Tuesday, September 9, 2014

THE LIBRARY'S SO BRIGHT I GOTTA WEAR SHADES



There’s surely a book to be written (not by me) about Jorge Luis Borges and walking.  As a young man he explored the streets of Buenos Aires on foot and if the picture above is anything to go by, he cut quite a dapper figure.  He’s up there with Adolfo Bioy Casares, Victoria Ocampo on la Rambla de Mar del Plata. in 1935.


Borges was extremely quotable on the subject of walking, thus:
“I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.”
“I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.”
“Which one of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?”

In a book titled Georgie & Elsa: Jorge Luis Borges and His Wife – The Untold Story, Norman di Giovanni, writes about walking with Borges in the streets of Buenos Aires.
“We would begin our stroll down the Avenida Belgrano, a wide, busy, modern thoroughfare, trying to speak over the roar and fumes of the traffic. The ubiquitous snub-nosed buses crawled along in step with us, throbbing and belching their murderous black exhaust in our faces. Borges never seemed to notice. He was too busy discussing the word music of Dunbar, Coleridge, or the Bard himself.”
Sometimes they went through the back streets
         “The only trouble with making our way on these back streets was the narrowness of the pavements; the two of us could not comfortably walk abreast, which meant that with Borges clinging to my arm I had to proceed half a step ahead of him in a crabwise manner … It was in the course of these daily walks that Borges gossiped to me about all and sundry – and it was not always benign.”

         Borges was blind by then, which was why he clung to di Giovanni’s arm.  Sources seem to differ on when he completely lost his sight, but it seems to have been around age 55.  From then on he needed somebody to help him walk.  And he never learned braille, so he also needed somebody to read to him.  I’m not sure whether walking or reading would have been the greater loss, but Borges never seems to have had much trouble finding people to help him with either.



The Elsa in that book title was Borges’ first wife, Elsa Astete Millán, and Di Giovanni didn’t think much of her, nor did Borges by the end, but there are certainly pictures of them walking together and Borges doesn’t look completely miserable.  The marriage lasted about three years.



Borges’s second wife, María Kodama, 40 years younger than him, didn’t think much of di Giovanni.  When she took control of the Borges estate in 1985 she ensured that the di Giovanni translations went out of print, representing both a professional and a financial loss for di Giovanni.  One can only imagine what it would be like for an old blind man with a wife four decades younger, but  there are quite a few photographs of the two of them walking together and they don’t look completely miserable either.


Certainly Borges cut a much less dashing figure as he got older.  That dead stare and those unaligned eyes give him a lost and uncertain look.  And I’ve been thinking lately he’d have looked much snappier if he’d worn some stylish shades. I’ve never seen a photograph of him wearing a pair, and obviously in the ordinary sense he didn’t need them, but it would certainly have made him look more the boulevardier.



There is however a curious reference to dark glasses in his 1943 short story "The Secret Miracle,"
Toward dawn, he dreamed that he was in hiding, in one of the naves of the Clementine Library. What are you looking for? a librarian wearing dark glasses asked him. I'm looking for God, Hladik replied. God, the librarian said, is in one of the letters on one of the pages of one of the four hundred thousand volumes in the Clementine. My parents and my parents' parents searched for that letter; I myself have gone blind searching for it.”
         He should have gone for a walk instead.


Saturday, September 6, 2014

OBAMAHENGE



I suppose I was slightly surprised to learn that, at this point in his life, Barack Obama is already working his way down a bucket list.  I mean, once he leaves office he’ll be able to do anything and everything he wants, so why not wait till then?



Still, when you have a spiritual vortex on your list, i.e. Stonehenge, and you happen to find yourself in England for a NATO summit, I can see that you might decide to make a detour, and use all the facilities of the president’s office in order to go for a walk there.  It would be a great photo op if nothing else.  And so it proved.


The best thing (and the least convincing thing) about the pictures of Obama walking at Stonehenge is that he seems to be completely alone there.  We know this can’t really be the case.  The visit was unexpected apparently, so they hadn’t closed the whole thing down, and therefore you know there must be large numbers of common or garden tourists lurking just out of the frame.  For that matter we also hear that he was being shown around by a curator, who did in fact make it into one or two photographs.


And then, being a man of the people, Obama had a "chance meeting," over the barbed wire fence surrounding the site, with a passing family.  And this is where it all falls apart.  We see now that although the Pres. has managed to appear to walk alone around Stonehenge, there’s no way he can engage with the public unless his secret service men are close at hand.  A good walk spoiled some might say.


Thursday, August 28, 2014

RECORD WALKS



 

Once upon a time it was apparently quite easy to design album covers.  You got a photograph of the artist – portrait studio, recording studio, maybe playing live - you did some more or less fancy lettering and there was your album cover.


And then someone came up with the idea – how about we show the artist WALKING?
There are a couple of advantages here obviously, it gives the subjects something to do, and perhaps even more important, it’s a way of asserting they’re men (and in a few cases women) of the people who haven’t lost touch with the street.



When it comes to “most famous walking album cover” it’s probably a toss up between Abbey Road and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.  I think Dylan just about edges it because even though we know it’s a setup, he actually does look like he’s walking somewhere, whereas the Beatles look like they’re only walking across the street for the sake of the photoshoot.



The Beatles actually looked a bit more natural on this one:


Of course when it comes to Oasis, it’s hard to know whether we’re dealing with homage or barefaced borrowing.  This picture is taken in Berwick Street, one of my “beating the bounds” streets when I go back to London.  Since there’s some motion blur on the cover you might be tempted to think the two men are the Gallagher brothers, but no, don’t be naïve.  The two men are Sean Rowley, who’s a DJ walking towards the camera, and the album sleeve designer Brian Cannon who’s walking away.  Apparently Owen Morris, the album producer, is lurking in the background.


I also suspect that photograph, borrows from this Duane Michael series, titled "Chance Meeting," but you know, in for a penny in for a pound, it’s all appropriation, innit?



No borrowings or homage here on this Dr Alimantado album cover, largely I think because walking down the middle of the street, wearing shorts with the fly open isn’t a look that really existed before or after, but in this case I’m glad it does.


Walking in the street too tame for you?  Then try the railroad tracks:


Earth too tame for you?  Try outer space.


And you can just about imagine what went on in the mind of Randy Jack Wiggins and his photographer when they made this cover.


“Sure,” said Jack, “I know I’m a boring old coot with a salt and pepper beard and dubious taste in shirts, but if we have a couple of good looking girls, and you know, they needn’t be professional models or anything, well if they walked with me holding hands, then that’d be a bitching album cover, wouldn’t it?  Wouldn’t it?”

 Maybe sometimes it’s better just to walk away from the camera.  If it’s good enough for Johnny Cash and Eminem, it’s probably good enough for you.





Tuesday, August 26, 2014

PEDESTRIAN MISTAKES - HOLLYWOOD STYLE


OK, so you probably weren’t really thinking of walking around Hollywood in wedge heeled shoes like this:


But if you were, then don’t.  Just don’t. Please.



Of course if somebody's standing at the side of you, watching you walk, the 

message will read Wood Holly at least half the time.  But that's not the main 

reason not to wear them.