À la recherche du temps perdu
Remembrance of Things Past
It is ok I am not going to witter on about Marcel Proust’s monumental work! I did start to read it, out of a sense of “I really ought to read the classics” but after the first couple of months I figured I would rather not bother. Sorry if that does sound a bit plebeian!
The reason for stealing his title came to me last Saturday night when standing bored out of my mind, trying to entertain people with a disco. I have been thinking of a good verb for doing a disco, do you run a disco? Play a disco? Inflict a disco? To be frank it felt a bit like the latter. I have inflicted my disco on folk on occasions on and off for the past 25 years, prior to that I did it for a living for the preceding 7 years. I need to say I love music, always have. I don’t follow it as keenly as I once did, if I am honest I am a little stuck in the 80’s and I am very fond of classical music. I probably shouldn’t confess this…. but…. the problem of being a party DJ in an English pub, is that you stand about doing very little until enough alcohol has been consumed to make dancing a possibility. They wanted the music to start at 8, and nobody really considered dancing till about 11, so for me there was three hours of pure tedium! On the upside you do get to listen to a lot of old tunes you would probably not listen to, which is nice. 
I did once thoroughly enjoy the whole DJ thing; I used to live for it, but things move on and something that was once the centre of your life can drift to something inconsequential. Even when I was a DJ there was my art running side by side with it and now it is the art work that takes the centre stage for me.
An arty break away
Most of what I do has some sort of arty element and a recent trip to Brussels has been no exception. I usually discount the day you take to get there and the day it takes you to get home; they feel like blank days to me, as I am usually too tired to do much other than think about food and drink. But with Brussels, like Paris, a little time to do nothing but think about food and drink is really not a chore.
We started a day’s sightseeing with an Art Nouveau walk. It was lovely to see so many buildings with original features dating back to the late 1800’s. Our walk culminated in a visit to the former home of the architect Victor Horta, a truly wonderful building especially considering how long it has been there. The queue to get in took about an hour but it was well worth the wait.
Another highlight of the trip was The Atomium which is a monument in Brussels originally built for Expo ’58, the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Designed by André Waterkeyn and Les Architectes Polak, it stands 102 metres (335 ft) tall. It has nine steel spheres connected so that the whole forms the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. It was a truly impressive sight though I had confused the meaning of the structure with a comment about the European Parliament!
We visited the Rene Magritte exhibition at the Musee Magritte. I have a fondness for surreal art and I thought the exhibition was very inspiring, odd, but inspiring.
I couldn’t begin to explain any of his work but there is a huge level of technical skill in the painting. If you are interested you can click here to see more of his work.
We were wandering down a back street where we cane across the Krethlow Gallery seeing the work of the Swiss artist Wolfgang Zät, truly amazing work, massive hand cut lino prints. I could have lost myself for hours in the intricacy of his art work.
It was a great break away, can’t wait to go back to Brussels!
Hitting 80!
I have been on a bit of a mission over the last six months to get more book covers out into the world. The target is 100 which I am expecting to hit later this year. Last weekend I hit a bit of a milestone though having just produced my 80th cover. The story is “Testing Their Love” written by Starla Kaye and published by Black Velvet Seductions. I am pleased with the cover and hope the story is well received, I know we have had sales for the story (it’s available to buy on Amazon and Smashwords) and the ink is barely dry, so it bodes well for the future. Starla is a great writer and works very hard at her craft. I have done several covers for her and I look forward to doing many more for her and BVS. On the subject of Black Velvet Seductions, I am doing my best to get my next story out to coincide with my 100th cover; that would be great timing, though that does require me pulling my finger out and getting some writing time in!
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