Paris, Feb. 21, 2005

In case everyone hasn't noticed, I got a digital camera a couple of weeks ago. I have always found photography to be an easy creative outlet, but the whole expense, and the significant environmental problem with film and processing, started to get to me. I've gone a good five years without keeping up with one of my favorite artistic passions. So, finally, a camera comes along that holds 250+ high-res pictures where you can pick what kind of film you want to use by clicking buttons, and then download a day's voyeuristic trawling into the Macintosh in about five minutes, switch out the rechargeable batteries, and start over.

The above photo is the studio floor on the 3rd or 4th floor at an artist's squat at 59 Rue Rivoli, on the right bank of Paris. A squat is an illegal dwelling; this is an entire warehouse, occupied by about 40 artists, who are not going anywhere. This building, outrageously decorated on the outside, is on the French equivalent of 5th Avenue, amidst many of Paris's finest shops and department stores. I don't know who owns the building, and any property issues I have around squatting quickly dissolve in the experience of being there, amidst such a shocking concentration of talented painters. I had spent part of the afternoon at the Pompidou Center, France's national modern art gallery. It was by far the best modern art museum I've been in, but the work at 59 Rivoli that I immersed myself in two hours later was every bit as brilliant -- including the work of my friend Kit Brown, to whom I'll be providing a more detailed and visually sensual introduction soon.

The space at 59 has been in existence for five years and is an extremely advanced, well-established creative community. Each Saturday the space is open all day, and hundreds of visitors come through, signing a guest book that is really an injury disclaimer. There's a doorman or two at the door all day, guiding people to sign the 'guest book'. So far city officials have been unsuccessful at closing the place down based on a variety of excuses, and apparently there is a long and varied legal history which I will not bore anyone with. Suffice it to say that in France, as in England, it's a little harder to get a sitting tenant out of a place, even if that tenant is a mob of painters who don't pay rent.

I'll be back later in the day with a bit on Thursday's Pisces Full Moon, as well as a bonus horoscope. And we're starting to post new articles at Planet Waves Parenting (http://planetwavesparenting.net) with the new edition going up in full over the next 24 hours.

Stay tuned.

    e

PS, if Hunter S. Thompson fans would like to send in tributes, quotes, pictures or articles, I invite you to do that -- I'd like to put together a page for him.