Summer in Paradise Lost

Sun, sea, heat and time seems to have lost it's meaning and relevance. Greetings from Greeceland aka my own private paradise lost. As my annual hermit, detox retreat is about to come to an end I thought I would share some of my favorite things that made this holiday paradisiacal. And what better way to start than music. My most beautifulest friend Giuseppe aka Porcarorama has made a Sunshine Summer and Moonlight Nights mixtape that I have been listening to on repeat all summer long. Just press play and trust me when I say that this is the ultimate summer soundtrack.

And of course one should always look the part. Hawaiian shirts should be included in everyone's summer attire, especially the ones made by my beautiful surfer boyz from Paleo Faliro, the seaside area in Athens where I grew up. I am beyond proud of them for launching, in the midst of the financial crisis,  their own brand MOHXA, of ossom clothes worn by the surfers, skaters, hipsters and THE GROWLERS! They say that chaos breeds creation and such start ups by young people in Greece have started proliferating despite the financial crisis or precisely because of it. As a principle I am a big fan of MADE IN GREECE so check them out. Below is my summer's favorite. 

And cause one of my favorite activities whilst being a lazy sunbather is reading here are some of the books I enjoyed and a few of my favorite quotes from this summer's reading list. Enjoy, they all come highly recommended.

The timeless classic which needs no further introductions.

"There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for those bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it it that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain…A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life…For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity."  

Hermann Hesse Steppenwolf

On an entirely different note I also devoured the ultimate summer read,  a cross between a pulp fiction crime novel and the genius of the likes of Mr Philip Roth"The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair" by 30 year old Joel Dicker is a real page turner and the perfect book to accompany you to the beach. At times repetitive and not a literary masterpiece yet nonetheless hilarious and well written and I was thoroughly impressed by the accurate grasp and depiction of American society that a young Swiss man has. I say enjoy this one as a guilty pleasure. 

Tom Robbins  in one of my favorite authors, witty, sexy, hilarious and with a sublime command of the english language, what is there not to love! Needless to say when his "autobiography" or more accurately what he has termed A True Account of an Imaginative Life was published under the title  "Tibetan Peach Pie" I couldn't wait to get my hands on it and I was in no way disappointed. 

"You see, at that juncture in my life I wasn't evolved enough to understand the fluid nature of romantic love (its indifference to human cravings for permanence and certainty); its uncivilized, undomesticated nature (less alike a pretty melody than a foxish barking at the moon), or, more importantly perhaps, that it's a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it's paradisiacal if she or he loves you back, it's unfair to demand or expect reciprocity. We should consider ourselves lucky, honored, blessed that we possess the capacity to feel tenderness of such magnitude and be grateful even when that love is not returned. Love is the only game in which we win even when we lose." 

Almond picking has become one of my favorite summertime activities...

Because I am basically incapable of ever writing anything about summer without including something from GRACELAND…..Diamonds on the soles of her shoes….

My favorite beach 

Man Ray revisited or the kind of photos my mum takes when we are on holiday together 

Pastel decadence in Greeceland

Too much love will kill us said the boy

Cause we fought a lot  (yet this should not  come as a surprise as our whole friendship actually started with a fight) and you were stuck in my head so...

-I thought about writing you a love letter said the girl
-I thought about fucking you when you were away said the boy....

A modern day love letter to a boy that is easily one of the best things that happened to me last year. Our friendship may be complicated and dramatic but we never like it easy huh?

You said that too much love will kill us but I am still trying to convince you that when I say "I love you" I love you in a different way than the plumber who successfully manages to fix a leaking pipe or the next Uber driver that offers us a bottle of water and some candy... This one is for you.

Cause this could be your motto

and we have danced to this one countless of times...



and KAVLA is still the most important word I ever taught you

and you are everything but EASY and you know it.





yet I have come to love your charming, lady-loving, social whoring ways... and your unique way of masking compliments into insults




and we laughed like fools when sweet concert goers confused us with singers and we just played along






and well I guess what I am trying to say is you can always have some affection without penetration with me...

and we will always believe in the magic of the night and chase music around the globe...

The dog days are over

Or in this case they have just began. End-of-summertime-saddness has taken hold yet I thought I would share some of the things that caught my eye, occupied my mind and sweetened the return to city life.

Belgium is renowned (and rightly so) for contemporary dance and this week I went to see a dance performance choreographed by our very own Jan Martens called "The Dog Days Are Over" which had a very strong effect on me and made me feel rather uncomfortable to be honest. For about an hour you witness a group of dancers, of all shapes and sizes, wearing kitsch revealing gym clothes reaching their physical limits through the repetitive act of jumping. An exhausting gym routine for your viewing pleasure with barely any music or interaction amongst the dancers, who at times you feel are looking you in the eye with agony. A study on the nature of entertainment and its voyeuristic element and a critique on society and the pains we go through, running like hamsters on treadmills in order to attract the looks of others. Not the most graceful or enjoyable piece but very strong and thought provoking. It's on tour at the moment so I definitely recommend catching it if it's on at a city near you. 

PS: The lighting is perfection. 

The starting point for the work is a quote by American photographer Philippe Halsman who said back in 1958: 

“When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears.”

"Contemporary Dance is Striptease for the Upper Class"

Jan Martens 

THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER - teaser trailer from Jan Martens on Vimeo.


Happiness hit her like a train on the track....

