... Tuesday evening ... watched the Apple launch event, both girls now in the market for iProduct. What better way to witness commodity fetishism in its most seductive guise. However ... realising that any new device is going to require a more sophisticated OS than on the current iMac, I find myself being dragged kicking & screaming into accepting, well, yes, we're going to have to upgrade. And yet ... what do I discover but that the new models are all without DVD/CD drives. So ... is this a surreptitious plot by Apple to get everyone on board iTunes, locked into buying music & films via their store? And what about we Strange People whose tastes fall outside the mainstream? "Buy a SuperDrive!" I hear you say. OK, but i) the current model is not compatible with iMacs and ii) why should I have to she'll out a further 70 or euros? Any thoughts? ...

... driving in on these dark October mornings is brightened by a new set of CDs which come with Geoff Sample's Bird Songs & Calls. It was Clare Balding's Ramblings (Radio 4) that put me onto this book - her ramble last week with Sam West (thespian & amateur ornithologist). The format of the CDs is wonderfully thought out: recordings are spliced together to give the impression you're sitting at a window or wandering along and the various bird calls arise and fade. Meanwhile, Geoff identifies the songs with some further commentary. The juxtaposition of the CD with the early morning traffic flowing out of Brussels is quite disorienting - a whole new genre of sound art. Might not an entire radio station be given over to similar such projects (an hour of waves breaking at Chesil Beach ... weather forecasts which have interludes of actual weather conditions from appropriate locations ((the sound of snow falling in the Lake District, wind blowing from the easy over the South Downs ...))). Imagine. Which is, of course, exactly what such recordings make you do ...

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The flight of the Poet

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... a little Autumn character ... (mucking about with Brushes & a new Bamboo 'pen') ...

A significant birthday today as the elder Wafflette turns thirteen.

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... two CDs worth a listen (great covers, too, don't you think?) ... 

... Reading (Max Eastley) ...

"Silence is a state of no consciousness: if we perceive, we are alive, however tiny the event. Perhaps that is why I strive to find significance through sound and movements that operate on the threshold of perception, offering an elusive, dream-like world which for me is vital and close to the state of life itself. Nature is full of such events. We sometimes think of it as being slow, but we're missing it all the time. It's very, very fast." (Max Eastley)

who could resist? ...

Happened upon a 2CD set of Max Eastley installation recordings (it was the cover what did it) & this, in turn, led to digging around for some video footage of the events themselves. Here's a great sequence - just what one needs after two days of meetings & talking oneself out.

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Another visit to the Artist Book section of the local library. More finds and good chat with the librarian and a Brussels-based book artist. There's an increasing sense of an invisible community.

Here are some shots of Catherine Wilkin's (C)Ours Pratique COMMERCE - a terrific two volume detournage of a dreary Economics book.

Two spreads from Frida Kahlo's Diary ...