16/12/2010

Backbone



 Fatou Keita is a writer and English Literature lecturer at Abidjan University. 
 I met her in Caen, when we were both doing a postgraduate diploma (DEA) in English Literature. We are the same age.

Yesterday she sent me an email with a letter attached, an open letter to Laurent Gbagbo. When I had finished reading it I was scared for her. Today she is going to join the march to the television headquarters.

Here is the letter:

LETTRE OUVERTE AU PRÉSIDENT GBAGBO LAURENT

POURQUOI J’IRAI MARCHER SUR LA RTI

Demain Jeudi 16 Décembre 2010, s’il plaît à Dieu, j’irai marcher sur la RTI  que certains ont surnommée RTMP (Radio Télévision Mouvance Présidentielle).
Non, ce n’est pas un acte de bravoure ni de défiance. Parce que oui, j’ai peur. Mais c’est un devoir.
Nous payons tous la redevance télé et ce que cette télévision nous donne à voir aujourd’hui est insupportable. Nous avons reculé au-delà de tout et les intellectuels, notamment, ne devraient pas l’admettre. Comment peut-on chercher à imposer la pensée unique, la manipulation, le mensonge, l’incitation à la haine et j’en passe ? Oublie-t-on que notre télévision est visionnée dans le monde entier ? Ce qui se passe aujourd’hui va au delà de tout ce qu’on aurait pu imaginer. Monsieur Ouattara Gnonsié, votre Ministre de la Communication commence son mandat avec un gros mensonge en affirmant haut et fort que la radio ONUCI FM incite à la haine et demande aux gens de descendre dans la rue. Il va jusqu’à comparer cette radio à la tristement célèbre Radio Mille collines. C’est un mensonge inacceptable et cela n’augure rien de bon pour la « communication » en Côte d’Ivoire. Le démocrate que vous disiez être alors que vous militiez dans l’opposition peut-il raisonnablement accepter que la télévision nationale soit ainsi caporalisée et confisquée au profit de vos seuls défenseurs, sans contradiction aucune ? Vous qui écriviez qu’il fallait libérer la parole ?
Comment peut-on nous infantiliser à ce point ? En filtrant ce que nous regardons, ce que nous lisons ! La RTI nous projetait, il y a quelques jours un film montrant les atrocités au Rwanda, on y voyait comment les gens se faisaient découper froidement à la machette. Quel était le message de la RTI ? Était-ce une menace à peine voilée ? A l’endroit de qui ? Si ce malheur nous arrivait ne serions-nous pas tous logés à la même enseigne ? Vous accusez ONUCI FM d’incitation à la haine mais c’est la RTI qui aujourd’hui semble adopter une position qui rappelle fort celle des extrémiste Hutus de 1994 au Rwanda. Tous les torts sont attribués à un seul camp sans aucune possibilité de réplique et cela est dangereux pour la paix à laquelle nous aspirons.
Pensez-vous qu’il était opportun, avec cette diffusion, d’effrayer ainsi une population de Côte d’Ivoire déjà traumatisée par la situation actuelle ?
Les télévisons et radios étrangères nous sont interdites et pourtant c’est sur ces dernières que vos défenseurs s’expriment régulièrement. Pour qui nous prend-on ?
Monsieur le Président, je remets ma vie entre vos mains. Non je ne me sacrifie pas, non je ne veux pas mourir. Je veux tout simplement revendiquer mon droit de vivre dans une nation juste. Je ne veux pas mourir, ma vieille Maman, mes enfants et petits-enfants, tous ceux qui m’aiment et ont besoin de moi ne s’en remettraient pas, et d’avance je leur demande pardon pour cette décision….
Protégez-moi, protégez les enfants de Côte d’Ivoire, protégez-les tous puisque l’armée est à vos ordres.
Je prends le monde entier à témoin, je dis à mes amis du monde entier que je ne veux pas mourir et que demain, inch’Allah, je sortirai, en pleurant certainement, et en tremblant car j’ai en mémoire Mars 2004…. Mais je sortirai.

