METROPOLITAN - French Poster by Pierre Le-Tan.jpg — **Being late to a funeral.**

Today I spent almost 5 hours working on an essay about my recent trip to Paris when all of a sudden Safari crashed leaving me with just vague memories of what I was really talking about. Apparently, something that had to do with Francis Bacon, natural wines and mainstream culture it seems but the details seem to escape me now. Im wondering how this second draft will compete with the original though so let’s give it another try.

I arrived in Paris on a clear evening, delayed by 4 hours due to a late flight and a strike on the REP B. I was supposed to attend the funeral of Pierre Le Tan, a person I have admired for years and father of my good friend Alexi Le Tan, but alas arrived to late. Stressed and exhausted I managed to find Alexi, his sisters Cleo and Olympia and a few friends (including Vidal Bejamin) drinking at a local joint near Le Tan’s apartment. I was just in time for a last beer. We all walked to Le Tans apartment for a few drinks with close friends celebrating death. The courtyard was flooded with flowers, a temporary garden of sorts, the scent heavy under the light drizzle. A weird looking Japanese guy in a grey suit was taking pictures nervously and breathed heavily. We drank dark rum in plastic cups and chatted under the dim light. My night ended crossing the river with Vidal while looking for a taxi in vain until I realised I had almost reached home.

The next day Fantastic Man launched its new issue at 0fr and I was happy to see a few familiar faces, meet with Gert and Jop and check out the new redesigned issue focusing on Greece. Deputy editor Eliot sported a sick Fall T-Shirt that I had to post here along with a few others from the evening.

Im starting to remember the reason I started writing this essay in the first place, and most of it was inspired by my visit to the Francis Bacon show with my good friend Haydee, at the rather neglected and forlorn Centre Pompidou. Somewhere between renovations and closures the place feels old and dirty. The show however reminded me once again the significance of Bacon in modern culture, and the dark almost brutal ways in which the eternal forces of life and death forged his paintings. The very much same qualities I find in Bataille. ~I was not surprised to read that show was actually curated over the literary influences on Bacon’s work from people like Bataille, TS Eliot or Conrad. Bacon still shines like a beacon in our times as an artist that based his whole expression on the vices that make humans what they are, rather than the mockery of what art is today. A safe exercise in the sheer act of self promotion without any risk or exposure of exposing ourselves. We are forced to be stripped of anything human for the sake of sanitisation and political correctness. No opinion should offend.

In one of the rooms they showed a few videos with interviews. A certain tape recorded at his London flat around mid 70’s drew my attention. The intimacy of the space, his furnishings, his v neck sweater, his wrinkled face and puffy cheeks, his mannerisms while talking next to his lover filled me with a rather silly sentimentalism that almost brought tears to my eyes. At the museum’s shop I almost bought a poster for 450 euros from his seminal Paris show at Gran Palais from 1971. I opted for a cheaper reproduction but Im still not sure I made the right choice. Im still trying to find the right frame for it. I think it will look good on the wall.

Now you will ask me how natural wine relates to Bacon. A few days after the show I visited a trendy wine bar, good for fashion crowds, but bad for wine. Small plates that raise the bill to a 100 euros and leave you hungry looking for a kebab on the way home. I mean dont get me wrong some places like La Buvette know how to do this right with good selection, tasty small dishes and good produce. But this was one of those places that 90% of the wine is rather offensively bad or just leaves you indifferent in the best case. Cleverly designed labels don’t hide the fact that a wine is bad. A lot of people ask me if I prefer natural wines to those vinified with traditional methods. I believe I have tasted amazing wines and really bad ones from both categories so Im not biased really, but I believe a wine which is badly made is just bad no matter how you choose to categorise it. A wine that ferments in the bottle is bad. A wine with no soul, or character, odourless, tasteless and not memorable is wine only good for the fast times we live in and for people that take no risks. People are afraid of tannins, that make your teeth grind, the spicy intensity of a good syrah, the complexity of a good vintage Pomerol. People instead opt for easy, lighter wines that are not intrusive to the mouth and the senses. Just like the abolition of meat from out diet. We want to move away from the slaughterhouse, but the slaughterhouse is life and death its self. Battaile writes in his Documents from 1929 a piece that influenced the curation of Bacon’s show.

