what would proust do?

how much can you know about someone from their responses to questions?
possibly not much, although scanning through some q&a can be entertaining

it seems this was highly entertaining for young frenchies at the fin-de-siecle. in fact the young proust (at 13) and the not quite so young proust (at 20) answered some questions, which were later used (loosely) by vanity fair to quiz celebrities of varying celebrity. they call it their proust questionnaire, see what they say:
joan fontaine (march 2008)
what do you consider the most overrated virtue? virginity
on what occasion do you lie? when being tactful … or evasive.
jasper johns (december 2007)
what is your most treasured possession? my refrigerator
What is it that you most dislike? seeing fish with silver skin marinating in cream (hmm, don't we all?)
helen thomas (april 2007)
How would you like to die? With my boots on.
donald sutherland (october 2005)
What is your favorite occupation? Imagining.
karl lagerfeld (september 2005)
What or who is the greatest love of your life? My life is not over yet. There is no other way to answer such a question …
How would you like to die? I hate the idea of death—I prefer to disappear …
umberto eco (july 2005)
What is your favorite journey? The years during which I am writing a new novel. I am wandering through a private and secret territory, nobody knows what I am doing, and I feel happy.
Which living person do you most admire? Let me wait until they die, so to be sure of my feelings.

a book which may or may not have much to do with proust, but has an amusing cover, and is about the mind and how we work things out for ourselves

another take on q&a which i saw via blog was in another magazine, where visual artist Hans-Peter Feldmann answered questions posed by art critic/curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in the best way he know how: in pictures
images borrowed from katherine bowman's site (she has lots of good pictures)
this is more exciting to me - i like the ambiguity of images as well as the pleasure from taken from looking at the visual

i suppose a blog is a way of posing your own questions, and then answering them. or sometimes, answering a question and setting it up as though there was a question in there somewhere...

so, evilmonika, what makes you happy?

and if you can be bothered, ask yourself:

Where would you like to live?
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Your favorite painter?
Your favorite musician?
The quality you most admire in a man?
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Your favourite virtue?
Your favourite occupation?
Your favourite meal?

up, down, love & loss, a tear in the fabric

hardly a day goes by that i don't think of my dad

it's been more than a year, and the pain doesn't rip through me any more, but it's not dull either. it can be acute and, the hardest thing perhaps, it comes on me when i don't expect it.

watching a doco on beethoven the other day, the narrator commented he was quick to offence, quick to hurt, quick to anger, but generous and loving. and hearing it made me think of dad, and when they showed beethoven dying, i mourned and cried.

walking down the street i remembered a video of my dad carrying my nephew on his shoulders, singing and dancing - i don't know what triggered it. sometimes images, memories just appear, conjured from a thought, a smell, a glimpse. a tear in the fabric of time.

the other day in a shop near china town, i browsed the colourful figurines and bits and pieces, things i only understand by their surface colour and texture. i picked up a wad of hell money (after-life money; wikipedia tells me that missionaries telling chinese that they would go to hell when they died if they didn't convert to christianity was understood as going to the afterlife ... no problem, they knew that already)

but hell money isn't something you should leave lying around, it shouldn't be used for decoration even though it is quite exquisitely lovely. it should be hidden until you need it, and then burnt for the dead.

ancestor worship. i'm not comfortable with worshipping ancestors.

i spent my early years paying my dad enough obeisance, i don't think i need to do more now

last weekend, i read a review of a book called Nothing Was the Same: A Memoir. the book is by psychologist kay redfield jamieson and it is an account of her grief at the death of her husband. according to the review, poignantly titled a wife's voyage to the farthest shore of grief, she looks at grief and contrasts it to depression because as well as being a clinician she also suffers from bipolar.

she has also written the unquiet mind in which she explores her own difficulties with manic depression and the manner in which bipolarity threads through creative minds and lives.

i wandered down to the paperback at lunchtime and bought both. i am looking for insight, comfort and understanding, enlightenment, and ultimately hope.

drawing me up the wall

the milk bar on the corner has a new lick of graffiti on its walls. it's not that great but at least it's colourful.

i like graffiti.

i want the train companies to hire graffiti artists to tart up the exteriors so we have street art snaking through our suburbs

interesting things happen on walls

ghostpatrol - interview on designfiles

illustrating street walls and special commission garden walls

( i like the feeling of this especially, secret garden-ish)

miso's wall-papering - again, interviewed on designfiles

some of her pieces remind me of klimt, stylised repetition

recently we had to get a present for a turning 11 girl. i confess i wanted to show her images like these and encourage some graphic urbanscaping because works like these, or practice like this makes me feel alive, and make me laugh and think (my favourite things ... almost)
an article in the age on wednesday got me thinking about street art. it was called if these scrawls could talks - nice one.

