Jim→
1. Jim →
→ Jim that way. Par là.
→ Well that’s New York for you. The only people who rush the stage are guys.
→ Every day or whenever I can, I climb the rue de la Roquette on my bike, turn left at the gates of Père Lachaise and head off to my studio in Belleville. As I catch my breath at the inevitable red light at the top of the hill, I often think of my first visit to the cemetery. A single young Dutchman sat at Jim’s graveside smoking dope. He would take a toke and then break into convulsive sobs. Toke, sob, toke, sob. The approximate marble bust was still keeping watch over the grave in those days, staring out into a nonexistent middle distance.
2. mustard pot / pot de moutarde
→ When I started painting in a serious way, I used colour unmixed, straight out of the jar — budget-rate acrylics that smelt strongly of ammonia. After about three years, my breakthrough in colour mixing occurred when I came up with a colour that, when applied to the picture, perfectly resembled French’s Mustard.
→ There is something magnificent about the diarrhea-like fart that a squeeze bottle gives in public.
3. keys / clefs
→ Something I find inexplicably odd is that despite a natural absentmindedness, augmented no doubt by continual substance abuse, I have never, during the twenty-eight years that I have been trusted with keys, lost one.
→ Le temps disponible pour travailler en atelier est inversement proportionnel au nombre de clés que je porte.
→ De nombreux grands artistes, écrivains et descendants de grands noms de la culture des XIXe et XXe siècles sont enterrés au Père-Lachaise. Dans ce cimetière, les statues sont cependant les plus mielleuses et kitsch que la tradition des Beaux-arts ait pu produire. Beaucoup d’artistes contemporains photographient cette sculpture mortuaire pour l’utiliser dans leurs oeuvres et finissent ainsi par promouvoir cette sentimentalité banale.
→ We were far from home, way up in the northern and eastern reaches of the city. Some family obligation. I had never been that far out of the centre. It seemed impossible to drive for so long and not reach countryside. My mother was in a bad mood. We had been driving in silence, watching the 'burbs roll unendingly by like some anti-aesthetic road movie.
“Where the hell are we?” she suddenly demanded. “I hope I never set foot in this godforsaken outpost ever again.”
“Well actually, Mom,” said my brother Evan, who always assumes the role of navigator on family trips, “just over there is the cemetery where you will someday be buried.”
This lightened the mood, though we continued in silence.
5. car / voiture
→ History of the Automobile
A boy sits in a black 1956 Buick with blood-red, Naugahyde interior. The car is parked in the blistering driveway, only partially shaded at this hour by the still-healthy elm. The radio plays and “19th Nervous Breakdown” follows on “Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter.” The boy studies the CHUM Top 50, looking for clues. Six years later, his first kiss, tongue, breast, vagina, heartache is killed in a car crash in Hollywood. It is not until near middle age that he buys his first car. He’s never really learned to drive it. The radio was stolen three years ago.
→ J’ai acheté la Supra de Geneviève, la fille de Jim. La voiture avait appartenu au père de Jim qui l’avait acheté neuve vingt ans auparavant. À la mort du grand-père, Jim en a hérité et l’a cédé à sa fille. Avant de l’acheter, je suis allé l’essayer avec Geneviève. C’était une belle journée chaude et ensoleillée de printemps et nous avons pris la route qui menait au sommet de la montagne de Hamilton. La Supra se conduisait bien mais plusieurs dispositifs ne fonctionnaient plus. Par exemple, il y avait une petite fuite dans le système de climatisation. Geneviève m’a expliqué qu’elle devait remettre du réfrigérant chaque printemps et qu’elle utilisait l’air climatisé le moins possible pendant l’été. Elle n’en avait pas vraiment besoin sur la route et le réservait pour les journées très chaudes. Elle faisait alors démarrer le moteur, mettait l’air climatisé en marche et restait assise dans la voiture sans sortir de l’allée.
6. hand / main
→ En 1988, mes peintures comportaient toutes une image de ma main gauche. Dans la pose peinte, j’évitais les gestes reconnaissables.
→ A wealthy Dutch friend told me a story about her father who, as a child, was one day shown a number of Rembrandt reproductions in school. He was very surprised and confused to see the teacher holding up, for all the class to see, an image of the very painting that hung over his bed.
→ Cette peinture est accrochée au mur qui fait face à mon lit. C’est la première chose que j’ai conscience de regarder le matin. Au fil de la journée, le soleil l’inonde. Je me demande si je ne devrais pas la placer à un endroit moins exposé au sud afin de préserver la couleur. Mais que mettrais-je à sa place?
7. chair / chaise
→ Because an operation in infancy made sitting in a cross-legged position very uncomfortable, I have never been able to meditate properly, I have always shied away from sing-alongs, and I have tended to surround myself with chairs. Indeed, I have been most fortunate in the chair department and find myself with some rare specimens.
