Paul Attinello

Author: paulattinello

  • Seeing stars

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    paulattinello
    in ,

    Diamanda Galás is here for two days, performing and giving an interview. Last night’s concert was amazing, with astounding piano licks and a ventriloquist’s array of voices – but also almost parodic at points, with an edge of blackly camp satire I’ve rarely seen in her work before. I went backstage to talk to her…

  • Audient

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    paulattinello
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    Lately several colleagues are running Events, starring themselves, or guests… and looking to me expectantly to be in the audience. To be another warm body. I’m unfortunately not very interested; and I’ve been avoiding their eyes when they start to hint that they want me to be an audient (or, as a sop to my…

  • Books (I)

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    paulattinello
    in

    I’ve been enjoying A Book Addict’s Treasury (Rugg & Murphy, 2006) for the second time through. It’s yet another of those collections of excerpts, bound in pale paper with simple fonts for the title; but this one is actually quite good – intelligent passages, well chosen, many surprises, really just a lot of very well-chosen,…

  • Apologies; and rambling

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    paulattinello
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    My apologies for not posting this week… frankly, my thoughts and experiences have been too fragmentary, and too dark, bitter, repetitive, to be worth putting into even this miniature form of public presentation. Continued rage over promotions, or lack thereof. Anger at students, who are being incredibly dilatory and irresponsible, in a way that feels…

  • The plan

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    paulattinello
    in

    The original plan was: (a) Laura is flying in to Edinburgh for a gallery opening, from New York. (b) I buy a train ticket to go up and have lunch with her, spend the afternoon, go to opening. Meet apparently amazingly friendly/charming gallery director, have fun, take late train home. (c) Many slightly complicated and…

  • Exquise

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    paulattinello
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    The French Baroque: a favorite period of mine. Although the German Baroque, in its transition from chaotic to orderly, is always impressive; and the Italian, though widely admired by good and intelligent friends, bores me; it is the quirky, unfinished but quaint English Baroque, and the fantastically ornate, seductive French, that I most enjoy. Lully,…

  • LA ’89

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    paulattinello
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    He pulls back the brake, turning his head. Pressure of the gear shift. Bare arm and vinyl. Warm, bright air, a slight glare. Can’t see. Growl of the engine. He backs towards the red Porsche… Hand on the brake, he pulls. Up. Feet on the clutch and brake, his head turns, he feels the breeze…

  • Afterthought (after bath)

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    paulattinello
    in

    I used to tell people (this is also in the context of noticing, over the years, my increasing tendency to organize my thoughts into neatly packaged anecdotes – a suspicious tendency, but useful at parties, if a bit artificial) that, before I moved to LA, I knew what it was like to relax over a…

  • Cliché

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    paulattinello
    in

    The bathtub is half full; hot, with oil, smelling of mangoes. A glass of spirits (limoncello as it happens – can’t quite do the cliché of a whiskey, not the kind of thing I drink – and that tells you something about me). Today I had to call around to the HIV patient group to…

  • Dis/location

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    paulattinello
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    Late night television: at certain points – somewhere among the fragments of Robot Chicken, The L Word, and a long advertisement for a CD set of ‘Classic Soul’ – there are so many echoing fragments of Los Angeles: Industry in-jokes, with night views behind a talking head through a plate glass window, clearly in a…