Fatou Keïta
Écrivain

14/11/2010

Reign on snow


 

The Balinese girl - Vladimir Tretchikoff

This is the picture that was above the fireplace in the living-room of the house I grew up in. I can't imagine how many times I must have seen it – and not seen it. I also remember wallpaper patterns I saw an infinite number of times. And clothes. Images create lasting impressions, some when only seen for a brief moment – and even some from dreams… or the ones we create.

There are no blank slates however much we meditate but I was a bit shocked to read that you can be charged for:

"George Harrison became the first Beatle to get a solo number one single in 1971 with My Sweet Lord. However, similarities to the 1963 Chiffons' song, He's So Fine, led to a lengthy legal battle, ending five years later with the singer paying damages of $587,000 after being found guilty of "unconscious plagiarism"."

An ironic tilt to the belief formulated by Duchamp that "All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone."

A "caisse noire" in English is a slush fund.
Neither expression had anything hanky panky about it originally, though the French black box was used to collect money from railway workers for a clandestine sickness fund – which the authorities outlawed for fear of cooperation between workers…
The word slush to me means dirty melted snow, walking home through, getting feet wet.

Source of term

The term "slush fund" was originally a nautical term; the slush referred to the fat or grease that was obtained by boiling salted meat, the sale of which could then be used to provide the crew with special luxuries. The money obtained from this sale was placed into the so-called "slush-fund".

Translating an article about coal mining in Africa, looking for information in English I came across the following snippet:

"President Rupiah Banda on Thursday urged Zambians not to condemn Chinese managers for shooting 12 workers at Maamba Collum coal mine, saying other people also shoot their employees."

"Guardian survey of Whitehall departments reveals plans to cut 103,000 posts as part of effort to reduce administration costs by a third"

This headline prompted me to ask myself what the purpose of government is. Throwing 100,000 of its citizens out of work to make itself what? Less costly? More profitable? For who?

"La raison d'état de soi-même" – tickled me, I had a sudden vision of grabbing power over myself… I was wondering how to translate it when I noticed a film on TV called "Raisons d'état" with Mat Damon and so looked for the original title, which is The Good Shepherd. Sometimes something intriguing or exciting in an expression can melt away when you start to look into it.




04/10/2010

Mutt Case



 There is a tree in my father's garden that looks a bit wilted, maybe it is a weeping fir tree. It has always kind of annoyed me, because it looks as if it has been doused in acid rain, or is just somehow untidy. I felt the dangly top branches spoilt the view from my father's living room and wanted to go out and chop them off. When I mentioned this to my father he said "oh no, you wouldn't chop off the man and his dug". I looked again and sure enough I saw a man walking a dog, a bit like a retriever with a feathery tail. (click on the picture to enlarge it to see the colour of the dog's collar).  A nice reminder of how differently people can see the same thing.


.
 When I started writing this I wanted to investigate something I read in the paper about "the belief formulated by Duchamp that 'All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone.'"  Imagine my surprise when the first Google search result gave - The Richard Mutt Case





25/07/2010

Tooth and nail



Je vous lis en juillet, au bord de l'eau, quand il fait très chaud.
De temps à autre, je garde ma place avec un doigt,
planté sur un point comme un piquet de cerf volant,
ta phrase fait le tour de moi comme l'hirondelle fait le tour du ciel,
comme le vin fait le tour du palais
et quand je suis loin, très loin du point de départ, je reprends le fil de ma lecture,
mon regard re-penchant sur ta page comme un oiseau qui picore les signes, bibliophage sauvage, haletant entre les espaces et les paragraphes.
Parfois, ne trouvant rien, je cours, puis un mot me ralenti, et je te suis, et tuez moi.
Je vous ai lu en juillet, deux fois, autour de la cinquantaine.
Entre la première et la deuxième, vous avez oublié mon nom
C'est sans importance
On a le droit de n'exister pour personne
Être sans importance pour un autre…
Je vous lis, je vous ai lu en juillets,
l'écris vain jeté du lit, je vous le dis, jujitsu à ta virgule près ; lits crevants, juvénile jubilance,
vous, juillet, lu.