→ Mon atelier se trouvait dans un immeuble appartenant à deux installateurs de fenêtres. Leur atelier occupait le rez-de-chaussée et je partageais le premier étage avec leur collection de chaises en bois. Une fois, j’ai eu besoin d’un sujet de nature morte pour un cours que j’enseignais dans l’unité à sécurité renforcée d’un pénitencier. J’ai emprunté une chaise sans consulter mes propriétaires, avec l’intention de la rapporter le jour même. Après le cours, l’un des prisonniers m’a demandé de lui laisser la chaise pour qu’il puisse l’étudier pendant la semaine. J’ai accepté. À mon retour à l’unité la semaine suivante, le prisonnier m’a fièrement présenté la chaise qu’il avait soigneusement décapée de sa vieille peinture originale, puis poncée et vernie.
8. hammer / marteau
→ Paul a un grand bureau à deux places dans son atelier, de type utilisé dans la fonction publique française, où deux personnes sont assises face à face et partagent la surface. Lorsque je travaille dans son atelier, il me donne un côté du bureau. De son côté, dans un grand tiroir de classement, il entrepose ses outils qui sont d’ailleurs peu nombreux : une scie, des tournevis, des pinces et un marteau.
→ The Cartesian tendency to compartmentalize and divide labour has created one tool for hammering nails and another for removing them.
INRI / INRO
9. Sorel Etrog
→ It’s snowing and dusk. All sound is cut off at the source. Two brothers throw snowballs at the modernist bronze statue that stands in front of the college: a strange green creature with hinges and holes. They pack on snow, adding to it. Drawn by the smoothness and the sprinkled powder on the surface, the young one advances his tongue, which immediately sticks. He starts to pull back but feels a slight tearing and stops.
With as much accuracy as he can muster, the older brother takes aim and pees on the sculpture around the imprisoned appendage.
While one, sputtering and spitting, washes his mouth out with handfuls of snow, the other writes his name with what’s left of his urine.
→ En 1999, Rebecca a aidé Sorel Etrog à trouver une assistante pour l’épauler dans l’organisation d’une publication et d’une exposition prochaines. Elle a corrigé ma prononciation de son prénom : So-REL.
10. newscast / les infos
→ Late Monday nights, after teaching, I took a commuter train back downtown. The train was usually empty and littered with sections of that day’s newspapers. I would spend the one-hour trip reading news and opinion pieces. Once downtown, I transferred onto the subway. While on this leg of the trip, it always startled me that I was unable to remember anything I had just read.
→ I went to see the veteran punk band The Ex the other night. During the show, a woman started talking to me. She had a wonderfully sonorous voice that was completely coherent despite the phonic assault coming from the stage. After the show, I asked her what she did. She said she was a newsreader on the radio. Made sense.
11. flower / fleur
à Je me levais et allais travailler avant le jour et revenais quand il faisait déjà nuit. C’était agaçant, sinon déprimant. Ce qui aggravait cette absence de lumière du jour était le fait que j’empruntais la ligne de l'Underground la plus profonde de la ville. À la même époque, je manquais d’inspiration dans mon atelier. J’avais décidé qu’il devait y avoir une image quelconque dans mes peintures et je n’arrivais pas à produire un motif approprié. Un soir dans le métro, à la station Old Street, je me suis arrêté chez un fleuriste.
→ Quelle est cette fleur là-bas qui pousse au milieu du trottoir, le fendant en deux? Est-ce que c’était une marguerite qui bouchait le fusil de la Garde Nationale dans mon enfance? La fleur me semble un symbole inadéquat de nos jours et je me prends plus souvent à penser au lichen.
12. cloth / tissu
→ Le jour de Noël. Je suis dans l’avion de Toronto. Il est à moitié plein. Un homme est assis à ma gauche. À ma droite, de l’autre côté de l’allée se trouve sa femme. Enroulée dans la couverture orange fournie par la compagnie d’aviation, elle dort en tailleur, laissant les 2 sièges libres à sa droite. Pourquoi est-il assis à côté de moi au lieu de partager ces trois sièges avec son épouse? Pourquoi retire-t-il ses chaussures maintenant? Pourquoi porte-t-il des chaussettes beiges en polyester? Pourquoi?
→ La première oeuvre d’art que j’ai achetée était une gravure du surréaliste belge, Paul Delvaux. La gravure n’est pas datée mais on m’a dit qu’elle avait à peu près dix ans lorsque je l’ai achetée. À l’époque, j’étais encore à l’école secondaire et j’avais dû faire des économies pour me l’offrir. La gravure représente un buste de femme portant une robe serrée à col Nehru et aux motifs élaborés et dont le décolleté révèle les seins. La femme, dont la longue chevelure est rejetée en arrière, se tient nonchalamment sur une place à l’italienne. Elle a les mains croisées sur le ventre et regarde à droite.
