Tosh Berman's Blog, page 216
August 29, 2014
Boris Vian à l'ombre du Moulin Rouge2
Part Two of the Boris Vian documentary
Boris Vian à l'ombre du Moulin Rouge1
A fascinating look into the interior world of Boris Vian in this French documentary.
August 28, 2014
August 28, 2014
August 28, 2014
Some days I wake up in the morning and I just can’t bear the world -mine, their’s and yours. I remember seeing there was a commercial on TV many years ago when the adult, in bed, woke up with a smile on his face, due to the smell of fresh coffee being made or a bowl of cereal waiting for him in the kitchen. I never had that type of morning. Instead I get a wave of anxiety that I just have to set aside, or I will never get out of bed. In a way I live in separate compartments, where one room is total despair, and I have to suck that feeling out of that space and put it aside or put it in another part of my brain. There is something wrong when one wakes up and is in a moment or two of pure panic. What I feel is “knowing is not enough; we must apply. "Willing is not enough; we must do. Generally I do not give in too much to feelings. An overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth. ”
Every morning I do an inventory of everything I did badly the previous day. One horrible blunder after another. As a child, I remember we had a statue of a female in our backyard. I would spend a great deal of time touching her face, feeling that somehow I could capture the emotion she’s expressing, but also I was drawn to the coldness of the marble. It would give me comfort, and when no one was around, I would embrace the statue and just stand there with my arms wrapped around its head. At times, I could have sworn that her marble face would change an expression. Either it was unmoving and non-judgmental, or it could have a faint smile on her lips. “Raising a child is a creative endeavor, an art rather than a science.” This is exactly how I was raised, and I grasp anything that will keep me on balance in a world that has pits, holes, and rings of fire at every step.
The Velvet’s “White Light White Heat” maybe the greatest song ever. Every time I put it on my turntable, I can feel the power of the words taking me to another place, but yet, I’m totally aware that I’m still here, in a place that has no room for me. I like to read fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, because I think they put the reader right in the front of a headlight of an oncoming car, and I think any child would learn to jump away from the blinding light. I tend to embrace the light, and I think it is one of the reasons why I love the song “White Light White Heat.”
I learn lessons from all my mistakes, yet I can’t correct anything. Basically I hit the side of my head and go ‘Hey dummy, ’ but that’s about it. My life is like holding a bowl of burning flaming liquid on the top of my head, and I’m just trying to avoid all the sink holes on the ground. I just want to contain everything I have, and not spill it out on the pavement in front of me. But most of all, I just want to rock. And. Roll.
August 27, 2014
August 27, 2014
August 27, 2014
They are having a double-bill at the Beverly theater tonight, showing “Rock, Rock, Rock” and “Play It As It Lays.” Both films starring Tuesday Weld, who I first saw in the TV show “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” To this day the perfect little squeeze for me. I have a tendency to date women who look like Tuesday, because she’s my ideal beauty. There’s the icy blonde, and then there is the blonde who can raise the temperature of your coffee, just by being there in that room. There is something vulnerable about her, and I imagine that she is socially awkward in social gatherings. I can see myself parked in a car by her apartment, and talking about things with her. I would want to embrace her, but I know that would be wrong. Well, this is all in my head. Nevertheless I have had relationships with women who very much look like Tuesday.
Each man has their “type” and where that comes from is a very mysterious place. To be honest, my feelings for that type are always visual to me. It is not due to if she’s smart or interesting, but more to do with the thickness of her lips, and how her blonde hair flows over her eyes or not. My obsession once hit a peak, when I was going on a date with a girl who had dark hair. I bought her a blonde wig, and asked her to watch various Tuesday films, to see if she could imitate her. The fact that she’s “fake” made the sex with her very exciting to me. Of course a relationship like that, can’t possibly last long. But for me, it is not just the length of time, but the quality - and even now, when I think back, I smile.
Having this private obsession, I tend to ‘smell’ out others who may share my obsession with a certain type of woman. I don’t have any serious money, but I like to collect art books by Man Ray. Both his sculptures, paintings and especially his photographs. But to be honest what I love most about him is his taste of women. Lee Miller, Kiki, and of course his wife was all beautiful, and more than that, incredibly sexy. Over the years I have purchased books with respect to his photography, and I cut out the images of women he photographed. I would think that he had sexual relationship with every girl he photographed, no? What I did was to collect the images and put it in a scrapbook, that I hand-made by myself. Whenever I look through this scrapbook, I would get such an erotic charge. It is like the image is coming off the paper and grabbing my genitals.
