Arcadia Discussion Zone

Dear all,

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a song for Patrice Chaplin called "City of Secrets (the Grail in you)".
The song deals with Patrice's relation with the Grail and its keeper Josep Tarres


Last night I posted the video for the song on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSZm2U9Ym0A
The video contains footage from Patrice's 1987 Hollywood cult film "Siesta" with Ellen Barkin which the producers were kind enough to let me use.

The song and film will have their TV première on Gardiners World somewhere in November (SKY 200 Controversial TV) for which I recently did an interview and a live performance of "The Book of Love", which I wrote for the wonderful Kathleen McGowan.

Hope you enjoy it!
Raven

Love is the message - the message is love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgAJYBJBrmE

Did this inspire you?

actually know it was all about the book

I really enjoyed that.
Great song.

Fantastic song Corjan. Well done. LOVE it, and the video...

When can we expect the album?

Andrew

Awesome!!!
I gave you a 5 star and Favorited you

well, i have posted much of my praise for this video on facebook...

raven, i have now obtained the dvd 'siesta' and cannot wait to watch it. after i saw clips from this movie that were included in you video...i just had to.
the dvd is in english with spanish subs.
tingra...thought of you when i finally received this dvd. more than willing to let you borrow it if you would like to see it. it is not pal...but if your computer allows for other countries, then it is viewable.

Great song, superb filming. Love the use of clips from Siesta -- I have it on video, but it's not on Region 2 DVD.
Patrice once told me that nearly all her work, fiction and non-fiction, is inspired by her love affaire with Jose Tarres (and hence deeply rooted in Girona) -- including Siesta, a beautiful, dark, surreal fantasy.

BTW ... I never saw it (Siesta) (or read the novel)... is it supposed to be autobiographical? I mean Patrice indicates so in some of her interviews.

The IMDB and Wikipedia plot summaries are very short. This is one of the best and longest I can find.

http://www.zimbio.com/Gabriel+Byrne/art ... iew+Siesta

Apparently the character in the movie is a trapeze artist with amnesia. She thinks she murdered somebody because she has blood on her clothes. The movie focusses on her solving the puzzle of why & what happened. People have compared it to both Jacob's Ladder and Twin Peaks. It might be a love story but it seems to be a macabre one. And the latter comparison makes me think it is ... surreal.

Just as a footnote -- sorry, can't help it, but love to notice these things. Miles Davis did the music for the film.

Juliette Greco and Miles Davis had their own long, passionate affair -- controversial, of course, because it was inter-racial.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/may/25/jazz

BTW, not to doubt Patrice, but the only question that remains in my mind is ... if she and Josep Tarres had this long, passionate affair ... why did he end up marrying someone else in 1975? I guess they were just star-crossed, as they sometimes say.

I understand Happy Hour is actually supposed to prefigure some of the things she wrote in City of Secrets, but it focuses more on her relationship with Josep, and not so much on the Sauniere/RlC angle (because that supposedly only came into view after he gave "permission" for her to talk about it after his heart attack, whatever year that was in.)

OK yes ... I hear it already ... go read it, Seeker, even if it is offline .... but anyway I suspect the answer to my question's already there.

http://cheshireoaks.borders.co.uk/book/ ... ur/509316/

Now in paperback, this account based on real events is the story of a woman who realises her dream of living in paradise, but reveals there is a price to pay for that reality. Discovering that the Catalans always stick together against an outsider, the author learns to play their game, so providing an unexpected finale of her own.

[snip]

I'm guessing Josep's Catalan peers didn't approve of the relationship.

I understand Happy Hour is actually supposed to prefigure some of the things she wrote in City of Secrets, but it focuses more on her relationship with Josep, and not so much on the Sauniere/RlC angle (because that supposedly only came into view after he gave "permission" for her to talk about it after his heart attack, whatever year that was in.)

it was in Happy Hour that the assumption of Jose being Saunniers grandson was first mentioned. It was not mentioned in City of Secrets.

"is it supposed to be autobiographical?"
As I said, Seeker: "inspired by" and "surreal fantasy". The clues are in the words.

Yes, the Miles Davis music is excellent; I think he performed it as a favour for Patrice.

