There is not much time for blogging these days, but I thought I would post an older piece I had totally forgotten about. Fin de certitude dates back to 2002 & is the prequel on how I combine visuals, texts, voice & food today.  The piece was published in the Masthead literary arts Ezine-Issue #6.  The painting -material/colors, triggered words; words triggered material/colors, then all was assembled & sung. Looking back, the end of certitude is an important dimension I need to add to things fall where they lie especially when dwelling & re-occupying my feminine folds. Definitely an a®titude I’ll pursue.

Click here to have for the full version, that included two paintings, text & translation & the song.

Poem Pierre Joris—Video N.P.

Thank you for reading the blog and the most read pots of the years are:

Charles Bernstein Poetic Birthday Buffet

Ninkasi: “The Lady who fills the Mouth”

Three Sisters Soup

Lo Magret goes to Paris!

29000 years ago…and Paleo Lunch

Fast Poulet

Squids Part I: Clean & Keep the Ink

Squids Part II: Kept the Ink ? Now Cook with It!

What was your favorite? Love to know. Merci & Bonne Année!

Thank you all of you who came to hear Trialogues at The Local 269 on Monday.  Pierre Joris, Michael Bisio & I had a wonderful  time and the captive audience provided great support and inspiration. At the end of this post you will find the photo gallery of the gig —courtesy of my friend documentalist/ videographer Chiaki Matsumoto.

Next gig for me will be Sunday afternoon at the Gold Mine Saloon in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Megan Burns & Dave Brinks are organizing a mega event to try to raise funds for “ProtectOurCoastline.org“. The event will feature: a silent auction —paintings by George Rodrigue, as well as my painting “Unfinished Business” (see picture above) will be part of it, as well as a poetry/performance reading by “La Voix de Nola Poétique” and I am honored to  be featured as one of them. There will also be performances by the Saintsations, Cyrill Neville, Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters, plus many celebrities & great food. It is open to the public and please forward the info to anyone you know in the Gulf Region.

I am looking forward to be among my friends but also a bit anxious to be confronted with the Gulf devastation from close up.   I was there right after Katrina and I remember too well how different it was to be there than from getting the info via TV or the newspapers. There is always a lot of issues that are not discussed  in the main stream media & I highly recommend reading Dahr Jamail‘s posts about the devastating use of dispersant sand how the fisherman are being lied to, used & abused by BP. So not really a “Laissez les bon temps rouler” kind of trip but an “All-hands-on-deck” experience:

Trialogues at The Local 269 Monday August 23rd 2010
All photos by Chiaki Matsumoto

Thanks for the support and keep in touch!

I am not sure what is the final mileage the 21st century Odysseus,  A.K.A. Douglas Rothschild, ended up walking along small roads between Troy (N.Y) & Ithaca (N.Y) but it should be pretty close to 170 miles in 8 days! Congratulations to Douglas & to Anna Moschovakis & Matvei Yankelevitch (both active members of the Ugly Duckling Press Collective).  This is how it all began for Pierre Joris & I, but it had been in the brew for a quite a while when Anna Moschovakis sent out this email in June :

A few years back, Matvei Yankelevich and I had some idle idea that it would be fun to make a film of Douglas walking from Troy to Ithaca. It just seemed obviously like a good thing to do. This summer — soon, in fact — we’re going through with it.

We’re calling it an Experiment in Potential Documentary. But you could also call it a Constraint-Based Happening. In any case, the basics are simple:

– Douglas takes one week at the end of July to walk from Troy to Ithaca, on backroads determined primarily by the “walk” function on a GPS mapping software.
– Douglas wears a mic the whole time, so that all of his speech — including talking to himself, if there’s any of that — is recorded.
– Friends of Douglas’ join him for portions of the walk. He will know which people have been invited (though we will add some surprises too), but he won’t know which people to actually expect or when.
– People who can’t join in person can indulge instead in a desultory phone conversation with Dug as he walks.
– Much of the proceedings are filmed in HD video and with a variety of other means. Douglas, too, has a camera. Visitors, too, are handed a point-and-shoot video camera to employ as they wish while with Dug.
– The journey culminates at a Banquet and Poetry Reading in Ithaca, co-hosted by Catherine Taylor and Stephen Cope at an arts venue, to which the local community will be invited.
– Homeric overtones may be explicit, implicit, or cast aside altogether — though certain episodes dear to Douglas (e.g., the trip to the underworld) will be incorporated and we will ask each person who joins Douglas to bring a copy of the Odyssey (in any translation, or in the original) and to read a portion of it to the camera.