Also I was intrigued by Man Ray, because in a sense he made his character up. I find that fascinating especially when you throw in sexual identity in the mix. I often wonder if I made up my desire for Tuesday Weld, or it somehow came naturally, which thinking now, must be impossible. I’m intrigued by people who go out with the same looking people, or they have a precise physical requirement - for instance they must be blonde or redhead and so forth. I don’t know where or when my identity started. I don’t think it came naturally. It was more of a choice of some sort. But where did that ability to make choices come from?
Like Man Ray, I also take an interest in mechanics and how things can work. As a hobby I made myself a rhythmicon, which is basically the first electronic drum machine. The composer Henry Cowell invented it with Léon Theremin, with the hopes of using it for his music. It can use 16 different rhythms and I find it fascinating to build something from nothing and then having it become something. Imagination can lead one to new ways of looking at the world, yet I didn’t alter the machine whosoever. I kept the same model as Cowell and Theremin, because I wanted to be in their shoes. I didn’t want something that I made-up, but borrowed. For me, desire is what I know. The more I know it, the more control I have over it. I’m going to enjoy the Tueday Weld double-bill.
August 26, 2014
August 26, 2014
August 26, 2014
I wrote a perfect book of poems called “The Plum in Mr. Blum’s Pudding” 25 years ago, and for the life (or death) of me I can’t write another poem since then. The truth is the fact that it took me years to get to the point in writing that book, which didn’t take that long for me to write. Maybe in six months? I wrote most, if not all, while I was in Moji-Ko, Japan. What excites me about poetry is the intensity of both the practice and the form. It’s a snapshot of the world, where one doesn’t have to continue to worry about narration. All my early poems were in a sense the basis of the poetry in the Plum book. It didn’t happen, but I had to go through the process of writing every day in countless notebooks, to get to the point, where it made sense to me. It is equally odd that I had to leave my country to focus on my language. Which is exactly what happened when I was in Japan.
I couldn’t speak a word of Japanese, yet I made sure that I kept as far away as I can from the English language. The distance from my own language and country made me super aware of my limitations, which acted out as an inspiration for the Plum book. Yet, I did have a mass-market English dictionary, which also had a small atlas in the back of the book. With that as a guide, I plunge myself into writing “The Plum in Mr. Blum’s Pudding. ”
My most useful tool is my memory. The beauty of it is the fact that it doesn’t have to be a correct memory. In actually, I prefer the act of memory, and somehow get the facts wrong. Some years ago, I read Jules Romains’ “Donogoo Tonka or The Miracles of Science” which had a huge effect on me, due that the location of a city in South America was totally made up by the author. For me, a writer needs to be bigger than life. When I was a teenager, I discovered Guillaume Apolliinaire, because I like the fact that he was writing poetry in such a fashion, that was so ‘new. ' To honor him and his work, I tried to write a poem from my memory, but alas not having the book in Japan, I had to re-invent the work. A lot of my poems are really is my memory working to remember a piece of literature, or if it is something first-hand, such a conversation, then it is trying to remember what that person said. If I was a journalist, I would be a total disaster, but as a poet, every accident becomes a port hole to another world.
Collecting art to me is a form of writing poetry. Just not on paper. I was very impressed with Peggy Guggenheim, because here is a woman who made her world, in her own fashion. Combining the artists and their work and having it contained in a location is a must. Art lives on no matter what, but with the focus of how one displays that work, and with another artist, it becomes a dialogue of sorts. Writing poetry works the same way for me. I choose words that hopefully will go together, not to make a specific sense, but actually to bring one’s imagination into focus. As much as possible I want to avoid the real world and what I want to do is make it into an artificial paradise. To mis-phrase Donald Rumsfeld: “There are things out there, that we do know, but it is the unknown we need to know, and what we know, is not really knowledge, but a slight misunderstanding on what we think we know. ”
When I saw the film “Blow Up” I was struck by how easy reality can be altered by another medium - for instance in that film, with the camera. Writing poetry serves the same purpose in that one is not recording what’s real, but what’s the subjective view of that world. With that in thought, I’m a freed man.
