The Future is French

A work in progress:


Motivation letter
http://french.about.com/library/weekly/aa111000.htm

Name: Guy Maunder Taylor      

Date: 3rd Decembre      

Monsieur, Madame,

• General personal description including hobbies and pastimes

Je me permets de poser ma candidature pour le poste d’internat avec le projet Leonardo da Vinci. Je suis vingt sept ans et je travaille depuis Septembre 2009 comme un chercheur de production a une maison de production japonais en Londres...

• Why would like to join the programme

Je suis désireux de travailler en France afin de... I would like to spend some time living in France- I spent two weeks as part of a school French exchange when I was 17 so I would like to return there.

• The ideal internship that you are looking for
• What type of tasks you would like to do in your internship
• What are your strengths and what can you offer the employer
• What you hope to gain from the programme
• Any other details you feel will strengthen your application

Comme l’indique mon CV, j’ai travaillé pendant trois ans en Japon. Mes expériences de travailler en Japon m'incite(nt) à penser que je suis à même de vous assurer une collaboration efficace pour ce poste. I am very adaptable. I have very strong organisational skills having worked in TV.

To renew my French, to learn about teaching in France, to learn about Bordeaux and life in a French city.


Yours truly,


Your name

Notes:

• Your letter of Motivation should not exceed one page
• Once you have completed you letter please ensure all text is in BLACK

Breasts

'I have lots of milk'

These are words you should never hear from your sister.

'I'm lucky, I have lots of milk'

It was my mistake bringing up the subject. I had strolled into no man's land last week: a baby shop down the road, just near a guy with a cart with onion and garlic strings spilling over every side. Baby shops and onion strings. Hampstead is that kind of place.

They had cute stuff, toy stuff, early learners and clothing and then a whole bunch of stuff that I had no idea about. Exhibit A: Boob Tube, a Mama Mio product.



This product promises:

'Within a week you'll notice that the skin on your neck, chest and boobs looks firmer, fitter, glowing, more dewy and youthful. As it reduces crepe and creasing above and around boobs, reduces wrinkles on neck and chest and plumps up skin so it looks young & bouncy. This high quality product is super nourishing in Omegas 3,6 and 9 and packed with very high levels of nature's amazing anti-oxidant, CoQ10 (co- Q- ten).'

What is crepe? How does skin look dewy?? What the hell is CoQ10? Dewy..?

I considered all of this, then I thought about picking it up for my sister as a joke present but in the end the price was a little prohibitive.

Exhibit B was a little further into the shop. I can't deny that as I went further in I felt a shiver of nervous excitement, an illicit frisson something like when pocketing penny sweets in a corner shop.Small time stuff, but enough to make you think twice. And there it was, top shelf, surrounded by all of the other practical mum/baby goods- the manual breast pump. The horror, the horror.

I felt a little strange staring at this product, but I was totally enraptured. In spite of this, I failed to note the brand name. Here's what it looked like:



Application, usage etc remain a mystery. Exhibit B I also considered picking up as a joke present, but I didn't have the chutzpah to walk to the counter and pay for a manual breast pump. Instead I picked up something else and later brought up the breast pump with my sister on the phone.

'How about a manual breast pump?', I asked, jokily.

'Actually, I already have an electric breast pump', she said.

There ensued a 3 minute monologue, the details and gist of which I'm sure you can imagine. Suffice to say the phrase, 'express milk' (my sister used this as a verb) entered my vocabulary. God-willing it will never again surface.

Inside the Royal Albert Hall, the Most Beautiful Tree in Gunnersbury Park, Arabella (aged 45 days)

Debut

I made my debut. My speaking debut on Japanese television. A year in the job and I've seen some pretty good times- the time I first started eating my lunch on the big red sofa, the day I moved to the Desk by The Window, the other day when I figured out the keyboard short-cut for format painter. Woah nelly, some pretty heady days, some good good times.

But this takes the biscuit. I once appeared as a walk-on, fill-in for a part. They needed a staff member from the National Archives to push a trolley of old books and documents (Meiji era stuff), and to wear white gloves. No-one from the NA wanted to do it, so I got the call. I never saw that one though- the AD was a bit of a frosty character, the story the Director had was falling apart as he went along and there wasn't such a healthy production relationship.

This, though, this was my speaking debut, and we got a DVD of the show through just fine. I was Local Gib Driver No. 1 and I nailed it in 2 takes. Tony the cameraman said I was a natural. The guys in Japan put a Japanese voiceover mine. The works, the whole 9 yards.

I tried to take some screen shots, but I guess the DVD is protected somehow, or you can't take screenshots from DVDs, or I'm just doing it wrong, cos all I got was the image above. Sorry folks.

Instead, I ripped some pictures from the net of the programme my speaking debut features on (Unbelievable):

CAPELLO:CARL FREDRICKSEN

Art?

