.. and a portrait and words and babbble babble about all subjects like this blog… tangential at best. ….. all over the table and around and sipping wine and using it with the ink and the dealer would come and wisk these drawings away and lay down fresh newsprint and I’d play with the words and calligraphy and pictures and talka and talk and I go on and on.. I was sort of the opening act after cooking the meal…. Like the meal was my bill on the program in the Carbaret….What song would that be in the musical? Money Makes The World Go Round? Could be. I never did see any of these drawings again… and there were a lot … and some might be good and some of the asians did calligraphy and people quoted and wrote and they were audience interactive… I wasn’t just doing my own thing, I was directing this dinner thing….
Matterhorn, drawing on Jung’s Dreams, ITIN ’04 (IT IN space live drawing for Mark Shwartzbaard film)
When dinner was done we retired into the living room under arch ceiling with fire place and large settee and comfie chairs. The Violinist from New York turned to me and said: “Okay, now you can stop talking and listen.”
She played a haunting solo violin…. like classical gypsy music or something…. Maybe Spanish? I was speechless for the first time in hours…. Then the circus guy dropped trou to reveal his was wearing a lycra Harlequinn suit… like a Picasso by Toulouse Lautrec… it was surreal… and he began to juggle three glass balls in the Marlowe Bogie ben wa ball thing taken to a strange and magical level. He was like that Cobra in Little Buddha who coverd Sid’s head while he was meditating and it started to monsoon, or something and the five ascetics all laughed in the rain. He was moving all serpentine and rubbing those balls all around and up and down his toroso and slither slither….. He never actually juggled them…. like throw and catch, it was all ben wa roll and slither technique: Flithy to watch… Like Eric Clapton playing guitar…. just maybe a little too intimate to stare at if you know what I mean, but beautiful… like Porn with brains.
Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream drawing cycle from IT IN space SoHo , live ITIN ’04
And when the wine was done and the smoke was done and all the acts were done, We all just sort of hung out and had some coffee and Some guy showed me his website he was building for the Italian dude who is building some future city in the desert of America… has been for fifty years… with kids who volunteer out of Architecture school… and then it was time to go and I was back on the vespa holding on for dear life and there is the Clichy and the river, and The Eiffel Tower and then Moulin Rouge with Sacré Coure behind all white and Pigalle and the trassexual whores and up to the Abbesses where I returned to the Hotel Gill (same last name as Moira…just realized) and opening a heineken, I started working on the screenplay and the cigarettes and it seemed I never slept in Paris, just sometimes closed my eyes for a minute and zap back into the beauty and light. I was manic as the day was long… and the next day awake to hotel breakfast and then the papeterie and the photo shop and collage in the Café Sancerre, there to talk and flirt and meet and draw draw draw…. as if life depended on it, because it did… or atleast it sure felt like it did…
This is perhaps the most bizarre advertisement ever made by the advertising geniuses on Madison Avenue… there ought to be a law.
It’s like I told you, only the lonly can play… and thanks to upfronts, I’m learning to be a man alone…..
