franjournal

Too big a picture?

2012-02-02T08:59:00.000-08:00

The whole of London seems to be flocking to the new David Hockney exhibition called "A Bigger Picture". And yesterday we went too. Being a keen fingerpainter, I wanted to see his ipad work. To say that this exhibition was OVERWHELMING, is an understatement. See here to the left, my version of Hockney's ipad tunnel, with a tiny overwhelmed me at the bottom. There were hundreds of paintings of the Yorkshire landscapes, admired by a sea of wowing old ladies and extremely tall young ladies with sketchbooks. The colours were so bright they jumped out at you and wrestled you to the ground. I hadn't been quite as scared since I went to see Disney's Alice in Wonderland as a child (I was a teenager, actually). I was ANGRY and needed to be calmed down with tea and sandwiches and soothing husband conversation. We talked for hours before my heart rate went back to normal. I like Hockney very much (no, seriously), he does what he wants, whatever grabs his attention he explores without worrying about pleasing others. At least this is what comes across and what is so free and wonderful about him. He also works, I mean WORKS. And that is very inspiring. He does thousands of sketches, paintings, huge canvases, films, photos. I don't want to be Frida Kahlo anymore. I want to be David Hockney.

Striving for fridom

2012-01-08T02:56:00.000-08:00

I have been a believer in the law of attraction for a long time. It is so far the best explanation I've found for how life works. The difficult part for me is to follow my emotional guiding system. My thoughts change from feeling good to feeling bad to feeling good again in a nanosecond, and sometimes I really need to sit down and ask myself: "What happened there? I was happy a minute ago, and now I'm angry/upset/sad (delete accordingly)." And other times to feel sad actually feels incredibly good. One such amusing occasion happened just before Christmas. I was watching a documentary about Frida Kahlo with my husband, and I was enjoying every minute of it, until I became suddenly very sad, angry and, basically, a venom spitting cobra. It took me a few hours to understand what happened. I had become upset because I developed a sudden desire to BECOME FRIDA KAHLO and move to Mexico, straight away, that night. Maybe Source is already in Mexico, but I'm still here. There are other minor impossibilities in this project, anyway. On the other hand, understanding all this, amused me no end. The mind is a beautiful thing. Or, the mind has a mind of its own.

Things

2011-12-15T00:15:00.000-08:00

I have learnt and I'm learning a lot about things lately, how we surround ourselves with things to feel secure and how things actually fail to do that function - they instead often stunt our creativity, fill precious space, and keep us where we were, stopping us from moving forward. One of the reasons why I like travelling is that I leave all my things behind. I now pack a tiny bag and rely on the masses of things accumulated by others. Adapting to what I find, in terms of books to read, accessories, paper, pens, toothpastes and hand creams, is a fantastic exploration of the world and of my relationship to the world. Travelling only with hand luggage makes me feel that I am at home everywhere and nowhere. Even my sketchbooks are becoming smaller. I love this super tiny Moleskine. I brought no art supplies with me to Genoa, thinking that I would find something there. I bought only this fun pen called tratto pen that turns blue if you wet it. Back home the tratto pen is now sitting together with all my other hundreds of pens, and has lost some of the charm it had when it was the only one. Possessing things or being possessed by them is a funny, delicate balance. Travelling is a great way to test what is and what isn't important.

What to do and how to do it

2011-12-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

While I was barricated in the bedroom waiting for the floor to be finished in the sitting room, I read two books, the conversations with David Hockney and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Superficially these two books have nothing in common, but somehow each helped me to understand the other. It's something to do with who you are, who you want to be, who you think you want to be or do, who and what other people want you to be or do. Indecision on what to portray and how to portray it are often the main reason for inertia in creative people. Most often this insecurity is a struggle between who we are and who we think we should be in order to be succesfull, understood, appreciated, loved. This is why at the beginning of my artistic expression I became fascinated by outsider artists, people who follow their muse, be it a god or a need, without worrying about technique, without worrying about pleasing anybody. Just following their call. Outsider artists are incredibly prolific, because they do more and worry less. They also often have the time, but this is another excuse. The moral of these two books, as I interpret it, is: return to your soul, it knows better than anybody else what your destiny is, and your real destiny is always good.

While soundproofing

2011-11-25T00:52:00.000-08:00

My first regular contribution for Mixed Media Art magazine is up today. I planned to revive my blog around the same time, writing more about journalling and the techniques I use. Instead I am in the middle of soundproofing the floor in the sitting room and the rest of the flat looks like a place that American Pickers would just love! Piles and piles of stuff everywhere. I spent the day in the bedroom yesterday, feeling like a teenager, one room to study, read, draw, sleep. Having an ipad helped feeling less deprived of tv watching in the evening, and I ended up watching Amos & Andy and other very old, very odd tv programmes. We had dinner in the kitchen upon another pile of junk, listening to a cassette of Los Lobos. It's funny, with all the mp3 players, downloads, etc. the best music we have still seems to be on cassette! Today is the second day of soundproofing and soon I'll go back to the bedroom and find some other way to spend the day. I have a book on interviews with David Hockney... somewhere.

to sketch (or not)

2011-08-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

I love sketching, but I have to get over a wall of inertia ever so high. I don't know what it is. Once I get going, I'm fine, I enjoy it, but I seem to find a lot of excuses: not the right weather, nothing to draw, too many art supplies or not enough. In search for the perfect pen that does all the work... After spending a couple of days at the sea describing in detail to an artist friend all the reasons why I should sketch and all the equally important reasons why I avoid it, I've decided that I should stop being a pain and get on with it. So here it is, today's sketch. A pair of scissors (just about one of the hardest things to draw free-hand). Not just any scissors. These are my grandmother's, with an art nouveau butterfly design. Tomorrow we'll see. There's plenty of horribly difficult things to draw all around us...

Good book bad book

2011-07-29T02:08:00.000-07:00

I've always hated the expression 'a good book', as if anyone wanted to relax and enjoy a bad book. Nevertheless, this is a good book. The author takes you on a complete journey of the human nature starting and coming back to maps, and that is pretty clever. He touches on things that I never particularly thought about, like what are the reasons behind collecting, and he quotes authors who've written on the subject. They say that collecting comes from animistic beliefs, it's a way of surrounding yourself with sacred objects that protect you and inspire you. I wonder if this explains why I keep on buying art supplies that I often never use, but revere as if they held the key to my creativity.

My shelves full of art supplies

Now here's a bad book: it is not really a bad book, just sad for me, as I tend to read every book as if it held a piece of a truth higher than mine, as if it was right and I were wrong. It's just the opinions and samples of various artists' sketchbooks and most of the artists seem to see sketches as means to an end. Yet, in my opinion, the means are way more interesting and alive than the ends. Also I seem to be attracted like a magnet to the pencils/charcoal/marker isles of art shops. Those art supplies are my idols, and yet I seem to be told here that they're just ephemeral, that only oil paints or acrylics are the real thing that makes finite, complete artworks.

It makes me cry on my printer, who (sic) is working hard with me to preserve those marks created using transitorial, short lived instruments of unfinished creations.

Leaving the past behind

2011-07-08T02:31:00.000-07:00

A little doodle I did on the back of an envelope with a biro and a dried-up marker sparked all sorts of thoughts in me. I wasn't thinking of anything in particular when I was drawing but I was wondering why this guy looked sad, because all of my images are usually jolly. But then, still for no logical reason, I started sketching the house that I see from my kitchen window. And the thought occurred to me that this guy, who is young in age or in spirit, is leaving his childhood home and is not ready to be happy yet. But butterflies are showing him the way and the sun is shining.

