These photos astonish me. I saw them just before I read
Grapes Of Wrath for the first time which gave me a vivid mental picture (which, I'll level with you, I didn't need). I can't get over them. Look at
this one. It blows my mind. How eloquent... (Hat tip:
Normblog)
Mr Bourdain has a
new book out. Bought it yesterday. There was an interview with him in
Sunday's Observer. I'm really saddedned to hear that he's split with his wife. He dedicated one of his books to her. He always talked about how put-upon she was. The long hours, the stress, the trips abroad, the vacant staring into space while he thought about a kitchen-incident or a staff dispute or tomorrow's specials. I don't know...
Makes me think of my life at the moment and the time I spend doing the thing I love more than anything: being a musician. It's so fulfilling. But where does that leave your personal life when you have not time or energy and you are constantly on the move and tired as a result? I don't know...The transitory nature of love....(!) Anyway, his new show No Reservations is on the Travel Channel this month with his new show. If you go to
their site you can watch loads of great videos of him talking about music, litereature and film. Read the whole Observer interview but here's an excerpt:
'I miss the chef talk. Five or six chefs, all talking away about someone who's a backstabbing treacherous psycho, all agreeing, completely, and then into the anger someone just says, yeah, but he can cook. I miss that. Cooking is such an intimate thing. There's no lying in the kitchen. You can't massage or spin your ability: you can't even lie about your personal life, because problems come through.' His own personal life began to fall apart not long ago. You could blame the success of the book only in part: it was because of one physical place that success got him, and that was Vietnam.
'I'd read Greene. Conrad. Maugham. And Vietnam was just like the books, just like the movies, only better. The guileless generosity of strangers, waking up smelling those smells, seeing those sights. And having, once, one perfect meal, a confluence of everything good, a source of perfect happiness; I was almost ready to believe in God. 'But there was quite a big downside to all of that.' His eyes are intently on me now, the background chatter receding. 'I knew that my whole previous life was doomed. It was no longer going to be normal. I had seen that ... colour ... and I knew that that had changed me, altered the way I would look at things. And the first time I went back to America, I found I was right. Everything was flat. Everything.' He doesn't go into too many details, but his marriage to Nancy broke up shortly afterwards. 'She was the love of my life. But everything changed.'
Watched Bergman's
The Seventh Seal for the first time over the weekend. For some reason I haven't felt like watching it for a long time. I've owned for ages now. Anyway, it was worth the wait. I presumed the purported influence on Woody Allen (I say purported but Allen has admitted as much) would not be explicit. I don't posess enough film know-how to put it into words but it really felt like a Woody Allen film. Here's the
Amazon review (how low-brow of me):
Ingmar Bergman's best-known film and deservedly so, 1957's The Seventh Seal is an allegorical study of death, God and the meaning, if any, of human existence. It is a film that every human being should see, addressing as it does our deepest hopes, anxieties, curiosities and fears. Yet it's also a magical and captivating experience, close to the state of a lucid dream. Max Von Sydow plays Antonius Block, the knight who has returned, gaunt, weathered and disillusioned, from the crusades, to find his home country in the grip of the plague. He is met by Death, in the pallid, hooded form of Bengt Ekerot, whom he challenges to a game of chess. The longer he can stave off defeat, the longer he can prolong the existence of himself and his own entourage, whom Block acquires in the form of his cynical squire a young family and a band of travelling players.film,
food,
photography,
literature,
Bergman,
love,
death,
Woody Allen.
