Childhood, mine and/or others

To follow up on my last post. Of all the things that needs to be done in India, maybe the most important and difficult thing is to take care of the rampant corruption. And as for the rest of my Saturday, yes, there was time for both. I actually sat outside for maybe four hours reading in the sun. Oh, it was heavenly. Then the sun disappeared behind the trees and there was nothing heavenly about that I can tell you.

I was awake when Lisa called me this morning, but I didn't feel like I was. But soon enough I was myself again and we were in her sofa, Maeby sleeping on my leg. I think it's safe to say that that is what I'm going to miss the most.

Yesterday I visited the spring exhibition at Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) and it was slightly boring. There's usually something that's abjectionally pretentious and something that's inspiring and/or beautiful. This year I found nothing to excite me. Is it me or was it a bad year?

In the evening me and my brother saw Les quatre cents coups, François Truffaut's first feature. It's a film very dear to me, like few other films. I've seen it many times, and the occasion this time was that it's 50 years since it had it's premiere. It's just so wonderful, the music, the images, the sadness and the tenderness. It feels like it could've been about my own childhood, or, since it's not because my childhood was anything like the one shown in the film but because it touches me so, at least that of a close friend. But in away it is that of a close friend, because I've always felt like Truffaut was a personal friend, even though I never met him. I was ten years old when he died. 

(Here's a wonderful scene from the film, Antoine in front of the mirror(s))

Coincidence?

It just occurred to me that I have a book with Truffaut's letters, translated from French to English by Adair.

Rain and Tea and Influences

It's been a windy day and now it's raining. Soon my tea is ready and I will drink it whilst either reading Surfing the Zeitgeist, a collection of Gilbert Adair's culture criticism from the 1990s, or watching the last episode of David Attenborough's The Trials of Life. 

Adair is occasionally confusing, such as when he says that there's no such thing as television history (because according to Adair there has never been a classic tv-series or classic show which has stood the test of time like old movies have, which if you ask me is just poppycock) but more often than not he's rather brilliant.

Attenborough is never less than brilliant, but more on him later. He is after all one of the defining individuals in my life, outside friends and family. (Others that belong in that category are Alfred Hitchcock, François Truffaut, Enid Blyton and Jan Lindblad.)