[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: January 17, 2011]
This exploration of old journals is a risky business. Five minutes flipping the pages, and twice I've said to myself - could that really be ten years ago? But that's time for you - can't live with it, can't live without it. Not that my diary is very clear on just why I had a burger for breakfast on January 7, 2000.
Home cooking to start the week, and I can tell I had my nose in some French cookbook or other just by the names of the dishes. Tranches d'agneau à la Poitevine? Veau à la Normande, Cervelles à la St. Menehoude? Moules marinières?
Okay, the mussels dish is familiar enough, and I suppose Normandy veal would involve cream and maybe some mushrooms. As for the lamb in the style of Poitiers, I suspect a dip into Larousse was involved. Some kind of onion-based sauce, it seems. And then cervelles - brains. I wonder where I found them? Anyway, crisply breadcrumbed and served it seems with a tartare sauce; I suppose I was too lazy to come up with a sauce gribiche.
Not much to the week otherwise, except trudging around the east sixties trying to remember at which discount art store I had left a print of Simon Patterson's "The Great Bear" for framing. But a rousing climax to it on Friday night. Alternative TV at Manitoba's on Avenue B.
This, of course, was back when Manitoba's could host live music, and bands set up in the back of the small room - no stage. For imported dignitaries like ATV (or Alternative Television, if you will), who attracted a sizeable audince, this meant performing face to face with the front row of the crowd. This was the band formed by Mark Perry, founder and editor of the seminal U.K. punk fanzine "Sniffin' Glue."
I bought copies of "Sniffin' Glue" from stores around Soho in the nineteen seventies, saw ATV play on an unlikely tour with the hippie band Gong. Here they were - or here was Mark P, at least - a little older but still pumping out the classics: "Splitting in Two," "Love Lies Limp," "How Much Longer?"
And now this reunion gig is ten years behind me.
The days of the future stand before us
Like a line of lit candles;
Golden, warm, lively little candles.
The days that are past are left behind,
A sad row of candles that have gone out;
The nearer ones are still smoking,
Candles cold, and melted, and bent.
I don’t want to see them; their shapes are painful to me,
It hurts me to remember how they were once lit.
I look before me at the lighted candles,
I don’t want to turn around and see with horror
How quickly the dark line is lengthening,
How quickly multiply the candles that have gone out.
C.P. Cavafy
Comments