avec quoi suis-je venu
avec un âne
avec zéro bagage
sur son dos
marchant auprès de lui
animal
qui ne me sert à rien
sinon à doubler mes pas

what did I come with
with a donkey
with zero luggage
on his back
walking near him
animal
which is not useful to me
if not doubling my steps

womit bin ich gekommen
mit einem Esel
mit null Gepäck
auf seinem Rücken
neben ihm gehend
Tier
der mir nichts nützt
aussern meine Schritte zu verdoppeln


.......................

(note: 'doubler' also means 'to overtake' in french)

Paris & Fashion & Paris & Music & Paris & Film: the fashion défilé by Robert Normand was superb my personal Florence did some beautiful patterns for his materials for the second time the music by Au Revoir Simone (this live song I used in the film is called the Distance). The photo by Florence are from Cosmic Wonder défilé yesterday evening.

Martine was a french hit for the french little girls in the sixties. Here are some Martine remixes, the three last I did for Wiki-Ardkor, a poet site by Antoine Hummel who's also part of the new poetry magazine 'Enculer' with excellent texts by Ludovic Bablon, Hummel himself, LL de Mars, Stéphane Batsal.

I'm not sure if Nicolas Sarkozy the little rabbit is famous outside France he will probably be our next president he's working on it since he was a small rabbit I wish that he will remember what Martine told him don't eat the cables little rabbit don't strip the cables you could activate short circuits the world is very touchy right now

I'm planning to do a New York trip in april/may, for interviewing the people who worked with Jean-Jacques Perrey in the sixties, for my 'debut' documentary about his life (producer: "Les Films d'un jour"). Perrey is 78 years old. He devoted his life since 1952 to the electronic sound & music, for helping it to make its way to the grand public. His electronic life in the US (1960/1970) was launched in France by... Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf! Which makes of Piaf one genuine electronic pioneer.

I added DEMO 1 and DEMO 5 to myplace. DEMO 1 contains mouth beat box. DEMO 5 is a clin d'oeil to DEVO ("Working in a coal mine"). People who know me know how I do appreciate mental mines ("Pépites" on 6633).

THIS MINE IS MINE.

//////////////

Dicton du jour:

Les habitants des pays riches n'ont plus le droit de fumer. Que leurs pays fassent de même.

I put 2 new demos on myspace. Demo 2 is a three times track, with piano and trumpet. Demo 3 will become a song called Olaz: an astronaut is reaching a planet made of oil, and describes it to the base on earth. He will get trapped there because all the spaceship knobs become so oily. Of course all plants there, fruits and vegetables are tempura-ed and the animals are fried. I'm proud of the very last section of the song, when the whistling & sounds of the Olaz fauna (sampled from my friend Etienne Jaumet, from the duo band Zombie Zombie) join the music.

Also, Stéphane Bérard, a friend artist who's a youtube connaisseur, sent me this video about leisure in Saudi Arabia. I like it when you see the people from inside the car, wearing the traditionnal keffiyeh and drifting.

Art is back at Palais de Tokyo, the IKEA feeling vanished thanks to the new curator: the installation by Tatiana Trouvé is extraordinary + Michel Blazy works about natural rot process + "Music for plants" which is really cool when you're lucky to have live music + the exhibition about micro-nations, funny and exhaustive + one room with Joe Coleman's paintings which are something that everyone needs to watch once in a life (Coleman played the role of an erotomaniac producer in Asia Argento's film Scarlet Diva; a beautiful text of hers opens Coleman's monography) + different project rooms for young artists.

Many galleries @ rue Louise Weiss (13th arrondissement) have changed: gallery Perrotin moved to the Marais, gallery Jennifer Flay closed (she's now directing the FIAC), the book store closed, new galleries opened... There's still my favorite gallery in the area: Art:Concept, a gallery born in Nice. My favorite art piece in their actual group exhibition is the one by Sue Tompkins: unfolded sheets of paper that keep delicate lines of folding, with only a few typed words on it. They seem to love paper and cardboard in this gallery; me too.

