Paris: Donovan, Mai, Stephane
Apr. 29th, 2005 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'm waiting in the lobby of the Hotel Montalembert, just off the Rue du Bac, for Mai Ueda to show up. We've never met, and we're supposed to be doing an art show together. This rather tired-looking English tourist is checking in. He has a mane of white hair, a rather washed-out face, and wears a purple T shirt with a green sweater draped over it. I notice the guitar case then scrutinize the man to see if he's a famous musician. Wow, it's Donovan! Donovan Leitch, Donovan pere, the Donovan who was in Don't Look Back, the Donovan with the Scottish accent and the folk LPs, the one who did that song "Atlantis" in a voice that Anne Laplantine thought was mine! The Donovan Devendra Banhart has been listening to a lot recently. The Donovan I used to hate getting compared to, although secretly I knew I'd listened to Cosmic Wheels when I was a kid and something must have rubbed off. Donovan Donovan. I didn't speak to him, but I wrote down the title of the New Agey book he was reading: Uriel's History: Uncovering the Secrets of Stonehenge, Noah's Flood and the Dawn of Civilization. According to the blurb, this book presents evidence that "there was a single global language on Earth, a single female was a common ancestor to all living humans, angels bred with human women to create The Watchers, giant half-human beings, and the oral tradition of Freemasonry records real events". No doubt Donovan will sing something about all this soon.
Mai arrives. She's wearing these outrageous jeans that have bits of gold chocolate wrapper tearing off them in strips. The designer has made them out of NASA space material, she tells me, and it's supposed to self-destruct. Is it a reference to the Shuttle disasters? Space technology which falls apart? I tell her about Donovan. "Oh, I know his son, he's a hip scenester in LA!" she says. Stephane Sednaoui arrives. He looks like a young Gerard Depardieu. He used to date Kylie Minogue, apparently. He made that video of Bjork on the back of a truck, you know, "Big Time Sensuality". He shot Madonna covers. He's just back from Tibet, where he drove around shooting snow scenes. He was told of one valley which flowers only once a year, but when he got there it wasn't in flower, so he's going back when word comes in that the flowers are out. The last two projects he's worked on are an animation for Bjork and a film with Lou Reed in which Reed explains the back story to "Walk on the Wild Side".
Mai and I drape ourselves across a chair, roll on the floor, sit like kabuki actors on the bed. Then, after Stephane has shot about 100 pictures with his digital camera, he downloads them onto his Powerbook (it has a dragon tattoo engraved on the metal lid) and we go through them selecting the best ones. There's Edit 1, Edit 2 and Edit 3. Finally the Edit 3 folder contains just three images which we think are the best ones. One will be used for the flyer of our art show (probably a close-cropped portrait of Mai and me in quarter profile, looking very Gainsbourg-Birkin) and maybe a couple will run in the New York Times or something. Anyway, it was terrifically generous of Stephane to give us his time.
Mai arrives. She's wearing these outrageous jeans that have bits of gold chocolate wrapper tearing off them in strips. The designer has made them out of NASA space material, she tells me, and it's supposed to self-destruct. Is it a reference to the Shuttle disasters? Space technology which falls apart? I tell her about Donovan. "Oh, I know his son, he's a hip scenester in LA!" she says. Stephane Sednaoui arrives. He looks like a young Gerard Depardieu. He used to date Kylie Minogue, apparently. He made that video of Bjork on the back of a truck, you know, "Big Time Sensuality". He shot Madonna covers. He's just back from Tibet, where he drove around shooting snow scenes. He was told of one valley which flowers only once a year, but when he got there it wasn't in flower, so he's going back when word comes in that the flowers are out. The last two projects he's worked on are an animation for Bjork and a film with Lou Reed in which Reed explains the back story to "Walk on the Wild Side".
Mai and I drape ourselves across a chair, roll on the floor, sit like kabuki actors on the bed. Then, after Stephane has shot about 100 pictures with his digital camera, he downloads them onto his Powerbook (it has a dragon tattoo engraved on the metal lid) and we go through them selecting the best ones. There's Edit 1, Edit 2 and Edit 3. Finally the Edit 3 folder contains just three images which we think are the best ones. One will be used for the flyer of our art show (probably a close-cropped portrait of Mai and me in quarter profile, looking very Gainsbourg-Birkin) and maybe a couple will run in the New York Times or something. Anyway, it was terrifically generous of Stephane to give us his time.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 06:47 pm (UTC)I could hang out with famous video directors with dragon-engraved Powerbooks in Parisian hotels, but instead I get to write code to generate PDFs for weekly drugstore adverts. *throws devil horns*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 07:07 pm (UTC)c4 teletext
Date: 2005-04-29 07:34 pm (UTC)Stephen Parkin.
Re: c4 teletext
Date: 2005-04-30 09:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 07:36 pm (UTC)Actually that book is the last part of a trilogy (http://www.knight-lomas.com/index2.html -> strating with "Hiriam Key") that was recently recommended to me, it was written by two freemasons as a rebuttal to the false "offical history" of freemasonary, though it seems by reading the synopsises that theres probably a lot of disinformation in those books anyway. Still! Those books are next on my reading list!
