Stumbling
I am going to Belgium for the weekend—a long weekend, as I’m leaving tonight.
Here is the deal: I had two Eurail passes left that had to be used up by the end of the month. Sarah and I had discussed going to Croatia when I visited her before…but Croatia is a lot of hours away from Berlin, especially Split, our beachy tentative destination. So I started looking into closer options. Köln (i.e. Cologne) has interested me before (not least of all because it is the hometown of Marthe, Jason Lutes’ protagonist). I realized Brussels is only a two-hour train ride from Köln.
I started researching Brussels, and discovered that the place has proclaimed 2009 “The Year of the Comic”! Apparently, Belgium has always been into comics, long considering them “the 9th art form” (are arts like circles of hell?), and proudly promoting Herge, their most famous cartoonist. There are comics-related murals all over the city, and a Comic Strip Center. But thanks to this very special comics year, there are about a MILLION comics events taking place in Brussels throughout 2009. I guess I picked a good city! In my excitement, I loaded my weekly Daily Cross Hatch Dispatch with plenty of Brussels information.
So what’s happening is, I’m staying one night in a hostel in Köln—and then three nights in a cheap hotel in the heart of Brussels.
I hope it goes well. This week, I have been exceptionally unhappy with my living situation. It’s gotten worse slowly, and now I am so very tired of it. I’m also tired of The Hub, which always makes me feel confused and frazzled and completely stressed out for no good reason. Fuck you, The Hub.
It doesn’t help that my sister is home for the summer now. Suddenly my homesickness has risen by about sixty percent. Thank god I have six albums of Gregorian monks singing pop hits to ease my pain.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
I TOTALLY forgot about the Hub.
I need six albums of Gregorian monks singing pop hits RIGHT NOW. I have several hours of the London Symphony Orchestra playing hits from the 80s if you want to trade.
May 21st, 2009 at 4:52 am
Gregorian Monks???? For real? I once told Jerry Johnson that if a spouse of mine put on such stuff, it would be justifiable grounds for murder.
May 21st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
So, I need to know more about the other 8 art forms…for tomorrow morning’s ArtSwirl meeting.
And, you’ve given me an idea for a new event, the Comic Strip Mall.
May 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 am
There is something perverted about the monks singing this song and eerily (EERIE) walking about their temple and singing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8DRP3O22Xk&feature=related
Also, did they not take a vow of chastity?
May 24th, 2009 at 10:46 am
So how about those other 8 art forms?
May 24th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Hey Dad,
Well, now that I’m back from my Belgian comics adventure, let me tell you all about it!
It seems that it started with Ricciotto Canudo, an Italian film theorist who came up with the idea of numbering off arts. He was arguing a place for cinematography among the established art forms. The first five art forms are the “ancient” ones: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry. Later Canudo added “dance” as the sixth, putting cinema in at Number 7.
At some point, French comics critic Claude Beylie wrote an extension of Canudo’s piece, in which he put cinema in spot Number 8, and argued a place for comics as Number 9. (I’m not sure what he put in for Number 7, though.)
As Daniel Johnston has recently reminded me, 9 is God’s number!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qtFPOxDMs4
(This is a movie you should see Dad, regardless of art category.)
May 24th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Mom: I’ll assume that murder thing doesn’t extend to daughters, and that I can play all the Gregorian monk music I want when I come home.
William EERIE indeed! That is so bizarre…and I was wondering about chastity too, given some of the songs choices on the six-album set. I keep thinking, “well, maybe it’s a metaphor for God, not a lady?” But “When A Man Loves A Woman” seems pretty straightforward…
Doyle: that trade is ON.