to rescue a felt tip pen

2011-06-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

Landing in Genoa

The pen

It was a daunting trip, going back to that flat, to a piece of distorted history, distorted by distance, time and many inexplicable events. It was difficult from here, so many miles away and with such a wide gap between my me and other people's me, my version and other people's, it was difficult to face such a potential flood of feelings. What would I want to rescue from my past? Nothing really, some memories, perhaps, the essence of me, the thread that we call conscious life, but nothing physical, no weight of objects to pull me down... except for one pen, that I never got to use. I knew it was in the drawer, next to my bed and I wanted it, and I thought of nothing else, for days, for weeks. Now it's here on my desk, in my present life. Here, to share with me some magical moments in the future, create sketches and look forward to harmony and joy.

cheap but not so nasty

2011-06-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

My take on one of Liu Haisu's paintings

Sometimes I like giving myself silly challenges, and experiment with things. So today I did two paintings. The first is a panda that I copied from the great artist Liu Haisu. I used a Chinese brush and... soot. Yes, you heard me right. I put a spoon on top of a candle and... voilà (Don't burn yourselves or singe the brush like I did.) The second is even sillier. It's a flamingo from a photo I took a while ago. And the paint used is... the ink of dried gel pens. Snip the tubes (they do tend to fly and splatter on your walls when you do that), put them in a little jar with a little water, shake, and off you go.

flamingo painted with gel pens

High expectations

2011-06-09T01:05:00.000-07:00

Being free with Blendypens

My art may look quite diverse, but it all stems from two desires - of living the creative and carefree childhood I never quite had and, on the other hand, the desire that I had so strong as a child, of being skilled at reproducing images that I saw in my head or on art supply boxes. I often get children's art supplies and see how far they can extend into the adult world of expression. I was amused when I read negative reviews of the Blendypens from unhappy mothers who said that their child could not reproduce the pictures on the package. Of course not, those pictures are done by very capable illustrators, not by children. But my frustration as a child turned out to be one of the strongest incentives to my creativity. I love my new invented childhood. You may not be able to change your past, but you can always create images and settings and feelings and stories in your head where you can be any age, any place, doing what you like best.

Medium format

2011-05-12T03:56:00.000-07:00

Last week I went out with a group of photographers shooting medium format. I was kindly lent a Mamyia RZ and fell in love with it. It was my first experience with medium format cameras and looking into that 3d viewfinder was fascinating. Of course, it's not as easy as it seems, the focus and depth of field are not exactly what you see in the viewfinder, but still, with a bit of practice...

Now that I think of it, what is this fascination I have with bicycles lately? I don't even know how to ride one.

Throwing or keeping

2011-04-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

All the creative people I talked to have very different opinions on the throwing or keeping of what doesn't entirely satisfy them. Do you paint over the same canvas ten times, do you hide the works that upset you at the bottom of a drawer, or do you rip them and recycle them into a collage? I tell myself that there are no mistakes in art, that everything is ultimately good. But this approach sometimes stops me from doing as much art as I would like to, lest I discover that I am wrong and that some drawings and paintings are just plain rubbish and should leave the planet quickly and quietly. So, this bycicle should have been my first sacrificial victim, but then it just broke my heart, and I couldn't get myself to kill it. Not just that, I am even sharing it with you! I drew it using my grandfather's old stack of wax crayons and coloured pencils from the 1950s. Ultimately, there is nothing right about this drawing, and yet, this poor bycicle, whose handles are so far away from the saddle that only a monkey could possibly ride it, is still somehow sweet looking, in its humble way, and begged me not to bin it. Next time, I will get tougher, though, I will learn to throw. Or not?

Flotsam and jetsam

2011-04-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

The private beaches in Venice Lido open for the season in mid-May. During the rest of the year there is public access and there are only a handful of people dipping their feet into the water or walking up the piers. There are great amounts of driftwood and all sorts of things brought on shore by the sea during the winter months. I am fascinated by this kind of findings, sometimes mysterious treasures, other times, just plain rubbish. As I was rummaging through the debris, looking for bits of brick and glass pebbles, chips of boulders and other fun stuff to decorate my garden with, I saw a guy looking around the same area, even lifting and observing a broken buoy. I wondered what he was up to, but then he vanished and I continued my search on my own. About an hour later, I walked back to the main exit and saw more jetsam and flotsam, but when I stopped to look at it more carefully, I realised that it was an installation, a sculpture, a piece of artwork, and I had no doubt as to who the artist was.