We hope YOU can participate in some way!

With many others Pierre Joris and I did. I will not tell you about the details of what happened because that is Anna & Matvei’s potential-in-the-making documentary project: they have 58 hours of audio and 11 hours of video recorded. Let’s hope they can gather all the necessary resources to play with it.  Meanwhile I just wanted to share the menu and pictures of the banquet — for the Chanterelles episode click here. The Banquet took place at the house of Wylie Schwartz, overlooking Cayuga lake and food was coordinated by Catherine Taylor, Stephen Cope, Anna, Trevor and myself, while many others helped with logistics and goodies.

At around 6:30pm —& after shooting his bow-oar through a dozen  axe head— Odysseus arrived at the banquet dressed in fine clothes, oar still in hand. A lovely band (sorry was busy cooking didn’t catch their name) greeted him and played throughout the banquet. As the sun went down Odysseus Rothschild (or Dugysseus, as Pierre called him) told us the tales of the journey. Hermes read beautiful messages from far away lands like Brooklyn, we also heard Homer’s writing in Greek, songs and passages of Charles Stein translation of  The Odyssey until deep into the night & after moving the party twice with our last being the harbor of Catherine & Stephen, until the wee hours, I don’t remember what time we left!

Menu:
Cheese platter: Syrian cheese, brie, local cows milk hard cheese, grapes, hummus & pita, lamb burgers, marinated olives, garden greens, feta salad, cucumbers, white & purple carrots, (from Anna & Trevor’s garden), artisans breads, baklava and plenty of ouzo, wine & other liquids to wash it down!

Eric Paul brought an amazing sausage from a local Ithaca’s charcuterie. We owe thanks to Lori & Tom who let us take over their kitchen to prepare the lamb burgers.

Epilogue:
The poets have decreed that Odysseus can now rest. He met enough people and told them all about oar & sea. A shrine has been built & sacrifice have been  performed. He is all done & can now return safely home, write more poetry and travel for pleasure as it pleases him!

Graduation, birthdays, family visits, drawings, preparation for up-coming shows kept me away from the computer, but here is the schedule for the next few weeks. We hope to see you at these very exiting shows:

Sunday June 27th
Metropolitan Museum
1:00PM
“Picasso, Pablo Ruiz: Spanish Poet Who Dabbled in Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture””

A conference by Pierre Joris, co-editor and translator of Pablo Picasso’s poetry: Burial Of The Count Of Orgaz & Other Poems
I will be the reader for  the French & Spanish versions of Picasso’s texts.

TRIALOGUES @  The Vision Festival XV
Tuesday June 29th
9:15PM In the Downstairs Theater

Mike Bisio/Nicole Peyrafitte/Pierre Joris

Thursday July 1st
5:00pm -midnight (our time TBA)
at the Brooklyn Bridge Park
Pierre Joris & I will be among the many poets & performers of:
I Do Not Doubt I Am Limitless: Walt Whitman’s Brooklyn

Couleuvre /Grass Snake
“To whom it may concern”

Snake
Mouth Vulva
Mouth
Snake Vulva
Snake
Vulva Mouth
Vulva
Mouth Snake

Once I saw it
Pain disappeared
And you with it
Your slime de bully
Lubricates me now
And heal the ”self”
Inflicted wounds
Thank you!

NP/ March 2010

I am looking forward to a variety of exciting events this spring/early summer. All the details are listed below & do not miss “Trialogues” —Joris/Peyrafitte/Bisio— at the Vision Festival June29th!

