Lounging About In Daddy Warhol's Silvered Harem

Fig. 1. Nat Finkelstein, Gerard Malanga, Nico, Donovan, Barbara Rubin, John Cale, Danny Williams, Sterling Morrison, Paul Morrissey, Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and Moe Tucker at the Silver Factory, 1966

'Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax deductible.'

Andy Warhol

Your Ears Will Orgasm #21: The Velvet Underground & Nico (MixPod Player)

The Velvet Underground & Nico

1. All Tomorrow's Parties
2. Femme Fatale
3. Here She Comes Now
4. Candy Says
5. Sunday Morning
6. Heroin
7. Venus In Furs
8. Pale Blue Eyes
9. I'll Be Your Mirror
10. The Black Angel's Death Song

The Girl With The Jadeite Teeth

Fig. 1. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette in a publicity still for Rêve d'Égypte, 1907 (Moulin Rouge)


‘One aspect of Colette’s life is how modern it sounds to today’s reader. She ate sushi at the turn of the century, had a facelift in the 1920s, hired an acupuncturist, kept her wild hair permed all her life, rejected religion, flouted most of society’s rules – and ate with such relish and so little guilt that she ended up weighing 180 pounds. (Once, recovering from food poisoning, Colette soothed her stomach by downing a stuffed cabbage and a currant tart.) She announced that slimness was dangerously “masculinizing” women. She loved perfumes and sprayed each room with a different scent, attuned to its décor. She was one of the first serious writers to turn to the silent movies and devise scenarios that were neither novelistic nor theatrical but purely cinematic. She was obviously open to anything and everything; once when she had some painful dental work she asked, “Why can’t one simply have one’s teeth pulled and replace them with green jade?”’

Edmund White (The Flâneur)

Addendum: Dogs Are Human, Cats Are Gods*

Fig. 2. Full-length studio portrait of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, c. 1885

'On this narrow planet, we have only the choice between two unknown worlds. One of them tempts us - ah! what a dream, to live in that! - the other stifles us at the first breath.' (S-GC)

Fig. 3. Réunion de famille au chalet des Sapins (Colette au premier plan à gauche)

'I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.' (S-GC)

Fig. 4. Walter Limot - The Hand of Colette, 1934

'The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.' (S-GC)

Fig. 5. Ammi Phillips - Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog, 1830-1835

'Our perfect companions never have fewer than four feet.' (S-GC)

Fig. 6. Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

'You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.' (S-GC)

Fig. 7. Colette receives the Gold Medal of Paris from René Moatti, 1953

'What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.' (S-GC)

* 'Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God.' (S-GC)

The Endless Night Of Paper Shadows

Fig. 1. Frank Miller - Sin City, 1990s


‘Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: “here are our monsters”, without immediately turning the monsters into pets.’

Jacques Derrida

Addendum: I Shadow Boxers

Fig. 2. Mischa Merz at Doherty's Gym, November 2008

Mr. Stravinsky Rode A Horse Called Serendipity

Fig. 1. Igor Stravinsky

'I was made a revolutionary in spite of myself. . . . All creation presupposes as its origin a sort of appetite that is brought on by the foretaste of discovery. This foretaste of the creative art accompanies the intuitive grasp of an unknown entity that will not take definite shape except by the action of a constantly vigilant technique. This appetite that is aroused in me at the mere thought of putting in order musical elements that have attracted my attention is not at all a fortuitous thing like inspiration, but is habitual and periodic, if not constant - a natural need. The very act of putting my work on paper, of, as we say, kneading the dough, is for me inseparable from the pleasure of creation. So far as I am concerned, I cannot separate the spiritual effort from the psychological and physical effort; they confront me on the same level and do not present a hierarchy. What concerns us here is not imagination itself, but rather creative imagination: the faculty that helps us to pass from the level of conception to the level of realisation. In the course of my labours I suddenly stumble upon something unexpected. This unexpected element strikes me. I make note of it. At the proper time I put it to profitable use. The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation. And the true creator may be recognised by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note. The least accident holds his interest and guides his operations. If his finger slips, he will notice it. On occasion, he may draw profit from something unforeseen that a momentary lapse reveals. One does not contrive an accident: one observes, draws inspiration from it.'

Igor Stravinsky

Mr. Stravinsky's Marvellous, Metronomical Ontology

Fig. 1. Igor Stravinsky


'Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.'

Igor Stravinsky

Don't Erase Your Head, Just Its Limits

Fig. 1. David Lynch


'I am very interested in meditation (in particular, transcendental meditation), and this is a technique, a mental technique, that allows any human being to dive within. And why in the world would we want to "dive within"? Why would we want to experience subtler levels of mind and intellect? Because, at the subtlest level of intellect, we transcend, and we experience an unbounded ocean of consciousness: the home of all the ideas: modern science's unified field, where anything that is a thing had its origin. And it's a field of pure creativity. You grow in this, and life gets better. Ideas flow. Intuition grows. Negativity begins to recede. Anger, fear, anxieties, sorrows, depressions - all these things that restrict the flow of creativity (and it's like a heavy, heavy weight on us) begin to lift away. That's what I'm interested in. And I'm interested in making films.'

David Lynch (interview at FNAC Ternes, Paris, 3rd February 2007)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #1 (MixPod Player)

Lykke Li - Youth Novels, 2008

Nowhere To Go But Everywhere

Fig. 1. Jack Kerouac

'[Then] they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"'

Jack Kerouac (On The Road)