A wonderful piece of land art made with debris from the sea

Sketching in Southbank

2011-04-03T01:01:00.000-07:00

I went to Southbank yesterday with a group of sketchers. The sun was out (sort of) and there were thousands of people. I hadn't done any outdoors sketching in a long time, and never in a group, and I really enjoyed it. I've also been doing a bit of street photography lately, and I'm amazed by how your relationship with the world changes, when you take the time to observe it. How many interesting things you can discover about places and people. It really is an adventure. I wonder why we open up to things only when we travel abroad and we seem to ignore what is around us in our everyday life.

Museums and reverie

2011-03-28T04:06:00.000-07:00

phone-doodled portraits of 4 famous artists

Mostly, people talk about one thing (at a time), but I'd like to talk about two and see whether they can be connected. It's like a game of logic. I want to continue with my fascination with collecting and with museums. One of my favourite museums is the Meir Agassi Museum. Among other things, Agassi collected invented artists, the biography of whom he would write in great detail. Like Hokusai, he hid his versatility by choosing different pseudonyms. I thought about doing that myself, and decided against it, embracing all the facets of me under the umbrella of me. I chose to be, in a way, my own museum. Now, for theme number two: a few months ago I read an article in Psychologies mourning the end of reverie. It claimed that through the constant fidgeting with mobile phones, social networks, etc., boredom is now officially dead - the downside of it being the disappearance of reverie (daydreaming instead of fidgeting) that is so necessary for our creativity. I think that whether you want to reverie or not is entirely up to you and that fidgeting could be catalogued and displayed in your own museum, becoming material for inspiration and further thought. Of course, it could also be a mandala, swept away by background noise.

The art of looking sideways

2011-03-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

I have been wandering, if not aimlessly, rather soullessly, through meanders and mazes of little sense, searching for that inspiration, or even for that desire for inspiration, that makes my journey through life an exciting and adventurous one. So, in this state of depletion, I entered the library yesterday and found a huge tome, called The Art of Looking Sideways. It is a most irritating piece of work, as it is written in all directions, weighs a ton, tells stories that are too long, and has quotations. But. It suddenly woke me up from my torpor. I can do this too, I thought, play with images, words, type, aimlessly, but now in a positive way, wandering through the same or different meanders, randomly collecting flowers, pebbles, ideas, dreams, obsessions, distortions. And then put it all in a book, a big irritating book that weighs a ton, for my own benefit, or yours or nobody's. But doing it. Perhaps I'll call it The art of doing.

I discussed this with Diana drinking cappuccino.

Goodbye, Dad

2011-02-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

On January 25th my Dad passed away. He was buried in Venice, on the island of San Michele, in his in-laws' family tomb. My granny used to take me to that cemetary as a child to visit grandad. There were toy cans that you would fill at the fountains to water the flowers on the tombs, and tall cypresses, so somber, they looked like arrows pointing at the heavens above. I remember that place as peaceful and dreamy. I hope my Dad has found there the peace he so much deserved. Goodbye, Dad, you will be missed.

Pause for reflection... sort of

2011-01-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

When I am busy with long translations, as I am now, by the end of the day I'm too "worded out" to find the energy to blog or start any creative project. So, it's a time for reflection, in which I lazily flick though art books. The one I'm flicking through at the moment is a colossal volume: Mariscal Drawing Life, and I'm finding eeeerie similarities with some of my stuff:

Mariscal

Me (before knowing Mariscal)

Old pictures

2011-01-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

Was this my very first encounter with photography? I'm scanning tons of negatives, restoring pictures to a glory they actually never had, thanks to the power of digital. Old images are fascinating, full of bizarre details that go past the personal sense of history and belonging. Note the star fish next to my foot!