On another note I can't stop thinking about the hunting photos of Francesca Woodman. A photographer who took black and white, often blurry long exposure photos in the late 70s and though her carreer was short (she committed suicide at the age of 22) the eerie beauty of her photos is much celebrated today.
Enjoy a selection of my favorites.

Teddy Boys and Copycats

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensation for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

I finally read the dystopian all-time classic and  this is the paragraph that stayed with me the most. Cause a good fight against misfortune and a struggle with temptation do hold a dangerously glamorous allure.

Speaking of dystopian futures and state controlled behavioral manipulation, an interesting fact about Greeceland is that during the 60s, a time of revolution across the rest of Europe, an infamous law, law 4000, was put in place to punish "Teddy Boy" behaviour. According to law 4000 young troublemakers arrested for the offense of slander had their heads shaved, the cuffs of their pants ripped and were forced to walk around with a sign stating "I am a Teddy Boy", for pedagogic reasons of course.

And now for the copycats, surprisingly enough some of my favorite "songs du jour" seem to be covers and the quintessential soundtrack during this transitional month is Todd Terje's Johnny and Mary sang by Brian Ferry! This song is GOLD.

Another current favourite:

And last but not least photos and tips from 2 of the must-see exhibitions in Athens at the moment.

-The exceptionally curated A THOUSAND DOORS exhibition by NEON and Whitechapel Gallery that is hosted at the majestic Gennadius Library until the 30th of June.

Tip: all the volunteers are extremely polite and well-informed ask them to tell you a story about the art piece they are standing next to you won't regret it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I'm profoundly shallow, my lack of knowledge is vast and my horizons are narrow" said the boy.

 

 "No Respect": Graffiti and street art at the OCC." 

Cause our graffiti rocks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And my favourite portrait at the moment needlewordk by Lockibird

 

2014: Only lovers left alive

Cause I can't think of a better way to great 2014 then watching the new film by the king of cool-Jim Jarmusch "Only Lovers Left Alive". A never-ending love story between the eerily elegant Tilda Swinton and the dashing rocker Tom Hiddleston. Against the no-mans land that is modern day Detroit we follow the afterhours wanderings of Adam and Eve, a couple that can't live without music, books and blood. Cause as Eve says, the only way to make eternity bearable and to deal with the way humanity, "the zombies", are raping and pillaging Earth, is to fill your time with love, compassion and DANCING.

"The most important thing is love,...I know that now. There's  no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon...I'm not quite twenty, but, thanks to you, I've learned something that many women these days never learn; Prince Charming really is a toad. And the Beautiful Princess has halitosis. The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed  and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes love. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn't that be to make love stay?"

"Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free."

"Still Life with Woodpecker" Tom Robbins

"Barking at the moon?"
"What about it?"
"That's all our love was to you?"

'That's all love ever is. Love is not a harpsichord concert in a genteel drawing room. And it sure as hell ain't Social Security, Laetrile, the Irish Sweepstakes, or roller disco. Love is private and primitive and a bit on the funky and frightening side. I think of the Luna card in the Tarot deck: some strange, huge crustacean, its armor glistening and its pinchers wiggling, clatters out of a pool while wild dogs howl at a bulging moon. Underneath the hearts and flowers, love is loony like that. Attempts to housebreak it, to refine it, to dress the crabs up like doves and make them sing soprano always result in thin blood. You end up with a parody. There're lots of pretty sounds that describe 'like', but 'love' is more on the order of barking."

"Still Life with Woodpecker" Tom Robbins

You know you're living when it all becomes a blur...

  WHAT 2013 WAS ALL ABOUT

As this year is coming to an end, one day left darlings and we get to kiss this bitch of a year goodbye, I couldn't resist the urge of drawing up a list of the things that made 2013 special for yours truly. ENJOY.

1. THE GROWLERS 

Cause they have been the soundtrack of my life for the past few months and are undoubtedly my biggest recent musical crush!

2. PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVAL PARIS 

Cause I went for the first time to what is easily the most civilized music festival and had the time of my life! Amazing company, awesome music from the likes of Todd Terje, The Knife, Omar Souleyman, Junip, Jon Hopkins, Jagwar Ma, Hot Chip, Glass Candy, Yo La Tengo, Disclosure and Connan Mockasin and one of the best festival venues La Grande Halle de la Villette.   

 

Marylin, cause she made our nest in Montmartre special.

3. MAKING LOVE HAPPEN 

Cause I know I have done at least one right thing in my life when 2 of my closest friends that I introduced to each other and actually organized their first official date decide to tie the knot. I was the happiest 'best man' this summer, cause we all love love. 

 

4. WANDERLUST

Cause in 2014 I will be embarking on a new adventure....

5. ALL THE BEAUTIFUL BOYS 

That have colored my life with the chaos of trouble during the last few months...BIG LOVE

 

6. THE REFLEKTORS aka Arcade Fire

Cause 2013 was their year and everything they did was pure GOLD.

7. THE DEEP SEA 

Cause I have spent the better part of the last year and a half trying to save it! 

This is an amazing comic strip that accompanied a petition against deep-sea bottom trawling. It explains the story of how after the over-exploitation of demersal fish stocks we discovered new fuel intensive techniques to fish further from the coast and at greater depths whilst destroying corals and sponges that live thousands of years to catch extremely vulnerable fish that no one really wants to eat!  

8. LA GRANDE BELLEZZA

9. Our high school reunion and our matching tattoos

10. MARGARET ATWOOD

For ooooh so many reasons...