13. draped cloth / tissu drapé
→ Among my first rose paintings was a picture of a rose-patterned cloth. The rose and leaf motifs on the cloth were studies I made of actual cut flowers. The painting was made in pastel and transparent acrylic washes, resulting in a delicate surface. I traded the picture with Peter for a table that he and Ben had designed and built. Peter stored the painting for a year in his shop, face up in the rafters. During this period, he worked extensively with some pitch pine that had been recently recovered from the bottom of the Thames, where it had served as footings for the first London Bridge. The wood was over a thousand years old. The air-born sawdust from the milling and dressing of the pine timbers spread a resinous film over the face of the painting, which created the surprising effect of syrupy Rembrandt gloom. It wrecked the painting.
→ Das ist alles Volks. Or, I love Paris and Paris loves me.
14. boss / patron
→ Roger would have us over for curry once a year. He learned to make the curry in Hong Kong in the late 40s. He and a number of his colleagues in the Foreign Service shared a house with a staff that included a Chinese chef (from whom Roger learned the following recipe) and a couple of boys, as he put it, to tidy up.
Fry onions in oil until they are well cooked, nearly black. Stir in the meat, either chicken, prawns or mutton. When the meat has browned, add chopped fresh tomatoes and bottled curry sauce. Simmer. Prepare a pot of steamed rice. Deep fry (separately) poppadums and Bombay duck. Chop up fresh apples, pears, bananas and other fruit of your choice. Serve the curried meat on the rice. The chopped fruit, poppadums (which may be broken up) and Bombay duck are presented on individual plates or in bowls, and may be served as a topping or stirred into the curry. Mango chutney and raita should accompany the meal.
→ Artistes préférés : Françoise Aubert, Roméo Bruno, Carole Gollé, Isaac Lorchtein, Roggio Principiano, Rudolf Schauenberg
Photographe préféré : Herman Klaus
Compositeurs préférés : Louise Graedel, Roland Thominet
Poète préféré : Manfred Hempel
Critiques préférés : Roland Barthes, Percy Glendale
Cinéaste préféré : Robert Bresson
Plats préférés : Baltimore steamed crab, pissaladière, tripes à la mode de Caen
15. fish / poisson
→ Étant donné que nous sommes dans un pays catholique, le restaurant La Strada sert tous les vendredi du poisson à la crème. Pommes frites ou à l’eau. Parfois des haricots blancs. Rarement des légumes verts. Je ne bois plus de Côtes-du-Rhône. Pas de dessert. Café.
→ Le lundi, il n’y a rien : pas de poisson, pas de file d’attente, moins de chaleur que d’habitude, et les lumières sont éteintes. Il n’y a que le long comptoir en acier inoxydable.
16. art dealer / galeriste
→ Je n’ai rien, mais strictement rien à dire des marchands d’art.
→ I have nothing, but absolutely nothing to say about art dealers.
→ I called Robert to ask him about showing the photographs, and he offered us a slot in May. In the next breath and with obvious anxiety, he said the ceiling was leaking again, and hung up.
→ Chaque fois que Marc avait des réserves sur l’œuvre d’un artiste ou qu’il n’était tout simplement pas intéressé, il levait les yeux au ciel et déclarait à l’artiste d’un air très préoccupé : « Vous savez, il est très difficile de faire de l’art ».
17. floor / sol
→ J’avais acheté des journaux locaux pour trouver un loft à louer. La Hackney Gazette avait une annonce qui semblait convenir. J’ai appelé le propriétaire, qui s’est présenté sous le nom de Mick, et qui m’a proposé une visite sur-le-champ. À mon arrivée, Mick était en train d’installer un nouveau plancher. Il avait retiré l’ancien pour respecter un marché conclu avec une locataire potentielle, une danseuse de ballet. Je l’ai aidé à finir le plancher moyennant un loyer.
→ I had a girlfriend. We met at a party. We went back to my place and had sex on the street-lit floor. The next morning, I noticed that she had quite severe carpet-burn on the small of her back. I was both alarmed and impressed. She moved in with me. One morning, three years later, I noticed that she had quite severe carpet-burn on her back. That’s when I figured out that it was over.
18. tree / arbre
→ La très grande difficulté d'entrer en contact avec un arbre (en dehors d'un accident de voiture).
→ Pour faire les moules des roses en bronze, j’ai coupé des tiges d’érable et des brindilles de cornouiller. J’ai utilisé l’érable pour faire la tige des roses et le cornouiller pour la queue des feuilles. Le calice et les feuilles sont faits individuellement en cire, tout comme les épines que j’ai attachées au hasard le long de la tige d’érable. Les pétales sont en porcelaine.
19. garbage can / poubelle
→ In the Kenneth paintings, a naked Kenneth is depicted either in the studio with its brick wall and concrete floor, or on the gravel roof of the studio building against a backdrop of residential Roncesvalles. Beside Ken in each of the paintings is a teepee-style campfire made of twigs and old newspapers taken out of the studio garbage can.