Yes, the affaire continued for many years, on and off. They lived together for some time as well. Some of the reasons for Jose marrying Pia are explored in the books. Pia, quite understandably, was not best pleased at her husband's former lover still being around.

I can't remember where you are, Seeker, but Happy Hour is available secondhand on amazon.co.uk for 1p, or for $3.99 on amazon.com.

And yes, I've made the point several times over the last couple of years that many of the points in City of Secrets which prompted ill-informed people to accuse Patrice of jumping on the DVC bandwagon were included in Happy Hour, published in 1998 and referring to events ten years or more before that -- including Jose Tarres discovering the buried kabbalistic quarter, references to Sauniere and Maria Tourdes, and "Rennes-le-Chateau is here... It's here, part of it, in this garden." "Did Saunier know?" "But of course, he came here. Here is the birthplace of Jewish mysticism and cabbala. The magnetism here allowed these medieval spiritual discoveries and experiments..." etc. (p212, Pan pb edn). It also ties in with Patrice's forthcoming books about portals.

AFAIK all of the books by Patty Chaplin are but love stories. As I said I liked her book on Modigliani. Same thing once again - a tragical surreal love story. Just great!

And a simple strickmuster.

Thanks for the nice words everyone.

Josep has certainly been the love of Patrice's life. The song is all about that and the nature of the Grail even though it's hard to describe such things in 20 lines of text. Siesta is about impossible love as well (and what it can lead to I guess). I love these atmospherical little word-sketches Patrice does. And yes, it's all surreal. She has some touchpoints with the work of one of my all time favorites: Jean Cocteau. She was certainly influenced by him and his work.

Just asking; the reason I ask is I've seen what Patrice has said about her autobio (and I haven't yet read the book but I've seen the interviews here and elsewhere and her own promo page), and I'm not sure where a murder figures into things. That's all.



The U.S., but it's easy enough to order from Amazon US.

My problem is I keep waiting for these things to show up at local bookstores and they never do. Oh well, yes, I know, bite the bullet.



Sorry I wasn't here when you made that point, and sorry I haven't read either book. I like the video interview. Sorry to be asking questions about Patrice; it's just my natural skepticism at work.

However, my interest level toward CoS is building, so I'm thinking I'll get it soon.

I do think it's interesting that if you were an RlC "afficionado" nothing about the blurb for Happy Hour would suggest to you it's a book of interest. The weird thing is it's her second autobiography after Albany Park, and I guess in a sense City of Secrets is her third.

Seeker1 - you could also try the 1987 "Another City" by Patrice.
From the inside cover -

"In the first volume of her autobiography, the highly acclaimed Albany Park, Patrice Chaplin tells how she ran away to Spain from her suburban home at fifteen and began a life-long affair with a charismatic political activist and poet, Jose Tarres. Another City continues the remarkable story of her life - success as a writer in Hollywood, marriage to Charlie Chaplin's son Michael and the break-up of that marriage as a chance meeting reunites her once more with Tarres. As in the past, some drama always intervenes to drive them apart - Tarres's secret dreams for his city run out of control, and Patrice is caught up with a mysterious "tycoon" who ends up murdered on a Paris street..."

Another City (1987) is probably my least favourite of the four autobiographical books, largely because I thought the men she was involved with were such bastards. It's set mainly in LA and London, but there are some sections in Girona, and with Jose, and there are connections with the Kabbalah Centre, a brief mention of the house with the tower, allusions to priests, and several quite startling mystical/magical lines. They're not the centre of the story, but they show that such things were an integral part of Patrice's life long before she wrote City of Secrets; it didn't spring out of nowhere.

One thing to beware of with Patrice's books is that her novels all contain factual elements, and her autobiographical books all contain fictionalised elements; this is why I said above that "nearly all her work, fiction and non-fiction, is inspired by her love affaire with Jose Tarres (and hence deeply rooted in Girona)". She is essentially a storyteller, and the heart of her story is her own life, seen from different angles and through different lenses; different books involve different people in different "slices" of her life, and details change to suit the story she's telling in each one. Sometimes names change; in Another City Jose's wife Pia is called Nina; in Happy Hour Jose himself is called Luis -- who of course is a totally different person in Albany Park and City of Secrets (Carrie interviews him in her documentary). Sometimes she merges elements of two real people into one character. In her forthcoming novel Mr Lazarus the main female character Vicky isn't Patrice, but once you've met Patrice, or have read her autobiographical books, you see clear "borrowings" from her life story; similarly the enigmatic main male character Raffi certainly isn't Jose, but he has elements of Jose, and wouldn't be the person he is if the real Patrice hadn't loved the real Jose.

