Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Musical weekend...

... kickin' off TOMORROW!!

It's gonna be a great weekend, first with Werchter, on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, with a stop in-between at Couleur Café on Saturday. Hang on Björk, Marylin Manson, Johan as Police Woman, Rachid Taha, Ziggy Marley, Interpol etc... we'll be there! And a very special thought to Tori Amos, being so disappointed by her concert in Paris three weeks ago, we're really looking forward to see her again so we can go on loving and listening to her maddly like we used to!
After rock and world music, we'll move forward to jazz in Ghent and Rotterdam... Festival months in Belgium and around... soooo nice!

Monday, June 25, 2007

Look 10 Years Younger!

I was walking in the street, coming back home from a quiet end- of- the- season- working- day at BOZAR, and I saw a magazine in the window of a bookshop with a "LOOK 10 YEARS YOUNGER" printed in huge red-pinkish letters on the naked shoulder of a beautifully photoshop-ed creature. I couldn't help but think, why? Why should I look 10 years younger? Because I'm only 28, well yes, that's one point, but even if I were 38, or 48 or 58.... can anyone give me just one reason why one should LOOK whatever years, months, even seconds younger? Trying hard, I could see one good though... if looking younger can make you get all those years back and do whatever you wanted to do but couldn't, or correct any mistake or whatever... then maybe, there could be a point. Still, I did a lot of mistakes between 18 and 28, but I wouldn't change one bit of my life, because what I am today is because of what I did during the years that preceded my present age. And to the editors of these cheaply repetitive women's magazines, I would like to suggest searching for new topics, because one thing I'm sure of, is that for the last 10 years, I haven't read any other headline than "Look 10 Years Younger" or "Weight 10 Pounds less" and their billion of paraphrased versions. So, glossy piece of paper, you can go on trying to put some more imperatives on your cover for a few more decades, but you will always fail with me, because the older I'm gonna get, the less I would want to read how I can look younger. And yes, aging means dying in a way, but looking younger is not going to stop the process, but being ashamed of one's age, therefore of one's self, will certainly not help living one's own decades.

Girl Talk from Brussels to Antwerp enzovoort...

Five girls, all of them having worked together at least at one moment of their careers, in the same office, for the same purpose. Each of these girls are going through different experiences, aging 24, 28, 33 and 37, one has two children, three of them none, and one has a baby on the way... And what do these girls talk about? Babies, guys, love, sex, friends, work, politics, leisure, culture... ? Well all of it, mixed in between salads and home-made speculoos ice-cream! Conversing both in Dutch and French, but most importantly, in sincerity and simplicity. It is indeed that easy just to enjoy being together. And that's the way I like my friendships. Lieve, Leen, Stéphanie and Eve-Marie, thank you for being here and there... from Brussels to Antwerp enz.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Black Pearls in my cup

I live in an amazing neighborhood. The Saturday market on the parvis, the Librairie de Rome on the Jean Stas street next to the Avenue Louise where we love to weekly buy The Guardian and El Pais, and right in front of it, our coffee place, where we buy our coffee and where, for the first time, we sat to drink a great Jamaicain Blue Mountain, reading our freshly bought newspapers.
This place is one real great coffee place serving and selling coffees from everywhere around the world. I strongly encourage all of you who would visit Brussels to have a cup (or more) there. Not only is the coffee great, but the owner and his staff are so welcoming that you could spend hours there just drinking coffee and reading, in a black and brown, jazzy and very chic but not arrogant a bit atmosphere. The place is une petite perle as we could say in French... transforming beans into pearls.

Perle Noire
Shop Louise
Rue Jean Stasstraat 13
B- 1060 Brussels
info@perlenoire.be



Thursday, June 14, 2007

Yesterday...

... was my birthday. Yesterday, was no special day, but it was still like no other. Not because of my birthday but because none of my days look like each other. But I still wanted to be a birthday girl and act like a kid, happy to receive gifts and calls and messages... I got the first one live at midnight... then the morning began with some unnecessary ones, reminding me how hypocritical families can be. Not caring a bit, I went to work, where I received presents from my dear colleagues (thanks guys for initiating me to dutch literature... after French, English, Spanish and Turkish... I'm finally going to read a novel in Dutch! I'll let you know how it went on in a next- not soon- post).
Going back home with my arms full of yellow flowers, I celebrated my birthday my own way in the streets of Saint-Gilles, first by offering a flower to the neighborhood's homeless who immediately shared the gift with his dog, then by stopping by the café where the owner (I guess he's Italian) immediately greeted me... the Italian way :)
Arriving to my final destination, home, I found myself covered with other gifts; my little brother's presence and outstanding mark for his French exam (8/10 for a kid who doesn't like to read ... that's an achievement!); another bouquet (white flowers, thanks again sweet, I love them) and a Marcolini pastry (no need to mention anything about this!!), and and... you don't need to have the whole list. Yes, I agree, I am lucky. But wait until you hear the end of the story... The next step for the evening was going to my dad's place, but when we arrived at the car, nothing seemed to work, the battery had been emptied! Our fault, we forgot to switch off a light inside the car. So we called dad so he could help us out with this... he played hero-dad of course and tried to push the car down the way... well, it didn't work out and we finally got to call a cab to help us fill up the battery with a bunch of cables (don't ask me how it works... I simply don't care). And we were finally ready to go at 9.30pm. What we did? Just hang out, stay together, have some laughs, playing with the kittens... just be together, for a not so special but still very nice day.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Patti and the Rabbits

Such a perfect day!

9 o'clock in the morning, I'm running to the Kaaitheater. Right outside the metro station, I'm meeting the most beautiful rabbit in the world. It was black and tiny, so little I could hide it in my hands. Afraid that it might get lost or killed while trying to cross the street, I slowly approached it, thinking where I could possibly take it when... without leaving me another second to think, it disappeared in its closed garden.

After my short but nice encounter with the black rabbit, I got back to work and ten hours later, I was standing in front of the Ancienne Belgique, where I did another great encounter... Patti Smith was just going out of the building, her camera in hand, ready to take amazing clichés of my city! While she went out, I got in. Our exchange had begun and went on one and a half hour later... and for the next two hours after that...

During the I- have- absolutely- no- words- to- explain -concert, I found myself with another rabbit... Alice's or Charlotte's, through the voice of Patti, the white rabbit was everyone's. But I felt even higher knowing that I had already begun my day with my own rabbit.

I'm glad I've spend it with you...