→ I was surprised to learn, shortly after arriving in Paris, that the few basic verbs I possessed also existed in both past and future forms. I was disheartened when it became clear that I had as little command of the vocabulary as I did of the grammar. For a while I was able to get by speaking English in a pronounced, stage-French accent. The few French words and phrases of which I was certain, I would enunciate with a relieved assuredness. It was with this confidence, pride even, that I asked the woman with whom I was staying, "Où est le garbage?" I pronounced "garbage" à la française, to rhyme with garage and massage. Her quizzical look made me think that perhaps my accent still needed work.
20. bicycle / vélo
→ Le « tout voiture » de Georges Pompidou ayant tellement pris le dessus dans la cité, j’étais un des seuls à Paris en 1982 à utiliser un vélo comme moyen de transport. J’allais d’un point A à un point B : les adultes me suivaient du regard, les enfants à pieds, courrant, criant « Vélo ! Vélo ! Vélo ! »
→ I purchased my bike from a back-alley shop in Knightsbridge. Brian’s came from the Brick Lane Market. Both were second-hand ten-speeds, British made, and not very lightweight. Brian left me his, and as my own bike frame was too small for me, I broke them both down to create a single one. The original bikes were scratched and chipped, and in a fit of fussiness, I took the new bike in to be sandblasted and re-enamelled. I had the enamelling done in white — which turned out looking antiseptic. For relief, I outlined the decorative edges of the lugs with a painted black line.
21. Georges Seurat
→ I was complaining to a friend that I was stuck. I had nothing to say about Georges Seurat, and I really don’t know why we chose him as a subject in the first place. It being the day of George Harrison’s death, she said, “Why not just write about another George?” I was immediately thrown back to music class at free school, 1973. That day, the teacher played us a recording of Steve Reich’s “Violin Phase” — as well as Monty Python’s ”We Love the Yangste.” After class, I was reeling from the effects as I climbed into someone’s car. The snow was coming down heavily, not quite silently. The car was started and the radio put on. George’s extended blues jam, “Thanks for the Pepperoni,” was playing. Everything clicked into place. The world seemed to make sense.
→ After we visited the exhibition of Seurat studies of the Eiffel Tower, Ian took me to his Elm Park Gardens studio. The studio was a second-floor walk-up flat, and every room but one was filled with stacked rows of paintings. In what would have been the living room there was a very long and narrow painting in progress. The picture was supported by five evenly spread-out easels. At each easel was a chair and a tabouret on which sat a palette, brushes, an ash tray and one or two cups of cold tea. The painting was a varied field of coloured dots and squiggles, with the odd snippet of text or figurative reference. In particular, I recall a pair of lips.
22. clock / horloge
→ Dans I AM NOT AN EIGHT-DAY CLOCK, le dicton est peint en trois couches circulaires, comme des cadrans d’horloges superposés. Dans la première couche, le « I » de « I AM NOT » se trouve en haut, à la position du douze. La deuxième couche, superposée sur la première, contient « AN EIGHT-DAY » où le « A » de « AN » est sur le douze. Pour la dernière couche, c’est le « C » de « CLOCK » qui occupe cette place. Afin de distinguer les couches, chacune est peinte d’une couleur différente. Très peu de personnes arrivent à déchiffrer la phrase.
→ Je me réveille la nuit pour boire, pisser ou me faire du souci. L’horloge semble toujours présenter une séquence numérique non-aléatoire étonnante, comme 1:23, 2:46, 3:57, 4:44, 5:00.…
23. record / enregistrement
→ Family’s first long-playing 33-1/3: Harry Belafonte’s Midnight Special (1962) with Blind Boy Grunt on harmonica
First 45 rpm bought with one’s own allowance: "The Monster Mash" by Bobby (Boris) Pickett (1962)
First 331/3 of one’s own: A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Last CD bought: April Remixes, Yoshihiro Hanno (2001)
Very last CD bought: Leves vos fists comme antennas to heaven, Godspeed You Black Emperor (2001)
→ Full price $3.67; discounted records or re-issues, $2.99
24. editorial cartoon / dessin politique
→ Jacques Faisant is a national treasure. His sheer awfulness as both a draughtsman and a critic of current events never ceases to amaze me. He was recently bumped from his traditional place on the cover of the right-wing Le Figaro to some interior page. Les choses ne sont plus se qu’elles étaient.
→ It was my habit to pick up things to paint on the way to the studio, something that could mark but not outlast the day — a newspaper, a flower or a branch nicked from a bush in a park.
25. rad / radiateur
→ Il y a une peinture métallique pour radiateur (cuivre, bronze ou argent) et il y a un pinceau à radiateur à angle de 30 degrés parfaitement inutile pour autre chose que peindre des radiateurs. Il faut environ une heure pour appliquer chaque couche.
→ L’image m’a échappé ces dernières années et je n’en ai peint aucune depuis cette variation sur le Pompidou de Vasarely. Avec ses lignes parallèles, sa spirale et sa couleur de style Europe de l’Est 1965, ce carton mis au rebut m’a ramené à l’image.
26. colleague / collègue
→ On the way back from evening classes, half way into town, Richard stops at Tim Hortons. The coffee and donut shop is on a service road in between a mature residential area and a highway sound barrier. He insists on paying, and knows the names of all the staff.
