The End of the Affair

Remember that Sex and the City episode where writer Berger breaks up with Carrie via post-it note (it said: "I'm sorry, I can't, don't hate me")?

Well imagine if Carrie Bradshaw, in her emotional turmoil, had decided to contact various women of different backgrounds and professions: a lawyer, a dancer and several performing artists, a journalist, a literary critic, a mother and even a rifle shooter, asking each of them to give their personal interpretations of the end of the affair (and the peculiar mode of communication)?

That's exactly what real life conceptual artist Sophie Calle did when her boyfriend (like Berger, also a writer) sent her a break-up email. She compiled 107 responses she got from her female allies and set up a multimedia exhibition, which appeared in the 2007 Venice Biennale and more recently in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris:





If you missed the exhibition's final round you may still want to try this nifty pink catalogue. Containing illustrations, bound-in booklets, bright green envelopes with DVDs and even Braille and Morse code versions of the dreaded email, it's a precious item for anyone who has ever obsessed about matters of the heart...

One, Two, Three... Singing by numbers

Carry the Zero (Built to Spill)

Made first, never forget (Tahiti 80)

One (U2)

First It Giveth (Queens of the Stone Age)

First Wave Intact (Secret Machines)

Once (Pearl Jam)

Expresso 2222 (Gilberto Gil)

I am Two People (Morrissey)

12D3 (Gorillaz)

3's & 7's (Queens of the Stone Age)

Four Sticks (Led Zeppelin)

Four Walled World (Temple of the Dog)

Two Hundred More Miles (Cowboy Junkies)

Cinco Minutos (Marisa Monte)

Il est Cinq Heures, Paris S' Eveille (Jacques Dutronc)

Five Ten Fiftyfold (Cocteau Twins)

Six Shooter (Queens of the Stone Age)

Six Barrel Shotgun (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club)

Dead Road 7 (the Kills)

Seven Nation Army (The White Stripes)

Driver 8 (REM)

Eight Line Poem (David Bowie)

Cloud 9 (George Harrison)

Nine Million Rainy Days (Jesus and Mary Chain)

A Thousand Hours (The Cure)

AF607105 (Charlotte Gainsbourg)

Back to the 101 (Albert Hammond Jr.)

Before Three (the Cure)

Blister 2000 (Violent Femmes)

Lot 105 (Blur)

M62 Song (Doves)

Neighbourhood numbers 1/2/3/4 (Arcade Fire)

No 13 Baby (Pixies)

Obstacle 1 & Obstacle 2 (Interpol)

One Hundred Years (The Cure)

Pop Song '89 (REM)

Rebel Music - 3 o'clock (Gilberto Gil)

Revolution 80 (Tahiti 80)

Room a Thousand Years (Soundgarden)

Seventeen Seconds (The Cure)

Song 2 (Blur)

Song Seven (Interpol)

Ten Years Gone (Led Zeppelin)

The Big 3 Killed my Baby (The White Stripes)

Three Days (Jane's Addiction)

Twenty Four Hours (Joy Division)

Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones (The Hives)

Um a Um (Tribalistas)

Veinte Anos (Buena Vista Social Club)

Voo 2364 (Nana Vasconcelos)

Walls n. 3 (Tom Petty)

With My Own Two Hands (Ben Harper)

You Only Live Once (The Strokes)

1/2 Full (Pearl Jam)

5:55 (Charlote Gainsbourg)

5:15 (The Who)

12:51 (The Strokes)

15 Minutes (the Strokes)

22 Grand Job (The Rakes)

25 Minutes to Go (Johnny Cash)

40 ft (Franz Ferdinand)

50 ft Queenie (PJ Harvey)

666 Conducer (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club)

300 M.P.H. Torrential Outpour Blues (The White Stripes)

1921 (The Who)

1992 (Blur)

Wrong Number (The Cure)

If your life were a movie, which director would film it?

Your Score: Woody Allen

Your film will be 77% romantic, 38% comedy, 26% complex plot, and a $ 38 million budget.

Be prepared to have your life story shot entirely in New York City -- though lately Woody's been loving shooting in London [NB: how obliging!]. Also, your music soundtrack is all jazz from before 1949. Filmography: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Everyone Says I Love You, Match Point, Scoop, etc.

