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May 08, 2006

Post-Belgium

My trip to Belgium was A-OK. The Festival Livresse folks were good to me and the other participants, and it was swell meeting everyone and eating excellent food and drinking good beer, beer, and more beer, and taking part in the panel discussions. (Some of the other writers involved: Scottish novelist Laura Hird; French philosopher / writers Bruce Bégout and Sylvère Lotringer; Finnish graphic novelist Marko Turunen; French novelists David Bessis, Daniel Charneux, and Dominique Fabre; and the French editor & publisher Laurence Viallet, whose house produces books by the likes of Samuel Delaney, Dennis Cooper, Peter Sotos, and Kathy Acker).

Charleroi, the town south of Brussels where the festival was held, isn't exactly the most beautiful small city in Belgium, but the townspeople were exceptionally friendly. Nearby Brussels, on the other hand, was gorgeous, with a really amazing Place Royale, great secondhand CD shops, and sublime chocolatiers (ie, Galler was one of my favorites--curry chocolates! rosepetal and violet!!--but also very expensive).

Best of all, on the last day I was there, I met up with Christophe Grosdidier, my great friend and also my French translator, and he and his pal Guillaume whisked me (on a gray, drizzly day) off to Bruges--or Brugge if you're Dutch--which turned out to be almost miraculous in its beauty and charm. (That's G. and C. & their umbrellas, above, along with a picture of a rather soaked Me in the main Bruges square.)

In between eating way too much, drinking too much beer, and babbling about literature during the festival, I also spent some time in the stellar art museums, ie the Modern in Brussels, where I got to see lots of amazing Flemish landscape paintings and also stuff like James Ensor and Fernand Khnopff as well as Francis Bacon's nightmarish POPE WITH OWLS (above left) and Jacques Louis David's THE DEATH OF MARAT (above right) in the flesh, so that was pretty f@#$ing cool for an ex-art-history-major like myself.

So, yeah, Belgium was the reason for my silence. Below are a few more photos from the trip (including, photo #4, a shot of the interior of the Livresse festival space with its zillions of books on display... AND ALSO photo #3, the country's national symbol, a pissing child, believe it or not. MUCH more imaginative than a silly bald eagle). I'll write more tomorrow, because it will be May 9th, a particularly special day for me....