→ Francis Ponge, Wallace Stevens, ee cummings, filet de boeuf aux huitres, six magrets et un tartare.
27. hat / chapeau
→ Growing up as a Reform Jew, it was never the custom to wear a yarmulke or kepah in the synagogue, and I suffered some embarrassment when attending the Bar Mitzvahs of my Conservative Jewish friends, where I was obliged to don one. To help alleviate my discomfort, I would cakewalk down the aisle of the shul, shaking a finger and intoning, “Kepah truckin'.”
→ The fedoras occupy the top shelf of the hall closet, stacked-up and in the boxes they were first purchased in. These boxes are eight-sided affairs with black-and-white, cursive typography that stylishly announces the fedoras’ manufacturer, Stetson. The hats sit upside-down in the boxes, their rims supported by an interior boxboard ledge designed to prevent any dinting of the hats’ crowns.
28. painted sky / ciel peint
→ In art school we were encouraged to paint only non-representational pictures in acrylics: these could be somewhat fanciful, employing either pattern or abstraction after observation, or they could be process-oriented, where the image obviously derived from the process of the painting’s manufacture. One summer, several of us decided to go out and work directly from the landscape in oils. We drove to a rural road north of the city. Dan’s painting rendered the clouds as flat, interlocking shapes, creating the effect of a jigsaw puzzle.
→ A ladder's top rung can evoke nineteenth-century skies or mises en bouteille au château. This is a painting, as is the recording of a telephone dropping into a bucket of paint.
29. musical instrument / instrument de musique
→ Nous sommes dans le studio d’enregistrement de Song Active Productions, rue Henri Feulard. Palix bidouille à l’ordinateur et je prends le temps de fignoler le son du synthé, modifiant la forme de l’onde, le temps d’attaque et de relâchement, l’intensité de l’EG, la hauteur des oscillateurs, « l'after touch ». Arrivant à un effet convenable, je lève la tête pour signaler à Palix que je suis prêt à commencer l’enregistrement.
« Ca y est, dit-il. C’est déjà fait. » Il faut être vigilant avec Palix.
→ Annie, Catie and I were in an Italian restaurant having lunch at the end of a long week. A hired musician strolled among the diners, singing popular songs and accompanying himself on guitar. He struck up a tune that Annie knew, and she burst into song in her disciplined, operatic voice. I felt self-conscious, and wished she would shut up. When the song was over, the whole restaurant rose to enthusiastically applaud her performance.
→ J’ai trouvé la guitare chez un prêteur sur gages. C’était une grande guitare sèche en épinette rouge à caisse de résonance bombée et deux trous en F. Elle se maniait bien mais, malgré sa taille, avait une sonorité faible. Je l’ai prêtée et, comme j’en avais trop souvent l’habitude à cette époque, j’ai vite oublié à qui je l’avais confiée.
30. Jean-Paul Riopelle
→ His parents would spend eight months of the year in their condominium in Florida, and from the age of sixteen on he lived virtually alone in the large house, only occasionally crossing paths with the discreet maid who came in every other day to pick up and generally efface all evidence of the fact that someone actually lived there.
Sunk into the thick off-white pile of the spacious living room were all the instruments necessary for playing rock ‘n roll, including amplifiers, a full pearlescent Ludwig drum kit and a baby grand. Friends would come over to play, smoke dope and hang. One evening, between extended Dead covers, he noticed one of his friends absent-mindedly chipping off the pointed curlicues that extended out from the abstract painting hanging above the couch. He watched for a while, then asked him to stop. Picking up his guitar, he started strumming “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” The musicians came raggedly in.
→ Dans le cadre d’un programme fédéral de 1967 visant à exposer des oeuvres publiques dans les aéroports canadiens, Riopelle a produit un grand tableau pour l’entrée du bâtiment administratif de l’aéroport international de Toronto. Chaque fois que j’attendais un vol, j’allais voir l’œuvre devant laquelle, ces dernières années, on avait disposé un bureau pour le personnel de la sécurité. À l’occasion, les agents appuyaient leur fauteuil contre le tableau. En 1989, Brian Mulroney a fait cadeau du Riopelle à la France à l’occasion de l’inauguration de l’Opéra de la Bastille où il est maintenant accroché.
31. toilet / w.c.
→ I explained to the young French woman that men in Canada were expected to lower the seat after peeing, as a courtesy to women. “And do the women lift the seat back up after they’ve finished, as a courtesy to the men?” she enquired. This was a crucial moment leading to my decision to remain in France.
→ Mary’s home is perched on a rock incline overlooking the busy entrance to the canal locks at the end of Clear Lake. The setting is picturesque, but posed some practical challenges. For example, the site did not have an environmentally friendly septic system. After several years of using a leaky holding tank, Mary’s solution was to get a composting toilet, whose invention owed something to pioneering work in toilet design done by the Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Mary was particularly pleased with the connection between the processing of her shit and recent art history.
