Badaude

Great Britons!

When I'm not writing about Surrealism, I design stuff including, sometimes, scarves: well it worked for Elsa Schiaparelli...

I was delighted to work with the wonderful Age of Reason again, this time on a design showing British cultural - and other - icons, each wearing a scarf tied in a different style.

 

The version posted above is one of several colour schemes I tried out for the scarf. You can see the final colourway here. The scarf is available in three sizes, from a reasonable £35 for a headscarf to £195 for something you could probably camp under... 

(ps: spot the non-Briton: she was off project but I couldn't resist her)

A Man Asleep, a man awake...

Here's an extract from my Berfrois essay on Georges Perec's newly-translated dream diary, published by Melille House.

“Along with a poorly identified person (maybe my aunt), I am visiting a sort of colonial trading post. At the very back of one room we come upon a gigantic puzzle… it’s of a Renaissance painting… close up, though, you realise the whole thing is a puzzle: the puzzle itself (the painting) is but a fragment of a larger puzzle, unfinished because it can’t be finished… there are, if not an infinite number, at least an extremely large number of possible combinations.” Dream #114 - La Boutique Obscure

What are dreams for? Elliptical, intimate, (seemingly) significant; from predicting the future to returning the repressed, these least fathomable experiences have always had an interpretive function laid on them. 

A similar question lies at the heart of the Oulipo, the Euro-French literary club founded in 1960, which Georges Perec joined in 1967. The movement replaced its Surrealist antecedents' espousal of 'chance’ - “Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought.”^⁠ - with the application of mathematical ‘constraints’ in order to create 'potential literatures’, not all of which are, or are capable of being, realised.  The Oulipo’s ideological aims - perhaps uniquely for a twentieth century art movement - are less clearly stated and vary from practitioner to practitioner. Its problem might be, as Lauren Elkin and Scott Esposito have recently suggested,^⁠ that it is a literally ‘end-less’ literature. Does it matter if  Oulipian texts 'mean' anything, have a purpose, or even sound good? 

If you're just dying to know the answer, read the rest here. 

I'll also be talking about the Oulipo with Lauren Elkin on 11th March here. Please come if you can!

Eat Your Words...

I did a thing for the London Review of Breakfasts (the site has a fine-looking book out later this month).

Here's a bit of it. 

It's not much about breakfast really (unless you like eating your words)...

Click here for the whole thing.

Joan Didion in a Cashmere Onesie...

...and other (living, female) super-authors. 

I'm thinking of making this drawing into a tote bag or something... 

 

 

 

 

The Kelley Scarf - (50 Shades of) Giveaway

Here's a Valentine's giveaway for a pocket square (35 x 35cm) version of this design I did for Age of Reason scarves as part of their Boudoir range. This is a sample of a scarf not yet in production so, if you win it, you'll be the only one wearing it. The 100% silk square can be worn as a head or neckscarf, and also looks very good as a bag, hair or wrist tie.

This is Kelley who inspired the Scarf. She's wearing the large (90 x 90cm) version and it looks quite demure. As with so many things it all depends how much you want to reveal...

I've been wondering what to ask you to do to win - this could get quite steamy. OK, don't be bashful and tell me below why you'd like this scarf for you, or for your Valentine, or how you'd wear it, or whatever. You don't have to leave your real name...

The giveaway finishes at midnight on 11th February so I can post the scarf to you to arrive - hopefully - in time for Valentine's day.

And if you don't win, I'd also like to mention Katherine Angel's book, Unmastered, an investigation into voicing/writing the erotic and, I'm pretty sure, a more exciting Valentine than 50 Shades.

Blue Marguerite

I ran out of Yellow Marguerites. Anyone who'd still like a print, including anyone who asked me but hasn't paid/swapped/whatever yet, will get a Blue Duras: one of a signed limited edition of ten.

Several people asked me about this drawing of Clarice Lispector and I've decided to also do an edition of Blue Lispector x 10. If you're interested in either, please get in touch: badaude-at-gmail-dot-com.

Both giclee prints are A4 in size, printed on archive paper with acid-free inks. They're UK £25 inc European postage, or £30 inc postage anywhere else - or you can buy me some books to approx the same value...

 

Par Avion

I wrote a story for this anthology. 

It's called, Hauptbahnhof, and it's about a station in Berlin. 

"I know what you are thinking.

But it is possible to sleep on the station. 

If you don't look like a tramp, if you change your clothes with reasonable regularity, above all if you look like you are waiting for someone.  

I have perfected the waiting look. 

After all, even if I am no longer sure whether I am waiting, or whether I only wish to appear to be waiting, it is my responsibility not to cause a 'situation', an incident. It is my responsibility to protect the people who pass through the station from the sight of a woman alone who is not waiting for anyone. Although, of course, I am..."

If you'd like to read more, the whole anthology costs £2.55 on Kindle here.

I believe it'll be around in paper form later in the year.

If you'd like a review copy, please drop me a line below. 

Duras Prints For Sale - Not Very Expensive...

A few people have asked me about the drawing of Marguerite Duras I made for Berfrois.com so I made a limited edition of 10 giclee prints. They're on museum-grade paper in acid-free inks. Each is signed, numbered & dated. They're a4 in size.

I'm keeping prices low - £20 per print + £5 p&p in Europe, £8 for the rest of the world. If you'd like one, email me at badaude-at-gmail-dot-com. 

If these sell out I'll do another edition with a different colour background, but these will be the only yellow ones.

You can pay me via paypal, UK cheque or cash if I'm going to see you soon. If you don't have any of these and wire transfer's too much of a faff, you can always buy me some books to the value of the print, or we could enter into some kind of complicated personal negotiation... 

Berfrois (outcuts)

"One good thing about being a woman is we haven’t too many examples yet of what a genius looks like. It could be me."

I have an essay over at Berfrois about the way a few female writers are presented/have presented themselves, based on a series I started here last month.  

This is an extra drawing of Sheila Heti wearing the 'thrift-store' dress (read the Berfrois page & you'll know what I'm talking about). 

I think the most fun was imagining what kind of shoes all the writers who were not shot full-length would be wearing...

 

A Short, Dark Story

National Short Story Day was on the shortest day of the year: 21st December. I was trapped on a coach between London and Oxford. It was 3.30pm - already twilight, and besides the world was about to end. So I wrote this very short short story & put it on Twitter before I reached my stop...

One day someone moved the day to where the night had been. 

The first thing lost was edges. Without dusk or dawn days had no heft. The sun never crossed the yardarm; clocking off became a mere matter of time.

No one liked how the lights on nightclubs didn't show. They lost their appetite for thrills. A dog was always a dog, a wolf - a wolf, but suddenly all cats were plainly different. 

Horses were no longer dark, nor strangers - but nor was anything else. Uncertain of uncertainty, no one whistled or danced any more. 

Nothing glowed, not even at 3am. At dawn, nothing faded. No one hid: there was so little to hide. Sunflowers didn't know where to look.  

People saw all their lovers' flaws. Marriages failed: others flourished. Beds were draped with cloths of heaven, like parrot cages. But even through curtains, morning waking could no longer be gentle.

Twilight clubs convened on cloudy days. If you half closed your eyes, they said, you could almost feel the day switch. Until…

One night someone invented darkbulbs. Soon on sale in every corner shop, only they created the ambiance necessary for love. 

Happy Christmas/Holidays/whatever - see you in the New Year!