Far from the beach, but still surrounded by treasure of all kinds just ready to be found, looked at, gloated over, gleaned and swiped or simply created! Here are my latest finds....
Well, yesterday I did get to see the David Bowie Is exhibition, and wasn't disappointed except for the fact that photography was banned. That meant that I never got to take photos of any of those great costumes, and certainly not the one that had so marked Klaus Nomi when he was backing singer to Bowie's performance on the show, Saturday Night Live.
However, I did notice that as fantastic as all these clothes were, a lot of the time more statements and stage props than 'real' garments, they couldn't live up to the image they had created on record covers, posters, videos and my mind. So, in fact, the only thing really missing in the show was a place to dance... It was really hard to contain myself, and above all not hum along tunelessly to the music on the guide headphones!
Well, after three hours' viewing, I went off to the Jardin des Plantes to see what was on show there, in the immense flower beds that stretch out towards the Natural History museum at the far end of the grounds.
The elegance and beauty of the plants give no indication of the fact that the Jardin des Plantes had been transformed into a wind tunnel. I even tried to hold onto the stems of some of these in order to steady them for the photo. However, my favourite flower has to be the one that I have just acquired for my balcony. This plant is equally challenged by the high winds that arise with higher-rise accommodation, but that's another story.
A beautiful purple Passiflora... Here to go with it is a collection of the flowers, set along to some music from Klaus Nomi's unfinished opera Za Bakdaz.
I just wish that in his creative years, Nomi had benefitted from some of the breaks that Bowie had, and especially that he had simply lived longer to create more of his unique music...
Last night I listened again to Klaus Nomi and since I certainly won't be able to watch out for tomorrow's eclispe (if it's even actually visible here), that gives me the perfect excuse to post some of his songs, through a tenuous link. His work took my breath away in the early 80s and never fails to amaze me still as I can just listen to his songs again and again. His most famous was perhaps The Cold Song, but the following, Total Eclipse and After the Fall, demonstrate his truly unique talent.
Total Eclipse - Klaus Nomi
Big shots argue about what they've got,
Making the planet so hot, hot as a holocaust.
Blow up, everything's gonna go up,
Even if you don't show up, in your chemise Lacoste.
Total eclipse, it's a total eclipse,
It's a total eclipse of the sun.
Can't come to grips with the total eclipse.
Just a slip of the lips and you're done.
Fall out, nobody left to crawl out,
If someone calls out, we're all out,
Turning into French fries.
Last dance, let the entire cast dance,
Do the dismembered blast dance,
As we get atomized.
Having been noticed by David Bowie in the early stages of his singing career at the end of the 1970s, Klaus Nomi was used as one of the backing singers for Bowie's performance on Saturday Night Live. He and his singing partner, Joey Arias, (along with a pink robotic poodle) certainly seemed to have had a far better time than the bemused female backing vocalists in Nomi's Eclipse...
After the Fall - Klaus Nomi So I told you 'bout the total eclipse now, But still it caught you unaware, But I'm telling you, hold on, hold on, Tomorrow will be there. And even those who went to church upon Sunday, You thought you didn't even have a prayer, But I'm telling you, hold on, hold on, Tomorrow will be there. After the fall, we'll be born, born again, After it all blows away, After the fall, after the fall, After the fall blows away. We'll take a million years of civilization, We're going to give it the electric chair, But I'm telling you, hold on, hold on, Tomorrow will be there. We'll see one hundred million lonely mutants They will be glowing in their dark despair But I'm telling you, hold on, hold on Tomorrow will be there. After the fall, we'll be born, born, born again, After it all blows away, After the fall, after the fall, After it all blows away. Well, the freak shall inherit the earth now, No matter how well done or rare, But I'm telling you, hold on, hold on, Tomorrow will be there. We'll build our radioactive gases, Into the radioactive air, But I'm telling you, hold on, hold on, Tomorrow will be there. After the fall, we'll be born, born, born again, After it all blows away, After the fall, after the fall, After it all blows away. Just as David Bowie was impressed by Nomi's artistic talent, the latter was influenced by Bowie's costumes and this led him to 'purify' his aesthetic form, leaning further towards a hybrid theatrical Kabuki style.
I'm currently planning my trip to see the David Bowie is exhibition in Paris - I can't wait to see this vast collection of clothes and styles and hopefully hear the music that is integral to them! I just wish that Klaus Nomi had lived long enough to be fully appreciated for the rare talent he possessed on every level, and hope that he had some awareness of the appreciation he did have, before his death in 1983, from AIDS. ______________________ Well, now it's the month of May, and I have finally visited the David Bowie is exhibition in Paris and seen that costume and image which had inspired Klaus Nomi so much.