The only visible change in Venice is in children's fashion...

Venice

2011-01-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

Venice was grey and white with fog and drizzly rain. I hadn't been there in winter since I was a little girl. It was strangely deserted, perhaps all the tourists are waiting for the carnival. We had intermittent heating in the flat, wearing heavy coats we searched drawers filled with forgotten histories, including this photographic plate that I managed to scan, a family portrait of some ancestors I know nothing about. Memory lane was sore and sweet, everything slightly or drastically different from how we remembered it, but in a way it didn't matter, as we still belonged, somehow, to it all.

The BIg Sleep

2011-01-05T01:43:00.000-08:00

To celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary we went to see The Big Sleep last night. I hadn't seen an old b&w film at the cinema for I don't know how many years. It's fascinating to see how little we've learned about filmaking since! The lighting was incredible and the settings perfect, every single prop had a reason to exist, such attention to detail. Really amazing. The clothes and makeup were beautiful. I've done a lot of period films as a background artist and we were never given clothes of that fit and quality. But then again not many of us have Bacall's waistline. What were women eating in those days to have such perfect bodies? Or were they eating? Of course in Europe there wasn't a great deal of food going around at that time, but I don't know about America. My grandmother kept a piece of bread from the wartime to show it to me and my sister when we were kids. I understood more about war from looking at that black, sad piece of stale bread then from what I was taught in school.

2010 Highlights 2

2011-01-03T05:33:00.000-08:00

Before becoming passionate about photography, I had perhaps a couple of film cameras that were strictly used for holiday snapshots. So, after three years of digital photography, I really wanted to go back to basics or, should I say, go to basics for the first time. I got myself a lot of cheap range finders from the 60s, compacts from the 80s, and a few plastic cameras, like a Holga 135 BC and Holga TIM, and had a lot of fun. I showed the results in a talk called "Plastic Francesca", at my camera club in October. You can see more images on my flickr folder called Holga, plastic and cheap cameras. 35mm is back in my life for good, although I will keep on using digital cameras, phones and what not, as well. Film is warmer and film cameras have all got their own personality. That's what I like about them. I also like the fact that they are usually much lighter and faster. You can take a few with you when you go out and if they break, so be it, they only cost a few pounds (or dollars or euros). I am not in any way a purist, though, I scan the film digitally and do as much or as little manipulation as the image requires.

2010 Highlights

2011-01-02T01:44:00.001-08:00

peru01
Originally uploaded by franvisions

2010 was not the best of years for various reasons, some of which, i.e. the gloomy economy, affected everybody to various degrees. Still, there were some very good moments for me, and here are some of the highlights. In February, I was lucky enough to be among the 55 artists who participated in the Regenerator II project. We were all sent an old book discarded from the Bower Ashton Library to alter in any way we wanted. The book I received was about the Chimu culture. The Chimus inhabited the area of Peru now known as Trujillo in 900AD and made the most bizzarre pottery. There were about 100 B&W plates in the volume. I therefore decided to let this guide my inspiration and created an imaginary journey through Peru. I have never been there, but luckily some of my friends, photographers and artists, had, and provided me with various material to play with, including a fascinating diary of a motorbike trip through South America. You can see three pages of my work in the archival pages of Regenerator II, together with the examples of the other artists' work. All of these books are on permanent display, if you happen to go to Bristol. The whole book can be seen on my flickr set entitled My Peru altered book. I worked on this project for a couple of months and it has been an amazing imaginary trip.

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everybody. This is last year's Snowman. This year one had a hat and looked much more handsome, but he melted before I had the time to take his picture. I'm back at blogging after more than a year gap. That's because I was busy thinking!

