Some friends and I grabbed a row when she toured thru Austin TX and we all had flashlight bulbs in our mouths too and batteries in our laps, ready to touch the wires…. She would sometimes come out into the audience and hand people things, little electronic parts, chips, batteries, odd unknowable gizmos, The Ugly One with The Jewels in Her Eyes… she loved it when we lit up our whole toothy-red-mouth row for her on cue. An unexpected lift from her show fired right back at her en masse, as an homage. She knew. Ha!
A lot of her VERY good early stuff is on YouTube now, just search her name. When she married Lou Reed, it was a proof that a (sort of) God DOES exist. Or so I believe. Now. I think.

Your Kosmopolis coverage here? 10 stars, home run, all the way, speeding up until the white stripes just look like… dots! GO! I’m floored…. and ready for the CRASH…..

Language is a virus
From Outer Space
And hearing your name
Is better
Than
Seeing your face.

“Lifestyle changes” – hmm, don’t know about that. Has Ballard ever changed his lifestyle? Or is it just that he’s had it right since some time around 1960?

You getting your wallet stolen reminded me of the book ‘Paris and the Surrealists’, where George Melly recalls having his wallet stolen on his first trip to Paris. But he was in a brothel at the time………………………..

Jordi, congrats once again.

Leigh, no I didn’t. Why do you ask?

Tim, your photos are stunning. I am seriously jealous. As for the lifestyle changes, unfortunately I have not discovered the therapeutic benefits of crime, no.

Ian, Melbourne is a great city, Australia a great country, but like the UK it has a seriously backwards approach to alcohol consumption.

I’ve always fancied moving to the Mediterranean, but the thought that it would be a romantic thing to do has always stopped me. At the start of your piece I’m afraid you confirmed my prejudices about Australia – that it’s basically a solarized, desert, spiritual adjunct of Britain, with kangaroos instead of cows. People I know here in northern England who want to emigrate to Australia seem fully aware of that – in fact, that’s why they want to go!

PS. Isn’t Lou Read eternally self-conscious, an actor forever rehearsing ‘bored’?

PPS. Mediterraneans have a staggeringly heroic lack of self-regard when it comes to driving their motor vehicles, especially motor scooters. Could this have contributed to the preponderance of young men hobbling along on crutches…?

Self-promotion’s even more embarassing when you cock it up…

It was my first time in Barcelona, but the cultural differences seemed small compared with trip to Shanghai and Wuhan the previous week. I did do the Gaudi stuff, having had my interest fired many years back by the ‘Decreator’ issues of Grant Morrison’s ‘Doom Patrol’. But you’re right – the real interest was in the back streets, plastered with graffiti and transfer art (I spotted your Kafka too, and an Amelia Earhart) with tweaks of architectural or artistic strangeness on every wall and corner.

A few points -
‘ I’ve been inspired to make a number of important and long-delayed changes to my life and lifestyle, which are already in motion, a direct result of my nine days in Barcelona and the deep impact it and Kosmopolis had on me’
- Was this really Barcelona, or your brush with petty crime? Was Bobby Crawford right?

‘Laurie gave Lou a radiant smile and made little pincer-like movements with her fingers at him, clearly some kind of secret sign’
- Assuming that Laurie had some kind of video feed of Lou, possibly the message was “I’m crushing your head”?

‘There were plenty of school groups there and I could only think that being introduced to Dali at a very young age must be a very good education indeed’
- I went to the Dali museum when I was 13, probably about the same time I read ‘Crash’. Draw your own conclusions…

By the way, did you read ‘Monturiol’s Dream’ before you went?