Incomplete

Sometimes the best pieces of art are the ones that seem unfinished.

This is the way I feel about this piece of music by Michael Nyman.
I wouldn't recommend watching the video, though, it's truly horrid. Just listen to the music.

When you listen to this, it's like there is this lack of completeness. You can hear the missing parts, the parts that aren't there. And you long for them to be fulfilled. The missing parts live only inside your own mind and the fact that you know that, is what makes it so beautiful. You can see perfection through the cracks.

.357 stringband

I saw this band last weekend and it was so good! If ever they're playing nearby you should go and watch. The musicians are excellent, but the best thing is that their performance and music create a sort of vacuum. You'll find yourself in a totally different time and space. Somewhere in a deserted corner in the south of America, in a dark smokey bar with lots of testosteron, beer and women in corsages and wide skirts. If you're able to stand still and not dance around the room like a crazy person, I would be very impressed ('cause that was all I could do, my body is helpless against this kind of music).

Have fun!
http://www.myspace.com/357stringband

Painting on a onesie

The old lady

The old lady is sitting next to me at a dinner table. I've been watching her silently while she eats. There is a greediness in her manner. Her little hands grab for the platters around her, holding the delicious foods that everyone prepared. She shoves them onto her plate and chews loudly. Whenever I pass on a dish or offer her something to drink, she always says yes thankfully. But she never offers me anything in return. I wonder how a small old lady could have such an appetite. She eats as though she was starving. Was she maybe? And then she starts to talk to me.

She tells me about all the old people imprisoned in their houses, everyone they love dying around them one by one. She tells me how she's trying to resist becoming one of them by still going out often, trying new things. I'm trying very hard to evoke my compassion for her. But when she speaks I can see the food that she put so hastily in her mouth floating around on her tongue. She spits out big chunks of beige coloured, half processed toast with marmalade while talking and I'm scared that one of those chunks will end up on my face.

Then her story gets better. She tells me how she worked in the family business when she was young. It was a company selling the most beautiful expensive cars. People from all over the world would come to buy cars from her father. There were drivers in suits with white gloves and women wearing fur and jewels accompanying their husbands. I don't really believe her. She reminds me of my own grandmother in the way she tries to make a good impression by proving that she hangs out with the elite. It's a typical thing people do when they've had to work their way up all of their lives never ever feeling good enough. But I appreciate the effort and I can see her in my mind, young and beautiful walking between those cars being overwhelmed by the richness of the clients and it takes my mind off of her eating manners for a moment.

But when I ask her wether she had an education the conversation takes a bad turn. She didn't. And she thinks some people getting an education these days are being pampered. They don't know how to work anymore. Old people are wasting away in their houses and nobody does a thing about it. And those foreigners coming to our country get everything they ever wanted. They're being taken care of as if they were on a holiday. In the little park in front of her house people let their dogs shit without cleaning up afterwards so all the flies come and fly around her windowframes and shit on them so the windowframes get black spots and nobody does a thing about it while the foreigners get lemonade and cookies on their arrival. Big glazy beige chunks fly around angrily all over the place.

I don't want to just sit there and nod, so I try to give her a different perspective on the matter, explaining that foreigners aren't fleeing their countries for no reason. But it's of no use. She sneers that she was in the war also, and that she deserves the same treatment. As I think of another thing to say to calm her down without telling her I agree my eye wanders to the piece of tablecloth between our plates and I see the chunks from her filthy mouth piled up and I almost start to vomit. So I just get up and leave while she hisses after me that she knows, because she's seen it with her own eyes and I don't know because I'm young and ignorant.

I tremble as I put the dishes in the dish machine, smiling to the other people who are helping out in the kitchen as though nothing's wrong. But the happy cloud is gone. It seems as though all the joyful feelings I ever had were only confined to my own little safe world. The space I created for myself, the things I wished to see while leaving the bad stuff out. She's right, I have been ignorant thinking that all was fine. The world does not consist solely of people I care about, kind and good-mannered and openminded. There are also these people that you wish you could change their minds or feel sorry for or help out, but all you are left doing is just feeling helplessly revulsed.

The final dance

Sometimes, when I ponder about what happens after we die, I try to imagine that the afterlife could be whatever we want it to be. Wouldn't that be excellent? Anything, everything we could ever imagine happens there, our deepest wishes become tangible. And not the kind of superficial wishes, but the things you've longed for all your life, sometimes even without knowing.