I don't know much about art. I know nothing about art. At school I got stuck at Rothko. My A-level teacher, Mr. Box, tried to explain it all to me. I couldn't understand why such massive blocks of colour are held in such high esteem. I didn't get it, I was frustrated, there wasn't a ready solution. I quit art soon after.

During art I had learned one important lesson about the gap between what you envision and what you produce. Sometimes it's a gulf. I've learned that lesson again and again since the art room: I've learned to avoid recipes with photos (that just plants pictures in your head to measure up against), although I'm invariably drawn to them. I've learned that words and stories don't always come out how you'd read the script in your head: sometimes, by some happy accident, things will turn out differently, but just as good as you'd envisioned. Mostly this doesn't occur though. It takes time and skillful execution to pinch the gap between the images in your head and the thing in your hands or that come hurtling out of your mouth.

Work is research and research lately has been art. Find some new art. Something that translates fluently to television, to Japanese television. It's not as easy as it might seem, especially when you consider what kind of art people produce nowadays- conceptual art, found art...how do you explain that?

Not much on TV is new. Most of it has come from other TV, or at least other media. It really does just feed into itself. Another research topic for another channel and another programme at the moment is art. 'Trick' art. Optical illusions and anything remotely related. The illusions have a charm to the eye all of their own. An illusion to demonstrate Four Stroke Apparent Motion has really got Japan stumped though- they keep asking, how does it work? They keep asking, but why?



Deconstructing optical illusions, penetrating the jargon and the theory for condensed, soluble blurb to translate into Japanese and then easily into the mind of the producer in Japan requires care, and it reminds me of the task I and Mr Box faced up to and failed.

Rule number 7 of a Top 10 Problems Within the Art World list reads:

7. Press Releases and descriptive, explanatory texts next to pictures.
We shouldn’t need words to understand or access a work of art anymore than we need art to understand a film or an album cover to listen to music. They are extra, they can bring you to a greater comprehension of an artist – but if they are necessary then the artist has messed up. If they are not necessary, then don’t display them next to the work. If one watches an audience go round the Tate they spends as long reading the small print as they do looking at the work. Additionally poor artists use these explanatory texts to justify obtuse obscure work, or banal conceptual pieces – the writing often eclipsing the art in eloquence and expression.

I don't need any notes, or chats with Mr. Box or any other art authority to understand Rothko these days. In fact, I'd even venture to say he's one of my favourite artists (without wanting to appear like someone who knows anything about art). What I do know is that I know what I find appealing in his art. The size and depth of colour, especially in person and in close consultation for a prolonged period, is nothing short of mesmerizing.

With this in mind, I wanted to share some art work I've come across at work. (With no more explanations.)

Andreas Gursky, Blu, Anne Hardy.

RESULTS

The results for the inaugural Fund-Raising Dog House Pub Quiz (+ prizes):

1. Quiz Eubank and the Long Shots (a flagon of Old Navy Rum).

2. The Quiztal Malaise (a signed Jimmy Carr DVD).

3. Pirates of the South London Pacific (a fully PAT tested electric vegetable steamer tower).

4. Quiz in my Pants (a quarter bottle of French red wine).

5. An Ode to Guy: Ultimate Quizbee (a jar of mint humbugs).

6. Quiz Team Aguilera (some 'Free Tibet' stickers).

7. Stepfathers because we beat you and you hate us (AWOL at prize-giving?).

7. Let's Get Quizical (a toy water pistol).

9. Quizzie Rascal (a Cafe Nero loyalty card with 5 stamps).

ISO 800

Last night I ate this with Hannah, who agrees that composition can really make up for a lack of any photographic ability or technical expertise.

The Most Beautiful Tree In All Of Gunnersbury Park

HOW TO BLOW AN INTERVIEW

Things were going badly until one of the interviewers started asking questions in Japanese. Actually, he only got through one question before he abandoned it completely. Thereafter, things nosedived sharply.

This was my shot at the big time. No more car crash clips. No more dancing dogs, or interminable searches for third-party rights holders to nature documentary footage. This was a job in news.

There was a quiz to kick things off. Just to get started. Amongst others, I couldn't answer who the current Prime Minister of Japan is. I went with cheek, charm and humour instead: 'There have been so many changes recently, I've lost track'. Yes, Guy. You might not know the answer, but you bloody well know the background to it!

The English interviewer scanned through my answers and said not to worry, there were only a few he'd be really worried if I'd gotten wrong. 'Actually', he said, looking closer at my answer script, and frowning slightly.

He didn't wave me off at the door, returning to his desk instead and leaving me to gibber through some small talk with the two Japanese interviewers, in pigeon Japanese.

I left the building and started walking with no direction whatsoever. At first I felt giddy that at least I had a story to tell, but when the full weight of what I'd just tossed away came to bear, a different kind of feeling sank and settled.