On the finacial crisis

"…Well, it's too late. And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that. Yes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.

But - you see, a bank or a company can't do that, because those creatures don't breathe air, don't eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don't get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.

The squatting men raised their eyes to understand. Can't we just hang on? Maybe the next year will be a good year. God knows how much cotton next year. And with all the wars-God knows what price cotton will bring. Don't they make explosives out of cotton? And uniforms? Get enough wars and cotton'll hit the ceiling. Next year, maybe. They looked up questioningly.

We can't depend on it. The bank- the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size…"

Extract from "The Grapes of Wrath", a novel written by John Steinbeck, published in 1939.

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.

From Brussels with Love

Compiling music is an art. The vast majority of rock and pop music compilations fall normally under the category of dispensable product. Leaving aside the financial and legal constraints of bringing together licenced songs owned by diverse record companies, people who normally put together compilations do so not for the love of music but mainly for commercial reasons. In most cases it is quite clear that the "compiler" has a very superficial knowledge of the music genre he/she is trying to represent objectively in 60 to 70 minutes. Most compilations use the commercial formula of including two, three well known songs and the rest filler with no particular attention given to the order of the songs as they are played. People are attracted by the decoy songs and buy the album.

In the time of the vinyl and the cassette, you were more likely to listen to an album from start to finish simply because to change from song to song meant to either get up, lift and place the needle or go through the hassle of pressing the forward wind button on the cassette deck. Today with the automatic zapping of music offered by the CD, the order of the songs is not important anymore. Concept albums are a thing of the past. But I think there are things that we have lost in the technological fire…

The order of the songs in a compilation is an essential element in defining the journey, the mood, the importance, the point or the link you are trying to make. You see, to compile is to make a statement. A song is also defined by its neighbouring songs. You can kill a good song and you can also "create" a masterpiece out of a mediocre song by placing it after a certain type of music that happens to be different.

And then the main mistake people make when compiling songs is that they don't think of the compilation as something more than a simple collection of individual tunes or songs. But the real art of compiling music is actually creating something more than the simple addition or collection of its parts/tracks. The fact that I like all the tracks compiled does not make a good compilation. Each track could be placed to lead effortlessly to the next one or the succession could bring the element of surprise without cancelling the flow. Does it all sound Greek to you?

Here is what I mean…

"From Brussels With Love" was an eclectic compilation released in an initial edition of 1000 copies on 20 November 1980. At the time it took the form of a deluxe cassette together with a book in a plastic wallet. It featured 22 exclusive tracks from the front rank of the international avant-garde and new wave, as well as several artists from the feted Factory Records stable in Manchester and Belgian label "Les Disques du Crepuscule". The collaboration between the two labels started after the organisation of the Joy Division concerts at Plan K venue in Brussels (21 rue de Manchester) on 16 October 1979 and 17 January 1980, and was cemented when A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column and Section 25 performed at Plan K on 26 April. In addition, Brussels band The Names joined the Factory roster.

Besides Factory, another crucial influence on From Brussels With Love was radio producer and new music composer Wim Mertens, whose book American Minimal Music had just been published by Kahn & Averill. The featured interview with Brian Eno had been recorded by Wim in New York in June 1979, as was the recording by Phill Niblock. It's therefore hardly surprising that Michael Nyman and Gavin Bryars also agreed to contribute tracks. Mertens would make his own debut on Crepuscule (initially as Soft Verdict) the following year. Eno's Obscure label was another key influence on early Crepuscule.

The compilation which included interviews with Brian Eno and Jeanne Moreau was purposefully international in scope, with France (Radio Romance), Belgium (The Names), Germany (Der Plan) and even Scotland (Richard Jobson) all represented, as well as the more familiar British and American contingents. The design, too, was seductively Continental, with text printed in a variety of languages, and copious line/cartoon illustrations by Jean-Francois Octave which reflected the Belgian and French obsession with bande dessinee.

The remastered CD (2006) version of the tape features all tracks included on the 1980 cassette version, with the exception of Felch (live) by A Certain Ratio. These are:

CD tracklist:

John Foxx - A Jingle *1
Thomas Dolby - Airwaves
Repetition - Stranger
Harold Budd - Children On The Hill
Durutti Column - Sleep Will Come
Martin Hannett - The Music Room
The Names - Cat
Michael Nyman - A Walk Through H
Brian Eno - Interview
Phill Niblock - A Third Trombone
Jeanne Moreau - Interview
Richard Jobson - Armoury Show
Bill Nelson - The Shadow Garden
Durutti Column - Piece For An Ideal
Kevin Hewick & New Order - Haystack
Radio Romance - Etrange Affinite
Gavin Bryars - White's Ss
Der Plan - Meine Freunde
B.C. Gilbert & Graham Lewis - Twist Up
John Foxx - A Jingle *2

Source: Read the article of James Nice at http://brainwashed.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5881&Itemid=90

Simon Leys

Simon Leys, de son vrai nom Pierre Ryckmans, né le 28 septembre 1935 à Bruxelles, est un écrivain, essayiste, critique littéraire et sinologue belge, de langue française et anglaise. Le livre "Le bonheur des petits poissons" contient une anthologie de observations, des aphorismes, des idées et des chroniques que Simon Leys a publié dans divers magazines. C'est un livre à ne pas manquer.

Voici un extrait:

[…Ce que je voulais souligner est simplement ceci: notre équilibre intérieur est toujours précaire et menacé, car nous sommes constamment en butte aux épreuves et agressions de la réalité quotidienne; l'issue des luttes de l'existence demeure à jamais incertaine, et finalement c'est peut-être un personnage de Mario Vargas Llosa qui a donné la meilleure description de notre commune condition: "La vie est une tornade de merde, dans laquelle l'art est notre seul parapluie."]

The Night of the Hunter

"…
- Ah, little lad, you're staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of Right-hand, Left-hand? The story of good and evil.

H-A-T-E.

It was with this left hand that old Brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low.

L-O-V-E.

See these fingers, dear hearts? They has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends. The hand of love. Now watch and I'll show you the story of life.

These fingers is always a-warring and a-tugging, one agin t'other.
Now watch 'em. Old Brother Left-hand. Left-hand hates a-fighting. And it looks like Love's a goner.

But wait a minute!

Hot dog! Love's a-winning. Yes, sirree. It's Love that won.
And old Left-hand Hate is down for the count.…"

In 1955 the film "Night of the Hunter" hit the cinema screens in the United States. It was to be the only film in which Charles Laughton would stand behind the camera as a director and not in front of the camera as an actor. Robert Mitchum was perfectly cast in the role of the sinister "Reverend" Harry Powell.

In many films Mitchum comes across as someone difficult to decipher. You're not sure if he is a flawed good guy or a sympathetic bad guy. In "Night of the Hunter" this ambiguity is still there, at least in the beginning of the film. But something is seriously wrong. Appearances seem completely deceptive and as the story unfolds you feel trapped in this black and white idyllic tale that transforms into a nightmare. The film is remarkable because it has this certain dream feel quality to it. The expressionistic angles, the light and the studio confined artificiality of the scenes, contribute to create archetype landscapes and situations such as those found in some sinister fairytale which had scared us when we were young and innocent.

The glorious black and white photography was the work of Stanley Cortez who had shot Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and later was responsible for the cinematography of Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor.

When the film came out it left critics puzzled and was completely ignored by the public. Today, "Night of the Hunter" is rightly acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of 50s American cinema. So if its not entirely clear in your mind, press play and let Robert Mitchum explain to you the difference between Ying and Yang. Love and hate. Good film, bad film.