I am dead. I am standing in a dark room with a dark floor in the middle of a dim spotlight. There are chairs around me with red velvet cuchions, but they're empty. And there's a big black piano with no one behind it. I'm wearing a ballroom dress. My hear is tied into a red flower and I'm wearing jewels. From the darkness into the spotlight steps a man. I know the man. I loved him once. The memories start to spill. I remember where I first saw him, how he laughed at me, how it made me feel. I feel so happy to see him again. I smile. He wears a tuxedo and white gloves and he smiles also. We get into position. The music starts. We dance. We twirl around the room, round and round. And whenever I look away and look back at the man, there's a different man. All the men I ever loved in my life are there. This is my final dance. It stretches out eternally over time. Twirling and dancing, our bodies know the exact movements to the music. We don't speak, we just dance. Every man brings out his own memories. Some of them I didn't even remember, but they are here now. And some I never even said a word to in my life, but I felt for them anyway (yes, the unattainable famous men are there also :) see earlier post) I am overwhelmed with gratefulness and joy to see them all again and to have this final dance with them. To look them in the eyes and to remember how much I loved them during my life. This is pure hapiness. This is what happens in my afterlife.

So please, come and join me. Play Jamie Cullum's "Please don't stop the music", which is perfect for this scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq6Bq2TVyVs

and dance...dance with all the men or women you ever loved in your life.

Look at my beautiful pie!

This one's for James McAvoy

I wrote this yesterday in my paper journal, because I thought it was too embarrassing to post on a blog for people to read. But then I remembered the vow from my first post: to be brutally, fiercefully, vulnerably and nakedly honest. I guess that leaves me no choice then...

There is something really disturbing in the way I tend to fall in love with actors. It is genuinly embarrassing and you should know I am truly ashamed of myself. I know the world of logical reasoning human beings doesn't like me to proclaim my love for an actor, or to write about my crush. It is known to be foolish, childish, irrational and...boring actually also. Boring? Yes, boring. Especially since I'm supposed to have outgrown puberty.

But...just...how....aargh! How am I supposed to deal with this situation then? The situation being: I just watched The Last King of Scotland and I am left having all these heavy feelings towards James McAvoy. Am I supposed to ignore or deny it? And to ignore and deny the desire to write about it, to pin down the feelings word by word on this piece of paper? Please, please let me have this moment. Please be embarrassed with me, or for me, I don't care. Let's have it.

In this film he is just so...real. So real that it feels as though I could just reach out to the screen and touch him. It makes me want to laugh when he's laughing, cry when he's crying, be in pain when he's in pain. There's just such passion in his acting. When you deliver an effort like this, (and really, for the record, I know Forest Whitaker does the same, but it's a matter of attraction) you could just simply just die and not feel a spark of regret. It is worth your life. It is all you have to live for, to be able to do something with such passion, even if it is just one little thing, it will be worth it. Every tiny move he makes, when he raises his eyebrows, when he twitches his lip, when he gazes into the horizon, I am with him, right there. And the fact that he is so present, that he throws all of himself into his act, is what makes him so beautiful. Sometimes I tend to believe that people in the North-Western part of the world have no feeling for passion. But you just have to take one look at this Scot to know that you're wrong. You get to see it all. You get to see him at his most vulnerable, when he's scared, when he's horny, when he feels like all the world is open to him, when he's naive. That's probably why you fall in love so fast and so hard. Because in our normal lives we spend a lot of effort hiding these things from each other. The ugliness, the weirdness, the laziness, the nonchalant, the naive. When you do get a glimpse, it means you've come very close.

Closeness. To be able to feel close.
Isn't it sad that this closeness is fake? The closer you feel, the better the acting, the less real it is.

But I do.

just.
keep.
on.

having my childish dreams of actually ever coming close to...mr. James McAvoy.

Injection needle

Photograph taken of a vet when he is pausing from giving deadly injections to goats to prevent the spreading of a disease. Source: NRC.Next

He places the injection needle beside him, on top of the fence. He slides the gloves from his hands one by one, carefully putting them in the pockets of his worksuit. He takes the red strap behind his head and pulls it over his head, removing the mask from his mouth and nose. He places his hand on his forehead, pressing it with his fingertops, before he pulls back the hood from his hair. His brown hair is folded flatly into the shape of his hood, but he runs his fingers through and it gets messy. Then he places his hands beside him, wrapping his fingers around the top bar of the fence until his knuckels turn white. He stares blankly into space, breathing in and out heavily.