‘‘The slaughterhouse is linked to religion insofar as the temples of by-gone eras (not to mention those of the Hindus in our own day) served two purposes: they were used both for prayer and for killing. The result (and this judgment is confirmed by the chaotic aspect of present-day slaughterhouses) was certainly a disturbing convergence of the mysteries of myth and the ominous grandeur typical of those places in which blood flows. In America, curiously enough, W. B. Seabrook has expressed an intense regret; observing that the orgiastic life has survived, but that the sacrificial blood is not part of the cocktail mix, he finds present custom insipid. In our time, nevertheless, the slaughterhouse is cursed and quarantined like a plague-ridden ship. Now, the victims of this curse are neither butchers nor beasts, but those same good folk who countenance, by now, only their own unseemliness, an unseemliness commensurate with an un- healthy need of cleanliness, with irascible meanness, and boredom. The curse (terrifying only to those who utter it) leads them to vegetate as far as possible from the slaughterhouse, to exile themselves, out of propriety, to a flabby world in which nothing fearful remains and in which, subject to the ineradicable ob- session of shame, they are reduced to eating cheese.’’

A few years ago I watched the movie Le Sang des bêtes, a documentary style portrayal of a day at a french slaughterhouse. It’s a brutal not moralised or sentimentalised portrayal of life and death. Workers smoke, sing and drink next to the bloody carcass of a horse. Im still haunted by the images in black and white but I still enjoy a steak any day. Life and death go hand by hand.

Speaking of wine and meat here is one bottle of wine I enjoyed on a couple of occasion at my new favorite restaurant in Paris. The Japanese beef tasted splendidly as well.

Sanjo is a Japanese owned place serving mainly Ramen. They have a lovely wine selection, amazing food and great service. The place feels effortless, people are nice and doesn’t feel Parisian at all, since the word is full of bad connotations. It was introduced to me last January. by good friend Yuichiro from Dreamin Man Cafe. I managed to go twice on this trip with my lovely friend Alexia and Yuichi and these are some of the stuff we tried.

Another highlight of this trip was a dinner rive gauche with the girls from Skirt Chronicles, Haydee, Sarah and Sofia and our friend Hugo. It was a warm, intimate night with good humour, good wine and good music. The night ended with Hugo singing Foreigner’s ‘‘ I want to know what love is’’. Maybe we played Psycho Killer after too or The Lady Don’t mind but i’m not sure.

While in Paris I watched the documentary ‘‘ Rolling Thunder Revue’’ about Dylan’s eponymous tour. Upon its release it was ridiculed by many journalists I know, people who think hip hop is the greatest thing that happened to modern culture and Bob Dyoan should be obsolete a thing of the past. Show me one of those artists you proclaim as cultural heroes these days that wrote a song like Hurricane, a song that was written to save the life of a wrongly imprisoned man. Just watch Dylan force his way at his record label’s offices (CBS) asking for a political support to free Rubin Carter from jail. Reflecting on the movie (which is one of the best things I have watched all year), I was re assured that Dylan is one of the biggest artists of our century not just because he wrote amazing lyrics or songs but for the fact that he reached out to so many people and his was political. Dylan was the mainstream and people worshipped him like god. Dylan spoke to rich, to poor, to educated, to simple people, to people of colour, to white. Show me someone who can do that today. While being good at it. Ginsberg is ending the movie with some great quotes about self enlightenment . ‘‘Pick up some kind of redemption of your own consciousness, become more mindful of your own friends, your own proper work, your own proper art, your own proper meditation your own art, go out and make it for your own eternity’’

I went to bed with a smile on my face feeling light hearted from my troubles.

The trip though was a mix of sleepless nights due to anxiety, sunny days with intervals of showers that made the soil smell like Autumn. I got to wear a cord jacket and a tie without feeling uncomfortable. I had great food with great people and walked for miles and miles every day. I took some nice pics along the way. Some are here on this post along with other memories. Last but not least highlights include the Holiday Rizolli launch where the creme de la creme of the creative world of Paris showed up for another great issue of Holiday magazine and the release of the book.

I miss my mornings with Daphne and Stelio, having salted butter on toast and filter coffee. The sound of the washing machine. I hate Paris but love its misdemeanours, its clumsy ways and walking by the river at dusk.

It was another trip I complained about everything and loved everything about it.

And I should not forget to mention a memorable lunch with Etienne and Nico.