August 25, 2014
August 25, 2014
August 25, 2014
Every August 25, I fly to London for a meeting with my fellow birthday citizens. It was started some years back by Sean Connery, and since he’s the oldest among us, he’s the one that organizes the event. Basically it’s a dinner with only men who are born on August 25 and who are well-known in their fields of interest. Right now it is very much a small club, which consists of Wayne Shorter, me, Elvis Costello (we’re actually born the same time), Regis Philbin, Frederick Forsyth, Martin Amis, Tim Burton, and the head member of the group Belle & Sebastian, Stuart Murdoch. Sean does a good job in organizing us to have dinner on our birthday, considering that all of us are busy people, but somehow when Sean says “come to dinner,” well, we never turn his invitation down. I’ve been going since I was 23. Now I’m turning 60. As well as Elvis.
It’s a weird group of men in the room when we get together. Otherwise, there is no absolute reason why we would or even want to get together. Sometimes I feel that Sean is secretly laughing at us, for going to our birthday dinner, without our family, for decades now. Time-to-time I believe that it is nothing but a power play on his part and we never discussed this within the group, but I have secretly kept this opinion to myself for years. My wife and other family members have been upset at me for years by leaving them due to the date of my birth. None of us in the August 25 group can say no to Sean Connery. For me, I think it's due to the fact that my father used to take me to see Sean in the Bond films at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. As one gets older, memory becomes more of a shadow, but I deeply remember my dad and I seeing films like "From Russia With Love,"' Goldfinger" and so forth. He always made the point to take me on the very first screening of the film, which at that time was around 11:30 in the morning. It was a ritual between me and my dad.
Oddly enough, one would think I would feel closer to Elvis, if nothing else, due that we were born at the same time and moment. But that fact has done nothing except the emotion of jealousy has crept up on us over the years. This is something that Sean has noticed, and he likes to make fun of us. I can see that it really upsets Elvis, and I just say nothing. The one I feel most closest to is actually Martin, because we are both writers, and both of us have well-known fathers. It is difficult for the son to make his mark on the world, when you have a famous and well-liked father. For him, it is probably tougher, because his father, Amis, was a very successful writer. My dad, Wallace, was a visual artist, so at the very least I never had to compete in the same category as him.
The other writer in the group is Frederick Forsyth, and he’s quite different from Martin and me. He wrote major bestsellers such as “The Day of the Jackal” and “The Fourth Protocol” that is good adventure or suspense novels, and it seems he is very close to Sean. Both Martin and I feel that Sean has probably never read our books, which over time, we both think that’s odd. Perhaps even an insult. Almost every dinner, on our birthday, Sean went out of his way in complementing Frederick’s work, without ever mentioning my writings or Martin’s.
And I feel kind of sorry for Regis, who I think is quite brilliant in being himself in front of a TV camera. Funny enough, I can at times feel more comfortable in front of a camera as well. I did a series of shows called “Tosh Talks, ” where I just ramble on about books. A lot of people hate the show, but for me, it is just a technique for me to say something about what I love in front of an (imaginative) audience. When I do the show, I often think of Regis Philbin, and that puts me in a groove when my assistant starts taping me. Nothing is planned, and I really like that. As the Joker in the last Batman film said:
“Do I really look like a man with a plan? I don't have a plan. The mob has plans, the cops have plans. you know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught one. I just DO things. I'm a wrench in the gears. I HATE plans. Yours, theirs, everyone's. I AM AN AGENT OF CHAOS. And you know the thing about chaos. It's fair.”
So with that in mind I do the shows, and I have read Regis’ two books (both have brilliant titles) “I’m Only One Man!” and “Who Wants To Be Me? When I read them, just for the titles alone, I thought for sure I must have written them. I don’t feel that way with Martin and Frederick’s works, but still, even keeping Regis in mind, why do I go to Sean’s birthday dinner?
Tim Burton, Wayne Shorter and Stuart both stand out, because I have the impression that they don’t care what Sean thinks of them. For them, it is just an amusement in itself, where Martin and the others take it very seriously. I think back what the Joker has said, and at times I really hate myself to be in a world of Sean’s making, and I even start to resent that I share my birthday with him, and on top of that, when I do think of my birthday, I firstly think of him. When Sean started to compliment Stuart by saying he’s the sound of young Scotland, me and Elvis briefly looked across the table at each other, but once our eyes made contact, we both looked away.
