A Portrait of an artist as a young man (me @ 18 in London)

THE British Museum Reading Room – where I was studying (reading) at the time of this photo.

 

Keith Richards: “Little Red Rooster” – my entire generation seen through the prism of Gimme Shelter.

O maior de todos: GILBERTO GIL !

Um fragmento de poesia de Guilherme Andrade (lindo…)

Bob Dylan delivers this extraordinary “lecture” (a jazzy song, rap beat…)..to the Nobel committee ..

Letter to Damien Hirst :

Damien Hirst’s Magnificence exhibited in Venice # 1

Damien,

I want you to know that, regardless of your existence, my heart and my eyes, my mouth and my genitals reside in two God forsaken places on this planet: London and Venice. And I also want you to know that as I woke up this morning from uneasy dreams and found myself transformed in my bed into a gigantic insect. I was lying on my back in the dark trying to forget this (yet another) horrible terror / terrorist / terrible attack on London Saturday night. In fact, on my way to London – from Zurich – I had been (obsessively so) studying “Death in Venice” and (again and again) reliving Richard Wagner’s final hours and so on.

Damien, I want you to know that, regardless of your existence, I am going to be 63 years old in less than one month from now. Have I accomplished something in life? Well…. Not sure. Depending on the scale, by some measure or degree, some people would say…yes. In my case…I’m writing to tell you that you have just humiliated me (yet again) and that your work, the grandiosity of which, has left me as speechless as did “Finnegan’s Wake” or….”The Making of Americans” or “Guernica” or this senseless sense of horror one feels when emerging from a ‘wired wrong’ terror scene, such as the one on London Bridge of Borough Market this last Saturday. I feel a little – or a little less – than Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Am I reliving the entire Third Reich because of your work? Am I holding you responsible for making me feel things that your (and mine) antecedents have undergone, horror stories of life and death under gas and under torture…under persecution and under so much suffering? WILL IT EVER STOP? Damien? Will it EVER STOP ?

Gerald Thomas

June 5, 2017

Esse sou eu. Cada palavra. Cada virgula. Atual como nunca.

Shallow graves #1

 

Não, não… não, não é o que vocês estão pensando…não é não, não é isso. De certa forma… quero dizer de alguma forma é o que vocês estão pensando sim…. é não posso negar. De alguma forma o que vocês estão vendo é isso, de alguma forma o que vocês estão vendo agora, confirma exatamente isso e confirma também o que vocês estão pensando…engraçado e triste. O desmoronamento, varias obras de arte tem essa cara…melhor a cara do que vocês estão vendo agora “O PODER TEM ESSA CARA TAMBÉM”.

———————————————-
ENGLISH

No no no. It’s not what you’re thinking. No, this isn’t it. But, in a way, I mean to say that it is, indeed, what you’re thinking. I cannot deny it. Somehow what you’re seeing is this ! Somehow what you’re looking at right now confirms exactly that and also confirms that which you’re thinking.

Funny and sad. The collapse. Several amongst us resemble works of art. Several of us have the a kind of collapse built into our system. I mean, we might look as we’ve collapsed. Is that it? Have we? I mean…have we collapsed? Are we a witness to a complete collapse ? Is ART …. no, art isn’t. 

“POWER HAS THE ROTTEN FACE OF THIS COMPLETE AND….. yes, the collapse. Power and art have, sometimes, the same face. The face of a collapse.” 

But why you may ask ? This might seem a like relevant question. Indeed it might.But it’s not what you’re thinking. In a way, though, I mean to say that it is, indeed, what you’re thinking. No matter. Move on. It MUST be what you’re thinking because….well…because you’re looking at it. And you’re looking at it because I’ve staged it. And if I’ve staged it it’s because I was thinking it.

Gerald Thomas  (2006)