Sherlock....brainy is the new sexy

The Great Gatsby

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

Jay Gatsby as first described by F.S.Fitzgerald


If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament.”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.

.............................................................................

They had forgotten me, but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together.

...........................................................................

No telephone message arrived, but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until four o’clock—until long after there was any one to give it to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about . . . like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.

..........................................................................

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Jay Gatsby..........

Ralph Fiennes

"The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to other people, how they approach the future, people who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it. I call people successful not because they have money or their business is doing well but because, as human beings, they have a fully developed sense of being alive and engaged in a lifetime task of collaboration with other human beings -- their mothers and fathers, their family, their friends, their loved ones, the friends who are dying, the friends who are being born. Success.. is all about being able to extend love to people... not in a big, capital letter sense but in the everyday. Little by little, task by task, gesture by gesture, word by word."

Ralph Fiennes

After watching the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards 2009 I was really intrigued by 'Bernard and Doris'...and oh dear what a spectacular Bernard Ralph is you cannot tell he is acting the drama is so underlying and painful it is simply heartbreaking to watch.

I loved Ralph ever since 'The English Patient', absolutely hated-adored him in 'Schindler's List' and could not believe he would be the one to play Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, a role he played in 2 days.

Well he is a great actor, one that encapsulates for me the essence of 'an actor is a light', a great artist and a man with a soul larger than life.


This spectacular actor and human being has been greatly mistreated by the academy he deserved the award for every nomination he ever got.

Bow!

Freddie Mercury - Lover of life Singer of Songs

'It was one of these parties that you had to come dressed as your favorite person and he just came dressed as himself...obviously'

(Freddie Mercury's 39th black & white birthday party in Munich, which was meant to last for 3 days and finally lasted 3 weeks. Footage from the party were used for the making of 'Living on my own')

Freddie, for being part of the soundtrack of so many people's lives, of my life......thank you.....you're still here.......

Nicole Kidman, Coco Chanel & Virginia Woolf - Class

Nicole Kidman, Baz Lurhman, Annie Leibovitz, Stephen Daldry and Chanel......

Class is not an acquired taste, class is something you are born with and carry with you either in the gutter or the greatest of halls. Class is reflected in the eyes of the beholder......

As the great Coco Chanel once said :

'I love luxury. And luxury lies not in richness and ornateness but in the absence of vulgarity. Vulgarity is the ugliest word in our language. I stay in the game to fight it.'

And the the one that displays such with the out most clarity, Nicole Kidman in my -ever so favorite- movie The Hours as well as Moulin Rouge as well as Chanel No.5 ad movie.

'Virginia Woolf: Dear Leonard, To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it, for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years, always the love, always... the hours...'

'Richard Brown: Ah, Mrs. Dalloway... always giving parties to cover the silence. '

'Virginia Woolf: Someone has to die Leonard, in order that the rest of us should value life more. '

'Virginia Woolf: I'm dying in this town.
Leonard Woolf: If you were thinking clearly, Virginia, you would recall it was London that brought you low.
Virginia Woolf: If I were thinking clearly? If I were thinking clearly?
Leonard Woolf: We brought you to Richmond to give you peace.
Virginia Woolf: If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know. Only I can understand my condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.'

Madonna @ Athens 27/09/2008 - Uh uh!!

Relativity

Relativity, always and forever, the moon eclipse as seen from the greek skies 16/08/2008

Love don't give no compensation
love don't pay no bills.
Love don't give no indication
love just won't stand still.
Love kills
drills you through your heart

Love kills
scars you from the start.
It's just a living pastime
ruling your heart line
stay for a lifetime.
Won't let you go 'cause love
love
love won't leave you alone.

Love don't take no resenvation
love is no square deal.
Hey
love don't give no justification
strikes like cold steel.
Love kills
drills you through your heart

Love kills
scars you from the start.
It's just a living pastime burning your lifeline

Gives you a hard time

Won't let you go 'cause love
love
love won`t leave you alone.
Hey
love can play with your emotions
open invitations to your heart.
Hey
love kills. Play with your emotions
open invitations to your heart

To your heart
to your heart
love kills.
Love kills
hey
hey
love kills
love kills
love kills
love kills.
Love can play with your emotions
open invitations.
Love kills
hey
drills you through your heart.
Love kills
scars you from the start.
It's just a living pastime
ruling your heart line
won't let you go.
Love kills
hey
drills you through your heart

Love kills
tears you right apart.
It won't let go
it won't let go
love kills
yeah
yeah.

And continuum

The problem with writing about something so emotionally charged, like Freddie Mercury, is that for a while afterwards you are unable to write anything else because....well.....everything else in comparison is found wanting .....

So here below is a piece about a guy who literally embodies what for me was the most important topic of an essay in high school .....

The topic was what is better, to live your life, a long life like an ant, gathering and gathering goods so that you are provided in harsher times, or sing your lungs out all summer and die at summers end.......

Of course the 'correct' thesis on this is the first, which is what all of my classmates wrote about. I chose the second one to debate on, and was met with dismay by my professors. I was only a child and even though I was a bit shaken my belief still stood strong.

I would rather die singing my lungs out, living than keep silent and gather and become just a past of the mass of constructors.

After the last few weeks I think I have realized what has obsessed me with Freddie. He actually was a Lover (with a capital L) of life and he literally died singing.

In one of his interviews he says 'well of course I love music , its my life but if for some reason I stop making songs or people stop buying them I'll do something else, I dunno, I'll become a stripper.....(reporter)and what music will you strip to Freddie? (freddie) Well my own songs of course darling!'

He accepted what he was with such dignity, with such understanding but also with such easiness that one is enchanted by him.

'I'm just a musical prostitute my dear'

You gotta love this man.

