January: often a slump month after whatever festivities we might have scraped together in December. February will bring more signs of life but January is for scheming. And travelling, this year.
While attending a great series of talks at the Courtauld Institute in the autumn, mentioned last month, I was cajoled to pay an overdue visit to Paris before the centennial exhibition of Surrealism vanished from the Pompidou Centre. Having read about Surrealism ever since student days and having always been an admirer of Luis Buñuel’s films, I had to go and was glad, despite the ugly weather.
There was always more to Surrealism than Dalí and Magritte, of course. Max Ernst was stupendous and it was great to find work by Remedios Varo, Dora Maar and Dorothea Tanning. Such a wild range of themes and obsessions, ingenuity and madness.
Creación de las aves, 1957
A few souvenirs of the trip have been posted at Trombone Poetry on Instagram, which automatically slings them over to Trombone Poetry on Farcebook. If those places are also your playgrounds, please follow.
There is another book on the way that will gain something from this expedition, but that’s a topic for another day.
Meanwhile, on with the scheming, the reading, the writing, the trombone studies.
GIGS
Merch available at all these events!
Thursday 16th January, 13:00-15:30
Sugarfoot Strut : traditional jazz
The Morden Arms
1 Brand St, London SE10 8SP
near Greenwich Station
Friday 17th January, 18:00 – 21:00
Trombone Poetry (short set) + sundry turns (poetry, songs)
Rotherhithe Voices
Deli Felice
40 Albion Street
Rotherhithe SE16 7JQ
free admission
near Rotherhithe Station