When he was a little boy, one night when he was sleeping his aunt woke him up to go to the hospital. They found his parents talking to a doctor. His mother was crying and his father was looking scared. "Go see your sister", said his aunt, and she pointed towards a door. He walked into the room. It was white and had a grey floor. There were all kinds of noises. Tiny bleeps, a sort of heavy breathing, ticking and cracking. The soles of his shoes made a chrunching noise as he walked towards the bed. He looked at his sister. Her eyes were closed an there was a tube coming from her mouth. In the back there were machines lined up. There was one machine which was formed like a cilinder and there was this paper inside of it, contantly folding and unfolding. Folding and unfolding, folding and unfolding. It was fascinating. A nurse entered the room. "Hello" she said and she smiled at him. She started to make notes on a pad, looking at the machines. Then she looked at him again. "Is this your sister?" asked she. "Yes", he answered shyly. "Such a pretty little girl" she said. Normally when people would say that about his sister, they wouldn't sound like this. He didn't like the way she said it. They stood there silently for a moment. "What happens if that machine stops?" he asked, pointing at the tube with the folding paper. "It helps her to breathe. She can't do that on her own anymore." From the moment he had walked into the room a sadness had entered his body that was growing with every minute and after the nurse had said these words it became almost inbearable to him. "Don't worry", said the nurse, "All innocent souls go to heaven." She walked away. He kept looking at the paper inside the tube, folding and onfolding. He tried to breathe in and out in the same rythm, folding and unfolding his lungs. But he couldn't. He felt like he was choking.

Story from the convent

Walter de wiskundeleraar (it sounds better in Dutch)
transl.:
Walter the math teacher

When I enter the dining room for the first time, there are three people sitting at the table. A women wearing a buddhist cloak, her grey hair cut very short. A elderly man with white hair, a cheerful face and a big earring in his left ear. And there's Walter.

Walter looks like he just arrived from the fifties. His black, grey hair is thin and combed from one side of his head to the other, although some of the hairs decided not to follow and are standing up in all kinds of directions. His skin is white, yellowish and he is wearing an ochre jacket over his brown spencer. When he stands up clumsily to shake my hand, his face is clenched in the strangest expression of severeness and suprise. I feel offended, it's like his expression states that I am the alien when they are obviously the aliens here. In what kind of pool of intolerant, pragmatic, unworldly beings have I arrived, I ask myself quietly?

When I learn that Walter is a math teacher in high school I am simply astonished. How is this possible? I was assuming he was some kind of dusty librarian or mad scientist. These kids must eat him alive...

Walter is very interested in my being here. He keeps on looking at me with that strange expression and then he asks me what I am doing here. It's very annoying to have to explain myself to him, especially since I've just arrived and still nervous for being in a totally new situation. But when I give him my awkward answer he just replies:"I hope you find what you're looking for."

During the course of the week, somehow whenever I make the most clumsy moves or find myself utterly helpless, Walter is always there to experience it. He says nothing. He just looks at me with his typical expression and helps me out. I forget to take a book, sitting there empty-handed when the service already started and he walks out of the room, returning with an extra book. I keep on turning the pages not knowing where the hell we are and he bends a little bit in my direction, pointing his finger to the correct page. I storm out of my room hastily when the bells are already ringing and I still have to go to the toilet, he just stands at the top of the stairs, patiently waiting.

In conversations, Walter's social skills are also very different from what I'm used to. When I say something, he bursts into an enormous laughter as if I said the most funny thing he ever heared, for example. He utters a loud "Haha!", tilts his head towards the ceiling and slaps his knee. And at other times, when I finish my sentence he looks at me as though there is more to come. But it's clearly his turn to say something.

Still, I'm starting to like him, this strange Walter the math teacher. In all his strangeness there is a kind-hearted, curious, funny man.

On his last day at the convent, he knocks on the door of my room. "Goodbye," he says, and he shakes my hand. "You were my muse". "Oh", I reply, "Thank you." I was his muse. Something in this comment shakes me. I feel sad and happy at the same time, but I don't really know why. I return to my chair by the window and watch the birds as they come and go. Goodbye Walter.

Sweet tile, nice wallpaper

Divine

"The divine dwells in the darkest places..." Shane Hipps