Woody has released one film per year consistently for the past 35 years. For the past 15 years he's been trying to make films like his older, funnier ones, just like characters in his Stardust Memories film suggest throughout. Regardless of his personal life, his films are American classics.

Try it yourselves: The Director who films your life test

Holding My Breath For Tim Winton

Laird Hamilton at Jaws
(source: stills from Riding Giants)

You know that recurring dream where you are faced with an impending test you have not studied for? Well, in a more naturalistic version of this dream, as I stand by the sea, I am faced with a fearful big wave surging upwards and I feel half powerless, half spellbound. That may sound at least as scary as the school test, but oddly enough I always wake up from it feeling stress free and sunny. The more I am dwarfed by that wall of water, the biggest my fascination. Sometimes during my dream the wave will stand still for a moment and I manage to look at the beast in the eye and then outrun it (barely!) before it explodes onto the shore with feral force.

The fact that I grew up in Rio de Janeiro partly explains my obsession with the sea. Over there agitated waters are a constant and it can be fun to gather around the shore to watch big swells (my paternal grandmother was also fascinated by them). Sometimes the raging Atlantic causes mayhem, as waves lick the ocean drive and cars and passers-by are sprayed. Occasionally tragedy strikes such as the late eighties swell which claimed the life of British young dancer Graham Bart, who drowned engulfed by a furious wave as he watched the ocean from a dangerous spot. Me and my family had often seen him in performance and I remember we were very saddened and in complete shock.

Big mouth: Laird and the biggest "lip" at Teahupoo

I see rough seas as a contradiction of nature: so threatening and at the same time so harmonious, as waves may rise and peel down beautifully (see Teahupoo picture above). That's why I have always found surfing so fascinating, initially purely as a spectator (to me it has the same aesthetic appeal as dancing - surfers are to water what dancers are to music) and many years later as an occasional participant - but one strictly confined to gentle waves. I have absolutely no aspiration, or skill, to tackle anything seen as "big" and thus I am happy to take my dose of radical sports adrenaline purely from watching or reading the surf adventures of demigod Laird Hamilton or those of Jeff Clark at Mavericks.

Man and Beast: where is Jeff Clark?

While there are plenty of interesting documentaries about surfing (Riding Giants, Step into Liquid, Endless Summer, Thicker Than Water...) it's hard to find compelling, well written books on the same topic. Other than short stories (Zero Break) or collected surf magazine articles (such as "The Big Drop") the best I have come across until now is Daniel Duane's "Caught Inside", a memoir of his "year spent surfing" and doing little else in Santa Cruz. Sounds very simple yet this is a book so eloquent and full of poetic imagery it earned Duane the moniker of "Henry David Thoreau on a fiberglass board". Agreed, but that's still a personal memoir, not fiction.

How refreshing then to stumble upon Tim Winton's latest novel "Breath" - which according to the Times Literary Supplement tackles surfing as a radically aesthetic life choice and dwells on the themes of fear and friendship, loneliness and boredom, the lure and danger of life lived intensely. Sounds compelling enough. Time to park all the feminist prose I have been reading of late (thanks to the arrival of Persephone Books in Kensington!), and embrace a sea change. More later...

5 Cool Things to do on a rainy day in Covent Garden...

Brace yourselves for another sunny summer!

... that do not involve flighting your way through the overly crowded, overly touristic, overhyped central market area:

1 - Stock up on exotic confectionery sourced from all over the world at Cybercandy. There's always something to keep you safely away from candy bar boredom. Some of my favorites: Green Tea Kit Kats from Japan, Cherry Ripes (a cherry flavoured Aussie version of the Bounty bar) and M&Ms in "Razzberry" flavour.

2 - Find yourself some vintage treasures at Rokit, Pop Boutique and others

3 - Sample a mix of Brazilian and Portuguese comfort food at Canela cafe (the chicken pie is simple and delicious) or, if it's sugar you crave, pop in for an impossibly cute candy muffin at one of London's most colorful coffee shops: Candy Cakes.

4 - Window shop at unashamedly girlie designer stores Koh Samui and Orla Kierly

5 - Cut the distance between audience and actors by half at the pocket-sized Donmar Warehouse. There's always a quality production on.