Black dogs

2009-06-26T00:33:00.000-07:00

Winston Churchill called his bouts of depression "Black dog". I had many black dogs and the amazing thing about them was the silver lining, the light at the end of the tunnel, the cosmic sensation of joy you experienced while going through the darkest time. I remember very vividly a few: a night sitting on the boulders in Genova with my then best friend smelling sea air and an incredible cold breeeze, feeling the shivering on my body as an electric energy running through me; discovering W.G. Sebald at a time when I was exploring the concept of exile and finding that he had nailed it to an extraordinary level of accuracy. In my recent dark days I came across Dan Eldon and his illustrated journals and through the intensity of his short young life I felt almost purified. He used to say that the journey was the destination and I've learned recently what that really means in terms of giving up expectation and witholding judgement. I got in touch with his mother and learned yet another lesson about pain and joy and strength. I don't have heroes in my life because my search pushes me forward all the time, but I have had magical encounters, Dan was one, Christina was another.

2009-06-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

The art of travel and The Art of You

I made a list of things I wanted to do during my travelling, some I'm doing, some I haven't done yet and maybe will end up not doing, like collecting ball point pens from all the places I go to, and then use them all in one very intricate drawing. Among the things that I have done was to attend a workshop at The Art of You in San Diego. It had been on my list for over a year, and it turned out to be as great as I expected, and better. The studio has every possible art supply, found objects, ephemera, magazines to cut from, glues, paper, scissors, whatever your imagination tells you you need, you find it there. The idea is to let your creative mind express itself without all the limitations imposed by our tyrannical rational mind, things like judging the importance, usefulness, beauty - or lack of - of whatever we do. And when you give your creative mind some space and say, "I won't judge and I won't be judged", the journey really becomes the destination.

Venice

2008-08-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

Venice was very emotional for various reasons this year, but we found good weather until yesterday's storm and spent most of the very hot days at the beach, reading and drawing (and swimming and sunbathing, of course). I only took my camera out at night, when it was cooler (not much).

In the house I found a trunk of my grandad's paintings, watercolours and oil, but so many, hundreds. Still lifes, portraits, scenes from the opera and cafes. I was hoping to find some of the paper he used, but didn't. He used a very thin paper, I don't think it was particularly good or expensive, but it laid so wonderfully flat, while mine tends to buckle even when I stretch it. I'd love to know how he did that. I didn't bring any of his paintings back with me, but I will next time, and I'll write a little bit more about him. Here he is (the guy standing) in a very surreal picture my mum took in the 1950s.

Kaleidoscopes

2008-08-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

I fell in love with kaleidoscopes when I went to Jerome, Arizona, where there's the most amazing kaleidoscope shop. Today I was playing around with images and decided to turn some into kaleidoscopes, and I thought of doing some "kaleidoscope magic", choosing images of things I would like. Here's my Ferrari:

And here is a beautiful mansion in Encinitas, where I would like to live:

Perhaps my subconscious mind picks up on these suggestions and turns my dreams into reality.

I hope it works for you too!

Making Time

2008-07-26T02:53:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading Making Time by Steve Taylor (on My Shelfari) - Why time seems to pass at different speeds and how to control it. After a few pages in which I could relate to what he was describing - the internal chatter and other stuff about how time can expand in states of maximum concentration, but it shortens in states of absorption - he lost me completely. Not that I could not follow what he was saying, I just simply have a different experience on the matter. For me a day can be long while living it and short looking back. And it is not due to the amount of experiences and exposure to the new, but to change. Time feels longer for me when the before and after an experience are different, i.e. after I have changed in some respect. But then again I've never suffered at the thought of time passing too fast, for me it passes too slow. Taylor says that in states of mindfulness, i.e., living and experiencing and concentrating on the present, time seems longer or we might transcend it altogether. He says that children live in the now. But so do I, I am aware of the clouds and the trees and buildings, sounds, all of that, micro and macro worlds to discover. I'm surprised to hear that other people don't. It's sad. But in the now there always seems to be something bugging me, I might be thirsty or tired or cold or carrying a heavy bag. So the future is still a better place. If I need more time I think of reincarnation. What a shame that we don't seem to learn from one life to the next. What a shame that what we identify with the I (or ego in the sense of the I) is our personality, which is what we shall leave behind. Time has not passed fast for me, but I still don't know how I got here.

