On the train to Pompei

An old refreshments seller walks into the carriage. He is overweight and his upper teeth are missing. The sweat trickles down his forehead and creates imaginary islands of sweat on his brown shirt. With a tired expression he lets down the basket with the cold drinks and leans slightly on one of the seats. He wipes his forehead, and with his crooked mouth gaping, he breathes heavily. The eyes, with the sagging eyelids, reflect his pain and exhaustion. It's hot today and the refreshments are heavy to carry. He rests for a few seconds and then briefly looks around. Nobody seems to feel as thirsty as he feels right now. But he must go on. The drinks are getting warm. He has to cover a whole train and he's only in the second carriage.

The television of our lives

In the sixties, the counterculture phrase "Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out" coined by the High Priest of LSD, Timothy Leary, was in fact saying to "Get stoned, abandon all constructive activity" and the rest would follow.

Today LSD actually stands for Liquid Screen Display and we have in a perverted way finally achieved Timothy Leary's wish. We turn on the television set, tune into a soap opera, the news, a film, a reality show and then we drop out. In 1974 Gil Scott -Heron already made the link between the power of television and what could be understood as the ultimate expression of reality, revolution. Do you remember this…?

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
By Gil Scott-Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
and skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able to predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back
after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, the tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

But in reality the revolution was televised all along. The revolutionaries of the sixties and seventies became the stockbrokers of the 80's and all the marches and demonstrations were put on VHS and kept for viewing on special family occasions. Ideologies were put in a can and served cold. And then we realized that it was television that was live and not the revolution. Slowly but surely we had been hypnotized, driven to substitute our reality for the fabricated reality of television. We were in fact little by little poisoned. Murdered by television. Like in the title of the bad 1935 B movie starring Bela Lugosi. Then again, even in this film, what you see is not what you get. In the film nobody is murdered by television. A murder actually takes place on television. Live. It's that subtle and we've had many re-runs since then…

Real and imaginary magazine covers

Das Eckhaus

Das Eckhaus. The corner house. Ludwig Meidner painted the Villa Kochmann in Dresden in 1913. The house, as if made of cards, gives the viewer the impression that it's moving, that it's alive.Bathed in a Van Gogh green light and blue shadows of a cloudy afternoon, the house stretches and swells the contorted lines of its façade like wrinkles on an old face. Through the windows, behind the eyelid curtains, there is a reflected darkness of private space and hidden lives. The cellar windows transform into gaping mouths with a mouldy breath exchanging vows with the dark green shadows of the garden overgrowth creeping in from the sides. Vows that will eventually be broken.

The owners of the house seem to have belonged to the family of Franz Kochmann who later on, in the twenties, established a photographic equipment company in Dresden manufacturing folder-cameras, such as the Enolde in 1924 and the Korelle in 1930. However one of Kochmann's most innovating designs was the Reflex Korelle which was launched in 1934-35. In 1938, Franz Kochmann decided to emigrate and his company was totally destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in 1945. Nothing was ever heard of him.

It is not clear who lived in the villa Kochmann from 1938 to 1945. One could imagine a forgotten butler, like Firs in the play "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chechov, taking care of the house, keeping things in minimal order while awaiting the return of the Master of das Eckhaus who would never return.

The villa Kochmann did not survive the bombing of Dresden which took place between the 13th and 15th of February 1945 and destroyed 90% of the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. But das Eckhaus of 1913 still lives on in the Meidner painting. In the painting it is only late afternoon…

Peter Lorre, the scene stealer

It was 1924-1925. Peter Lorre in his early years on the stage had very quickly earned the reputation of a scene stealer. Hilde Wall, the later wife of Max Ophüls, remembered sharing the stage with Peter Lorre who in that particular performance played the insignificant role of a servant. His little bit was to come in and announce that Frau Schultz was here to see her. That's all he had to do, just come in, say those words and go out. Lorre came in and sat down. "Of course, you know Frau Schultz," he said. "Yes, of course I know her," Wall said, simply trying to follow along. Lorre pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and looked up. "She's been here quite a few times lately, hasn't she?" "Yes, of course, she's a friend of mine." Lorre drew long drafts, puffing the moment into something greater, stubbed out his cigarette, and then got up. "Well, Frau Schultz is here to see you." he said, finally delivering his one and only line. On that, he exited and the audience applauded.

Taken from the newly published biography of Peter Lorre "The Lost One" by Stephen D. Youngkin.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

It is called “The arrival” and you could call it a silent movie graphic novel. I guess you could also call it a comic but that would be quite insufficient a characterization considering the artistic achievement of Shaun Tan’s work. Immigration, the voyage from the familiar to the foreign and the unknown. What you leave behind and what you carry with you. A family torn apart and reunited.

The photorealistic drawing precision of the known, devoid of any identification, is in constant interaction with the imaginative plane of the new and the strange. They playfully mix into landscapes of the mind where history and the future blend effortlessly and everyday objects are enveloped with the magical aura of an archetype nostalgia and an imprecise shape of things to come. If nevertheless, this is a measure of the things to come from Shaun Tan, then we are in for some pleasant surprises in the future.