Bird catcher's dream : Takumar 50mm f1.4 and Macro
A 'bal musette' is a rural French get-together, often with accordion: a 'bal populaire' with steps trickling up from a deep past and down from past trends as diverse as waltz and tango. Whilst Manu Chao is a songwriter and musician that might be rightly placed at an opposite end to this tradition, with the track "Les mille paillettes" he dances intimately with the genre's cycles and sing-song. The song's title glistens with a slightly kitsch ambience and the lyrics explain his dream, which is not of a dance with a single partner that keeps to the steps of a 'salle des fêtes', rather a private space full of tantalising beauties overflowing a bed: 'Francine, Ginette, Louise, Roberta...'. In his reported dream, the list of women comes and goes, while the song's protagonist and confiding songwriter is just a loudmouth without a body.
Songs of sexual fantasy can easily become extremely embarrassing, but here there is an honesty to the voice, and a mesmerising sense of mood that turns the track into a deeply human artwork on a footing with some of the lyrical ideas of, for example, Georges Brassens. As with so many dreams, this tale of a mind without a body is absurd, and there is a Gogol-esque warmth and honesty that sings through the endless spirals. and as with so many dreams, there may also be a candid reality of 'rock and roll' friendship hiding between the sheets of the songs hypnotic lines.
Manu Chao is of a Spanish family from the Atlantic north, born into an urban Paris, and his early music clashed guitars with multicultural musical roots. His fame with 'Mano Negra' ended with one of the most extraordinary tours in rock and roll history - 'La tournée Cargo' of 1992 (Mexico, Senegal, Brasil..) that included a customised cargo boat and an absurd theatrical history of France via the inventive Jarry of the street art company 'Royal de Luxe'. Upon return, he produced one of the most listened to records of a generation "Clandestino". For Manu Chao, the act of flicking through the wavebands of foreign radio stations - hunting for a tune - became a sound texture, or collage-effect that ornamented much of his work under his solo name.
As with David Bowie, Manu Chao also had a capacity to work with others to bring a distinct light and shade. "Amadou et Mariam" were provided with a 'Clandestino' for their Malian post 'Les Ambassadeurs' sound, and "Noir Desir" were offered one of the few French standards of the modern epoch with 'Le vent nous portera'.
In the clip for this dream, the bed full of women is represented by dancing bird's eggs. Dreams can be silly, erotic and based on real events, and bird's eggs are as old as man's life of species, with the painting of a face onto an egg to represent a face certainly being an informal 'child's game' with deep roots through all man's histories and prehistories. The simplest possible frame, and we must simply imagine the rest. This is relevant as the first of the three ceramic characters (I modelled them a couple of years ago to look into other issues of prehistory) is the bird man from the "scène du puits" in Lascaux. This is a face from a Magdalenian late ice-age rock-art depicting an accident with a man who has a bird for a head. I put this early example of 'drama' on a pedestal. Collecting eggs and fowling for birds is a unisex activity, but tends to be done alone due to the need to control noise and visual inputs. A fowler (bird catcher) may creep, wade and mimic sound and vision, and having a representation of a bird on a head with feathers and carved wood may look right from above and explain any cracks of twigs to nervous wild fowl bobbing about to the fowler's sides. The central ceramic is based upon a well known female statue-menhir from the late neolithic to early bronze age bridge period. And as our singer dreams of his bodies, we must take the schematic lines of a statue-menhir and dream of the real bodies that inspired and lived in our deep past. The clay figure to the right is based on late statue menhirs and rural iron age statues - one clearly showing a deft moustache. Tattooed or face-painted bands under eyes are often represented and can be seen above.
Ring dances, line-dances, jigs, partner dances, rites and ceremonies all have, and will have had music. For all of the modernity and savvy candid cheek in this song, there is something reassuringly human about the shapes and details of its folly and fantasy. The accordion may be a relatively modern invention, but it stands in the same corner once occupied by someone with a bag-pipe or a flute, lute or single reed instrument. The twinkling kitsch of many a modern 'Bal Musette' is an off-load from the disco 70's with mirror balls and PA systems sitting in corners like props from scenes in Czech new wave cinema. Prior to these recent flickers, the dance was under a market hall or on a dry rise to the side of a village. I recently translated a series of documentaries on deep rural lives as witnessed through the Occitane language, and there was a segment on the pleasure of dancing. A rural cluster of hamlets with an old-timer explaining that there, they simply loved to dance - Friday night and Saturday night. If they could find a musician - all the better - if not, they would dance to the 'tra, la, la'. Clogs kicking the rhythm and voice alone declaring the tune to the night's sky. When we get to these points of human space, we are on a perspective that can perhaps look both backwards through the ages into the great chapters of prehistory and forwards to this very modern song.
The lenses are the two main 50mm Takumars. The f1.4 and the f4 macro (for the eggs).
AJM 14.12.19
Press play and then 'L' and even f11. Escape and f11 a second time to return.