The White Cliffs of Serendipity

2008-07-22T10:54:00.000-07:00

This was Dover a few hours ago, seen from the cliffs. On a good day, and actually on bad days too, you see a lot of elderly couples, usually wearing funny hats and some white items of clothing, sitting there looking at the harbour. And if you don't believe me, look at this:

These being two different sets of couples! One of the things I like about going to my caravan near Dover is that there are a couple of places that leave books out in baskets, either for free or for a donation, so I end up getting stuff I wouldn't normally read, like Super Cannes by J.G. Ballard and a Seventies travel book by Ethel Mannin: An Italian Journey. I randomly opened it and the Gritti Palace just stared at me - being the place where Hemingway used to stay when in Venice. Last night we went to an Indian restaurant by the sea with fuchsia lights and golden pictures and I remembered a book my parents had, that was quite seminal in its own way, Kitsch; the world of bad taste by Gillo Dorfles, so I've decided to order it from America. I might scan some pictures for my posts when it arrives. I highly recommend it, if you are a connoisseur of bad taste.

Canary Wharf

2008-07-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

Another day of photography with a group of photographers, this time in Canary Wharf. Turner would have loved the sky today:

I am not too keen on architecture, so I was trying to find an angle, some kind of story to tell: I thought this building looked more like some crazy mental asylum from the 50s than an expensive office block. When I was a teenager I developed the belief that I was allergic to poplar, as if its pollen had some kind of lysergic effect on me. Doesn't seem to work anymore (sadly).

So here the twilight zone theme continues with this giant menacing clock, you can imagine it to start spinning backwards.
If it does I might find that I'm still fourteen soundly asleep under a poplar tree.

Happy nightmares

Hemingway in Venice

2008-07-17T09:26:00.001-07:00

I started reading Across the River and Into the Trees. My grandfather bought it when it first came out, in 1950, it's a green cloth, no dj looking thing that I kept on my bedside table in Venice for a year and another year on the shelf here. The original dj that I don't have, was designed by his young lover Adriana, friend of some of my mum's friends. She also committed suicide, but much later on. I always wanted to read this book and see if I recognise some of the characters and read what Venice was like through Hemingway's eyes. My attempts to go to the Harry's Bar and drink a Bellini have failed up to now due to the tiny size and overcrowding of the place. I also don't like those golden grated windows, I found them scary as a child.

Hemingway's studio in Key West. I keep this picture on the wall
behind the computer. There's a cat sitting on the left chair (take my word for it, this is a very low res pic). It's one of the 60 cats (most of them with 6 toes) that live in his house today.

In the woods

2008-07-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went out in the woods with my photography group. There was a wood cabin with many pictures stuck on the walls and dusty skylights with cobwebs and butterfly stickers.

There were also trees (being a wood),

a lonesome guitarist and runners.

Later in the pub I wanted to get a photo of me looking like a black and white poet, but didn't quite happen.

Later still we sat in the garden with an oil light, "drinking and (never) thinking of tomorrow".

The underground movement

2008-07-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of gruelling days of work with a full immersion in the Sixties, what London was like then, bookshops, events. The movement. I have always been fascinated by avant-gardes, experimenting, the creative poet who is always photographed in black and white in a cloud of cigarette smoke. It's in the Beat generation poets that I first found my desire to travel, be creative, but most of all to "belong". That's when I learned concepts like "us" and "you", "you" obviously being not quite as good as "us". "Us", obviously never existed, but it felt like it did, and then it would all dissolve, long nights talking, painting, getting drunk together, and surreal dawns, going back to too much light to sustain that dream. The "leftovers" of that world today seem a bit sad to me, I met a few, the spark was gone, they were made of a buzz that once gone, left empty shells. No interest in the new. It's been a strange journey for me going through all those names, Ferlinghetti, Corso, Trocchi, Mitchell. But inspiring too. I'll read them again, reaching for a much wider concept of "us".