I bought a recording of Bach's Cello suites played by Yo Yo Ma on Itunes so I went to buy blank cds at the supermarket bookshop/multimedia outlet (which you may remember is called "l'espace temps").

As I waited for the sales attendant to finish her conversation with a friend and come and take my money, I noticed two copies of a book for sale, propped up on the counter, right in front of the cash register, some distance from the books. I noted the name of the author. BG.

In the evening I switched on the news and the main headline was that BG had died. The same day. I felt a sudden revulsion at the society we are living in. It couldn't be a coincidence. They put that book there because they knew it would have a good chance of selling because the author had just died. So we cash in on death. We are actually using death as a selling point. Do we have no scruples left? Or did we ever have any?


Amitiés bizarres…
The Heads of State and Government confirmed their determination to fight translational threats together.

I had never come across "nous" in English before...


A French question from a satisfied customer and an English sentence from the Guardian..
Ne vous ai-je pas encensée à la réception du document ?
Obama team 'incensed at being kept in the dark' as company denies underwater oil clouds

avoir les dents longues does not mean to be long in the tooth

Painting over the map.

People tattooed acupuncture pressure points on their bodies gazillions of years ago, but we have painted over them. The new layer hides the old layer which is eventually forgotten…

31/05/2010

Dirty washing

I have just lost the post I wrote on Greece and ferries... blogger refused to save it because it had a meta link in it...

Got my knickers in a bit of a twist.

Translating sometimes feels a bit like ferrying meaning from one language to another. I frequently fall in the water in more ways than one.

When I came across the words "lingerie sale" on a website I was shocked to see what I thought was "dirty underwear" and then I realised it was "reduced in price"

speaking of underwear, thong in cheek:

French English
string thong
tongs/tongues flipflops

I can't get my mind round the way sanction means both punishment and approval…

And now for something completely different - Nougaro

30/04/2010

Ex ante


Just realised with horror that I sometimes translate without thinking about the words

without thinking about what they mean

the way you drive a car without seeing the road – on automatic pilot.

The word that made me aware of this is "univers".

When I see it I think automatically "we don't say 'universe' in English we say world, sphere, domain, field…"

Today I actually stopped and imagined what the French was saying…

a warmer universe… are they one step ahead of us, living already in the multiverse?

a phrase I've been stumbling across is up the ante – to increase the stakes.


seems to be everywhere

antipodean = des antipodes

28/03/2010

Come to the disco






Picture a March morning
I still find the sight of the snow-covered Pyrenees uplifting, awe-inspiring, in the same way as a vast expanse of open sea. Unfortunately it is impossible to ignore the irritating fact that when you can see the mountains clearly from my kitchen window it means rain is on the way. This reminds me of the cycling conundrum – there are those who enjoy pedalling uphill because they look forward to freewheeling down the other side and those who fail to enjoy freewheeling downhill because they can't bear the thought of having to cycle back up.

I really do feel now that my position towards words has shifted. There is something decidedly not new about the language, about language, about the language I use.

Laconic – lapidaire - scissors – scission – iconoclast - demotic (popular).

And the words are no longer mine. They don't belong to me in any way, I did not create them… putting them together in a particular sequence is not such a big deal… It's just like throwing a handful of sand up in the air and "reading" how it lands.

I feel like I've been barking up the wrong tree, or staring down the wrong well. This intellectual uncertainty is certainly related to the feeling of "uncanny".

And it is possibly related to a recent borderline experience … if that is how you describe the feeling of touching a limit. Last week my reading group "à livre ouvert" was invited to read some poetry during an aperitif in honour of the "Printemps des poètes" ... the theme was "couleurs de femmes". One of the colours we chose was black, and my take on it consisted in a list of words that rhyme with "noir" –

Voir, soir, croire, boire, foire, loir, poire
(see, evening, believe, drink, fair, dormouse and pear)

Not only did I read each word with my entire being, but I also mimed the word and the group (there were six of us) backed this up.

