Saturday 31 March 2012





"Have a beer , it is solstice.. just lay in the sun all day, it is solstice" the guy told me offering his can as if I were one of his neighbors and not even wondering how I had found my way through the boatyard. Then he went again to taste the sun..




For some kind of magic the sun was still warm at something around seven in June, 21st of June in London outskirts of Twickenham. Which is in fact a much less poetic way of calling this lost pearl of countryside suspended nowhere in time and space that was baptised Eel Pie Island.


What else than magic could I call this tiny piece of land which is linked to greater London by a small foot bridge. When you cross the first house has written on the small panel Kuala Lumpur ,which adds to the already well settled state of dreaminess one brings on from the bridge. Looking around it seems that there is no public path to walk among the country house,but a small tiny way brings to the boatyards. I sneaked in into two almost closed doors, to my fascination with sea and boats the large titans parked to be repaired or repainted made me feel like inside this dot of land were larger worlds , as a game of boxes.


I always feel like a child in front of this lords of the sea, able to cut waves and cross horizons.
I went on trying to discover hidden corners , I was in total awe thinking of the time this place had a hotel well known as ballroom , that misteriously burned down.
The memory and the warmth of that summer solstice came to me in an another propitious sunny day when at la cite de la musique , the passionating class about rock history held by Olivier Julien brought us back to the days of the british rock . 
Pete Towshend had in fact his own recording studios opposite the island and called them inspired by the island itself.
Life goes and summer withers and ends: still some dreams linger on and can revive through a small foot bridge. The warmth of the solstice light can feed a whole winter time









Sunday 25 March 2012

caps and lids


an old japanese sir
In back light two pieces of very white and wise hair were floating in the afternoon breeze around the oval of wrinkles and elegant japanese eyes. He walks slowly in my direction and I recognize in the twist of his face some sort of pain while he looks down at a plastic bin halfway in the street.
I turn and close my eyes as my heart squeezes sharply inside me as I realise that he is stretching his hand inside the bin. I just grieve at this world we are living in , where an old japanese man has to live his most mature days to fumble in a garbage bag to get by.
As I try to run away from this scene, I stop and decide to catch this and live through with him the despair of this world. The time I take my camera, he has lifted some washing liquid container.
The time I switch it on , I see that he has get rid of the container and walks away gingerly with the red lid in his hand. Amusement makes its way through my surprise : the old man was in fact trying to correct some careless parisian mistake ; the plastic lids have to be recycled elsewhere in this place ! And he took care of the situation even if at his venerable age and in his serious black outfit he had to put his arms through the garbage... A warm relaxation pervades me, I witness a scene of joy and not of catastrophe. I know for sure that the scene I imagined exists somewhere as piercingly painful as I felt it. I know also that people care and we are not lost. There he walks away with the red cap in one hand and the dangling stick in the other.




Saturday 24 March 2012

glimpes of Naples

Napoli when we were still waking up to the day and to the bright sky ...
old and bright fresh as his inhabitants that can keep this place alive just by their wits notwithstanding the neglect from the governement.

A door bell is like a ticket to another world

Music from traditions bring new life to the square, it is impossible not to feel the feet and the hands tickling to dances, I do not remember this music but I know my body is made of this substance too



 
Naples could look like a Mitteleuropean city in some places



and in spaccanapoli the only feeling is like being at home
In some parts it reminded my of Bombay, yet I would say that Naples has more the sweetness of Calcutta


still a place where you can warm up in the sun , where the streets are one's garden 



la melodie dans les choses

in the dazzling unexpected sun, my head becomes suitably lazy and heavy and rests onto the bus window as outside as lazily  the town seems to move in patterns of music at the rythm of the bus lullaby of stops and starts. The couples and the friends string along the seine's paved banks or stretch out to the newly born warmth , one by one from one bridge to the other. 
In another summer in buenos aires, when the heat was promising endless nights of friends meeting in squares and bars, I remember bumping into the end of the year parents students rehearsal from the town conservatory, when I was looking for a live concert. I stepped out fast, aware of the mistake as soon as I noticed the clusters of dressed up youngsters surrounded by proud families. 
Few seconds later I saw up the theatre emptying his audience into the large street. The small figurines slowly crossed the highway

 
I could not help being tricked into looking at them as notes stringing the patterns of the road , one by one or in small group bringing back the music in the auditorium to the patterns of the city. Playing the city alive.


On and on one by one they all went on the either side small dots playing the notes of the streets , as if wise architects had hidden a secret pentagram in the streets and in those far away building at the end of these reoads so that every human being cannot escape this playing un unknown and unheard music...







Rilke said that one should always be aware of the big music that is animating this world, be ready for your hour of speech in this larger symphony ...




Friday 23 March 2012

a winter fairy tale city


a glimpse of San'a in a brief stopover ... I entered the city with a half charged photo camera and the large smile of Hussein , the taxi driver and his big smile showing his children .

I was almost tiptoeing into the streets as old as history, as old as the sand: the peace of the town were making me wanting to be silent, not to break this enchanted sleep.  
San'a is a dream dreamt by children and shares its same sweetness , as if the houses were made of gingerbread and coated in sugar. 

On the other hand , this was a true fable and no witch was lurking in the dark, but in the gentleness of the air it was as if you could hear a distant music of children and crickets. Maybe it is the sound of the happiness of the holiday. 
 The city was like a bubble suspended in another world, a world before that our world became a popart object.




The town slowly was waking up and the people gently coming out

I did not remember this girl , i did not remember her as this picture, I remember rather when she burst out laughing and ran away, to friends or family I do not remember either
 




I was hesitating to enter the Mosquee, I was so unexpecting this encounter that i did not even have any shawl to cover and yet the people invited me inside and urged me to take pictures, and even then they did not pose , they were just being who they were , giving the gift of self as generously as their town was letting me wander.






then the pictures ended with the battery of my camera and I cannot tell other than with my words the colours of the bazaar, the laughs and jokes with some merchant and his scared little son, while waiting for the taxi to get unblocked, the break at the tiny square to have lamb and lemon juice, the benevolent looks and smiles.



I just wonder now; in this world in turmoil , that these dear friends are doing fine and are doing better than some years back when we briefly crossed our ways for a short afternoon... I just long to see them again


 "you are a good person" Hussein said when i got out of the taxi , I could not feel more proud of the sincere love I felt for this city , for its people ..."not as much as all of you , I should have said "