Unfortunately, photos were not allowed. Still, it was good to watch the video of Joey Arias and Nomi singing alongside Bowie. I think Nomi would have appreciated the building of the Philharmonie de Paris as it looks so futuristic with its hard lines and flowing forms - the roof seems to melt down towards the main entrance...
Here's a
violet-coloured Valentine heart I made, having bought a stash of sequins from a
cheap-and-cheerful shop in England over the summer (thank you PoundLand!). I hoarded away several
packets of various different colours, but my eyes were drawn to the purple
ones first of all; there will always be something about shades of violet..
Forget-Me-Not thoughts for a dearly loved feline friend...
The
sequins were of all shades, shapes and sizes and I couldn't buy enough of them!
Valentine
Song by Klaus Nomi came to mind for today, and to go with the music here are
some other shades of purple that I've come across in flowers in the wild, or in
very tame places over the past year.
The orchids
look like painted silk, with dye running down their surface...
Or blown on with an air-brush, to give a pyschedelic speckled effect... If not created after the large consumption of psychedelic drugs themselves...
Other flowers are far less sophisticated in form but so mind-blowingly bright that I can hardly look at them!
Despite the simplicity of their form, the colours seem to burst outwards and burn your very eyes!
Other flowers take the shape of a star-burst, exploding outwards...
Or spreading out in the morning dew...
Or pushing on upwards into the rain...
Or simply intricate, with frothy forms and delicatedetails...
Their pale, ragged lace-like edges leading down into hidden interiors...
Where only insects would venture...
Or hardier creatures stroll...
Or busy themselves regardless of who's watching...
Flitting from one flower to another, even when their wings are tattered and tired at the end of the season...
And so here's to the music of Klaus Nomi, a 'gift of love' from a creative genius who fly away, only too soon, to the beautiful place he must have come from...
The snow has actually gone now, but I wanted to put the photos onto this virtual scrapbook before they disappear into the mass of pictures on my computer, and I myself get buried under work to do, or that is supposedly being done... Hmmm!
A walk in the woods was quite magical this time because the snow lay and successfully covered over the carefully laid-out tracks that make these country areas a bit too 'civilized' for me.
The woods are devoted to the hunting of game and the recovery of timber so the terrain is criss-crossed by extensive 4x4-friendly paths. It's not unusual to see the hunters driving trucks laden-down with their trophies - very impressive, but equally very dead wild boar.
Iced Cow Parsley...
Luckily it is possible, but rather unusual, to see the live version in the area too - though fortunately at a far distance because I would not relish a close encounter with an adult wild pig, especially one protecting its young!
Old-Man's Beard under a heavy sky - it was glowering by this time!
Anyway, this snowy day lent itself more to wilderness and rambling, rather than obediently following all these straight lines. The Old-Man's Beard had also been clothed in ice, and was almost brittle...
Bracken emerging...
Meanwhile the plants nearer ground-level, namely the bracken, were simply snow-covered.
Frosted fungus on timber...
Or seemed to be sprinkled with frost and ice, so that they seem sugar-coated...
Old-Man's Beard...
The snow and, more precisely, the freezing temperatures reminded me of a song I used to listen to years ago - The Cold Song.
It's a haunting aria from Purcell's opera, King Arthur. It may have originally been 17th century Baroque music, but when it was sung by the undefinable genius Klaus Nomi, it took on a whole new dimension whilst still honouring the solemnity of Purcell's music. The words, as you can imagine, are pretty grim, so despite their beauty, I won't transcribe them here. They're just too sad, and are even more so because Klaus Nomi died of Aids in the early 1980's... Here's another of his songs that I love...
I'll leave you to discover the wide variety of his magical sounds. He was such an original, giving a unique quality and ironic twist to the most ordinary popular songs of which he did cover versions.
Chamery
The journey back to the city takes you through the local
champagne-producing communities... These looked quite pitturesque in the
snow, with all the wintery vineyards tracing back to the heart of the
village from the slopes of the hills.
A lacy Lantern...
Back to civilisation, there was even beauty in the strangest of places - frosted Chinese Lanterns and red berries on a building site...
Okay, couldn't resist - here's another great one... The ultra-straight French audience probably never even knew what hit them... However, he was a great success there, and it was in France that I discovered Klaus Nomi...