It was an extremely satisfying experience. And I definitely touched some kind of limit, my dégré zéro de l'écriture maybe. In any case, it made me feel that the words stand up by themselves. They don't need any fancy sentences to give them meaning.

Reading Zizek,
 I come across perspicuous, which I had never heard of. It is neither perspicacious nor conspicuous.
Zizek reminds me that the unconscious does not take negatives into account. I'm trying to write a short piece about the uncanny in psychoanalysis and I can't get past the fact that I'm a "canny Scot" – in fact, "canny" in my Scottish dialect means "can't". "Ah canny dae it" = I can't do it. "Cawnie" on the other hand means cautious. "Caw cawnie" means take it easy, don't do whatever you're doing quite so hard.

Audio, video, disco - I hear, I see, I learn




28/02/2010

Leap forward

I bit into the bergamot, that cross between a lime and an orange that is yellow, and the next day the skin round my teeth marks had turned orange. Decidedly strange. Had only ever heard of it before in tea.

The word has a ring of “Bergman” to it, which is German for miner. My mother was a “krankenschwester”.

Now, I'm not an anchorite.

Nor am I shipwrecked – naufragée (je suis navrée…)
Stranded - marooned (macaroon) seranora – serendipity.

mangrove (twas brillig)
mongoose
corrigected.

The crocuses have flowered yellow and spring is on its way and so am I. I walked down to the village feeling extremely light-hearted and fell heavily on the pavement. Pride before a fall.

I broke off a dead geranium stem and was surprised at the distinctive smell.
Poetry is a kind of web of mnemonic devices… I see a dead geranium. The distinctive smell tells me it’s a geranium. This reminds me of TS Eliot’s dead geranium and from there to the rest of Eliot’s poetry –

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

So there. So here. As I am about to write “So what” I hear the music … And I’m surrounded.



I am surrounded by a web of poetry, music, literature. Other people have created harmony, beauty and new combinations of signifiers… And I am grateful for that. There is something reassuring in depth.

Today is February 28th. Tomorrow will be March 1st. What about the people who should have had a birthday on February 29th? There is a slight problem with the seamlessness of our reality. The world is not 100% round. Our systems do not 100% work. We live in an approximation that we mistake for an absolute.

31/01/2010

Lime, lights

"We should quickly seize enlightenment while we still have the chance. In much less than a century all of us will be dead. We cannot be sure that we will be alive even tomorrow. There is no time to procrastinate. I who am giving this teaching have no guarantee that I will live out this day."

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

So I write on. … most of the words have already been high jacked by bandits…

I don't often come across a use that feels wrong, but I couldn’t hide my surprise when I read:

“There, he whipped out a tiny knife he had secreted in his underwear and plunged it into his throat.”

in the Guardian.

In my inner dictionary, "secreted" goes with "secretions" and not with "secrets”. As the Dalai Lama eloquently points out, there is no time to check.

Strategise as a verb, and I stumbled on another new verb:

“Their reply brooks no argument.”

If I was paranoid I would think there was a connection between my analyst’s name and what she has to put up with.

And for the first time I set eyes on a Bergamot. The peel is indeed very tasty – is tasty the word, or maybe aromatic? Pungent? Funny how a cross between a lime and an orange turns out yellow.

Last night I saw the moon rise over the motorway as I drove into Toulouse. It seemed huge and orange. Almost touching the road. I felt as if I could reach out and touch it, it seemed so close. I was mesmerised by the sight. It was so beautiful, and I felt that what was so powerfully attractive about it was the contrast between its naturalness and the artificiality of the electric lights, cars and tarmac on the ground. As if the moon was soft and the man-made landscape was hard. Yet the fact is, unless the earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway as Douglas Adams predicted, the moon will still be there when those lights have long since gone out and weeds have ousted the tarmac… Realising my confusion between hard and soft, long-lasting and ephemeral (for the moon was only a beautiful sight for a very short time) reminded me of another confusion. My first classical singing lesson included exercises to work on the difference between soft, low notes and loud, high notes. In my mind (and in my singing up till then) I equated low notes with loudness and high notes with softness. My teacher pointed out that my perception was upside down. Low notes are soft and high notes are high-energy and strident. I reasoned that it could have been because in my childhood I heard drunk men shouting and women singing very softly but really I have no idea how it happened. It is not a problem having faulty perception. It would be a problem to assume that all our perceptions are accurate representations of the world.

