We found a very beautiful collection of old photographs, taken in the USA, the Netherlands and what seems to be Nazi-occupied Germany and Austria. But who are the people in these photographs? If anyone has any idea, any clues as to whom these photographs used to belong to, please let us know at lostphotosfound@gmail.com

There are many clues in the photographs themselves. Like streetsigns, familiair buildings, cars and social habits that tell us the time in which these must have been taken. We see a trip on the Holland-America line, a visit to Germany, a house on fire, children playing, a sportsgame. etc.
All we know is they were bought in the Dutch city of Deventer on a market a few years back in a large suitcase…

You might have heard about a weblog called “Filles Sourires“. It’s a website about “Fragile Girls Singing in French, Making me Sigh”. In the Dutch media it was mentioned a couple of times recently, both for example in national newspaper “De Volkskrant” as on television show “The Wereld Draait Door”. I ended up on this website a while back through some obscure link and had a look around. It was quite interesting, you should pay it a visit.

However, we musn’t forget the somewhat more classic French singers, who may or may not be fragile at all but still should be able to make you sigh. If not for their fragile faces, at least for their timeless songs. Try French music for yourself and start out with some of the heroes of times passed.

Charles Aznavour – Yesterday When I was Young

Edit Piaf – La Vie en Rose

Jacques Brel – Le Chanson des Vieux Amants

Charles Aznavour – Plus Blue que tes Yeux

Leo Ferre – Les Souvenirs

sigh…

The following sentence: “There but for the grace of you go I”  is a line from Paul Simon’s beautiful “Kathy’s Song“. 

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I

- Paul Simon (Listen to it here)
continue reading »

“Requiem voor oude woorden”

een requiem voor oude woorden
eerlang, aanstonds en alras,
oude woorden
zoals je ze vroeger wel hoorde
toen soms nog somtijds was

traagzaam gingen zij ten onder
schone frasen van weleer
de vraag rest kunnen wij wel zonder;
alwaar, ofschoon, enzomeer

het buurland bleek een onderkomen
daar raakt geen verbum in vergetelheid
en spreekt men nog zonder te schromen
van deerlijk, fier of appetijt

vooraleer zij zullen sterven
betoon ik hen den laatste eer
en kalk nogmaals uit pure wanhoop
schielijk, puik en guitig
neer

A pretty woman once told me to read Strindberg, so I read Strindberg. Sometimes that’s all it takes. She was at the time reading “Ensam”, stolen from her father’s book collection if I remember correctly. Ensam or “Lonely”, sometimes wrongly translated as “alone”, describes August Strindberg’s “Inferno crisis”. A period of about a year in which the author decides to rid himself of his friends and live life in solitude. He hopes to achieve mental independence, as he feels that living together with other people forces a man to be untrue.It has later been said that perhaps the author experienced psychotic episodes in this period of his life. The book is, as my friend probably didn’t know at the time, part of a series that Strindberg wrote, starting with “Son of a servant” and ending with “Lonely”. So I later realised I started at the end. I don’t know if she ever read any other works of Strindberg, ‘but I bet she’d like “Married”.

While walking past a flee market recently I saw a copy of August Strindberg’s “Married ” lying around at one of the stalls. It had just started to rain and the unattended book fell victim to the drizzle. The scene pained me, while I remembered reading that other Strindberg book so long ago. So I bought it, from a friendly salesman with a big moustache, who took half of the price, before I even went for my wallet.

Most of the people I meet these days wouldn’t be able to tell you who August Strindberg is, but those that do usually tend to believe he hated women. I’m not so sure. In this particular book Strindberg describes some very interesting problems in marriages. Strindberg doesn’t so much seem to hate women as such, but the position that “cultured” women have taken or have been forced to take, in marriage. That of a lady sitting at home, letting others take care of the children and the household and spending the husband’s hard earned money. He seems to support the idea of women emancipation, if only so that enslaved men will be freed as well.

Above all the stories are funny and recogniseable even in this day and age. The beautiful thing with these kind of books is that when you find one on a flee market, the price has gone down, the cover may be ripped or colored, but the stories inside are still the same and bring the same enjoyment as they did years ago, if not more.

Seeing how the trout season was coming to an end, the last weekend of september was going to be our last chance to fish for trout. Bart, who ahd never (fly-)fished in his life before, joined Jeroen and myself for what was supposed to be a weekend of fishing for brown trout. As usual we headed up to the little town of Ouren on the Belgian, Luxemburg and German borders. The friendly folks of “Camping International” just on the Belgian side of the border rented us a hut and by three o’clock on

Friday we were standing knee deep in a very low river Our. Most of the Ardenne rivers turned out to be quite low that weekend and to my dissapointment the trout were almost nowhere to be found. We cought a few small ones here and there, but it was obvious circumstances weren’t normal.