Freedom, fractals and the internet part 2

2008-07-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

And in fact, I agree, it is an uncomfortable discovery of our limitations. Faced by the infinite or potential infinite, we feel overwhelmed. Freedom of choice is also overwhelming, because it can be a freedom of making mistakes, and the more open to choice our lives are, the more there's a need for a changed perspective, for a playful desire for exploration, and a faith of some sort, whereby every choice can be equally good because it reveals an equally good world - provided that our core values remain intact. Continuing with the analogy with fractals, here is an attractor:

I won't try to define it, and I prefer to quote the wikipedia definition: "An attractor is a set to which a dynamical system evolves after a long enough time. That is, points that get close enough to the attractor remain close even if slightly disturbed." So, in a way, in our analogy, anything that is near that core which has formed in us through time, will stay and everything else will be an ephemeral contribution. But not, perhaps, a waste of time or a distracting noise.

Freedom, fractals and the internet part 1

2008-07-11T03:04:00.000-07:00

After spending a few hours yesterday updating my blog, discovering shelfari, etc. I felt a particular type of nausea that I get from the internet. Everywhere you go, an entire new world opens in front of you, with profiles to upload, people, pictures, texts, and all these tools to - well, to organize the infinite. It made me think of fractals, as in fractals you zoom in and in, into new worlds. And, unlike matryoshkas, they are not smaller and smaller. So here is an example, let's start from the classical Mandelbrot set: you've all seen this.

Now we zoom in:

We can continue to do so, changing filters, as you would change glasses, or light or perspective, and new worlds appear, which are, well, very different - although the patterns are still there, in their infinite transformations:

The classical Mandelbrot set reveals within itself... a carnival day. We could be in Venice, New Orleans, Rio:

Walking around on this carnival day, escaping the crowds, and searching even deeper, we find an enchanted garden. It was already contained within the carnival, but we could not see it:

This discovery, this exploring of the infinite, though, gives me pleasure and a sense of peace and belonging. So why does the internet's infinity give me pain? I have some ideas on that for my next posting. Meanwhile, I'd like to hear your opinion.

Graham Green

2008-07-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Actually, I want to talk about Paul Hogarth. I stumbled across him looking for pen and ink techniques and bought his book called Creative Ink Drawings. I became so fascinated by his work, that I ended up buying his autobiography, Drawing on Life, and the other books on drawing techniques. He was born in 1917 and died in 2001, getting better and better throughout his life. His books on drawing techniques, though, are quite old and they describe markers as a brand new thing! He used Faber Markettes, which are now unavailable. Other unavailable art supplies include a Faber 702 pencil that looks stunning. You can still find Pierre Noir pencils, so I bought one. They are so soft, you feel like eating them (not advisable). He was the official illustrator for Graham Greene - at last, we got there - which made me want to read him again. I got two of his books from the library and lost them on the bus.

Sir John Soane

2008-06-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

I hadn't been to the Soane's Museum in over 10 years, but it was just as I remembered it. Sir John Soane was born in 1753, the son of a bricklayer, and died after a long and distinguished career, in 1837. He designed so many famous buildings, among which the Bank of England. He was an avid collector of antiquities, as you can see from the picture above. Among the most unusual items there is the sarcophagus of Setis I, made of opal, now turned yellow, with a dense inscription which was not as yet deciphered at the time. The discovery of this wonderful sarcophagus was made by Giovanni Battista Belzoni, known as the great Belzoni. I must add a picture:
Belzoni was a 6' 7" tall explorer/strongman, a very bizarre character indeed. I'd love to read his book about archeological discoveries.

Here's my take on Soane's house: