Silent Witnesses

We posted about Daniel Brown's new site here the other day, but we just wanted to let you guys know what he's working on right now as it's directly relevant to La Muse and the village - a new series of work called "Silent Witnesses."

It's the first set of nine drawings in the series called "Pathways and Passages” and how:

"seemingly ordinary or unseen architectural elements return them to the consciousness of a community, acknowledging them as living “members” of that community.  The selected architectural elements define the persona of each village, and have acted as silent witnesses to its history."

You can check out a slideshow of his beautiful new images here. 

Philosophers...

There's a good short article here in The Economist book section about the book Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, by James Miller (FSG).

It contains:

11 biographical sketches of thinkers who tried to tread in Socrates’s footsteps, plus one on Socrates himself

and here's what it says about the French ones.

Rousseau:

preached on education, abandoned his five children by his long-term mistress, and made pathetic excuses for doing so (he was too ill and poor to be a good father, and a foundlings’ home is not such a bad place to grow up, anyway)... at the end of his life, Rousseau acknowledged that it was not nearly so easy as he had assumed to follow the Delphic oracle’s injunction to “Know thyself.” He concluded ruefully that it was “arrogant and rash” to profess virtues that you cannot live up to, and retreated into indolent seclusion.

and of course Montaigne is a:

master of the suggestive non sequitur and the self-contradiction.

Manifestation against France Telecom...

Forgot to post about the manifestation we attended the other day at the top of the village against France Telecom's refusal to listen to the locals of our village, but more importantly the villagers of Pradelles-Cabardes, over dropped calls and lack of service.

For over a year angry letters have been flying their way to no avail, so the locals, local mayors and the powers that be decided to block the road.

You've got to love the one below that says, "Le Telephone ne Passe Pas Vous Non Plus," which basically means, get lost, or, the telephone doesn't work so the road doesn't either, the verb "passe" meaning pass like in English but also not working in French:

Of course, as soon as the Midi Libre article and the L'Independant one came out, France Telecom promised 70,000 Euros in repair work and immediate solutions... the power of the press, and the people!!!

Artist Daniel Brown

Congrats to Daniel, a great artist who was here at the end of last year, on building a really cool site for himself on his own.

If you haven't seen any of Daniel's art before then you've got to check out his site. Beautiful stuff.

This is a video of one of his pieces from 2007 called "Luminalia," a serpentine line of fire floating upon the Tiber river’s surface in Rome, illuminating the length of the river with one thousand flames throughout the night and into the morning hours:


2007 Luminalia: Tiber River Rome from Daniel K. Brown on Vimeo.

"The half-kilometer long serpent of fire celebrated the Tiber River, which is known also as the ‘blond serpent’. The serpent symbolizes Aesculapius, Roman god of medicine, whose mythological island home Isola Tiberina lies in the centre of the river site. One thousand candles lined each bank, while the serpent was formed from another thousand candles floated in the centre of the Tiber, taking life from the currents and carrying light into the darkness to prolong the longest day of the year."

Below is the cool drawing Daniel donated to La Muse before he left:

The Future of Books...

Just came across this great video of Richard Nash talking about the future of books at BookNet Canada's Technology Forum 2010 in a session entitled "Publishing 3.0: Moving from Gatekeeping to Partnerships."

Richard got married at La Muse years ago and since then has started up Cursor.

Tired of Having No Time to Write?

Come to La Muse and get away from it all!!!

Winnie the Pooh a la Francaise...

Dwight, a former barter fellow here, just sent us this classic video he found on a Huffington Post article of a little french girl recounting the story of Winnie the Pooh, her way:

"The Melancholic Prophet"

There's a pretty good article about De Gaulle in the Literary Review here by Sudhir Hazareesingh.

The man with the 'Joan of Arc complex' is still keeping the biographers busy, especially since:

In June, President Sarkozy will pay a special visit to London to mark the seventieth anniversary of the General's BBC appeal of 18 June 1940, which launched the Gaullian rebellion. The commemorative flurry in France has already begun, and it includes a raft of new publications on de Gaulle - of which the most amusing (but also revealing) is Benoît Duteurtre's novel Le Retour du Général, in which de Gaulle rises from the dead to save France from the ravages of globalisation. 

Don't you love his hat? Classic.

House for Sale across the street...

We're selling our little house across the street for only 24,500 Euros. It needs everything done to it but has some lovely features and loads of potential...

We bought it a few years ago to renovate but we just don't have the time to work on it because La Muse is doing so well!

Here's a link to the listing on www.greenacres.com, a great site if any of you out there are ever looking to buy or sell a house. We've had our listing up there only 9 days and we've already had 10 people from 10 different countries contact us! The power of the Internet...

Art in the Air

It might be just for business class and the fancypants fliers but it's still cool to see that Air France are showing art from galleries on their flights. Cool idea and great to see art in the air!

This month, the gallery will be showing a video by Benoît Broisat, called “Bonneville” (2004), from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

You can see a clip of the video on his site here or read about it here.

PRISM's Short Fiction and Poetry Contest

We were just sent this info on the deadline for PRISM international's Short Fiction and Poetry Contests by a Muser.

The Short Fiction Contest deadline is January 29, 2011. A $2000 grand prize is awarded for the best original, unpublished story and the winner also receives publication payment in the Fiction and Poetry Contest Issue. Three runner-up prizes of $200 are also conferred. Works of translation are eligible. 

The Poetry Contest also has a deadline of January 29, 2011. A $1000 grand prize is awarded for the best original, unpublished poem and the winner also receives publication payment in the Fiction and Poetry Contest Issue. $300 and $200 are awarded to the runners-up. One entry may include up to three, single-spaced poems, and works of translation are eligible. 

Contest entries must be sent to PRISM through snail mail, accompanied by an entry form and cheque or receipt of credit card payment. For entry forms and the option to pay fees by credit card, visit Prism's contest page.

Entries can be sent to:

Prism International, [Contest Category]
Creative Writing Program
The University of British Columbia
BUCH E462-1866 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
CANADA

Never Fry Gnocchi

Classic...