tacking up

Right now, my son Mathew and his son Theodore are tacking up moustiquaire (you know, against the mostquitos) in the old window openings and it is very familial and usefully grand and grandly useful.
At our large party,  two nights ago, when it was pouring and we huddled inside, Matthew sang, and it was glorious. So  forgot we had lots of wine downstairs, rose from Aix in honor of Cezanne and white from Cassis in honor of all the Bloomsbury folk who stayed there: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Quentin Bell and the others -- in Cassis, staying once in the summer  at the Camargo Foundation,  I found, under an oilcloth table mat, a table painted by someone in the Omega workshop, all very delightful, and now it is in a bank somewhere. Discoveries are of all sorts, over, under, around...

Today, under the sun, glinting off the leaves, i am glad to have finished my piece for the Guardian on Matisse and Picasso and Montmartre and modernism, about Sue Roe's smashing book

Back to Pascal, whom I think I really never left, after Yale, where I loved 2 faces: that of Andre Breton (tbecause of which  I went "into" surrealism), and Pascal's death mask -- like that of Artaud, said my friend Lee Hallman..

off to meet a bunch of Scottish-British friends from , it would seem, always. Always is nice. 

Britten's War Requiem

Hard to imagine any concert, any anything, more powerful than this requiem with its interspersed poems of Wilfred Owen, as majestically presented by the London Symphony Orchestra, the American Boychoir, and the voices of Ian Bostridge and Simon Keenlyside. Avery Fisher Hall was filled to the brim and over, as were our expectations. After the quiet end, the audience sat motionless and soundless for a long while.
It reminded me of reading about Roger Fry speaking at the V and A in London, gesturing and holding forth on every image, until there was a Cezanne before which he fell silent: then the audience filed out. 

modern art cookbook!

Having signed the contract for my Modern Art Cookbook, to be published by Reaktion Books, in the UK, but distributed by the Chicago University Press -- both of which publishers I love -- I have quotes from MFK Fisher, Elizabeth David, Laurie Colwin, Hemingway, Proust, Julia Child, Monique Truong (Salt) and so on, but would love a wider selection...
Anyone who has an idea, please do let me know!
This book is about vaious still lifes and recipes connected with the elements in the paintings (you know, Cezanne's Ginger Pot and Eggplants, in the Met Museum, and associated recipes from various artists about eggplant, and Manet's Bunch of Asparagus, and his Single Asparagus, and relevant sections from Proust about asparagus, and from the Hare with Golden Eyes about Charles Ephrussi and his commissioning that painting), but goes wider than that -- it feels heavily tipped towards French recipes, and then modern artist recipes, as it should... but is open to suggestions!
anyone who is interested, and has suggestions, do please respond, thanks,
Mary Ann Caws