Bird catcher's dream : Takumar 50mm f1.4 and Macro
A 'bal musette' is a rural French get-together, often with accordion: a 'bal populaire' with steps trickling up from a deep past and down from past trends as diverse as waltz and tango. Whilst Manu Chao is a songwriter and musician that might be rightly placed at an opposite end to this tradition, with the track "Les mille paillettes" he dances intimately with the genre's cycles and sing-song. The song's title glistens with a slightly kitsch ambience and the lyrics explain his dream, which is not of a dance with a single partner that keeps to the steps of a 'salle des fêtes', rather a private space full of tantalising beauties overflowing a bed: 'Francine, Ginette, Louise, Roberta...'. In his reported dream, the list of women comes and goes, while the song's protagonist and confiding songwriter is just a loudmouth without a body.
Songs of sexual fantasy can easily become extremely embarrassing, but here there is an honesty to the voice, and a mesmerising sense of mood that turns the track into a deeply human artwork on a footing with some of the lyrical ideas of, for example, Georges Brassens. As with so many dreams, this tale of a mind without a body is absurd, and there is a Gogol-esque warmth and honesty that sings through the endless spirals. and as with so many dreams, there may also be a candid reality of 'rock and roll' friendship hiding between the sheets of the songs hypnotic lines.
Manu Chao is of a Spanish family from the Atlantic north, born into an urban Paris, and his early music clashed guitars with multicultural musical roots. His fame with 'Mano Negra' ended with one of the most extraordinary tours in rock and roll history - 'La tournée Cargo' of 1992 (Mexico, Senegal, Brasil..) that included a customised cargo boat and an absurd theatrical history of France via the inventive Jarry of the street art company 'Royal de Luxe'. Upon return, he produced one of the most listened to records of a generation "Clandestino". For Manu Chao, the act of flicking through the wavebands of foreign radio stations - hunting for a tune - became a sound texture, or collage-effect that ornamented much of his work under his solo name.
As with David Bowie, Manu Chao also had a capacity to work with others to bring a distinct light and shade. "Amadou et Mariam" were provided with a 'Clandestino' for their Malian post 'Les Ambassadeurs' sound, and "Noir Desir" were offered one of the few French standards of the modern epoch with 'Le vent nous portera'.
In the clip for this dream, the bed full of women is represented by dancing bird's eggs. Dreams can be silly, erotic and based on real events, and bird's eggs are as old as man's life of species, with the painting of a face onto an egg to represent a face certainly being an informal 'child's game' with deep roots through all man's histories and prehistories. The simplest possible frame, and we must simply imagine the rest. This is relevant as the first of the three ceramic characters (I modelled them a couple of years ago to look into other issues of prehistory) is the bird man from the "scène du puits" in Lascaux. This is a face from a Magdalenian late ice-age rock-art depicting an accident with a man who has a bird for a head. I put this early example of 'drama' on a pedestal. Collecting eggs and fowling for birds is a unisex activity, but tends to be done alone due to the need to control noise and visual inputs. A fowler (bird catcher) may creep, wade and mimic sound and vision, and having a representation of a bird on a head with feathers and carved wood may look right from above and explain any cracks of twigs to nervous wild fowl bobbing about to the fowler's sides. The central ceramic is based upon a well known female statue-menhir from the late neolithic to early bronze age bridge period. And as our singer dreams of his bodies, we must take the schematic lines of a statue-menhir and dream of the real bodies that inspired and lived in our deep past. The clay figure to the right is based on late statue menhirs and rural iron age statues - one clearly showing a deft moustache. Tattooed or face-painted bands under eyes are often represented and can be seen above.
Ring dances, line-dances, jigs, partner dances, rites and ceremonies all have, and will have had music. For all of the modernity and savvy candid cheek in this song, there is something reassuringly human about the shapes and details of its folly and fantasy. The accordion may be a relatively modern invention, but it stands in the same corner once occupied by someone with a bag-pipe or a flute, lute or single reed instrument. The twinkling kitsch of many a modern 'Bal Musette' is an off-load from the disco 70's with mirror balls and PA systems sitting in corners like props from scenes in Czech new wave cinema. Prior to these recent flickers, the dance was under a market hall or on a dry rise to the side of a village. I recently translated a series of documentaries on deep rural lives as witnessed through the Occitane language, and there was a segment on the pleasure of dancing. A rural cluster of hamlets with an old-timer explaining that there, they simply loved to dance - Friday night and Saturday night. If they could find a musician - all the better - if not, they would dance to the 'tra, la, la'. Clogs kicking the rhythm and voice alone declaring the tune to the night's sky. When we get to these points of human space, we are on a perspective that can perhaps look both backwards through the ages into the great chapters of prehistory and forwards to this very modern song.
The lenses are the two main 50mm Takumars. The f1.4 and the f4 macro (for the eggs).
AJM 14.12.19
Press play and then 'L' and even f11. Escape and f11 a second time to return.