another image or so from a recent exhibition in a half-torn down building

nose to tail

nose to tail talk has been moving in slow fooding circles a long time
respecting all the animal's bits as a way of respecting the animal
there was a nice article on the topic in the age a little while ago, bringing the boutique to the farm (though i think the print article was called soul food or something)
pork farmer, elizabeth behrendt refuses to sell to people who don't know what they're doing. she says "I am never going to see their flesh abused in my market stall or in the kitchen when someone cooks the crap out of it. I can do everything right on my farm but it only takes a few minutes from a crap cook to ruin the meat from my pigs."
well, artists nose to tail it too,
or sheep stomach and bladder it, at least
julia lohmann
ruminant - lighting made from cow's stomachs
and flock - A ceiling made from 50 preserved sheep stomachs, 180cm x 180 cm x 30 cm, made in 2004, exhibited at the Royal College of Art Summer Show and at Design Mart in the Design Museum.
not sure what i think of this, but her gallery includes a "before" shot...

this last image of julia plus sheep tummies reminds me of some of louise bourgeois's work.
like, fillette (1968) latex over plaster, 59.5 x 26.5 19.5 cm
mapplethorpe's portrait of louise bourgeois with fillette tucked under her arm like a baguette
an article in the tate magazine, with the wonderful, playful title lumps, bumps, bulbs, bubbles, bulges, slits, turds, coils, craters, wrinkles and holes, which pretty well covers the field ...
another bourgeois piece, the destruction of the father, which looks like lohmann's flocked ceiling

according to trendhunter
The paper-thin substrate Mary-Anne Wensley uses for her sculptures could easily be mistaken for parchment, but no, Wensley uses a material that she finds both captivating and disgusting: dried pig intestines,
in fact, the works look incredibly sanitised

a final piece by louise bourgeois, janus fleuri, which is just ... well offal-esque really
no-one made me blog about this, so if i make myself queasy ... i've no-one to blame but me!
given that it's footy finals time, it's apt to be thinking about pigs' bladders ...
or possum balls (marn grook balls)

horses horses

first motion picture horse

In 1878 Eadweard Muybridge photographed a horse named "Occident" in fast motion using a series of 12 stereoscopic cameras. The first experience successfully took place on June 11 at the Palo Alto farm in California. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's, and each of the camera shutters was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves

a guernica-like horse in alabama

a very guernica-like horse in spain

a gold horse in melbourne

hole in the wall

oh the fascinating formations of cappadocia houses built out of caves

less sculptural, but more cave dwellings in turkey near göre





which look a lot like these modern condiminiums built for bats and birds

falcons nest in or near the building where i work
i see them gliding past my window on the 43rd floor, swooping to hunt or hanging on thermals - i wonder whether they'd like modern apartments like these?

other cave dwellings,

the anasazi indians lived in and near caves, mesa verde, colorado
french cave dwellings, near st siffret - people in the area were troglodytes (cave dwellers) in pre-historic times, some comfier caves are still occupied





dank places to live, but they look beautiful...

the stacked rocks remind me of rock cairns

some more cairns in woods in pennsylvania

which remind me of termite mounds

which remind me of mud houses around the world (great collection of images here) including beehive houses in harran, turkey

which in turn take me right back to the caves of cappadocia

springing into life

life is appearing all over the place as spring unfolds

a phone book flower

soon turned out ...

years and years ago i dreamt of having a birthday party with a disco ball light, and me, wearing a dress similar to debbie harry's off the shoulder number in heart of glass










lisa ho maxi in platinum that is a very pale and far less sexy substitute for the "heart of glass" original
perhaps i could just have the bubbles, and the smoke and wind machines?
ooo-ooh, boy

colour me happy

why are colours so good?

why does an array of colour make me so giddy and happy?










i love paint swatches, and fabric swatches

what to do with colour swatches, source

i  and pantone colour fans (color guide - paper) (you can also get them to match web colours using a color bridge)

select and specify solid PANTONE Colors on coated stockdetermine how a PANTONE Color will appear when reproduced in CMYKcreate optimal display of PANTONE Colors on monitors and Web pages

mmm, so exciting!

and i just found a whole world of colour pencils! you subscribe, and every month they deliver 25 pencils. this goes on for 20 months (imagine!) and finally you have all 500. a whole world of colour.

vietnamese h'mong people wear vivid colours, so do highland people of many regions, nations, cultures

harsh life, colour is used to inject life and joy

new happy colour edition: