Playing (piano/harmonium/drums) with Firefay
You can check out the novel on the publisher's website:http://www.manuscrit.com/catalogue/textes/fiche_texte.asp?idOuvrage=5124
Also available from Amazon.fr.
My drumkit... don't know, get it where you want... I used to have a piano like that, back in France; alas, it didn't make it to these shores.
So, other than writing novels, short stories, fairy tales and scripts for short films, I write my own songs with Firefay, play the drums with Kick Me Ugly, and draw a little bit.
My first novel (Le langage de Dieu) was published in France two years ago and my second novel last year (Si tu m'oublies; again, in French).
Music
I grew up listening to French pop (what can you do…), but there are things to be salvaged there, like Dutronc/Hardy/Gainsbourg/Etienne Daho. Obviously there's also Brel. Wish I'd seen him on stage, the guy was so intensely in pain while performing that it even transpires through a simple video. Another Jacques, Higelin, but only the 70s stuff. A French singer/songwriter that I quite like is Veronique Sanson, at least her early stuff. She was married to Stephen Stills for a while and he arranged/produced one of her albums, Le Maudit. I confess to liking some "world music" stuff: Khaled, Rachid Taha, Cesaria Evora, Lhasa de Sela. Since coming to the UK I've started expanding my knowledge of a different type of music, and lately, I've been listening to early Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett (may he rest in peace), The Byrds, Black Sabbath, Caravan, Soft Machine, Os Mutantes, 13th Floor Elevators, The Ramones, The Who (wish I could understand the drumming on Happy Jack...), The Doors, etc. And then there’s Judee Sill, the hidden gem of late 60s/early 70s Californian country rock. Anything 80s (apart from The Smiths and The Cure) drives me off the wall...
Movies
Anything by François Truffaut (just pure class) and Wong-Kar Wai (Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046). Time of the Gypsies and Arizona Dream by Emir Kusturica. The late 60s/early 70s Claude Sautet films, César et Rosalie in particular (the difficulty of chosing to live according to what you feel rather than what seems proper). Kieslowski, The Double Life of Veronica, as it shows his obsession with the invisible links between people who don't even know each other. Don't know if people would call him a symbolist but that's how I see his work. German 20s and 30s cinema (Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, M). Jean Cocteau: La Belle et la Bête, Orphée. Oh, and two British films, Dead Man's Shoes by Shane Maedows and Me Without You.
Television
No thanks.
Books
Lolita, can't beat that dry, slavic sense of humour and the style, oh god, the style...
Let Petit Prince (The Little Prince), The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue, anything by Colette (The Shackle, L'Entrave, in particular) and The World According to Garp by John Irving, all of which I’ve read many times.
I'm not a big fan of poetry apart from some French medieval stuff - Ruteboeuf and François Villon - and Rimbaud when I was a teenager (still sounds good now). Federico García Lorca's Romancero Gitano is something I also like to go back to from time to time (Silencio de cal y mirto...).
I have a special fondness for Anaïs Nin, although I haven't read the whole of her diaries. I like that mixture of salaciousness and innocence, that's quite unique.
Some more books that I really like: Italo Calvino's Our Ancestors trilogy; Ismael Kadare's The Palace of Dreams; Huit-Clos by JP Sartre, Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse.
And plenty of French novels (Le Charme Noir by Yann Queffelec; L'Ile aux Trente Cercueils by Maurice Leblanc; Les Ames Grises by Philippe Claudel, among others).
In general, I like authors who have a distinctive voice and make use of the language they write in in a creative way that's not systematically following the rules of grammar. Here I'm talking about people like Richard Brautigan or George Pérec. I'd love to write one of those killer first lines one day:"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." (LP Hartley, The Go-Between). "J'ai vécu seul, sans personne à qui parler véritablement jusqu'à une panne il y a six ans dans le désert du Sahara." (I have lived alone, without anyone to really talk to until a breakdown six years ago in the Sahara desert; Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince). Alternatively, a final sentence like that of "Lolita": "And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita." ..
Heroes
Women artists/writers: Camille Claudel, Colette.
Camille by Rodin
Of course Animal
and my cat Milo
About me: A bit schizophrenic (am I French, am I a Londoner?), a lot depressive and a tad manic (thank god for drums...), well that's me. I was a chemist in another life. Although I still deal with scientists in the day-job, I devote all the time I've got left to write novels (mostly).
My novel (in French), Si tu m'oublies, is now out and available here: http://www.publibook.com/librairies/publibook/ouvrages.php?id=2546
Also available from Amazon.fr and Fnac.com
The English translation, The Tree Fairy, is now available at www.lulu.com
I do some artwork from time to time, a bit aimlessly...
