Slow Days,fast Company, Eve Babitz

Slow days,fast company, Eve Babitz

"On April 15, 1976, I read in the L.A. Times that Phil Ochs was cremated. (I hadn’t even known he was sick.) And it turns out he hung himself. In the news story it said he’d complained to a friend that he was depressed and “couldn’t write.” He’d been complaining for years that he could no longer write. I thought he wrote such beautiful melodies you could swim in them. And now he’s done such violence to himself, putting a rope around his neck, hanging himself, thirty-five years old. New York City style, black and white. No accident. Taking no chances."

(i was five)

Mick Jagger & Marianne Faithfull, 1967.

The Song of Achilles (chapter 9,page 78-79)

At night we lay on soft grass in front of the cave, and Chiron showed us constellations, telling their stories-Andromeda, cowering before the sea monster's jaws, and Perseus poised to rescue her; the immortal horse Pegasus, aloft on his wings, born from the severed neck of Medusa. He told us too Heracles, his labours, and the madness that took him. In its grip he had not recognized his wife and children, and had killed them for enemies.

Achilles asked, "How could he not recognize his wife?"

"That is the nature of madness," Chiron said. His voice sounded deeper than usual. He had known this man, I remembered. Had known the wife.

"But why did the madness come?"

"The gods wished to punish him," Chiron answered.

Achilles shook his head, impatiently. "But this was a greater punishment for her. It was not fair of them."

"There is no law that gods must be fair,Achilles," Chiron said.

"And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth, when another is gone. Do you think?"

"Perhaps," Achilles admitted.

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty attending the France premiere of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) at Cinéma Le Balzac in Paris. January 24, 1968.

Photos taken by Jean-Claude Deutsch.