Challenging Times

I wanted to hijack this van and drive around dropping flowers off for all the people I love

Alicia here talks about the failure of poetry to deal with current events or voice any useful opinions. She mentions the death of Antinuous

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinous

I went to the Bastille and saw a mass of magnolia and cherry trees in flower. A nice art dealer offered me a show whenever I like.

Gil Hochberg here at Columbia got a phone call on Thursday saying she is on Trump’s YELLOW LIST. This means she from now needs to travel with a witness and might be detained at the border. She is a US citizen, just with views that are not in line. There is now a RED LIST for enemies, ORANGE list for defavourised and YELLOW for people like Gil. Here is an article in the NYT about this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/us/politics/trump-travel-ban.html

Here is Gil’s profile FYI

https://www.mei.columbia.edu/faculty-mei/gil-hochberg

She is stuck in Reid Hall waiting for her Travel Witness to come, who is Mark Mazower. I like Mark very much.

Alexandra and I had fun with a biscuit like a jigsaw puzzle. It was banana waffle flavour

I am so happy as my friend Ebisan gave a bottle of my perfume to the designer Ituen Basi who I love https://ituenbasi.com/ It is so thoughtful of her. I am very lucky to have such wonderfully kind and attentionate people around me it is a great source of happiness.

I went with Marie and Guadalupe and Juan Gabriel to Wadja and we chose wine for the fancy dinner there will be for the ex president of Columbia who is coming to Paris for a couple of days next week. I love all three of them dearly. Joaquin Sabina. I always think I know nothing about wine but since they have now made me sommelier of the Institute ha ha they deferred to my opinion with which fortunately they all agreed.

Marie was at a Joaquin Sabina (Spanish singer)

https://www.jsabina.com/

concert with Juan and Sabina did a shout out to Juan in the audience saying the greatest writer in South America was there. We were all teasing him.

I went to see the film of this great artist Judith Deschamps who made a film about transgender singing and voice etc I fell asleep I am sorry to say but what I saw of it was very good. I went with Jens Hauser who I like very very clever German curator and Anna who seems to be very sad and dishevelled at the moment. I met some people who were quite intense and when I left the guy took my details to invite me over to dinner at their place (this was the conversation) but the next day he wrote me a long letter saying would I like to buy this big Baselitz painting he has.

I mean

????????

I spoke with George about this Farinelli project which was one of the first at IRCAM and have looked it up a bit in case you are interested:

https://www.ircam.fr/article/judith-deschamps-imiter-le-rossignol-de-farinelli/

IRCAM notes

http://recherche.ircam.fr/anasyn/listePublications/articlesRodet/ICMC94CASTRAT/

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francemusique/recreer-la-voix-de-farinelli-avec-l-intelligence-artificielle-9718232

I went to meet this very nice and wild-haired curator who has a place for experiemental art stuff in the Bastille. Achingly cool which I like of course. We had a Perrier in the sunshine and she told me about her work. I roamed around waiting to meet a friend of Alexandra for a drink and found a street where I think the kids should live in Paris very cool. Even a vintage shop where I wanted everything for my kids

https://azur-garage.com/

I love me a Fakeasso. Mike Bidlo maybe I shall write him a fan letter ha

The curator and I got into this big conversation about my Fakeasso works which I had such fun with and I wrote to ask Cora the name of Mike Bidlo I love him so much

https://www.brunobischofberger.com/bidlo-bio?lang=fr

Alexandra leaves adorable notes for me around the place

My perfume is out here: someone wrote to give it a 2/5 review as she thought a perfume with the name Portobello Road ought to smell more like clean laundry. WTF

https://fr.memoparis.com/products/portobello-road-eau-de-parfum

Jens sent me this he is obsessed with the colour green but I have not yet looked at

https://www.academia.edu/38061285/Greenness_Sketching_the_Limits_of_a_Normative_Fetish

Soliman Lopez artist friend of Philly

By my bed I Have W by Georges Perec - I have read 40 pages it is WONDERFUL

Je me Souviens also by Perec - 0 pages

A book of love poetry that Juan wrote about Marina - also 0 pages but I am so touched he gave it to me and also in Spanish how about that

I finished reading Orbital or rather listening to it, along with my friend Josie. I loved it and will listen to it again

I went to Boulogne Billancourt which is kind of cool

My friend photos of the space travel

Serpentine Swimming pool I can be a member!!!!!!

This is great news I skipped this massive waiting list thanks to my friend Lauren.

I need to read Atlas by Aby Warburg

Werner Herzog

I had dinner with Catherine’s friend Paula and her divine daughter and learned about all these artists I did not know. She is going to introduce me to some of them which is so nice.

Joise said (Kostya’s and my book) “Wonder Chaos reminded me of it. The author highlights how non linear differential equations such as those described in Wonder Chaos have a sort of random order and can even describe patterns in nature (such as Artemis’s crystals)”

Chaos by James Gleick recommended by Josie