Réenchantement critique

La France est marquée à fond par le discours critique. Depuis que le peuple a osé critiquer le roi et a obtenu sa décapitation et le pouvoir, la critique se considère chez elle partout. La critique est devenue une marchandise dont le propos est de critiquer d'autres marchandises, un objet qui se vend aussi bien qu'un autre. "La société du spectacle" de Guy Debord est d'abord un livre qui se vend bien.

J'ai remarqué depuis longtemps que de nombreux objets de presse de ce pays emploient le même champ lexical, quel que soit le domaine critiqué, pour signaler l'oeuvre réussie (littérature, musique, art ou cinéma): il s'agit de montrer combien celle-ci décrypte avec intelligence la machine du monde, éternellement démoniaque. La seule portée critique pouvant justifier une oeuvre, de nombreux artistes s'engouffrent dans cette brèche, mine d'or inépuisable qui permet de s'attirer les faveurs des juges. L'intérêt des revivalismes et références de toute sorte donne encore plus d'épaisseur à une oeuvre, en lui conférant une polyphonie temporelle, un palimpseste critique.

De même que la pornographie nous fait découvrir que l'homme a une sexualité, le discours critique nous permet de réaliser que les ressorts du monde sont troubles.

Ce type de discours, devenu tellement prévisible (l'oeuvre critique, puis le discours critique qui la défend), avec sa capacité d'évolution proche du néant, est mort. Cependant, il faut que se perpétue et même, que s'accentue la portée critique de certaines oeuvres d'art, dans un monde toujours plus complexe. Alors comment, si le discours critique est dépassé, périmé, caduque dans sa forme actuelle? Je crois que l'avenir du discours critique se situe hors de lui et notamment, s'il est capable de montrer ce qui a survécu et n'a pas été atteint par l'extrême corruption. Je suis de ce côté-là des choses, du côté d'un réenchantement possible. Un réenchantement critique.

"Without cheese, there wouldn't be an Inland Empire". David Lynch's reasoning was simple: "I ate a lot of cheese during the making of 'Inland Empire"... Yes, this is what David Lynch says... and this is what he probably hides: Inland Empire, near Spokane (Washington State) has a lot of dairies. These dairies are disappearing, being sold to real estate developpers. Once, David Lynch was a kid in Spokane, so maybe there is more than a private joke. Without milk, there won't be any film industry because there won't be the people to make films.

"Travels with a cow" with David Lynch was shot in LA. It makes me think of "Travels With A Donkey" by Stevenson (also the title of a nice record by Milky (Momus & ex-wife Shazna)). The defense of animals by a director reminds me of my own movie "Maybee" (a movie response to the great teen musician Tape Store), featuring Peter Fonda and his deep concern for the bees. Peter Fonda used to bee a bee keeper while Lynch never was a cowboy. I hear the word 'mad cow' at the end but I might be wrong.

Some people wonder why Toog is not going on stage for so long; there are 7 good reasons to not be on stage on this photo:

1. Some young girls see apparitions on my left;
2. Some boys think about the money they spent to enter the venue;
3. Patients escaped from asylums sometimes show up;
4-5-6. I'm very sensible to mockery.
7. Martians with red eyes do paralyse me while I'm singing.

.............................

Here is the list of songs that I would like to figure on my next album: Goto. Goto is a collection of 12 songs + one hour filmed diary. I haven't calculated the average tempo of the album yet, it must be around 83.7 BPM, which is under the slowest legal BPM speed (SLBS). You can listen to "I love you" on myspace, a song on which John Talaga (Fashion Flesh) put his magic input (I can't remember where I sampled the voices in that song).

Alabama Gay
My House
La chambre noire
Traffic jam
Are visages electric?
Lo-low
Je suis pour
Où va la vie?
Ébréché
Goto
I love you
This land is your land

What else: I love this song.