You Dress up for Armageddon, I Dress up for Polar Winter

Chaotic yet chic: the Hives

Let it never be said that I am not a person of diverse interests. And this week in particular seems to have been all about polar opposites, having finally managed to shake off my recently found Sky Plus addiction (why-oh-why, did it take me so long to discover TV that you can pause, rewind and fast forward?) and get out of the house!

WEDNESDAY: FRAM AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE

On Wednesday a quick stint through the north pole with Fram, a new play by Tony Harrison about the expeditions of 18th century Norwegian humanitarian and "hero" Fridtjof Nansen. The play, which has just premiered at the Olivier stage, feeds off various sources - such as Greek theatre, photography, video installations and even ballet (ex Royal Ballet principal Viviana Durante dances a small piece by Wayne McGregor called "Aurora", a reference to Nansen's beloved Northern Lights) - to show us Nansen's journeys from the north pole of the earth to the north pole of the soul, his life focus changing from deepest isolation to full involvement in humanitarian causes.

Having managed to break through thick ice and conquer Northern Norway with his ship, the so called "Fram" (forward in Norwegian), Nansen is then seen trying to break trough the ice of the human heart in campaigning various humanitarian causes (from the 1921 Russian famine to Greek refugees in 1922) but in the end, the pessimistic message of the play is clear: the ice age is here to stay.

I thought this was a well written and well staged production, with plenty of depth, shifting from funny to touching, from philosophical to disgusting. As I walked from the Olivier back to Embankment station the cold wintry night reminded me of the play's final image: a video screen projecting London' south bank entirely covered in ice. Nansen WAS right, at least in London there's definitely no sign of anything but everlasting winter...

THURSDAY: ROYAL OPERA HOUSE - PREVIEW TO NEXT SEASON

The next evening put me amongst an audience of mainly sexagenarians at the Royal Opera House, for an interactive talk about some of the Operas and Ballets coming to Covent Garden next season. It was presented by music writer Daniel Snowman, members of the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera and interspersed with a few live arias (unfortunately not remarkably sung) and ballet extracts (these were beautifully performed by promising young dancer Yuhui Choe).

Not that I mind being one of the youngest in the audience (and I am not that young after all...), but this taster of "what's coming next" seemed like the perfect opportunity for the ROH to bring in a fresh crowd (which they seem so intent on doing, as seen in recent press articles) and yet, unless you are a regular Opera/Ballet goer you would not have seen this event advertised anywhere, not even on the ROH's trendy Youtube and Facebook pages. Shouldn't they be trying to preach beyond the converted?

FRIDAY: THE HIVES AT BRIXTON ACADEMY

From Norway to Sweden. And from sitting with a mature crowd to dodging flying beer bottles at Brixton Academy last Friday...

The Hives were back in town promoting "The Black and White Album", a title which seems to herald a band thriving on extremes. How can they sound so loud yet so crisp and clear? Even when Howlin' Pelle Almqvist (you gotta love the name!) is screaming at the top of his lungs you can still discern the lyrics perfectly. Their garage pop is irresistible and completely conducive to half-rebellious, half-joyous dancing.

They are hilarious as well: dressed in elegant suits and ties the whole band "freezes" on stage for exactly one minute halfway during the aptly named "You Dress Up for Armaggedon". And at one point a disheveled Pelle pleads to the roaring audience: just give me a second to adjust my hair, it is crucial that my hair looks very tidy as the next song is very fast (or something like that). He then slicked his hair back into shape and started howling again. To me that just seemed to summarize the way the Hives sound: ironic, chaotic and chic at the same time. And cool as Swedish ice...

Blindness - Is it worth seeing?

I am torn between the eagerness to see one of my all-time favorite books adapted through the usually sharp lenses of director Fernando Meirelles and my fear of seeing way too much...

How much will Meirelles leave to the imagination? And how much will he show of the stomach-churning events that unfold in the book when "ordinary" people start to lose control of their lives? Will he put us in the same uncomfortable spot that José Saramago put the doctor's wife?

Like Alice in Wonderland, the below teaser leaves me "Curiouser and curiouser"!