Fragments From The Mind Nº1: "Erotic Vagrancy" and other delights
A new weekly update of interesting visual, verbal and audio ideas - live from the tabs.
I’ll be the first to admit this Substack has been somewhat… Sporadic.
Time, a job loss (there I said it), and frankly sometimes a lack of confidence in my writing (certainly in the more verbose/hyper intelligent world Substack) has been it’s own barrier.
Also, sometimes Substack comes across as place where DEEP THOUGHTS only apply. Which limits those moments of ephemeral, the random, or the maybe not-quite-not-perfect argument.
But, I do see it as a valuable place to explore subjects, and equally to use it as a platform that augments what I already do and say, within a less restrictive confine. (A prisoner of my own choices there).
I would say shoutout to those who provide the high quality links day in and day out. Especially
at , at , at and at , as they’ve inspired this (endeavor to be weekly) exploration of ideas big and small.From dating back to my days at St Martins, I always enjoyed discovery and digging, which I think is inherent in the best “people who link”. It’s one of the reasons (if not the primary reason) I’ve reconnected so profoundly with DJing again. This ability to connect and thread through a story of some sort has been so deeply satisfying.
So once a week, I’m going to do a summary of things, visual, verbal, audible, that have interested me, and potentially, have opened doors to other ideas. Rabbit holes and random elements. I think this rabbit hole idea is especially relevant. Great links, lead to intriguing ideas, lead to interesting avenues not explored. Sometimes our digital experience feels like it skims (‘surfing’ taken to it’s logical conclusion). Rabbit holes mirror how I think (hope) many of us still consume - with one door opening into another and another.
So let’s get on with it.
”You will finish in an erotic vagrancy, without end of without safe port”
The Pope in 1962 to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
The fact the Pope felt compelled to weigh into the Taylor and Burton romance demonstrates aptly the scale of fame, and scale of scandal that accompanied them in 1962.
The sturm und drang of Taylor and Burton is baked into the book of the same name. EROTIC VAGRANCY (caps very much author Roger Lewis’ own), is subtitled ‘everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and on that from this book delivers. Easily one of the most engrossing, insane, debauched, strange, verbose books I’ve ever read. The somewhat coiled spring of tension that is book, mirrors, the tension and intensity that the two protagonists lived their life. Whether together, or apart.
I a vague sense of Burton through his turns in the excellent Villain (a London mirror to ‘Get Carter’). In contrast I had no real sense of Taylor. Seemingly lost to Michael Jackson jokes and of course, the long list of husbands. One of the joys of this book is taking two people you know of and painting them fully, warts and all. The drunken rampages, horrendous drama, affairs, artistic gambles and all. Lives lived at high key, all the time.
I’m not going to get into a book review here (for brevity’s sake as well as this James Craig’s Substack is a phenomenal review and also how I found out about the book.)
One thing I would say, maybe heretically, is do the audiobook. The range of voices the narrator manages to create (include a decent crack at Burton’s very famous Welsh baritone) are marvelous, and add depth (and laugh out loud moments) to the narrative.
As I said at the top, the best type of links, connections etc… suck you in and draw you deeper into worlds. Such was the case with EROTIC VAGRANCY. Because once you delve into the filmography of both Taylor and Burton, there’s some CHOICES MADE (emphasis me.)
Mad, bold and almost lost to the world.
Staircase (1969 - the full film is on YouTube here) sees Burton star alongside Rex Harrison as two old queens living in late 60s East London (filmed in Paris for tax reasons. Tax exiles come up a lot in the book. Sounds like a good idea.) The energy, is incredibly strange and sort of sad, not only for the fact two of the straightest actors around get to pretend to play gay, and in such a miserable, suffocating locale. But equally it’s compelling period piece - radical, in it’s own peculiar way.
In competition for Strange is Taylor’s late 60s/early 70s oeuvre. in many ways, Taylor had more to prove by ‘going weird’ than Burton. Burton’s background in Shakespeare (his party piece, apart from getting drunk, was reciting off dome entire soliquoys in German) gave him a gravitas that Taylor had partially forsaken by the early 60s. So her creative risks are incredibly compelling. The most interesting films I saw, were where Taylor leaned into the crazy, or the detached.