Anyway the plan is to read the books and then join the freemasons in the fall to see if I get offered a chance to secretly rule the world from behind a curtain. Wish me luck!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 07:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 07:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 08:21 pm (UTC)i realize it would have to be from your perspective, so maybe you don't have any opinions on it, but i thought i would ask just in case.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 09:28 pm (UTC)Hey Eb
Date: 2005-04-29 10:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 11:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-29 11:59 pm (UTC)No doubt you've met many famous and not so famous people in your life.
Everytime I hear the opening to 'Atlantis', I think of you. Sorry! Great song nonetheless.
What did you think of his latest, Beat Cafe?
Also, did you ever hear Lawrence's project, Go-Kart Mozart, and their CD, Instant Wigwam and Igloo Mixture? I just bought it, but have not had a chance to listen to it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-30 07:28 am (UTC)The sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party...
Date: 2005-04-30 02:56 am (UTC)And to whomever said something about Donovan's "copycatness," I wish you'd clarify because other than absorbing some influences from his contemporaries (Bert Jansch, Bob Dylan), I'd say he was pretty original. And he himself influenced Nick Drake to a degree, possibly the Incredible String Band, and more recently Belle & Sebastian.
Yeah, and Donovan Jr. had that neo-glam band called Nancy Boy, which I have yet to hear, but I'm guessing they were much better than Placebo.
Re: The sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party...
Date: 2005-05-01 10:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-30 03:48 am (UTC)Donovan!
Date: 2005-04-30 04:07 am (UTC)Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-30 09:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-30 04:13 pm (UTC)der.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-30 09:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-02 06:01 pm (UTC)Any chance there'll be a pre-show thingy?
der.
Donovan and Tibet
Date: 2005-05-03 01:52 pm (UTC)Last week I was in the Bahamas. They have this gigantic, garish, straight-out-of-Las Vegas resort there called the Atlantis. Fortunately, we were not staying there. In any matter, I realized as we were walking over to check it out that the last song I had been listening to on my i-pod was "Atlantis" and I was struck with a sudden sense of horror. Would seeing this displanted Disneyland ruin the song for me? No, it didn't, thank god. I will say, if there was ever any one thing that encompassed the horrible tendency of "too much" this resort is the place. People kept talking about the wonders of the architecture and the detail and the marble floors and the light fixtures and it was all so forced and unnatural...not a surprise really, but it left me completely unsettled. In order to seem classy, they have a few Chihuly pieces throughout the casino (the casino!).
Did Stephane mention if the Tibet pictures will be eventually presented as a book? I love his work and was floored when I found out he was doing the photos for the show Mai and you are doing.
About four years ago, I played host to two Tibetan nuns who we (my husband and I) had brought in to speak about human rights issues at our university. It is still one of the most significant experiences of our lives. Both had been tortured and served five years in Chinese jails for standing in the town center at Lhasa and chanting "long live the Dalai Llama". Once out of jail they had to flee the country through the mountains into India. They couldn't even say goodbye to their families for that would have put the families at risk from government punishment for their fleeing.
We spent a day together just hanging out while they waited for their ride to the next city on their speaking tour. They wore the traditional clothing of a Tibetan Budhist nun, nothing special, just the orangish-crimson robes and shaved heads. But one of them had a pin on the robe...a very Warhol-esque pop culture pin...all bright colors...when I looked at it closely, I realized it was an image of the Dalai Llama. People talk about how certain images or moments are so significant they will forever remember them with uncanny clarity...that moment is on the top of my list.
To (quickly) continue on, we took them to the Domes in Milwaukee which are these wonderfully kitschy botanical gardens forever locked in their 1970s decor. There was a major language barrier, but the domes helped overcome that. They saw some trees that were local to Tibet and were so excited to point them out to us. We also spent a long time laughing at a lizard with a crazy blue tongue...they said (through a translator) that it was the strangest thing they had ever seen.
We then went back to my place where, of all things, we watched Charlie's Angels...the cheesy Barrymore, Diaz, Lui spectacle. They loved it! Mostly because of the lack of plot and dialogue...very easy to follow without understanding the language. Then things turned strange again, as directly after the movie they pulled out this book and started showing me images of the prison they had stayed at and pictures of themselves upon their arrival to India. They hadn't spoken about this at the university, at least not in this depth, and it was, needless to say very humbling that I was the one they showed these images to. Their attitude toward the past was so admirable. They made jokes about their long hair (the Chinese prison workers forced them to grow it out since their status as nuns dictated a shorn head) and showed us a picture of the man who helped them make the trek to India...it took them over 6 weeks. They ended up meeting the Dalai Llama who commended them for their courage.
They are definitely two people I am most grateful for ever having encountered.
Sorry to trail off on a wildly-unrelated tangent...but this generally happens when someone mentions Tibet.
You will post the fliers when they are ready for those of us that can't make it to NY?
Donovan
Date: 2005-05-24 08:34 am (UTC)