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!

Ils sont fous ces Islandais?

Crazy nature, crazy music, crazy art scene, crazy outfits... Iceland is a crazily stunning place.

I've spent four days in Reykjavik during the Iceland Airwaves Festival, on a press trip for BOZAR (which is preparing an Iceland Festival in Spring). A good opportunity to visit this incredible but quite expensive country (don't try to go on a low budget there). Our purpose was to see the most possible of the Icelandic artistic scene, so we moved from concerts to plays, meeting with artists like Baltasar Kormakur, Hallgrimur Hellgason, Helena Jonsdottir, Ruri and more. Artists in Iceland don't have any complexes, they do whatever they want and express themselves in the way they like: a writer composes music, a film director plays in several bands, a dancer sings hard rock and so on. The Icelandic art scene boils like a Geyser!

More about Iceland on this blog in the following posts.