Secret Ceremony fits into latter. A deeply unsettling borderline two-hander with Mia Farrow. While Robert Mitchum appears as grotesque looming shadow on proceedings. An eerie film that is effectively Rosemary’s Baby, just set in Kensington, not the Dakota. It starts bleak, it ends bleak.
Secret Ceremony’s sensibility is mirrored in maybe the closest Taylor got to true European-style experimentation with 1974’s ‘The Driver’s Seat’ (Identikit). This I haven’t seen yet - but eagle eyed viewers will spot Andy Warhol in a cameo. Taylor, a constant subject and source of material for Warhol, blends life into art and vice-versa. There’s a washed out, claustrophobic sensibility to the film. A jet-setter living through a Vodka and 50pills a day fever dream. Perfect fodder for Italian directors at the time.
Less disturbing, but more intriguing in a hedonistic gonzo way is the posh-gone-LSD-melodrama of ‘X, Y and Zee’. An implied meange-a-trois with Michael Caine (and his excellent eyewear) and Susannah York. In the film, Caine is an elite shit, Taylor a manipulative drunk using York as voodoo doll to play sexual mind-games, with her husband Caine. All the while living in a spectacular peak early 70s jet-set lifestyle. Why this film hasn’t ended up on fashion brand mood-boards is beyond me. The interirors are epic, the menswear is fantastic.
With each film (and these are just the ones I’ve got through), you get a sense of how bold and expressive even the biggest stars were at the time. Willing to throw shit at the wall. Reputation be damned. It’s incredibly refreshing, contrasted with the melodrama between Burton and Taylor that becomes ever more corrosive. Secrets and lies, swaddled in jets, hotel suites and a touring entourage of double digit suitcases. It’s easy to lampoon, but the book makes a profound, compelling and urgent case for a critical reappraisal of the two as both actors, celebrities, and harbingers of modern day media consumption.
In short, if you want a summer book for the ages, you should get this book and devour it’s extremely high key verboseness. Roger Lewis certainly knows how to deliver a well timed “c*nt’ into proceedings every often. (An art for those that know and a word both Burton and Taylor knew how to use to maximum effect.) There’s some great further reading on this over at Airmail
The Comex Rolex
The precipitous decline of the secondary watch market is well documented now. (The Jacob Gallagher piece on Hodinkee is about as a good a place to start), but the sales keep on coming. I wouldn’t count myself as a watch expert, but a lover of stories - especially, when they actually come from a point of view of authenticity. And this one fits into that category. To quote Robb Report:
COMEX or “Compagnie maritime d’expertises” is a French diving outfit that has been working with Rolex since 1970 (after their involvement with the SEALAB project).
COMEX commissioned watches from Rolex for use by their divers, often with experimental features such as helium release valves that had been developed for the Rolex Sea-Dweller during SEALAB. COMEX watches were never offered for sale commercially, and each
had a marked caseback signifying its commission.
What do I mean by authenticity? Well, let’s be honest, when most people are buying a watch these days high-level functionality isn’t top priority. A consequence of that is a simple truth can get lost. These watches were developed to deliver in the toughest environments possible. A submariner these days may only be partially submerged in the Palms Dubai, but the COMEX, was quite literally built different.
I also love the baby blue color. A by-product of usage, it softens the watch in general, but also feels utterly unique. It’s just a beautiful object, with a great story. There’s something in maybe returning to some of the simplicity, across the auction market.
The Battle For Attention: Wild-Posters Edition
I’m on the record of having a profound love for Art Direction, not just pleasant to look at, but using art direction to bring stronger stories out of the product, or the brand. It’s rarer than it seems, and harder than it looks.
I also love a wildposting. The ultimate agency ‘visuals out in the wild tool’, wildpostings remain bemusingly disregarded within the context of media agencies, and those that brief them. (It’s usually something about reach / waste of dollars, which considering the black hole that media agencies ask their clients to invest in seems, well a bit rich.)
Rimowa’s new work wonderfully threads this needle. It’s clear, it elevates the product message while continuing to augment the larger brand platform. Congrats to the teams involved.
On the flip side, wildpostings (when done right) are fantastic ways of driving short term attention in dense urban contexts. Wit and hyper contextual copy feeling like they are rarely deployed in the pursuit of attention. Which is why I was pleased to see Bandit Running play so hard into the IYKYK sensibility of downtown NYC for their store opening.
That’s it until next week. I’ll try and keep it shorter.