This one is fresh, but sometimes it takes a long time to be able to recount an experience. Last night I went to see some musician friends perform. The night was never-ending and memorable. Their music is highly original and spontaneous, but most of all they are great people. A few years ago these same musicians, in another formation, a fanfare whose speciality was to play outside and be able to mingle and involve the audience, did a series of spectacle-concerts in a theatre with a stage director.

LFM

The back and sides of the stage had sheets of thin clear plastic hanging, a couple of feet from the walls. When we went in the musicians were all chatting and walking about doing things very casually, almost as if they were at a party. Moving along the back behind the plastic and up and down the sides, and some of them on stage. The beginning was really exciting. There was a weird stool with a pole on the back of it. The musicians went off, someone came on and hung a plastic torso with a head on it on the pole, then went off again. Somebody else then came in and fitted a tube to the torso, and went off again. We could hear the musicians playing in the distance and suddenly belches of smoke came out the nostrils of the torso. This went on for a long time. A bear walked very slowly along the back behind the plastic and down the sides then back to the back and pressed its nose against the plastic and looked in at the audience through the plastic looking very sad. Then the musicians started to come on stage and MS made bear sounds with his soubassophone. Then the singer broke into Berlioz and the musicians played and it was so good I was aux anges. His voice is fantastic and I could feel the song move the skin on the back of my head.

After the Berlioz they did a very cacophonic number I recognised because MD had given me a tape to translate the words for him. It lasted a long time and when W started growling through a loudhailer, Billy started to put his hands over his ears. The friend I went with said why are they doing the same tune four times? Then FD, who had not said a word to the audience till then (in other settings he normally provides a lot of warm, funny interaction with the audience) proclaimed "Mesdames Messieurs, le merle" and they all whistled. There were side effects on the plastic after that and light effects that looked nice on the instruments but the whole thing was so cold I wanted to go home.



After more than an hour, during which time the only 'contact' with the audience was that at one point they faked not being able to end a piece and ended up coughing and clicking and eventually snapping their fingers, and FD came forward to the audience and held his hand up snapping his fingers and of course, we all started snapping our fingers. Later on FD took a microphone that was hanging from a wire on the ceiling and started off very serious about "Well, you must be wondering why we're here, and why you're here. Well, I'm going to tell you in a very precise and clear manner” (which was supposed to be funny because he kept repeating himself and it wasn't precise or clear). He went on "it's all about time, and about being in the present moment. There can't be any continuity because the past is separate from the future and you can't get two moments to join together". His voice is fabulous and the sound quality was excellent and I could have listened to him all night. While he was going on about time and the moment and why we were all there, he let go of the microphone and the speech continued, so we could see it had been a recorded message. The effect was, in a very clichéd way, like the bursting of a bubble.

Then more cacophony that lasted a long time. They were all obviously moving in the precise way their metteur en scène had rehearsed with them. Later, FD took the mike again and started talking more nonsense as if he was cracking jokes. He said "there was a duck and a cow (for example, don't remember exactly) and the duck said putain je ne sais pas ce que j'ai je suis toujours nase and the cow answered c'est parce que tu bouquines trop le soir chérie”. Then he repeated the same thing using different animals, and then a third time. Then more music, either I was by this time devastated or the music just didn't take off the way it usually does or it was the cold atmosphere but it was painful and at the end when they stopped, a child in the audience was crying. Then FD thanked the Théatre de la Garonne. He walked back on very slowly and apologised for forgetting to thank the Théatre de la Digue (where the gig was). By this time I was so desperate to get out I just left, along with a lot of other people, and we could hear them announcing they would do a morceau for an encore and it lasted 30 seconds. I don't know what happened after that I was out the theatre.