Keith Richard's Life (on drugs)

Keith Richard's memoirs are highly entertaining. One thing is clear: apart from music, there is nothing he likes better than drugs. His consumption is staggering: the carefully controlled doses of smack are mixed with gargantuan cocaine sniffs (the purest stuff, he emphasizes), a huge variety of pills (Tuinals, etc...) liberal doses of Jack Daniels, the whole taking place in a huge cloud of hash and spiff, not counting of course the cigarettes always dangling from his mouth and the occasional acid trip. How is this man alive? The music kept him going, the huge high of being on stage and playing these deeply satisfying, addictive, riffs which he describes in loving detail. The music: "what you are looking for is where the sounds just melt into one another and you've got that beat behind it, and the rest of it just has to squirm and roll its way through. What you are looking for is power and force - without volume". (Above, the Stones in their prime, blasting their way through Bitch in Australia:) For him "the chicks" come fourth or fifth. Had she not been intent on outdoing Keith on drug taking and outrageous behaviour, he would still be married to Anita Pallenberg, that "tough bitch". The book reads as if Richards just decided to let go and tell his life in a fit of absentmindness, which he now probably (but secretly) regrets.

A Religiosa Portuguesa

"A Religiosa Portuguesa", with its postcard perfect photography of Lisbon, its tongue in cheek hieratic dialogues, its strange mix of allusions to portuguese mythology, its superb performances of fado by Camané and Aldina Duarte, is cool, entrancing, almost moving at times. It sometimes feels like a Manuel de Oliveira movie made good, a kind of savant reinterpretation of the slow ponderous style of portuguese art cinema, enlivened by dry wit, songs, mystery and just the right amount of storytelling. Eugene Green makes it come aaaliiiive, like that, in slow motion.

Stunning

Browsing through a back issue of Vogue at the doctor, I stumbled upon an article about British photographer Sam Taylor-Wood: her John Lennon biopic "Nowhere Boy" is about to be released in Spain; she is married to the actor who plays Lennon, 23 years her junior; they just had a child, her third; she has survived two cancers, including a full mastectomy. I felt an immediate electric kinship and could not wait until I checked her out on the internet. So there she is, on these stunning series of photographs, the Bram Stocker Chair series. Stunning.