the sourcerer: Bijou Bisous.❤

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Bijou Bisous.❤

My friend The Blacksmith bought the old Bijou theatre in Observatory many years ago to house his forge. Since then, he's also let out parts of the building as artists' studios. I've been to some great events here - the blowing of the anvil, a secret performance by the Violent Femmes, The Odd Engineers - glowing balls of metal whizzing through the dark (!) and of course, the annual open studios combined with live music.

Much to look at on our wanderings, faces old and new, interesting conversation. This is my winning photo of the day: The Spaniard shaved his beard as a birthday surprise for the Young Scorpio. I can't look at it without smiling.

The Blacksmith had these highly desirable knives on display. The Forge was at it's moody best.

The Lovely Girlfriend and I rushed home to feed the hungry and exhausted Production Designer. We stopped off for sushi at Saigon (always the same, always good) and washed it down with a very old bottle of wine. This doesn't happen every day.

I like his t-shirt. It means: "To the kitchen with you!"

The two of them have been cosseting a monstrously large artichoke plant for many months now. It has finally delivered (one) fruit. Ultimate fate uncertain . . .

3 comments:

Marijke said...: great pics! Events at the Bijoux have an element of magical realism. A place where odd becomes ordinary.; November 21, 2010 at 10:09 PM
the sourcerer said...: thanks Marijke! and so true.; November 21, 2010 at 11:14 PM
arcadia said...: Dit lyk fantasties. Maak my so jaloers op al jul Kapenare!; November 23, 2010 at 8:17 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.