Tuesday 9 March 2010

Born on 9th March - Samuel Barber



" Dear Mother: I have written to tell you my worrying secret. Now don’t cry when you read it because it is neither yours nor my fault. I suppose I will have to tell it now, without any nonsense. To begin with I was not meant to be an athlete. I was meant to be a composer, and will be I’m sure. I’ll ask you one more thing .—Don’t ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football.—Please—Sometimes I’ve been worrying about this so much that it makes me mad (not very). " Aged 9.

Monday 8 March 2010

long live the new flesh




On my way back from Germany i sat on the train with a bottle of cava, a large pretzel and a quarter bottle of cheap vodka that i had bought at a U-bahn stop the night before. I began to write about my trip, pages of the stuff, feverishly, driving pen and oiled pretzel salt into the page, dribbling cocktail with a smile and letting my head deafen and wool itself as the train flashed in and out of tunnels. I made a solid document of my travels from berlin, down into bavaria and ending by the lakes. It was written on the last pages of a notebook, the last blank pages of a book on witchcraft, and on the tissue paper that the wine had been wrapped in.

Somewhere between Kings Cross and my bed the pages were lost. Of course these mislaid pages were mesmerising, vital nuggets of wild, transcendent literature completely reinventing all written matter and changing the course of the universe for good BUT they are lost, gone forever. So instead, i am going to be brief.

And say this:

Of all the films that i saw at the Berlin Film Festival, the one that i enjoyed the most (and that the cineastes hated) was 'Long Live the New Flesh' by Nicolas Provost. Try and seek it out. It will, how do you say, fuck you up.

Also, try and track down 'Geliebt' by Jan Soldat - a documentary love story...between man and dog. its pretty colourful.

I will be back here shortly.