Events coming up:

Thursday April 29th 6:15PM
I’m giving a talk -with slides & IN FRENCH & free- on Augustus Saint Gaudens:

Comité des loisirs du personnel de l’ONU
L’ASSOCIATION CULTURELLE FRANCOPHONE
est heureuse de vous inviter à la conférence de
Nicole Peyrafitte
Le Retour al Paìs d’Augustus Saint  Gaudens
Une En/Quête sur l’immigration, la vie et l’œuvre
du célèbre sculpteur Américain né en Irlande,
de père gascon et de mère irlandaise.
Le jeudi 29 avril à 18h15
Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie
801, 2ème avenue ( 43ème rue ), suite 605, New York, NY
more info on my work on Augutus Saint Gaudens here

Thrusday May 27th 7pm
MaelstrÖm Revolution Fiestival
Jerome Rothenberg/Pierre Joris/Nicole Peyrafitte
+ a group of Belgium Artist TBA
at The Invisible Dog
51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn

WALTZING IN QUICKSAND: POETS IN COLLAGE
Tribes Gallery
May 21-June 27, 2010
Steve Dalachinsky, Bob Heman, Yuko  Otomo, Valery Oisteanu, Bruce  Weber, Star Black, Aaron Howard, Nicole Peyrafitte and  Lewis Warsh.
Opening Reception
Sunday June 6th from 4-6
Tribes
285 East 3^rd St, 2^nd Floor
NYC 10009

Tuesday June 29th 
9:15PM
THE VISION FESTIVAL
Joris/Bisio/Peyrafitte
Trialogues
Abron’s Arts Center
466 Grand Street
New York, NY

And still on view:

Michel Calvet / Nicole Peyrafitte / Jean-Pierre Rives
The World Bar /The Trump Tower
845 United Nation Plaza
New York NY 10017

This month is taken over, not to say consumed, by my dear 19th century comrade, Augustus Saint Gaudens. The deadline for the French project is due in a few weeks  — thus very little time to do anything else.  Fortunately our good friend Charles Bernstein had an important birthday, so I got to take a break and travel to Philadelphia where on 8 April the Kelly Writers House at UPenn had a superb party for the occasion.  The readings were great and you can read & hear more about it on Pierre Joris’ blog and except for the performance by Felix Bernstein and Sherry Bernstein I focused on the food, are you surprised?

They are complete foodies at the KWH and it was splendid! Program Coordinator Erin Gautsche has her own food blog, Veggicurious.com, and  director Al Filreis looks like a gourmand to me! I wanted to record a very nice detail about the party: All the dishes on the buffet were references to Charles Bernstein poems! As noticed by the director, Charles’ poetry doesn’t include a lot of food elements so it wasn’t easy. They dug deep enough into the poems of All the Whiskey in Heaven to create a beautiful, festive, delicious & poetic buffet! See for yourself and click on the photo to enlarge.  Sorry for the poor quality of the video recording.

MARCH—collage/drawing from N.P.  Calendar Series

Yeap! We are in March and I saw some crocuses “piercing” the ground on 71st street yesterday. It cheered me up. The general mood has been down with all the international and national events, catastrophes, health care mess… Even my hometown, Luchon, was seriously affected by a storm coming from the Southwest with winds at 200km/h. It killed one man, pulled out thousands of ancient trees, lifting roofs, and closing bars for one day! No one remembers seeing or hearing about such an event in a place that is so naturally sheltered from the wind. Who says there is no global warming? The same idiots who feel threatened by universal health care? The same idiots who worship a god that knows neither nature nor health. We need D.A Bennett  The Truth Seeker all over again, I just read that book and it is amazing how the problem of religion in politics has remained the same for two century ago and is far from being solved.

Anyhow, life must go on and I have been busy. The “d’Artagnan 25th Anniversary Art Show” at The World Bar is still on. Works by French painter Michel Calvet and 3 large collage/paintings of mine are on display.  The World Bar serves delicious cocktails and their $8 happy hour special is totally worth it. I had a “peace cocktail” concocted by the excellent (1/2 french) mixologist Jonathan, all fresh juices and premium liquors — a real treat! We will have another event there soon as the opening was affected by the storm. So don’t feel bad if you couldn’t make it; D’Artagan has agreed to provide us with more patés and saucisson for another event, so stay tune!

Below you will find my detailed calendar of events for March, four events still coming up, it is all exciting especially the Umami festival one, which is leading me into fascinating research about yeast and beer in Mesopotamian time. As a result of all this action the fridge as been consistently empty and home made Miso soup (see recipe here)and rice has become a staple.

