Saturday, November 24, 2007

The No Way to Forest National

New York band INTERPOL was in Brussels last night. After having seen them in Werchter last summer, I was quite excited to renew the experience at Forest National. And for once, we've decided with my sweetheart to take the bus to go there, because it's more ecological but also because there's a serious parking problem near the venue. So we've naively waited for the bus 54 near My Campagne, the bus arrived with 15 minutes delay, and it was completely full (even a mouse couldn't find a place in). It was already 8pm, so we went back home to pick up the car. The way from Saint-Gilles to Forest wasn't good either... closed routes, working fields, one ways... as if someone was trying to prevent us from going to Forest National. After half an hour, we have finally managed to find a spot to park the car and walked 10 minutes to finally be there... on time. The gig was great, I forgot about all this stupid transport issue for one hour and a half. But I don't want anyone telling me that public transportation is more practical, it can be more respectful of the environment and I'm using it everyday, but believe me, there's NO WAY I'm going to Forest National again by public transport, and maybe not ever again, only if Dave Matthews comes back there of course. Can't wait for the new Brussels venue to open its doors... but that will be only in a few years

Monday, November 5, 2007

One Step Further

It's done! I have finally sent my project proposal to the Fondation belge de la vocation, and not within the best conditions ever. With a terrible ear-ache that put me in bed the last two days (I still went to work for 3 hours for Saturday evening's concert), I finalized the copy and printing-work yesterday, a bit "last minute", but I did it. I don't really care about the results, what matters here is that I've been able to send something (I'm quite proud of actually), and it helped me structuring my work done so far. Still, results will come out in February, you're allowed to cross fingers :-)

I felt the same for the "Fureur de lire" short story competition, to which I participated in 2005 and 2007, it didn't really matter if I would win anything, I just wanted to finish and send a text. Even though I still think that it's quite unfair to have a "young talented" writer to preside the jury, especially when his main promotion motor is his uneducated background: "he left school at 17 and never read a book until then"... waow! What a talented writer. This is quite another topic actually, and it makes me want to read more, and study more, and write even more.

Well, I think I'm ready now to go another step further...


Thursday, November 1, 2007

Before the tempest

November 1st, the streets are so quiet you can even hear birds singing. Cars seem to have stopped moving, the atmosphere is gray. A perfect day to go to the cemetery, just that I don't like cemeteries. Nobody's perfect! So I'm keeping it simple for today, a not so early but still not late wake-up, a very simple breakfast with coffee, followed by tea, then head on to BOZAR for a interview afternoon with Syrian singer Sabah Fakhri (Syria's Frank Sinatra they say... we'll see on Saturday evening) and several journalists working for Arabic medias here in Brussels. A preview for this weekend's tempest of concerts and encounters. Looking forward to it!