In late September, 2024, Barb and I went to Lowlands for two and half weeks. This means Amsterdam, Brussels, and Antwerp. All are places I know fairly well.
Beyond the Lowlands trip, I’m covering this fall and winter, including the death of my brother Embry, and another Christmas.
Our first stop was Amsterdam, and the first place I wanted to go was their Van Gogh museum. Here’s a nice shot of Barb with one of the man’s self-portraits.
Most of his really well-known paintings are elsewhere, but on the top floor, there are some amazing works from the last weeks of van Gogh’s life. To be painting that well, and to want to die anyway…unfathomable.
We stayed in old, plush Art Nouveau district near the museums. Each house’s door was more spectacular than the next. I’ve always felt that Art Nouveau didn’t last long enough. Why not continue making houses and furniture look like this! Less isn’t more—it’s less. Photo by Barb.
Well, there’s always Art Deco. Saw this wall in a kind of lamp and furniture historical art gallery plus store by an utterly cozy and peaceful canal.
I didn’t happen to get many photos in Brussels. But here’s the supernal master Peter Bruegel’s painting, “The Fall of the Rebel Angels.” This appears on the cover of my novel of Bruegel’s life, As Above. So Below. The painting is in the Brussels museum, and I used to go look at it a lot when I as living in Brussels for a few months at one point.
I was thinking about that painting again while writing Sqinks last month when I described a collection of sqinks being like “a teeming horde of flying grotesques and chimeras derived from fish, birds, kitchen implements, plants, knives, and fungi.”
And here’s some Bruegel photos from Antwerp, details of a lesser-known Bruegel painting “Mad Meg” or “Dulle Griet.” It happens to have belonged to an Antwerp worthy, whose former house is now a kind of museum in Antwerp, with this marvel in it.
The painting is quite large, and the room is dim, presumably to save the colors from fading. The last time I’d seen the painting it had been very dirty, and hard to see. But now it’s clean but, as I say the room is dim. This is where my little phone camera was a great aid. I used it like a viewer, moving it back and forth near the canvas, while watching the screen to see the details: not only magnified, but clarified by the camera’s AI.
And look at that big eye up there! So craftsman-like, such detail. And for some reason known only to Peter Bruegel, we have a row of three little birds (or demons) perched above the eye.
Barb and I spent at least an hour in “Dlolle Griet” room in Antwerp, going every square inch of the masterpiece. Paradise! No way of knowing if I’ll ever get there again, so I took my time. This little detail above: my god! It’s practially a novel! A fractal! No stinting here, no short weight, no rough draft. Seems like Bruegel might well have spent a year on Dulle Griet.
We stayed in a retrofitted mansion in downtown Antwerp, with a rooftop patio and a view of the tile roofs and the cathedral. No problem, baby! The lighting on the cathedral is so striking because the sun was rising from behind me. Unless it was setting…
As always in search for the cool part of town, we found an Antwerp street with artistic shops. This was an avant garde furniture store or gallery with nobody in it except for this friendly guy, Wout Bemelmans. His goal in life is to design this type of furniture, and he had a few pieces to show us.
And then it was back home, flying out of Amsterdam. The airports so modern and slick there. Souls getting sorted to leave this world.
And back to my deck in good old Los Gatos. As I always say, if clouds were for some reason rare—like if there was only one spot on Earth where you could see them—how we’d flock to view them!
I introduced Barb Ash to Teri Hope, curator of the Los Gatos Coffee Roasting cafe—and Barb hung a show of seventeen photos that she took in Cuba last year. A beautiful show and a big success.
Barb has this skill that somehow I still haven’t mastered—even after sexy-five years of shooting. It’s called focus. Barb’s photos are totally sharp. Great compositions and subjects too.
One day I was showing Barb the Haight, where I don’t go very often. Always fun to see the new stores and the old ones. Borderlands Books is there these days, moved from Valencia Street, a great place. This shot shows the sign of … a music store. Cute.
We hit the insanely gnarly Fluevog shoe store. One of a kind creations, year after year. Me wondering which shoe will go best with my outfits.
This is more or less a Halloween painting, although at the time I was also trying to visualize some of the aliens in Sqinks. They’re called Mu9ers from the world Mu 9. Like the San Francisco 49ers, in a way, although these critters are known for huffing human brains. Not that, as it turns out, it actually kills you have a Mu9er huff your brain. More like it clears you up. But too many repeats, and your brain’s a little too clear, or maybe it’s wet, gooshy, and collapsed like an old pumpkin, and there you are on the Santa Cruz sidewalk. Spare change?
But while it lasts, we can have fun. Here I am in food-coma at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe in Emeryville, down near the lower end of Berzerkistan. I worship the Clash song, “Rudy Can’t Fail.” Along with Dandy Livingtone and his “Message to You Rudy,” these rude boys redeemed by first name, which lived so long in the shadow of that cutesy-poo, didactic, ad-jingle-type reindeer.
Rudy can’t fail! Yes! Rudy Jr. had told me of this Valhalla, and, while spending a night in Berkeley, Barb and I sought it out for the most bodacious breakfast imaginable. Spinach, salmon, grease…we got! Unpretentious as a used car lot, but hip and mellow within.