introduction=failure. i just reread this weeks products and it struck me that it is all true but a complete distortion of the whole. so these sketches are not self-supporting. in spite of the things below, this week has primarily been a week of wonder: the growing papajes, 'a life less ordinary', 7 holes in my tire, pablo by night, discovery of the art of lighting [one year passed since the last time i studied...], making of a short-short-film. well, here it is. fragments
23X1999 am tired. very tired. must start finishing projects here. too much is floating right now. responsibilities. funds expecting material as a result of their money. oh i need somebody to kick my perfectionist & chaotic being into a clear direction. all the people seem to be floating here. need my mother i guess. the only one that disciplined me a little somehow. that's the bloody disadvantage of that bit of knowledge & creativity that we have: the awe, nobody telling you that you are being a bastard and that you should start finishing something or even better helping you to do so. all is random inspiration now and instinct rather than craft.
25X1999 20:57 tonight... i must have started over and over again with that word. an iffy attempt to locate myself amidst the flow of images, people and places. well, there i am. tonight. under a black african sky. the shreds of music travelling from somewhere in the house is amplified by the hollow spaces between ceiling and roof: the home of colonies of ants and of lonesome cockroaches with nothing better to do than to grow till extravagant sizes. am sitting on my bed, back against the wall. looking at the open window from my weddingdressshelter. smiling at the mosquitos. socks are drying everywhere. tomorrow morning they will be crispy objects of art that can only be put on after a firm massage. at the other side of the net stand neruda & blake & yeats. am quite honoured that these great makers are only inches from my breathing. every night. a friend just told me that neruda is 'a silence that never ceases to speak'...
27X1999 from a letter [about a 1,5 minute short-film]. 'i am amazed by the the power of ideas and the relativity of distance. dutch boy in africa beneath the sahara, taping a burkinabe worker for some educational program on a japanese camera in french, discovering a great loop on an american editing system, decides to give it a special place somewhere amidst chilean neruda poetry, sends an e-mail to texas u.s.a., where this crazy poetfriend whom he met in england near london finds a spanish lady who will provide the voice for neruda, that added with music from iceland and the czech republik makes a quite bizar mixture of cultures. just a simple idea, 90 seconds, nothing pretentious, that started three days ago. i pray that we can live like that. the instant art of every day. washing socks, talking to the boy next door, reading a book, writing one, drinking pictures, freezing some of them.'
28X1999 the world around me is suffering from AIDS and i have just sent half a day into oblivion, fighting some sort of virtual disease that is harming our computers. the contrast is ridiculous. the red streets, children carrying backpacks on their heads, the cows and donkeys of the neighbours and next to that this completely rebellious machine that does not even seem to exist as a shadow of the reality sunshine of the burning outside. so i was stuck somewhere to repair one of these machines. installing the software, running it and then waiting. absurd. the translucent warrior fighting the ghosts of the other world.