32. phone / téléphone
→ Rotary sets were offered to subscribers in a range of colours: black, white, cream, beige, dull red and beige green. Anything but black incurred an additional monthly cost.
→
33. air vent / bouche d’aération
→ It’s the strangest thing how form imposes itself on one. How, for reasons that remain mysterious, a sound, a colour, a relational system suddenly “glisten with meaning” and take on a significance from which you never fully recover.
→ Reza, who was in medical school at the time, warned me off walking over the grates in the sidewalks along Metro routes. He said condensed packets of flu and cold germs and all manner of contagion issued from the things. I feel a twinge of vulnerability if I don’t hold my breath when passing over them.
34. character / caractère
→ Parti Communiste, personal computer, prise de courrant, Petite Ceinture, poste de contrôle, Pierre Cardin, petit con, plein de choses.
→ You are made of neither salt nor sugar.
35. word / mot
→ I ain’t gonna die at the wrong end of a gun
I ain’t gonna die walking off into the setting sun
I ain’t gonna die out on the town while having fun
I ain’t gonna die choking on a stale onion bun
How am I gonna die?
I ain’t gonna die smashed asleep at the wheel
I ain’t gonna die crushed under a large automobile
I ain’t gonna die heart exploded at some sumptuous meal
I ain’t gonna die being hauled under a rusty keel
I ain’t gonna die a hero at the barricades
I ain’t gonna die of that dreaded accursed AIDS
I ain’t gonna die laying down the ace of spades
I ain’t gonna die screwing one of the upstairs maids
How am I gonna die?
I ain’t gonna die from the violence in the city
I ain’t gonna die reading the Secret Life of Walter Mitty
I ain’t gonna die one night smothered by my obese kitty
I ain’t gonna die from one more bout of feeling shitty
I ain’t gonna die from a devious government plot
I ain’t gonna die kidnapped, tied up and left there to rot
I ain’t gonna die buried in my family plot
I ain’t gonna die when I pay for the stuff I just bought
How am I gonna die?
I ain’t gonna die coming in the arms of my honey
I ain’t gonna die with a hell of a lot of money
I ain’t gonna die chasing after the Easter Bunny
I ain’t gonna die like Bird laughing at something funny
I sure ain’t gonna die from over-achieving
And I ain’t gonna die from excessive alcoholic heaving
I ain’t gonna die when my wife tells me that she’s leaving
I ain’t gonna die from a broken heart, grieving
How am I gonna die?
How am I gonna die?
→ Phone numbers were seven digits. As a mnemonic device, the first two digits were given a name shared by all of the telephones in a particular exchange. The names were based on the letters associated with the numbers on the dial. The phone number 278-4025 was CRedit 8-4025, and 537-1309 appeared as LEnnox 7-1309.
36. phrase
→ Voici ma deuxième blague dans la langue française.
Q : Comment les abeilles s’adressent-elles à leur reine?
R : « Cire! » (Rire)
→ The Good Lord loves you. Sit on your hands.
37. curator / commissaire d'expositions
→ Le déménagement de Keilor, de Washington DC, au Nouveau-Brunswick, semblait une entreprise téméraire. Il avait acheté, sans la voir, une maison ayant, d’après l’annonce, vue sur la Baie de Fundy, ce qui était vrai, mais qui se trouvait pratiquement sur la Route Transcanadienne. Keilor apporta ses trois vénérables perroquets qui, à sa grande horreur, perdirent rapidement toutes leurs plumes à cause du bruit constant de la circulation.
→ Au dîner, Virginia m’installa entre elle et son amie Jacqueline, la fille de Teeny Duchamp et de Pierre Matisse. Au cours du repas, elle nous raconta des anecdotes de sa jeunesse romanesque : les dimanches après-midi assise sur les genoux de son grand-père Henri ; les longues heures passées à assembler les boîtes-en-valises de Marcel ; l’appartement dans lequel ils avaient vécu à New York où sur la sonnette de la porte, on lisait Matisse/Duchamp/Ernst.
38. florist / fleuriste
→ The longtime (and only) employee in the local florist’s told me she’d recently met an acquaintance of mine on the bus. He is her next-door neighbour, and they’d never had the opportunity to speak at length until their shared bus ride. During their conversation, the subject came around to customers in her shop that he might know. He told her that he worked in arts and design, and she asked if he knew me. I asked her how she had got on with him. “Very well,” she allowed, “but he is a very unattractive man.”
→ One youthful summer, I worked for two florists with the real and unlikely names of Groom and Philpot. One day, en route to “deliver a wedding,” Groom told me that he and Philpot had just bought some lovely striped sheets for their bed. For lack of anything better to say, I enquired, “Only stripes? Where are the stars?” “The stars?” he responded. “Between the sheets, Darling! Between the sheets.”