Anyway these are great artists, great men who lived. I'm not a religious person (spiritual agnostic) but there is something in the Bible that fits perfectly "Those not found written in the Book of Life will be thrown into the lake of fire"

Now I know this does not refer to people's lives, it is actually a Christian reference to the Book of Life, however in a broader sense those who do not leave their imprint on life, they will be lost, forgotten and their existence will be matter less.

He certainly left his imprint on life. So now I'm stuck and at the moment I cannot write. It is my own personal Erinya my search for meaning, my search for an imprint on this life.

I feel the moments of time like dust slipping through my fingers and I long for this imprint but I also long for - deep breath - as Freddie said - Happiness.

I want to be happy.

And that is natural I guess but people tend to forget, or rather not understand what happiness is. So...one more time.......no more guilt......I want to be HAPPY.

I want to experience the universe.

I want to share what I have become and my journey towards what awaits me with someone who longs for the same.

Oh stars, you shine so brightly, you blind me in your eternal light.

And I still love you.

Those are the days of our lives - Queen

Sometimes I get to feelin
I was back in the old days - long ago
When we were kids when we were young
Thing seemed so perfect - you know
The days were endless we were crazy we were young
The sun was always shinin - we just lived for fun
Sometimes it seems like lately - I just dont know
The rest of my lifes been just a show

Those were the days of our lives
The bad things in life were so few
Those days are all gone now but one thing is true
When I look and I find I still love you

You cant turn back the clock you cant turn back the tide
Aint that a shame
Id like to go back one time on a roller coaster ride
When life was just a game
No use in sitting and thinkin on what you did
When you can lay back and enjoy it through your kids
Sometimes it seems like lately - I just dont know
Better sit back and go with the flow

Cos these are the days of our lives
Theyve flown in the swiftness of time
These days are all gone now but some things remain
When I look and I find no change

Those were the days of our lives - yeah
The bad things in life were so few
Those days are all gone now but one things still true
When I look and I find
I still love you

I still love you

Freddie Mercury

Sometimes it is far too painful to write about a person, and sometimes all words have been already said. Freddie, lover of life and singer of songs, 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991

Singer, performer, guitarist, musician, lover, friend, genius, shy, vulnerable, provocative, sexy beyond words can describe and a true candle in a world of so many dark places.

A man who could sing almost any music style (a unique characteristic), something that cannot be developed, a unique charisma, which consisted not only by being able to sing from the most powerful rock to the sweetest ballad or the operatic aria(with a full-voice range of 3 octaves!!!!) but also by being an amazing showman, his natural gift, his quality. A true genius, it has proven really hard to find another musician to combine his remarkable composition with a marvelous interpretation. Freddie was and will forever be one of the smartest and most envied voices in the history of music. With more than 680 live performances with Queen his vibrant, sensitive and most sensual voice and personality changed between each performance and especially in the live ones. It is my particular joy and my 'weakness' as if to say, to see and listen to Freddie's live appearances.....I prefer and adore his live performances which are always a tone down than his recordings, much more personal and provocative.

They say.....not a kind of magic but a picture says a thousand words.

Well here goes my attempt at 18.000 words.......for someone who really made me realize what the phrase 'I do not want to live in this world without you' means, for a light that went out too soon but also ......for the show must go on just like he did.

One big final bow........and the show must go on.

Queen Live @ Wembley 1986 - Its a kind of magic

Congratulations Brian May!!!

Congratulations Brian May for not only being one of the greatest guitarists of all time, not only being one of Queen but also being a great astrophysicist and completing your doctorate thesis more than 30 years after starting it "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud"!!!!!

May 14 2008!!!!!!! YOU ARE GREAT!!!!

Congratulations for resisting and enduring and conquering the difficulties of being a genius and a loner.

You inspire us!!!!!!

P.S. Photo1 is Brian with his home-made guitar the 'Red Special' which he built with wood from a 19th century fireplace.

And just Adam

Adam & Kylie

So long and thanks for all the zen....

This is a strange post about someone I've actually never met....

Eric Case is leaving Google, actually the Blogger part of Google. So what you might say?

Well Eric had rather a lot to do with what Blogger is and a lot to do with what the Internet is for me....

After studying the Classics he took a year off to travel (alone) around the world, see some new things, find out how people are different-and the same- and stopped by along the way to update his travel weblog.

In 2003 after being offline for about a month in Burma he finally got to a net cafe in Thailand. And there he learned that blogger was acquired by Google.

And he had a Moment, one of these Moments that you remember forever afterwards, when it is very clear what you really want to do, when after a journey you arrive at a point when a perfect moment of true conviction hits you......to cut the long story short he knew he wanted to work for Blogger. Because Blogger was what people like him, like us , makes possible what people like us do...share our lives our thoughts our realities on the Web, and the Web and the World stands witness to our lives.

Now in his 5 years in Blogger he moved from tickets and Help Desk to Project Management, Innovations, all kinds of new stuff and a big part of Blogger today has a bit of him in it.

After 5 years he decided to leave.....as he says his mom thinks he's crazy to want to leave one of the Best Companies in the world. And it is a fact that Google is one of the best companies in the world, both its mentality, its growth, the way it sees the web and the world, the way it understands the community and at the same time creates a community for its employees. I WOULD KILL TO WORK FOR BLOGGER!!!

His answer is : "Stay hungry, stay foolish"

Well that sums it up for me as well.....stay hungry stay foolish....always.....

For Arthur Clarke 16/12/1917-19/3/2008

We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

At last you get to see if its full of stars......

"Music of The Night" - Mario Frangoulis

"Caruso" - Mario Frangoulis

There is something about a man and his bike

Alexei@ Ice Wars/War of the Sexes

I'm too sexy - Alexei Yagudin

Alexei Yagudin Holiday On Ice Nutrocker