I just want to make acknowledgment to the participants:
Sean Connery: 83
Wayne Shorter: 81
Frederick Forsyth: 76
Martin Amis: 65
Tosh Berman: 60
Elvis Costello: 60
Tim Burton: 56
Stuart Murdock: 46
August 24, 2014
Gainsbourg The Biography ARTBOOK | D.A.P. ISBN: 9780966234671
The late and great Gilles Verlant's magnificent biography on French genius songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Truly one of the great pop music figures on this sorry planet. Verlant spent over 100 hours interviewing Serge as well as doing interviews with all those around him, including iconic figures in the French music and film world. Not only an essential book on Gainsbourg, but also the showbiz world in France from the 1950s to the 1990s. This is the best book on the world of French pop. - Tosh Berman, Publisher TamTam BooksGainsbourg: The BiographyPublished by TamTam Books
By Gilles Verlant. Translated by Paul Knobloch.When Serge Gainsbourg died in 1991, France went into mourning: François Mitterand himself proclaimed him “our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire.” Gainsbourg redefined French pop, from his beginnings as cynical chansonnier and mambo-influenced jazz artist to the ironic “yé-yé” beat and lush orchestration of his 1960s work to his launching of French reggae in the 1970s to the electric funk and disco of his last albums. But mourned as much as his music was Gainsbourg the man: the self-proclaimed ugly lover of such beauties as Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, the iconic provocateur whose heavy-breathing “Je t’aime moi non plus” was banned from airwaves throughout Europe and whose reggae version of the “Marseillais” earned him death threats from the right, and the dirty-old-boy wordsmith who could slip double-entendres about oral sex into the lyrics of a teenybopper ditty and make a crude sexual proposition to Whitney Houston on live television.
Gilles Verlant’s biography of Gainsbourg is the best and most authoritative in any language. Drawing from numerous interviews and their own friendship, Verlant provides a fascinating look at the inner workings of 1950s–1990s French pop culture and the conflicted and driven songwriter, actor, director and author that emerged from it: the young boy wearing a yellow star during the German Occupation; the young art student trying to woo Tolstoy’s granddaughter; the musical collaborator of Petula Clark, Juliette Greco and Sly and Robbie; the seasoned composer of the Lolita of pop albums, Histoire de Melody Nelson; the cultural icon who transformed scandal and song into a new form of delirium.
Gainsbourg The Biography ARTBOOK | D.A.P. 2012 Catalog TamTam Books Books Exhibition Catalogues 9780966234671
August 24, 2014
August 24, 2014
"Death cancels all engagements.” Thank God for that. Because I really don't want to go to the party tomorrow. I heard from reliable sources that she will be there. For this entire month, I pretty much hide myself in my study/office/library to avoid most if not all people. Luckly the bathroom is just around the corner from my office, so I don’t really have to look at anyone. I have a game that I play with dice. Every morning I throw the dice against the bookcase, and if the number twelve comes up, then I don’t do anything foolish that day.
To be perfectly frank, I can spend my entire life in my study with my books. I’m intrigued what’s happening outside my world, but I prefer that I read about it, than participate with the outside world, because I don’t see the point in having an one-on-one relationship with a landscape that is so hostile to my way of thinking. Even seeing a man walking down the street with the wrong type of pants can cause me a depression. Even when I walk in my neighborhood and watch, which seem like a painfully slow motion film, the construction of the new apartment condos on the corner of Waverly and Glendale, causes me a migraine.
There is a woman who will be invited to the party tomorrow, that I must avoid at all costs. Her name is Zuleika Dobson, and it seems she welcomes the suicides of men who are obsessed with her. She’s not even pretty, which everyone can gather is less than beautiful, but still, she seems to hold an influence over men who fail to think for themselves. It feels so odd to meet a woman who is actually sexually turned by a suitor’s suicide or suicide attempt. I just have to admit that for amusement sake, I would love to see her in a landscape where I can see men just falling on top of each other just to light her cigarette. When I met her, she seemed to obtain unlimited enjoyment of blowing smoke towards my face. I never liked her, but I wanted to have sex with her.