There's a danger, then, in looking for contradictions across the books, as I initially did. Two years ago I found a minor discrepancy on a fairly trivial point between Albany Park (which is the one I would most recommend to anyone who has only read City of Secrets) and CoS. I put it to Patrice, and after searching her memory (she did after all write the two books 21 years apart) she realised that she'd remembered something in two different ways in writing the two books.

I mention this because nit-picking is inevitably a feature of this forum, and similar ones; most of us do it from time to time, including myself. If you go looking for inconsistencies between Patrice's books you'll find them, for the reasons I've just mentioned and more. As in any autobiography every conversation will be a reconstruction; can you remember every word of a long conversation you had in a particular place at a particular time twenty-odd years ago? Times, places, people will get merged. Things will be mis-remembered. Events will obviously be remembered from one's own perspective, and with one's own spin on them, conscious or unconscious. All these are inevitable functions of autobiography. To be honest, I'd be far more suspicious if all of Patrice's books agreed with each other in every detail; if two witnesses in court tell exactly the same story you suspect collusion and deception, but if the broad thrust of their stories is much the same, with minor differences, they are likely to be credible. (The same principle applies to, for example, New Testament historical criticism.)

My feeling about Patrice's work is that, like any artist, she is exploring and developing her themes, constantly learning, and writing what she discovers. A reader going from Albany Park to City of Secrets (which tell very overlapping stories) would be startled at the development. I've only read the chapter from The Door on this site, but it's clearly a major progression from CoS, a much deeper approach. The novel Mr Lazarus, a beautiful love story involving portals and time and space and sex and death, involves the same themes but comes from a very different angle, and will shock and puzzle many readers, as good fiction should.

I think some of the negative reactions to CoS from readers, the criticisms, the attacks, came as a surprise to Patrice. I admire her for riding the storm, and for delving more deeply into the mysteries she has uncovered, and so far (I suspect) only touched the edges of in her published work. I'm looking forward to what comes next.

Well, I'm deciding what to do first, because honestly I'm just starting from the "banned" video interview and materials posted here & elsewhere.

So my count of three was wrong - Albany Park + Another City + Happy Hour + CoS = 4. I mean, not to put this the wrong way, but Patrice's life is actually of incidental interest. I mostly want to know whether there really is a Girona-RlC connection or not.

In the end, then, I'm more interested in Maria Tourdes, the authenticity of the letters, the existence of the 'twin tower,' and how on earth Josep might be Sauniere's grandson (he may not have been a heretic, but that can't be true unless he broke some vows. )

Siesta has a great cast, but rotten tomatoes only gave it 20% on their splat-o-meter.

Obviously I think first things first is to read CoS. So it's back to the land of the amazons, because a check of my fave bookstores shows once again it's not there. It's either that or wait for it to come into the libraries.

how can you have got this far into the rlc enigma without reading "City of Secrets"...or about asking who might have been 'feeding' Patrice the information?

Okay, I'll bite - who was and is feeding Patrice the information?

I understand your first interest, Seeker. But for me, and I think for Patrice, the whole RLC mystery is of rather less importance, something of a sideshow based on fabrications and deceptions and a lot of wannabe-conspiracy-theorist writers. (I'm guessing, and slightly off-topic as well, but I would think most people here have little interest any more in Pierre Plantard and the PoS, and all that side of the story, and want to get behind that to the real RLC story -- whatever it might be. But we all come in from different angles.) But yes, I'd love to know more about Maria Tourdes and her connections with Saunière. Are the letters genuine or fakes? We know that Patrice was fed fake photos, which she distrusted from the beginning -- but who gave them to her, and why? Are they the same people who have put pressure on Controversial TV to drop Carrie's film? To me, all of that is fascinating in itself; but it's peripheral to my main interest in what Patrice's work is, or might be, revealing.