I make films sometimes... latest one, The Suite. Presented at the Portobello Film Festival 2006.
I've also recently coordinated this strange little thing:
I also compose songs with my band, Firefay. Nearly there with the album now (see the Firefay page).
Who I'd like to meet: Vladimir Nabokov, so I could ask him how he managed to write in so many different languages. Well he's dead...
People who don't function on one level and can take the piss out of themselves. People who don't use the word 'spiritual' to describe the most mundane things. People who see the world in a way others don't see and try to share their experience through any medium.
Don't miss... DUB COLOSSUS “IN A TOWN CALLED ADDIS” Wednesday 8 JULY Dingwalls Camden Lock "as if Lee Scratch Perry were producing Ethiopiques" FT 12-piece band featuring musicians direct from Ethiopia www.dingwalls.com
We’re releasing Stay Up Late/We Love George Michael as a single on Monday 16th March Support the Stay Up Late campaign - fighting for the right to party Help Heavy Load become the first learning disabled band to get into the Top 40! You can download your copy at iTunes, Amazon, HMV etc.... or gift it to a mate! Thanks for your support, lots of love Heavy Load
La neige, le verglas, en effet, rien n'a arrêté les Parisiens. Ils se sont copieusement gauffrés sur les trottoirs, sans se départir de leur belle abnégation.
Et moi ? Moi, je glissais, comme tout le monde... xxx
Il faudra hélas te mettre à la nécromancie,Jean Painlevé nous a kitté en 1989,je n'en ai trouvé ke trois sur you tube mais il y en a beaucoup plus,il a fait kelkes films sur les quartz et la détérioration des isotopes,mais surtout des documentaires animalier(en particulier sous marin,il a même fabriker la première camera amphibie) toujours tournés et montés de façon artistike,pour lui la rigueur scientifike n'était en rien incompatible avec le gout des belles choses.C'était un proche des Dadaïstes,il a d'ailleurs tourné kelkes plans pour Man Ray, voilà pour la petite histoire :)
J'en avais entendu parler, du truc de l'accordéon. C'est ouf' non ? Je comprends que tu manques de temps, je fais plein de trucs aussi ces jours-ci ! On finit le troisième Elista, y'a le bouquin qui sort en mars ou avril (il s'appellera "Hollywood en Larmes"), j'écris le second et pour d'autres gens... Enfin bref, c'est chouette ! J't'embrasse miss ! xxx
wow, je commence a voir de la lumiere au bout du tunnel... 1 mois et demi et je retrouve qq heures de sommeil! j'espere que 2009 demarre bien pour toi, bisous
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La photo ? Bin oui, elle est extraite du court-métrage d'un copain. Je fais plein de trucs en ce moment... Outre jouer dans son petit film, je termine un recueil de nouvelles qui sera publié l'an prochain (ça y est, enfin...!) par une nouvelle p'tite maison d'édition ; et je pars enregistrer le nouvel album d'Elista, dans le sud, pendant deux semaines, dès ce samedi.
Comme quoi, on est très occupés tous les deux... ;-) Content d'avoir de tes nouvelles ! xxx
Salut Carole happy Birthday from MI,ici la neige est la,trouver 1 cibercfe ou internet cafe c est 1 cirque,autrement tout est bien au US,bonne journee a toi gros bisous pour tes ....... Yvon
C'est tout bonnement terrifiant, ce que tu me dis là - je parle de l'industrie pharmaceutique hein, pas de ton envie de revenir en France pour pouvoir savourer les shows de Patrick Sébastien...
Les shows de Sébastien, ils sont pas terrifiants, d'ailleurs : ils sont à se finguer! Mais tu dois le savoir, quand même, tout le monde sait ça... Bizzz xxx
You can check out the novel on the publisher's website:http://www.manuscrit.com/catalogue/textes/fiche_texte.asp?idOuvrage=5124
Also available from Amazon.fr.
My drumkit... don't know, get it where you want... I used to have a piano like that, back in France; alas, it didn't make it to these shores.
So, other than writing novels, short stories, fairy tales and scripts for short films, I write my own songs with Firefay, play the drums with Kick Me Ugly, and draw a little bit.
My first novel (Le langage de Dieu) was published in France two years ago and my second novel last year (Si tu m'oublies; again, in French). 
Camille by Rodin
Of course Animal
and my cat Milo
The English translation, The Tree Fairy, is now available at www.lulu.com
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