39. directional indicator / panneau indicateur
→ À Sackville (Nouveau-Brunswick), au milieu des années 70, Harold fit des études de couleur en utilisant de la peinture étalée sur une toile non tendue. En diverses occasions, il envoya à Clement Greenberg des lettres et des images de ses derniers tableaux. Greenberg lui répondait par des évaluations méticuleusement dactylographiées sur des cartes. En réponse à l’un des commentaires d’Harold, Greenberg lui écrivit : « Pollock n’a pas percé tant qu’il ne s’est pas résigné à ne pas aimer ses tableaux ».
→ Adam was playing with himself in the garden, alone, bored and not particularly happy. Taking pity, the head gardener decided to put on a show for him. Overjoyed by this break in the routine, Adam began spewing gibberish, and pointing his penis at the passing parade, he singlehandedly invented poetry and painting.
40. number / numéro
→ Notre première idée était d’avoir 45 paires de photographies dans un livre signé par deux artistes. Rien d’autre. Nous sommes allés voir Stan pour avoir un devis d’impression et il a proposé de publier le projet à condition que nous ajoutions une composante écrite, quelque chose comme les commentaires spontanés que nous avons formulés en lui montrant les photographies.
→ J’ai mes chiffres, mes « lucky numbers ». Une date, une adresse et je ne sais pas quoi. J’ai joué au LOTO l’autre jour. Je n’ai pas gagné. Je ne gagne jamais. À quoi bon des chiffres préférés si on ne gagne pas? Il faudrait peut-être en trouver d’autres.
41. travel advertisement / pubilicité de voyage
→ Barker a eu un vernissage à la galerie Pennell de Yorkville, à laquelle nous avons tous assisté. Cet été-là, il avait peint un portrait de moi qui devait faire partie de l’exposition. Nous avons découvert que le tableau portait mystérieusement le titre « Lorenzo ».
→ Ma première tentative de blague en français était particulièrement fine. Un exercice de style, d'ordre Carambar ou papillote de Noël:
Q : En quoi est-ce que la vie est différente d'une agence de voyage?
R : Là où la vie ne nous offre que l'éphémère, l'agence de voyage est apte à nous proposer air/fer/mer.
Encouragé quand même par le résultat de cet effort, j'ai tenté d’en faire une autre. Elle était meilleure.
42. arts administrator / administrateur d’art
→ Prior to renovating the gallery, we met to discuss the gallery’s design. The location of the gallery office was at issue. Some of us thought that the office should look out onto the street through the large window that spanned the front of the building. Sharon, who would be spending her days there, felt the office would be best positioned in the back of the gallery, beside a dim light-well. In the end, interior gallery walls obscured the front windows and the office looked into the light-well.
→ Ecoutez votre Administrateur d’art.
43. water / eau
→ “Water is the universal solvent,” proclaimed the science teacher with some solemnity. Later, in the playground, Phil had to chuckle. “If water were the universal solvent, the ocean would eat a hole through the earth!”
→ I called Gary at 9 a.m. one morning to ask him if he would write a poem to accompany a painting I had been asked to do for an exhibition about painting and poetry. I suggested “a glass of water” as the subject we would both treat. Gary responded that he had a terribly busy week before him, and, as I likely needed the poem right away, it might be difficult for him to participate. Once I explained that there were two months to go before the exhibition, he agreed to see what he could come up with. Gary’s completed poem came through on my fax machine at 9:25 a.m.
44. Lucy Hogg
→ The first and only time I went to Lucy’s parents’ home was during the short scalloping season. At the docks, I bought a pail of fresh scallops from a fisher who had just come in with his catch. I asked him how the season was going, and he said that he was as busy as a fart in a mitt.
→ La nuit dernière, j’ai regardé « L’Idiot » d’Akira Kurosawa. La magnifique Setsuko Hara interpréte la femme fatale, Taéko Nassou. À un moment donné, en écoutant le soliloque d’une personne qui lui parle, elle fronces les sourcils dans une expression complexe de concentration, d’inquiétude et de séduction.
Je me demande pourquoi Lucy ne m’a rien écrit depuis des mois?
45. poet / poète
→ Gary read several of his poems and prose writings. One took a glass of water as its point of departure; another recounted Gary’s relationship with the scholar and artist Barker Fairley; and a third was a recreation of a visit Anna Akhmatova made to the Paris studio of her lover, Amadeo Modigliani. Accompanying the reading were slide projections of Gary's recent paintings and collages, as well as cropped images of his home: the books in his library, the artworks on his walls, and his young son Alex stretched out face-down on a skateboard.
→ juste faire n’importe quoi
faire juste n’importe quoi
n’importe quoi faire juste
(n’importe quoi juste faire)
46. sujet libre
→ J’ai rencontré Richard dans le train Paris-Cherbourg. Envoyé par Trudeau, au début des années 70, pour représenter la culture canadienne auprès de la CEE, Richard n’est plus jamais rentré au pays et enseigne maintenant la philosophie de l’art à l’École des Beaux-arts de Cherbourg. Nous sommes ce qu’on appelle des « turbo profs » : vivant dans la capitale, enseignant dans les provinces. Au cours de nos voyages, nous avons pu parler de beaucoup de choses essentielles. Il est très volubile et l’un des hommes le plus érudit que je connaisse. C’était donc avec un certain étonnement et tristesse la semaine dernière que je lui ai appris la mort du hockeyeur Tim Horton, tué dans sa Mazerrati en 1974.