One time she came to my home, and met me in my library and office. As she was making small talk, she went to my bookshelves and started to pull a book here and there, and that drove me insane. She pulled my collected stories by Jorge Luis Borges off the shelf, read a random page, and commented to me: ‘Hmmm.” She then threw the book on my desk, at the same time she went hunting for another volume of something another, and I kept wondering if her hands were clean. I can’t stand people touching my books, especially a woman like her, who God knows exactly where she had put her hands on. I knew some of her conquests, at least the one’s that are still alive, and I avoid making physical contact, or to be specific, to shake her hand, because I immediately think ‘Oh God she touched so-so’s cock.” Worst yet, I couldn’t bare the thought of looking at her mouth, knowing that so-so’s penis was in that hole below her nose.
I have a small portable turntable in my library and I put on an album by Léo Ferré “Les Chansons d’Aragon” which usually drives certain people nuts, but she seemed to like the recording. She is a woman of taste, but it is the kind of taste that chews one up, and then spitted out against a filthy toilet. While in my room she toyed with me like I was a yoyo and that I was the string that couldn’t come back, due to the lack of strength, to the two disks. I literally held my breath till she left.
It is not obvious to me why I have to go to this party tomorrow. I was told that there was a specific theme to the party, and it deals with that there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. Also the host (hint, hint, the current beau of Zuleika) plans to show his favorite episodes of “60 Minutes.” Also to honor certain guests where 60 is the age for senior citizens in some cultures. I do hope to the powers above me will give me a swift and dignified death before tomorrow.
August 23, 2014
August 23, 2014
August 23, 2014
When I was writing my book on Sparks, which is also a travel journal as well as a memoir of sorts in London, I would always sit on the top deck of the bus and would take the one route that will take me down Albany Street on route to Angel Station in Islington. I would pass the blue plaque for the British composer Constant Lambert, whose music I don’t find interesting whatsoever. What I do find fascinating about the composer is his alcoholism and fear of doctors. Also the fact that he had trouble composing music, so therefore in my category of Heroes: The great failures of their time. I think his greatest contribution, besides his lifestyle and wit, was the fact that his son was Kit Lambert, who was the co-manager (along with Chris Stamp) and record producer of The Who. 197 Albany Street was the last address for Constant, who died in 1951. He lived at this address from 1947 till his death. For me, those were the crucial years of London. Recovering from the war and the ill (and long recovery effects of that war) I think produced great literature as well as art in London. Constant wasn’t a great artist, a skilled one yes, but his genius lies in his life as well as a critic. He has commented that “the whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it though there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. ”
Which to me pretty much describes the nature of rock n’ roll as well as folk music. It is one of the main reasons why I love it so, and not so much Lambert’s music. The world falls apart and yet one can depend on the nature of the rock, that it won’t fail you. In the 1980s, I was pretty much in awe of the band Orange Juice. My first impression is not the music, but their name. I thought it was (and still is) a brilliant name for a band, or even a novel or a poem. The first thing it makes me think of is Frank O’Hara, for no reason, except he brings up an object or a food and he takes off from that and goes into another part of the brain. The lead writer for Orange Juice was Edywn Collins, who was/is an incredible lyricist and as a young man, quite stunning looking. At the time, I took great pride in not owning any albums, whose band names I didn’t like, or their haircut. Very surfaced of me, but I find the surface actually tells a lot about a person. He had one huge mega-hit as a solo singer called “A Girl Like You” which has a great lyric (of course) “This old town’s changed so much/Don’t feel like I belong/To many protest singers/Not enough protest songs.” Or from “Consolation Prize, ” “I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn’s/I was hoping to impress/So frightfully camp, it made you laugh/Tomorrow I’ll buy myself a dress/How ludicrous.” At that time in my life (I was in my 20s) I was more like 17, due to my sense of identity, which honestly (and no one else either) could take seriously.
When I looked in the mirror I tried to imagine myself as Gene Kelly, but the (obvious) truth was that I was fat. But still, I think of Kelly as a role model due that he was recognized as a hard worker who was tough if you don’t follow his stance, which to go for perfection. To be fair, I didn’t go for perfection, either in my writing or physique, instead, I went a notch or two down from perfection. Adequate would be a satisfactory description for yours truly. Still, in my deepest depression, I would dance in the rain and my ability to jump over fire hydrants, usually caused a skinned knee here and there. Oddly enough I would be caught in the rain, while walking around Islington to wait for the Sparks show at the theater.
What I have in common with Lambert, Collins, and Gene is that I attempt to learn from my peers to do better and not follow their footsteps to specific disasters. But no one can be your driver or pilot. At best, you can drive your own car, and have the guidance of the angels to make sure you make it to your destination.
