Stealing stories.

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read. My principle in researching for a novel is ‘Read like a butterfly, write like a bee’, and if this story contains any honey, it is entirely because of the quality of the nectar I found in the work of better writers.” – Philip Pullman on His Dark Materials (a rich, powerful, magnificent work).

“I’d made myself believe that I was fine and happy and fulfilled on my own without the love of anyone else. Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I’d spend all my life without going to China, but it wouldn’t matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.” – Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, p466.

Whispers

So the guys over at the BBC’s ‘Culture Show’ reckon they can hear what Bill Murray whispers into Johansson’s ear at the end of Lost In Translation; “I love you. Don’t forget to always tell the truth”.

I took the above photo of a photo in Paris around this time last year.

Members club.

“Remember, no vagina wants to be a member of a cock that wants her as a member.”

 A classic Vice DO.

Progress.

Good God this is apt. Just found this browsing the Duchess’ blog:

“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

C.S. Lewis

Winslet’s lips and Schrader’s tips.

Photograph by James White, Esquire magazine.

“Every successful artwork is a fluke. It’s very hard to predict or plan. There is an element of mystery to creation, and you have to respect the mystery.”

“The bad thing about being a writer is that you don’t have a job, and the good thing is that you’re never unemployed because you are always speculating. From the time you read the newspaper in the morning to the time you dream at night, it’s all some sort of creative speculation.”

“I don’t care much for the idea of relaxing. I read a lot. I don’t consider that relaxation, I consider that invigoration.”

What a wonderful, wonderful idea these urbancurators had.

Chip upper lip, old boy.

I’ve been seeing London through foriegn spectacles these past few weeks and I’m all the better for it. Playing tourguide to Yanks and Aussies. I’m warming to it; cheese and wine in cellars, playing cards with Satan in Lynchian Wapping (before he tried to make out with me), drinking in an oppulent backstage boudoir, flicking through porn over coffee, reading some of Beckham’s early handwritten correspondance (“I just got my first wage packet. I got £120 …”), drinking in Britain’s tiniest snug bar, seeing horror at the theatre, fairies under London Bridge, eating Okonomi, fish curry, jam rolly polly & custard, venison pie, Welsh cakes, yuzu chocolate truffles and blowing over £100 across Turnmills and the Ministry of Sound (though upon exiting at 5.30am I won the MOS entrance fee back on a scratchcard).

I also bumped into someone in the National Portrait Gallery who I’d met at The Met in NY back in November ‘05 (art geeks tend to travel in small, albeit international, circles). Leading from our brief conversation I was inspired to get back into practical fine art and also dip into ‘art business’. So I’ll be looking into part time courses … and what to do/where to live in 2006! Oh, and I might get round to finding out where in the world half of my genes come from.

“I love the sea, and I love England as long as you can see the edge of it”. AA Gill (author, ‘This Angry Isle’).

And his words on what Churchill referred to as ‘old friends’ – the only food stuffs exempt from WWII rationing: “Fish and chips is … generally better remembered than eaten. It’s a totem of Englishness, a thing that is more than mere dinner and rather less than actual food. … Fish and chips is a silent meal. You shouldn’t talk and eat. It is a race against falling temperature. You need to be perfectly concentrated, constantly blowing and sucking, wolfing with bared teeth and flared nostrils”.

Whilst on a trashy British food note, I found this in a free mag in a bar in Paris (selling wonderful glasses of house red for just £1.20!), extholing the marvels of the English fry-up or, Brunch A L’Anglaise; “Enfin une idee originale pour bruncher a PAris! Sur de grandes tables facon cantine, vivez une experience culinaire rare: beans, jacket potatoes, sausages et bacon, assortis de scrambled eggs, scones, blueberries et delicieuses doucers a l’anglaise, vous reprendrez bien une tasse de the?” If you couldn’t translate that, the accompanying image was pretty self explanatory:

They weren’t kidding when they said ‘une experience culinaire rare’.

Something a little more confusing, is just what goes on at this little bar in the backwater town of Commercy in central France. Sexy drink party and an avalanche of T-shirts? Sounds like heaven. Checkout the flyer:

I also managed to catch the ‘Velasquez’/'Tim Gardner’ shows at the NG, the ‘Photographic Portrait Prize’ at the NPG, the ‘Fischli & Weiss’/'David Smith’ shows at TM and ‘Bound For Glory’ at The Photographers’ Gallery.

Monkey, monkey, standing there – in your purple underwear.

That’ll be LOMO-love, under a tree. It’s a tough love. I got showered with seeds on my lunch break.
I was going up the stairs at Leicester Sqr, behind a binman and his see-through bin bag had three, count ‘em, three spring rolls in it. Got me thinking. How many uneaten, giant spring rolls do you think are lying around on the London Underground at any one time? I reckon a lot.
I’ve been watching a lot of downloaded TV these past few weeks; LOST, Twin Peaks, Peep Show and Family Guy. Dark. Waiting on Green Wing and The Cremaster Cycle. And spying the producer-bashing out-takes to Bourdain’s new show No Reservations here. The new Chilis album is cool. Got a post-sold-out ticket to TV On The Radio on Monday and one to the DJ Spooky live-soundtracked abstract docu-flaneury “Berlin” at Tate Modern next week. Complete with beanbags.
Caught the Mary Cassatt prints show at the National Gallery. Like looking at a Matisse and seeing History change on the canvas as your eye travels from left to right and top to bottom; these bits of paper show someone trying to adapt an immediate and alien (Eastern) use of line, perspective and composition. The themes and materials are her norm, yet cut with single black, free-flowing lines; intersecting – yet not seperating – the flatterned patterns on the the walls and upholstery. Close-by is The Photographer’s Gallery, with a charming and heart-felt Asako Narahashi show. This is right up my alley. An ‘everyfamily’. Snapshots of bins, eyelashes, candles, toddlers on window sills, sandals, dying relatives, dead birds, birdsongs. A universal snapshot diary. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in Japan, yet Asako showed me that really, it’s no different to living right here, now.
Been hanging out with my lil’ 2yr-old nephew. He calls me “Uncle Ick” (after my sis – I’m ‘Ick’ for Ickle brother) and throws the horns at cameras (photo to come shortly). My little rock ‘n’ roll nephew. He shouts “Up, UP!” when he hears my name back home in Toronto (I lift him up higher than anyone else, evidently) and he shouts with glee when he sees the Dim Sum arrive. We’re bringing him up well.
I’m now the proud owner of a marshmallow gun, and halfway through The Pickwick Papers.
I’m not sure I can condense what’s been happening at work into a blog entry, but times are busy, exciting, interesting and scary. Lots of potential. I might have to talk my way into keeping my job. I think I’ve got it covered. I’ve got lots of good ideas.

“Why don’t they kiss? How come they have to run around the tree?” Anthony Bourdain on Bollywood.

“Join in the bike ride and us help beat Lukemia” Gary Linekar

Right Gary. Next time get the text on your subway posters checked before they go to print. Spent this evening after work as I (sadly) often do. Studying the shelves of Charing Cross’ 2nd hand bookshops and observing the habits of fellow browsers (a curious creed). Found that both Ulysses and Gormanghast both have; “Best novel of this century” attributed to them by Anthony Burgess. Hmm. Followed a man who was clearly insane and rather frustrated. Not a good combination. I veared away when he looked like he wanted to strike up conversation. Walked into a cheap chinese in Soho only to find they employed a minimum £10 order policy and promptly left. Told myself to eat a little more daringly in my usual haunt as penance. Warmed my belly with shredded pork & preserved Sezhuan cabbage soup followed by minced pork, ginger and dried salted fish steamed over rice. Apart from the unpleasantly crunchy spinal chord it was all rather delicious. Which, as anyone who knows me will tell you, cheered me up no end.

“[Poilu] The … name for a French soldier. Its literal meaning is ‘hairy, shaggy,’ but the word has conveyed for over a century the idea of the virility of a Samson, whose strength lay in his locks”.
Henri Barbusse – Under Fire

Maria that was great! More bbqs needed! I still managed to eat three platefuls at Blue Hawaii! I don’t see why the cake-giving has to stop at police … I see the dawn of a new movement on the horizon. How were my cocktail avacados?

“Egon Schiele was a Viennese expressionist that had great hair, got busted for pornography, and died at twenty-eight. You know, like perfect.”
Duncan Hannah, PKM p110.

I don’t normally go in for Westerns but this one’s amazing.

“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.”
Cormac McCarthy – All The Pretty Horses