Personally I think it highly unlikely that José (Spanish name)/Josep (Catalan name) is Saunière’s grandson. If I remember correctly the only mention of this in any of Patrice's books is an elderly lady (the butcher's wife?) in Happy Hour suggesting it to Patrice. I'd have to ask her to be sure, but I suspect that Patrice herself only thinks of it as a possibility, and not terribly important either way.

Andy and myself and others who have spent time with Patrice are interested in her personal story in itself; but she herself is interested in what she is discovering about portals, the mystical/magical, the spiritually esoteric, and the knowledge that has been hidden and/or protected by the Society that José is or was involved in. And that's what I'm finding fascinating myself. Also, as a writer on esoteric religions and secret societies I want to know more about José's society. I have my suspicions about some of its connections, but need to find out more.

All I know at this point is she says it all comes from Josep himself. Well, that and other locals.

Until I hear him disconfirm, and so far I haven't (and I guess he's still alive to disconfirm), then I fathom she might well be telling the truth.

I'm slow in getting around to books. Truth be told, the first time I heard about City of Secrets, I was too skeptical to go out and read it. She sounded like a bandwagon jumper.

I've heard and seen enough since that initial judgement to change my mind (something I can do), so I'm about to go and read it.

The Kabbalism link was one I had already heard about. The Surrealism-existentialism link is the one that has my attention.

Well, sure, but you know, it just strikes me as strange and controlled. He belongs to a secret society which is so secret he can't even tell her fully about it, even though she's his former lover and confidante. Now he has a heart attack, and suddenly he not only tells her everything, but starts telling her it's time to tell the world.

Again, I don't want to say it didn't happen, but you can see why someone might be skeptical.

Of course. I've expressed some uncertainties about aspects of the story myself. But I believe that Patrice is telling an honest account, at least as she sees it. I don't think José would have deliberately deceived her about the whole thing. It's possible that she might have misinterpreted some aspects of it; I don't know.

But what I do know is that she was writing about some parts of this story quite some time ago: Happy Hour was published in 1998, so probably written in 1996-97. And way back in Another City (1987) she quotes José on the vision near the cathedral: "Just because we can't comprehend something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'd hate to think that what we understand is all there is." There are other mystical lines in this book. As I said before, this isn't all something new. But now it seems to be coming together into something more detailed and cohesive.

Also, the letters and photos exist; genuine or fake (or a mixture of both) they have to have come from somewhere. I've only handled one of the documents, the drawing of the tower. My non-expert opinion, from the feel of the paper, the style of handwriting, the colour of the ink etc, is that it is many decades, quite possibly a century, old. I'm going by gut feeling: it felt like other documents a century old that I've handled. If I remember correctly Patrice has had some of the documents professionally assessed. Of course, the whole story of Saunière and Maria Tourdes, and of the society, could be a century-old con -- but if so, that would simply be another mystery. If the documents are fakes, whether old or new, the questions are: Why would anyone go to all that trouble? and Who would do it? and then: Why have they been passed to Patrice in the last few years? If they are genuine, there's a whole bunch of other questions. Either way, I'm intrigued.

Twin Peaks: a snoozathon if there ever was one. Damn fine cherry pie, pity about the series !

That's what always had me hooked on this enigma. Hoaxes, yes. Invented and fabricated materials, yes. But these hoaxers are weird. They invent stuff and then don't explain what it means.

Very oulipienne.

It's a bit like watching a game being played.

I don't agree with roscoe on much but I would also agree here -- it sometimes feels like you're watching a game of chess.

Pieces are put on the board, pieces are taken off. Things are being put into view. Strange auctions. Appearing parchments. Things are being taken out of view. Statues with parts & pieces chopped off. Tombstones being defaced.

Plantard and de Cherisey are dead but moves are still being made.

So whatever game is going on here, it's still in play. I think it didn't start with them (something was going on around the turn of the century and most likely earlier), and I don't think it's ended.

I don't get the sense that there's only one faction at work here - the so-called "PoS" or anything else. There appear to be a variety of them interacting. Religious, political, esoteric, artistic. Again, that's just my perception... my intuition, if you want to call it that.

Jean Cocteau's movies are full of halls of mirrors. This subject reminds me of that, in many ways.