The challenge starts like this:
Don't think of elephants!
Bam! Too late. You lost.
You imagined an elephant. Or Dumbo. Or any other pachyderm related to your personal culture. Maybe you imagined an entire herd of them. Shame.
I'm rediscovering Leonard Cohen: The Partisan, yes, but also "Who by Fire" which speaks to me quite a bit in these times of Zen exploration.
In an old chest, I found pictures taken in New York where I had invited my mother more than ten years ago. Back then, I used to do a lot of film photography and I used some of these for a small exhibition in a bar in Paris. (The pictures ended remaining there for several years.)
Set-up day for a project that I produce and direct with ChezFilms for École des Ponts. Today, life-size test in the studio before shooting the interviews starting next week.
I had let myself go a bit so this weekend I planned to get back on track.
Zero sugar: no more pastries, cakes and dark chocolate. Zero alcohol: no going to the Pub - or else for a Perrier. Two real meditation sessions a day: it's true that in Paris, between my son and appointments, I often do this too quickly - we're getting back to it.
Instead of being glued to my phone, I drew some pictures (still that stoic experience I'll talk about):
I've been conducting a "stoic experiment" for the past two days - I'll tell you about it - that took me in the evening to the Trouville Cemetery, which I'd never been to before and which, contrary to what the sign said, was still open. Or badly closed.
My song of the moment.
I like it because it has no real chorus, the lyrics are nostalgic and it ends in a climax. It's not recent - 2007 - but I discovered it recently when it came after This is the life which I have always loved. Since then, I listen to it on repeat while on the beach at night.
Digging around in the attic, I found these portraits of my ancestor Algar Ebenezer Boulengeman, a trapper on the Great Plains of Canada:
I'm keeping the English title because the French translation - as is often the case with self-help books - seems to have been written by the traveling quack who sells mercury potions in Little House on the Prairie. Don't pretend: you know exactly who I mean. Or by the villain from "Peter and Eliot the Dragon" who wants to cut up Eliot to make cough syrup.
In sound editing of episode 3 of Panic in Space, my existential webseries of the future. I haven't mentioned it here yet, but it's coming: the editing and 3D sets are done until episode 10. I'm doing the final assembly when I have an hour here and there.
At some point, I'll still have to get my fucking movies on my fucking website.
Because you see: I'm a director. So I make fucking movies.
And to promote those fucking movies, I have a fucking website.
Going to see the plays of my actor buddies when I was in acting school disgusted me with broke theater, or even theater altogether. Now, I either go to the Comédie Française to see classics, or screw it: I watch Netflix.
New rule: when I'm in a hurry, I'll post pictures from the last few days even if they're not inherently interesting. Trouville, as usual.
It's been a long time since we worked with UNESCO. Yesterday Campus XXL with 600 students who came to see a preview of the film Whale Nation, by Jean-Albert Lièvre, with the film crew, Jean Dujardin and experts from the Ocean.
It's becoming a tradition to post a containment drawing when I'm in a hurry. I'd like to tell you that I've worked so hard during this time that I have enough content to post for the next five years... but no. I've also done a lot of nothing.
This is a mock-up. I had started the final drawing but it never saw the light of day:
As is often the case, I bought this book by chance because I opened it in the middle and one sentence caught my eye. In this case (from memory):"You wouldn't have envied the tenor in the camel-hair coat if you had guessed his fear and known how he was going to die." Then I let fifteen years pass. Two days ago I stumbled upon it again and read the first poem that enchanted me:
Of course, you've known about this song for ages. Because you guys are cool.
But did you know that Dan Klein, the lead singer of The Frightnrs, died of Charcot's disease? I think it's something to listen to a song knowing that:
End of the weekend. I've got a little extra time, I'm heading back to Paris tomorrow morning.
It's becoming a habit: when I don't have time, I post an old drawing I did during lockdown. Except that this is also the subject. And it's not really a drawing. But hey.
I spend so much time writing on my computer (novel, screenplay, journal, email, etc.) that I recently started practicing typing. Every word-per-minute I gain will be paid back a hundredfold - that's my evil plan.
During one of these typing sessions, I realized the following phenomenon: I get much better scores when I'm not trying to go fast.
To get away from Six Feet Under, The Wire, Mad Men, or The West Wing for a bit, there's a series I had stumbled upon that blew my mind. I watched it again this week and it transported me again. But most of all, episode 8 - what the writers call the "turning point", where the protagonist(s) decide(s) to face their destiny - had a strong effect on me. It did it again.
Concept art for an animated short I finished writing a long time ago but never got around to it. The next step would have been to send the script to producers.