Crocodile tears

This is a very busy time of the year for me work-wise and I'm spending a lot of time in front of my screen. I bought eyedrops to reduce irritation and they're called "larmes artificielles". Speaks for itself. I don’t really have time to post (duh? as if any of us ever have time to do the things we want to do) so I’ll stop beating about the bush and just jot down the things that have been sifting themselves into the blog cubicles of my mind.

First I have to look up “beat about the bush” (which sounds like ‘Peter Piper Picked’ when spoken in a disincarnated, distant voice) because it came out automatically and I am not 100% sure where it comes from (actually have no idea). (quick google search) Ah, it comes from hunting and now means to avoid getting to the point of an issue. I am not 100% happy with this – is anyone ever 100% happy with anything? The meaning of the expression has deviated from the original situation – in hunting, it was necessary to beat around the bush for the bird to come out in order to capture (or kill) it.

“You may say we’ll never get there if we examine every paving stone on the way, that it’s impossible to pay attention to every single comma, every sous-entendu in Art”, he chokes.

Not the sort of food you can bolt down with your eyes still stuck to the screen. (Must look up ‘manger sur le pouce’ – to eat on your thumb – intensely annoying expression. Damn the French). The supermarket has been full of them recently, three for €1.20 (artichauts, not French people, they are more expensive :)). I bought some straight away, and was alarmed to find that they don’t keep. So I threw away the rotten ones and bought more and cooked them as soon as I got home from the supermarket.

Eating them is a leisurely zen ritual that reminds me of seafood platter evenings in Parisian brasseries (don’t go there – semantically, I mean. The starched white table linen, dry white wine in ice bucket, the yellow “robe” shining in clear, sparkling, stalked glasses, dark brown bread, butter kept cool in water, shallot vinaigrette, the waiters in their uniforms toing and froing in the huge mirrors with the art deco applique lamps, the brass handles on the evolving doors and the wood, the instant iodine fix of the oyster – what bits of the crab are we supposed to leave?).

· Artichokes are the opposite of fastfood. They take time and patience. Dedication. You rip off a leaf, which is actually a petal, gently dunk the end of it into a small pool of your favourite vinaigrette préalablement poured onto your plate, stick it in your mouth and scrape it along your teeth to extract the soft substance from the end, leaving beautiful rabbit marks – I wonder if any crimes have ever been solved by discarded artichoke leaves. Leaf after leaf you peel and devour the little bit of edibleness on the end of the petal, and the closer you get to the heart the more you worry about getting bits of the beard in your mouth. This is, after all, a thistle. You can always buy the hearts in tins.

The French expression avoir un coeur d’artichaut means to fall in love very easily…
When you steam them, the water turns a very bright, deep green.

About to switch to a new subject that has nothing to do with art or chokes, the French expression du coq à l’âne comes to mind because it means just this. Imagine my surprise to find that the “âne” = donkey is actually a female duck. It’s all water off a duck’s back!!!!

So here is Apocalyptic Dream’s latest track – they haven’t given it a name yet – I don’t know how they remember the different "morceaux" without naming them. A little sample of the unadulterated energy of 15 year –olds. I find it very exciting, but I'm hardly objective!