Patti Smith: Dream of Life

“There’s a Patti Smith documentary out,” a colleague told me.  “I think you’d like it.”

“Oh?”  I pricked my ears up in interest.  I vaguely remembered two friends talking about the movie but had dismissed it, because I wasn’t familiar with Smith’s work.  Although I probably had been more concerned with the food I was about to tuck into at the time.  “Is she still around?”

My colleague laughed.  “Yes.  It’s full of poetry.  You should see it.”

And so, this misty, chilly December night, I set out for the West End.  In search of Poetry and its comrades, Truth, Beauty and Love.

Back to School

Ephemeral, mercurial summer. Seemingly here one day and gone the next in a flurry of settling into new abode, gigs, bashes, festivals, weather grumblings, a not-quite-there heat and lazy hazy sundays… Suddenly, the early August chill attained a permanent air, a heads-down vibe permeated the atmosphere and September had arrived.

Bellini-esque: Intro – Venice 3-6 May 2007

Beauty. Art. Achitecture. Faded glory. The city where Robert Browning died. Where Byron kept his fiery mistress Margarita Cogni. A striped shirted man standing at the rear of a gondola, belting out an aria as he steers the craft through a picturesque, narrow canal while his charges, a couple, canoodle. An unpleasant watery stink. Titian. Caneletto. Pigeons.

Venice means many things to many people. To my father, who visited during the honeymoon with my mother some two decades ago, it meant amazing food. To my housemate, the city would be full of Americans believing they were being faah-bulous in flouncing about far from home, in a city so steeped in history and culture. To a single friend, it would be a ground hog day Valentines’ Day fiasco, a city to be strenuously avoided unless one was with a lover. To a colleague, getting lost in its maze of lanes was one of life’s greatest pleasures. Yet another person hoped it wouldn’t be a chocolate box city, full of tourists and locals catering to them, but with very little real work being done.

So this is the New Year

The bright lights, overindulgence and the relentless pressure to celebrate of the Christmas and New Year season have receded into the background. The initial shock of the yearly increase in public transport fares has come and gone (Let all tourists beware: it is now £2 for a a single non-Oyster bus ride). We’ve had the sudden plunges in temperature, mild days, wind so strong the rail system was reduced to a trickle and the City’s main thoroughfares were shut down in case the scaffolding adorning many a London building would tumble down. And of course, we’ve had the yearly snow which never fails to amaze Londoners… and bring their public transport system to a juddering halt.

I found my thrill…

More Wong Kar Wai (slightly outdated) news.

His first English language film will be called My Blueberry Nights. Norah Jones and Broadway actress Adriane Lenox have been cast as waitresses. Apparently, the film concerns a young woman journeying across the United States to find the true meaning of love. While doing so, in a mind-bogglingly obvious plotline, she meets various quirky characters,who will no doubt help her along to her goal. (*barf*)

Amedeo’s Muses, The Royal Academy of Art

Amedeo Modigliani and his brand of long faced, swan necked, melancholy lovelies in their muted shades have long been a favourite of mine. I have always been partial to portraits of fashionable women, their gazes mysterious and distant and their stories unknowable. When wandering around a dusty gallery (eg. Norway’s Nasjonalgalleriet in Oslo) full of dull, unappealing canvases, Amedeo’s paintings are bound attract the eye much like a magpie is attracted by a shiny bauble.

Oliphant!

One of the more amazing sights about London two weekends ago… a giant mechanically operated elephant, three storeys high, a carriage atop its back where various women in indian costume and a man in 18th century suit were scurrying about, and capable of spurting water onto the delighted masses following its path through Central London. Based on a Jules Verne story and apparently a project five years in the making between the Nantes-based theatre company Royal de Luxe, the Arts Council of England and the Mayor of London, Red Ken himself.

I caught up with the Sultan’s Elephant as it headed down Pall Mall and followed it (and the truck behind it housing a French band playing strangely appropriate Gallic soft rock) as it turned up into St James Street. There was lots of delighted squealing from recipients of the water spraying from the elephant’s trunk and it certainly helped that London turned on the warmest day of the year to date. But the crowds all got a bit too much for me when the pachyderm inexplicably came to a halt on Picadilly and went to sleep. Yes, its limbs went quite limp and its eyes actually closed. At that stage, I decided to make my escape through Mayfair, following – ahem – the siren call of Selfridges.

Despite the comments of the Guardian’s curmudgeonly theatre critic, Michael Billington, and the fact that the elephant’s journey caused all sorts of traffic problems, I’m all for huge mechanical animals parading through one’s city to the strains of cheesey French soft rock/mystic cithar music.

Coming soon to a city near you! (well, if you’re near Antwerp, Calais and le Havre)

Official Sultan’s Elephant website.