the sourcerer: Painting the town orange

Friday, June 25, 2010

Painting the town orange

We did the fan walk last night, my lovely friend and I. If anyone hasn't done it yet - do! It was other-worldly. The Dutch fans were so jolly and I didn't pick up a single bad vibe anywhere. Besides the innovative outfits, there was so much to look at along the way. We saw larger than life marionettes (Handspring, was that you?), a band of drummers with black ostrich plumes on their hats, a chain of luminescent soccer balls with people inside them, a group of opera singers, people on stilts, children jumping rope in a fantastic way... all of this just down the road from you.

It was a little sad that there were so few Cameroonians. Very little green in a sea of orange.

The mosaics in the stadium tunnel are beautiful and the biodiversity garden next to it - breathtaking. Indigenous plants and trees, fountains, a lake! Where did that come from? The wide path takes you all the way to the lighthouse and the sea.

We ended our walk with a lager at Brewers@Union. Perfect.

4 comments:

T&I said...: we were there too . so happy! did you see the people with the inflatable orange wigs? looking forward to see you tomorrow liliput.; June 25, 2010 at 3:20 PM
John L. said...: South Africa is all everybodies talking about here. we're so sorry that we're missing out. I check your blog every few days - carry on...
love from G-thorpe,; June 26, 2010 at 9:30 AM
sam said...: Why no more photos?; June 28, 2010 at 8:34 PM
the sourcerer said...: aargh! forgot camera at home. since then carry it with me everywhere..; June 28, 2010 at 9:24 PM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.