→ Meredith a donné mon nom à Max. Il m’a téléphoné pour me photographier dans mon atelier. Il m’a expliqué qu’il s’inspirait des portraits d’artistes de Arnold Newman. Il m’a demandé ce que je porterai et, comme c’était l’été, je lui ai répondu que je portais généralement des shorts. Il m’a demandé si je pouvais porter un pantalon, car en short, les jambes nues attireraient trop l’attention.
47. critic / critique
→ Pendant sa recherche d’appartement, Oliver a habité chez nous pendant quelques jours ou semaines. Un matin, après le petit déjeuner, je devais aller à un rendez-vous. Oliver lisait debout au milieu du salon. Il leva les yeux alors que je sortais et demanda, « Veux-tu que je fasse quelque chose pendant ton absence?
« Tu pourrais débarrasser la table » lui dis-je en fermant la porte. À mon retour, je l’ai retrouvé à la même place, debout, plongé dans le même livre. En levant les yeux, il m’a demandé si mon rendez-vous s’était bien passé. Nous avons débarrassé la table et sommes allé déjeuner au Vieux Chêne.
→ Throughout the 1970s, Eric published a number of reviews in Canadian and American art periodicals. At some point in the 80s, he decided to devote himself to writing about the evolution, construction and reception of his own artwork.
48. view of France / vue de la France
→ Before I moved to Paris, that entire city was contained within the boundaries of the playing field at the local grade school and junior high school on Spadina Road. I would read about the bohemian doings in Montmartre, and the action would unfold on the hill leading to the grade-school entrance and the arched porch separating the two schools. Montparnasse was at the opposite end of the field, perfectly contained by the baseball diamond. Les Champs Elysées was naturally the lawn over by the portables where I took Grade 7 math.
→ Mary had squatted a flat near Beaubourg for ten years. While she was on holiday in 1985, her then boyfriend Richard purchased the flat for a very modest amount from the city during a squat clean-up campaign. Richard did not consult Mary, but he grudgingly allowed her to stay on for a few more years.
→ La fenêtre de ma cuisine donne sur un mur blanc vierge au fond d’un puits de lumière, que nous nommons la courette. Le bar, où les invités s’assoient pendant que je cuisine pour eux, fait face à la fenêtre. Tout le monde a toujours souligné combien il était étrange de regarder par cette fenêtre et de n’avoir aucun élément sur lequel focaliser le regard, comme s’il y’avait un brouillard épais.
Au bout de quelques mois, j’ai décidé de créer un poème concret avec des lettres en zinc qui autrefois avaient servi à écrire « LES COURS DES HALLES, FRUITS ET LÉGUMES ».
Ce soir, j’ai fait de la ratatouille, des boulettes de viande et du riz complet.
49. View of Canada / vue du Canada
→ Barker and I went painting together in Grey County. He’d just returned from a painting trip to England, and spoke of the challenge of rendering Ontario’s very different light. He favoured distant views of the rolling agricultural landscape — fields of mustard, ripe grain or windrowed hay — all divided by delicately rendered fence rows and isolated maples and dead elms. Barker ordered cut-up hardboard panels, pre-primed with household latex paint, from a neighbouring farmer. He painted quickly to better capture the changing light. Barker began a painting with several simple dividing lines in charcoal: the horizon, the edge of a field, the silhouette of a tree. He would then set his picture on his lap and spread out a thinned pool of oil paint, which he would blot with paper towel to create a transparent wash through which the charcoal was still visible. He preferred Scott Towels.
→ You can always tell when a TV movie has been shot in Canada by the tightness of the exterior shots, the purpose of which is to neutralize any sign that might interfere with the illusion of the action taking place in New York, Chicago or Ubiquiville, USA. Once alerted to this stylistic idiosyncrasy, the hungry eye of the homeboy seeks out those discrete details that allow for pinpoint location identification.
I am lying in bed in a hotel room in Caen, Normandy. The toxic wallpaper matches the bedspread, and I am inhabited by an emptiness that always accompanies me on business trips. I should sleep but I am caught up in the minimalism of channel surfing on the five stations coming through.
Exterior shot: Two cops talk in a French that’s just slightly out of sync, in voices that don’t quite match their body types. They are in front of the latest victim’s place of residence. I am overcome by a strong sense of déjà vu. Through the small vase-shaped space created by their two profiles, I can tell that not only is this Amerika in Toronto, but that we are on the very goddamn street where I was born and where my family has lived these past 45 years.
Cut to exterior shot: Close-up of Serial Killer whose expression tells us he’s after new prey. I see that he’s only one street over.
Hey, he’s going into Phil’s building!
| John Armstrong & Paul Collins |
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