I cook two cups of brown rice twice a week and eat it in different forms. The breakfast version is becoming a house favorite and even Pierre who is not a brown rice aficionado really likes this one:

-Warm up some rice milk in a bottom of sauce pan. Add 1/2 cup of cooked rice per person, one small apple cut into small pieces, 1/2 banana, raisins, cranberries, goji berries, maple syrup. Just warm it up. Before serving add chopped roasted almonds, pistachios, walnuts. That’s a tasty healthy breakfast!

When we finally made it to the coop a few days ago we got the making for a chicken soup. I had been craving it since Dawn Clements (now showing an amazing piece at the Whitney Biennial click here) served me the most delicious one at her studio in early February.  That recipe is also very easy:  throw it all in the pot and let it happen while the smell of the broth takes over the house. This is what I threw in the pot of cold water:
-1 organic chicken (with feet!)
-3 celery ribs
-3 carrots peeled and cut
-2 “fanned” leeks
-1 onion with 3 cloves planted in it
- 1 spice/herb bag with: fresh parsley, thyme, laurel leave, 1 cardamon pod, 6 blk pepper corn.
- Sea salt.
Then you can either delicately lift some of the meat and eat it separately or debone  the whole thing and return it in the pot. You will have to add some salt and pepper to taste and you can of course add some pasta or rice or potatoes. I just had a bowl and this is ever so restauring and satisfying.

Now the schedule and if I don’t see you there, please stay in touch!

Sunday March 7th
Sunday Best Reading Series
4PM $7
The Lounge, Hudson View Gardens
Pinehurst Avenue and 183rd Street
183rd & Pinehurst Avenue
New York City

Friday March 12th
UMAMI Festival
Featuring Sarah Klein, Murray’s Cheese, Tom Cat Bakery, Ithaca Beer Company
& NP w/ Rosie Hertlein ( violin)
6:30PM
click here for reservations
Astor Center for Food and Wine
399 Lafayette (at 4th Street)

Sunday March 21
NP & Pierre Joris, Nick Flynn, Major Jackson, Douglas Unger
6PM
Poets for Peace at Erika’s
85-101 N. 3rd St # 508
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(between wythe and berry
and it is the bedford stop on the L train)

Monday March 29th
NP w/ Pierre Joris & Michael Bisio (bass)
THE LOCAL 269
269 E Houston Street NYC

Ongoing until Agust 2010
D’Artagnan 25th Anniversary Art Show
Michel Calvet / Nicole Peyrafitte / Jean-Pierre Rives
The World Bar /The Trump Tower
845 United Nation Plaza
New York NY 10017

From the Logan Monument

I am back from Shikaakwa or ” Stinky Onion” or as we call it today Chicago. The name Chicago is believed to be the French deformation of what the Miami-Illinois called the wild onion growing along the Chicago River. As expected, the weather was cold but I was prepared for it and it didn’t bother me a bit, au contraire. I convinced — or rather lured— Pierre into some mega walks along Lake Michigan. He didn’t regret it. As for me, they:

Impress memory

North Shore:
Sky    water    cityscape
Jade   turquoise   mauve-gold
Lincoln walking from his chair
Meeting with Schiller
Three mermaid boys & three cranes
at the Bates Fountain
Mist moist lost
Urbs in Horto
Tropical gardens?

Town Shore:
Mi’kmaq memoirs
Abby tethered sways
Rippled reflections
Magalie’s fluo yellow
That’s a wake up call
Logan rears up
Lincoln sits down
Vulva building opens
To sharp German poetry.

South Shore:
Ice   ducks   republic
Gris    black & white    gold again
Rounds  & sharps
Ice creaks   ducks call
Republic alone
Fathoms the White City
No looking back at plastered Beaux Arts
Or Palace of Fine Arts
Science and Industry to prevail?

