Monday, November 26, 2007

Louise Bourgeois

I met up with Caroline Coon today- she looked beautiful, long straight white-blonde hair, fitted black coat, slender legs and boy's shoes, what style the woman has!- at the Tate Modern, to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. We investigated the crack (apparently 14 people have fallen down it so far), then went and lunched with a view at the restaurant upstairs, admiring St Paul's and also the giant cranes; Caroline says she saw a documentary about them once. I told her about the embroidery I'd started of the cranes at Wembley- i got as far as doing the embroidered frame round the outside, then left it too long and in the meantime, they finished the stadium and took the cranes away.
Bah!
If I was a trillionaire I'd get 'em to put the cranes back just so I could finish the embroidery! It was going to be in black and white, because that seemed like a good idea, what with all those choices of embroidery thread colours. I had several different blacks and several different whites. Alas, my pretentiousness has been thwarted by the passing of time and the completion of the Wembley building project on time, near as dammit!
Louise Bourgeois is completely inspiring- there was one particular marble sculpture, of a seated animal with paws'n'claws and six globes hanging from its chest; its skin was stretched tautly over its spine and you could see the vertebrae just at the most curved part. The marble was polished to such a smooth finish, you wanted to stroke it. There were some drawings and models of housewives, women whose heads had been consumed by square and solid houses leaving their bodies helplessly dangling below them, that defined a feeling almost impossible to articulate in words but all too clear in her expression of it. She'd made little pink sewn model people with two heads, one head, eyelids, almost dolls but a little too scary. Oh do go and see it!
Afterwards we crossed the Millennium Bridge in search of coffee; unfortunately, I became too coughy myself (har har) and decided to tube it home.
Strange to have a cold- I don't get them very often. I hope it clears up by Wednesday because I'm supposed to be re-doing the vocals for the next album. I'll know tomorrow if I'm gonna be better in time. At the moment, I sneeze every time I sniff a strong smell, cough when my lungs hit the cold air, and walk like a 70-year-old man because my legs and arms are so stiff.
My nose is red and sore, my eyes are watering, and my head has settled somewhere between here and Mars.

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