I noticed the Café Dante was straight ahead. A kid hawking papers: ONE DOESN’T BECOME ONE IS. I knew where I was. Just beyond were the green double doors of the Gun Club. I plucked the strings of my gone shoes smack into love. – Patti Smith, Woolgathering, 1992
Not long ago I had a dream. If one must call certain experiences dream. In Thomas’ Field on a clear autumn afternoon. On this patch of land, seemingly abandoned, while my brother and sister sat watching in wordless admiration, I leapt suspended a few feet above the ground. I did not fly but hovered, like a saucer, like Nijinsky, and somehow it seemed in its simplicity all the more miraculous. Still not a word was spoken, as was common between us. A communion bred of love and innocence. – Patti Smith, Woolgathering, 1992
That night after the party I had a dream. I dreamt that writing on paper was false, that to tell the truth one must write on a strand of hair which comes directly from the brain, long phrases inscribed on the hair like Chinese characters, wonderful phrases I could not remember. This dream came also after John Slocum, literary agent, told me he could not do anything for my writing. – Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1934-1939
I had the sudden urge to unburden all, to be nothing. I wanted to cry out but I couldn’t. My breath formed language, but no sound, while the clear sky crisscrossed the fading remnants of prayers and poems trailing as though from the prop plane of Apollinaire. – Patti Smith, Woolgathering, 1992
We then find ourselves at the Batignolles fair which is, incidentally, on the Avenue de Clichy. We want to enter an anatomical museum, but the crowd is so large that we can’t see anything. I want to purchase candy, but what I took for eucalyptus lozenges are crystals of a recently discovered metal. At that moment P. reproaches me for not writing to him, and I immediately find myself alone on a street where the traffic jam is terrible. The crowd shouts, “It’s the priests who are blocking the streets.” However, I don’t see any. I try in vain to cross the street. A woman takes my arm and says, “Hypercomplex matrix.” – Raymond Queneau, La Révolution Surréaliste, year 1, no. 3, April 15, 1925
A face at the end of the day
A cradle in day’s dead leaves
A bouquet of naked rain
Every ray of sun hidden
Every fount of founts in the depths of the water
Every mirror of mirrors broken
A face in the scales of silence
A pebble among other pebbles
For the leaves last glimmers of day
A face like all the forgotten faces. – Paul Éluard, “Belle et Ressemblante” [Lovely And Lifelike], La vie Immobile, 1932
Texts & Photos Courtesy Les Douches la Galerie
Les Douches la Galerie
5, rue Legouvé 75010 Paris
01.78.94.03.00
www.lesdoucheslagalerie.com