*  *  *  *

We had a marvelous dinner at Turquoise, a Turkish restaurant in Roscoe Village. Both my Patlicanli Islim Sarmasi  ­—Braised lamb shoulder wrapped in eggplant and lamb jus, and rice pilaf ($ 17.95) and Pierre’s Kusu Sis Kepab —Lamb seasoned, skewered , grilled, served with vegetables, rice pilaf, and yogurt sauce ($ 17.95) were exquisite. A delicate tomato sauce topped the skillfully folded and perfectly cooked eggplant filled with fragrant marinated morsels of tender lamb. The rice pilaf was fluffy and buttery. Pierre’s kepab was equally perfect. Upon arrival we were offered delicious home baked bread with a complementary plate of what I think was Patlican salatisi —Smoked eggplant, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, scallion and roasted red bell pepper. We were also offered each a Kazandibi — Caramelized butter, sugar and custard served with vanilla ice cream as a complementary dessert. We sat at the bar to catch the end of the Football game and Pierre ordered a Raki; it turned out to be on the house as we were the last ones and the register closed! Never had I experienced such generosity on visiting a restaurant for the first time.

After the wonderful bilingual Chicago Review reading at the Goethe Institute of Berlin poets —Christian Hawkey, Uljana Wolf & Monika Rinck — we had a good meal at the Armenian restaurant Sayat Nova. After Pierre’s reading at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago we had a not so good meal at The Italian Village but the company was beautiful & the conversation with poets Jennifer Scapettone, Natanaëlle (Nathalie) Stephens, Dan Godston & Jennifer Karmin very inspiring, so it didn’t matter. Dan, Jennifer, Pierre and I had a cozy nightcap at South Water Kitchen where we returned the next day for a light dinner before taking the train back to NYC.  There was also the rowdier night with Magalie Guérin a lovely French-Canadian painter. Magalie led the way to a bar/restaurant tour that began for cocktails at the Palmer House, to a fair Japanese restaurant  & to end with night cap at a Bar called Exchequer where we spent time trying to befriend a fierce Lithuanian waitress and comparing our accents!

*  *  *  *

On our first night in town we walked by the symphony hall and noticed that Pierre Boulez was conducting one of his 85th birthday concerts. We walked to the box office and got lucky enough to grab 2 of the last tickets! Watching Pierre Boulez conduct the orchestra is mesmerizing;  so elegant, so minimal I would dare to say almost liminal. The offering started with his own composition Livre pour Cordes, followed by Bartók’s Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra and Stravinsky’ s The Firebird as the last piece. We read in the program that two nights later The Chicago Art Institute  presented a  Conversation with Maestro Boulez. “Mr. Bulless” —as the attendant who sold Pierre tickets called him— was reflecting on modernism with Phillip Husher, the CSO program annotator. Here are just a few of the notes I took during the talk:

— Importance to enhanced self teaching.
— The first “modern” composer was Beethoven.
— Paul Klee’s book on the Bauhaus lectures has been essential to his development.
—”Without Teleman I can live. Without Bach I cannot” —

*  *  *  *

And last but not least were my extended visits to the Art Institute & library educating myself in XIXe century sculpture and architecture with a focus on Augustus Saint Gaudens (1848-1907). The museum collection is a great place for me to absorb and contextualize the works by and information on his predecessors & contemporaries. The Art Institute owns beautiful ASG works, among them his bas-reliefs of Violet Sargent, Jules Bastien-Lepage & Amor Caritas.  There are also four of his major public art pieces in Chicago:
—Lincoln Park: The Standing Lincoln  & The Bates Fountain —on the last one he collaborated with his former pupil Frederick MacMonnies.
—Grant Park: The Seated Lincoln —behind the Art Institute—
The General Logan Memorial —Michigan Ave & 9^th Street—

An other important fact is that Augustus Saint Gaudens was advisor on sculpture for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair —a.k.a The World’s Columbian Exposition or encore, The White City. He didn’t make any special work for the exposition but the first Diana that had been too big for the top of Madison Square Garden II found a home on top of the Agriculture Building designed by McKim, Mead & White.

The first version of Saint-Gaudens’ Diana is on top of the Agriculture Building, left.

Voilà the report for the Chicago trip. The train ride in the roomette was wonderful, we had no delays and the food was totally acceptable. I loved the interaction with the train personnel. The one thing I really dislike is the toilet in the roomette. That is the silliest invention ever, I would much prefer to have more space and a public john in the corridor. There would be many other observation to report but that will have to be  for another post. Thanks to all the welcoming people we met, hope to come back soon!