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for this bank holiday I am ...

... off to devon & cornwall! see you next tuesday ...

basic needs

is it rainy and windy? and you feel grumpy? try to switch your mind away from the mirages of sun and sand, and just make the most this wet weather. how? what about warming yourself up with a sensually androgynous trench-coat by jens laugesen, defending yourself from car splashes and mud with a pair of hunter wellies (perhaps the shorter model with wider calf?), and appreciate the eclectical talent of gael garcia bernal in his new challenge: the creepy film the king, out now in london?! Oh, and just ignore the weather girls on the side bar of this page!

A news on a news

On 16 My The Independent was guest-edited by Bono. Half the revenue from the edition was donated to the Global Fund to Fight Aids. For one day the newspaper emblematically changed name into the (RED) Independent. I bought a copy which I am going to keep in my archive. Generally speaking, every single article, every single corner of each single page is worth to be read. Heavy articles alternates with more frivolous news, without being as malicious and gossipy as many other broadsheets. Here is the diverse table of contents.

• Bono: I am a witness. What can I do?
• Nelson Mandela: We are grateful for (RED)'s work
• EU subsidies harm Africa's farmers
• Blair and Brown: Still optimistic on G8
• (RED) phone in battle against Aids
• Bodies of African immigrants pile up
• Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
• Climate change will be catastrophe for Africa
• Africa's medicine man
• Banksy takes to streets
• Live8 and Gleneagles - what did they achieve?
• Can rock stars change the world?
• Bob Geldof: Aid isn't the answer
• Niall Fitzgerald: Not a burden
• Jeremy Laurance: Why RED can boost Global Fund and its war on HIV
• The wisdom of Giorgio
• Rice's music choice
• The Edge
• American Life, by Elvis Costello
• John Walsh: Tales of the City
• Play our RED game
• Buy RED print edition
• External RED links
• Hilary Benn in Uganda
• Eddie Izzard: 'We need Europe to be a melting-pot

The above articles can be read here. This man never ends amazing me. Bless him!

Mama in London

She enjoyed her stay more than ever before. We finally managed to do many things together without time and people constrains. She is back at home now and feels regenerated. It was nice to have her here, and not only because she was an invaluable asset for the house … Thanks, mama!

Chilling out in the lounge In our kitchen In the balcony, her favourite spot Gardening

With her new umbrella on the Millennium Bridge

Bowling

In Surrey

And in Brighton:

blog pensandi or blog mania?

something really strange is happening to my brain: i can’t stop thinking in *blog mode* ~ not only in terms of content, but even more oddily in terms of form! every time i experience something exciting or something arising any kind of emotions, I register it in my mind as material for posts and i also figure out. my brain has created a sort of cabinet where a growing repertoire of subjects and images are gradually and subconsciously stored.

something more disturbing is that i intimately feel guilty when i neglect it for a while. you can only appreciate how i can feel these days, after a month of complete abstinence! my cabinet is overflowing! so, now it is just a matter of selecting and finding the time to voice my best ideas, observations, tips and experiences.

i suppose this *phenomenon* is related to my need of communicating and sharing my experiences, which is legitimate and human. Or am I slowly becoming addicted to the Blog?

"If you want an audience, start a fight" Banksy

The debate of graffiti as a form of art or as pure vandalism remains wide open.

On a personal level, I cannot stand the scribbles ravaging the landmark of my adopting city which I have to eyewitness everyday between home and office. Below is an extreme example of annoying wreckage which has been inflammatorily accomplished, but intentionally labelled *Vandalism*, almost in an attempt of asking for absolution through the act of acknowlegment.

I feel very conservative about the historical heritage and the residential areas of a city. In this respect, I own a feng shui vision of living spaces as essentially harmonic, safe and clean. On the other hand, I do love metropolitan sub-cultures and their mix of street styles and provocative contrasts.

Back to my university years, I have cohabited for one year with him, a talented graffiti artist, of whom I have appreciated his portfolio of works and was fascinated by his modus operandi: usually at night and always in incognito.

Graffiti artists have a story to tell and a message to disseminate in the most direct, accessible, penetrating, democratic and unfiltered manner. Although they don’t necessarily aim to communicate beauty as many art theories have aimed to in the course of (art) history, graffiti in their best form still remain somehow a way to embellish urban spaces by making them unique.

It is in this mood that Banksy, Britain's most celebrated graffiti artist, spray-painted the streets of London with his humoristic yet subversive creations which are technically based on a neat black & white style and on the so-called coup d’oeil: his drawings deceptively camouflage themselves within the surrounding urban area, creating an illusion of reality, like the image below:

... or they sometimes pose themselves as a continuation of the real space:

Other times as representatives of a parallel underground world from which from time to time they emerge to tickle a narcotised city:

Banksy has been recently commissioned a work from Bono to highlight the plight of AIDS crisis, entitled Sweeping it Under the Carpet, which depicts a cleaner lifting a wall of north London. Banksy, referring to this portrait, reminds us the ultimate democratic scope of art: "in the bad old days, it was only popes and princes who had the money to pay for their portraits to be painted. This is a portrait of a maid called Leanne who cleaned my room in a Los Angeles motel. She was quite a feisty lady".

This and other works are currently shown as part of an exhibition called Occupied Space about the Palestinian conflict:

As all the extreme but yet successful movements hold their own contradictions, Banksy, whose identity has to remain mysterious because graffiti is illegal, does also corporation work for multinationals such as PUMA and sells pricey paintings on canvas. Fair enough--as any other human being, he has to earn his bread as well. However, the day he goes public is the day graffiti ends. © All the images above do not need copyright

Once upon a time

There is a story by Jules Verne (author of Around the World in Eighty Days) about a sultan and a little girl. The gist of the story is that there once lived a Sultan who was tormented in his dreams by visions of a girl who he believed was travelling through time. He couldn't sleep, so he built a time-travelling elephant and set off with its huge elephant in search of the girl, who, in the course of his nightmares, had been transformed into a marionette five meters high. This would be a fascinating yet *ordinary* fairy-tale, if only set within the pages of a book… But, instead, this tale was extracted from its original location and loosely converted into a play, which would have been a *normal* performance, had the characters acted on stage and not in the streets of London. Again, it would have been a *standard* street performance had the characters been real actors and not marionettes or mechanical devices. And it would have been a puppet show, had the marionette & the mechanical elephant been of normal sizes and not as gigantic as they were.

London, as previously other European cities and other countries, became the stage of a massive performing art show, created by Loyal de Luxe, a European street theatre company which was founded by Jean Luc Courcoult in 1979.

For a whole weekend all the streets of central London were closed to the traffic allowing a gigantic elephant, inhabited by the sultan and his entourage, to wander for the streets of the city heavily stamping over any car standing on their way during his desperate quest for a little girl who had (literally) landed to the ground.

It was a surreal atmosphere which I witnessed astounded…

This summer in my bag ...

After a lethargic period, I am reopening this blog with a picture of *what is in my bag*. This appreciated initiative, embraced by Superqueen, blog-star of fashion and pop culture, is proving itself successful. So, after posting the content of my winter bag, accurately psychologised by Superqueen here, I am now showing the Summary version! I am going to send a copy to her to be published in her rubric, but I am also posting and analysing it here as a different way to talk about my current mood.

Here the content description: from top, clockwise:

• Canon Camera in orange shell case;
• My Orla Kiely bag, purchased at Liberty one year ago;
• A lovely Sunflower (which is NOT in my bag, but serves to convey a sense of summer!);
• Oyster card;
• La Prairie eye cream;
• My passport wrapped in a blue metallic case;
• Mint chewing gums;
• Cherry Lancome glossy;
• Keys and Dimensione Danza necklace/key holder in orange & purple;
• Little Miss Late booklet, present from my friend Fede that I ironically bring around with me in (the likely) case I am late;
• Floral elastic band;
• Classic Ray Ban 70s glasses;
• Moleskine diary with passport photos of my half;
• TimeOut travel guide of Valencia;
• London Bargain Guide;
• My new Art Deco style Nokia telephone 7360 with headphones and grey knitted sock case;
• My yppie-poddy in its acid green sock.

And in the centre, my usual big wallet in sand colour.

As opposed to my wintery belongings, this bag and its content are characterised by colours and frivolousness. Literature has been replaced by a shopping guide; the hairy ear cuffs by a pair of vintage sunglasses. The propolis throat spray and silky slippers leave their space to a video i-pod. A passport and a travel guide hint at my itchy feet. The music, a new telephone and the bargain guide at a social and active disposition. The oyster card and camera are a constant--something never changes.

Superqueen defined my black bag with a metaphor: as “a fruit with a hard shell hiding a fancy world, rich of suggestions”. It was an appreciated compliment. I would define this summer bag simply as a mirror of my restless soul in quest for ad-venture. Let’s hear Superqueen’s verdict now!

Postum Scriptum--Let it to be noted that this is my free-time bag. My working bag is alas much more sober and practical.