Barbel

In the river Our there’s a large population of both nose carp and barbel. We always see them, as they don’t particularly try to hide. They tend to swim in quite large groups of up to 20-30 fish and we have never been able to catch them on the fly. We tried a lot of things and even hooked the accidental one in the past but we could never really find a way to interest them in the flies we presented. And so after the usual half an hour of looking at the large fish so close by and trying everything, we’d just concentrate on the trout and enjoy ourselves either way. But this time it was different. When Jeroen placed a heavy nimph on the bottom of the river and tapped the line just slightly, it attracted the interest of a large Barbel, which went for the nimph and suddenly found himself hooked. After a nice fight Jeroen was able to show us the the first barbel. Of course we were delighted, to finally land one of these giants, but we became more excited when it turned out this had not just been a lucky shot. That same day we hooked quite a lot of barbels and landed several big ones. The curse had been lifted, the “Wielick-method” and “Wielick-nimph” had been invented and the barbel was no longer safe!

The rest of the weekend brought hardly any trout, but the barbel was fair game and Jeroen also managed to catch some nice large roach. It’s tough that we’re going to have to wait about 7 months before we’ll be able to fish for trout again, but when we do I’m sure we won’t forget to try for barbel.

Afgelopen zaterdag kon er weer worden genoten van het jaarlijkse Prinsengrachtconcert in de grachten van de hoofdstad. Wederom leek heel Amsterdam te zijn uitgelopen om te kijken en boven al te luisteren naar prachtige klassieke muziek. Ook dit jaar bracht het bekende beeld van netjes in file drijvende boten in de grachten, mensen in raamkozijnen van grachtenpanden en bruggen die lijken te bezwijken onder de toegestroomde horde muziekliefhebbers.

Zij die een glimps wisten op te vangen van de mooie Australisch-Amerikaanse sopraan Danielle de Niese mochten zich gelukkig prijzen, maar boven al werd er, vaak met gesloten ogen genoten van de muziek van onder andere Mozart, Handel en Gershwin. De zangeres zelf genoot zichtbaar van de setting en het enthousiasme van het in grote getalen aanwezige publiek.

A short while ago I finished a book by Nick Hornby called “The Polysyllabic Spree”. It’s a collection of essays that Hornby wrote for the believer magazine. In these monthly essays he explains which books he wanted to read that month, which ones he bought and which ones he actually read. It was a nice read, especially for a non-Englishman, because it gave me some ideas about stuff to read. One of the books Hornby discusses, near the end of the book, is “A Life in Letters” by Anton Chekhov. I had heard of Chekhov of course and I had been to one of his plays, performed by “de Theathercompagnie” in Amsterdam. I remember it well as it was the first (and last) time I got to see Dutch actress “Halina Reijn” in the flesh. Anyways, I wasn’t very familiar with Chekhov’s work at all. Hornby quoted a letter that Chekhov wrote to his brother Nikolay and a couple of passages from this letter, like the one quoted below, intrigued me. continue reading »

Yael Naïm, was born in Paris to French and Tunisian Sephardi-Jewish parents and she was raised in Israel, which explains why her songs are sometimes in both French and Hebrew. I personally liked “Paris” and “New Soul”, of which you can see the video below. Wikipedia tells us that Steve Jobs himself chose this song for Apple’s Airbook commercial in 2008. Tell me what you think!

Een tijdje geleden stond ik op een huisfeestje van een bekende te luisteren naar een bandje. Het bleek een cd-release party te zijn voor hun eerste cd die ze zelf in elkaar hadden geflanst. Het bandje heet Go Back To The Zoo, een tot voorheen enigszins obscuur Amsterdam’s bandje dat het de komende periode druk zal krijgen. Maandagavond stonden ze zomaar opeens in “De Wereld Draait Door”, waar ze hun nummer “Beam me Up” ten gehore mochten brengen. Het energieke nummer is door Nike verkozen voor hun nieuwe commercial, waarin onder andere ook Rafael Nadal te zien zal zijn. Als er ooit een kans zou komen voor een echte doorbraak, dan is het nu zou je denken. En dat omdat het Amsterdamse reclamebureau dat de Nike commercial produceert hen heeft gevonden op Myspace. Wederom een digitaal succesverhaal.
Mocht je de band dus nog willen horen of boeken voor ze definitief doorbreken, dan is nu het moment.

Klick hier voor de videoclip bij het nummer “Beam Me Up”.