A Night in Gormenghast

Friday evening found Sebastian and I back at NYU Paris in Passy - a village I am becoming very fond of. Caroline, the director of this part of NYU, had arranged for a glass of kir for attendees and PWW (through Kate) provided small salty snacks! A fed and watered audience are always more receptive! 

Sebastian's talk led us through his father's work as an illustrator. In the UK Mervyn Peake is known as the author of Mr Pye and the Gormenghast/Titus trilogy but his first love was illustration and one of his first commissions was for pen and ink drawings for RL Stevenson's "Treasure Island". Sebastian explained how his father had him stand on the kitchen table in their unheated house in Sark for hours on end as he modelled for the character of Jim! I was hooked into the tale of a father who not only drew his kids but drew for them. We saw sketches of pirates and heard about an igloo that Mervyn made for the kids when a deep snow fell on Sark. 

The most powerful illustrations to me were the Glass Blowers (now on show in the Manchester Art Gallery) who were blowing glass cathode ray tubes for the bomber planes in WW2 unbeknown to Mervyn as he sketched them at their trade. As an illustrator foremost, Mervyn sketched his was through the Gormenghast books, his manuscripts were full of drawings and Sebastian says his father saw the scenes in his visual imagination before describing them in prose.

I collected my first autograph of this event as Sebastian kindly signed a poster I designed for the event and dedicated it to "My great friend and colleague Kate". I was truly touched. We had a farewell dinner and parted company - each their metro station and their route to the next adventure.

A Literary Walking Tour

John Baxter is described by his French in-laws as a "bon raconteur" and it is this attribute that ensured he was accepted into the family. He now lives in the 6e arrondissement in a building whose staircases and bannisters have been touched by the shoes and fingertips of writers such as Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. I visited John in May when he suggested I might like to be more involved with this year's workshop than simply as their web designer and attendee. I love him for the suggestion!

John conducts walking tours of the city, especially the area around Montparnasse where he explains why artists and writers were drawn to this particular part of the city in the 1920s, how the writers lived, how café culture grew as a result of Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann's sweeping changes to the city, where the most exquisitely overlooked Art Deco buildings can be found and how the philosophers, artists, actors, writers, and their muses lived and partied. 

He shepherded a group of us along rue Vaugirard, boulevard du Montparnasse, rue Delambre, Square Delambre and the Montparnasse cemetery for 2 hours and on Tuesday next week he will do the same thing in the film that Tom is making.

Location Scouting

Someone is watching you! Along rue Ruisseau towards Lamarck Caulincourt a piece of art casts a glance over the passers-by. And I cast a lens over the art and the passers-by. Both the artist and I are happy. And the passers-by... they are generally oblivious.

I am walking through the 18th in my role as location scout. Tom has sent through the filming schedule, Thursday is dedicated to Kate!!!! He will be shooting Sherry and I wherever I lead her in the quest for images of "The Other Side of Paris". My route needs to be fresh. I think I have found it. I stopped myself taking photos. 

But I need to run. I am late for John Baxter's Literary Walking Tour of Paris. I run to a walk...