Vivienne’s Diary – November

To Chelsea Manning, Freedom Fighter

I was so delighted to receive your note from Ft Leavenworth which is proof we can communicate.
You are a political prisoner. All activists throughout the world recognize the importance of the fight for your freedom. It is one step in reducing the power of our oppressor. Also, everything is connected. – We must save the world! The matter is urgent but the solution is easy.
We have identified the problem as Capitalism – and this economic system is run by a tiny percentage of people. It is easy to change from Capitalism to a Green Economy. For example, depending on our cooperation Europe could convert to sustainable energy within three years. But the Green Economy is not only green energy, it’s about the end of destruction. – Capitalism is a war economy.

Love Vivienne

 

Sun 2 Nov: Since Andreas was 14 and at art school in Graz he’s been best friends with Alex. Alex works with us. He designs scarves and ties (he manipulates and makes use of the art-work and prints I do and Andreas does) He helps with invitations and layouts.

He loves his work and we trust him completely. He’s so good with colour and textures – he knows a lot about carpets and wallpapers and he used to repair antique carpets for museums. If we have a request for a charity project we hand it to Alex to sort out. He organized the costume for Bobbi Bear .

Alex organized and designed our carpet for auction for the campaign against human trafficking. I have decided to go and meet Bank-Ki Moon [read]. Alex picks me up and we fly to Vienna.

The evening event is held in the carpet emporium of Ali Rahimi. He and his wife do a lot of charity work, he helped sponsor the LifeBall – that’s where we met. At the moment my speeches all begin from End Capitalism and in this speech I linked it with human trafficking, leading out from the fact that capitalism is a war economy which exploits people (cannon fodder and cheap labour); they are dispensable cyphers in a mechanical system and our potential to develop all that makes us wonderful and human is supressed and crushed.

I decide not to retire to an anti room to talk to Ban Ki-Moon – as he has read my leaflet End Capitalism. He liked my speech and I said that the analyses and warnings from the U.N. never seemed urgent enough. “Oh believe me it’s urgent! We use all our power to stress the fact.” I asked him at every opportunity to mention 2 words: Urgent and Capitalism, capitalism being the cause and effect of Climate Change and the financial crisis.

Mon 3 Nov: Still in Vienna. The art gallery is closed but we have permission to visit the Velasquez exhibition because there are people working in the museum. (We know the director Sabine – we did our photo shoot there with Juergen and Kate and a special fashion show to mark the opening of our Vienna shop. Andreas is Austrian and they are proud of us – of course we also did costumes for the famous Austrian New Year concert. This is one of the great world galleries and I look at the Brueghels. – You have to. As spectacular and immaculate and alive as ever. Then on to Velasquez. I had seen every painting before (except there were some workshop and paintings by contemporaries) The National Gallery had lent them. The Rockeby Venus. I was in heaven amongst them all. I always have the same sensation when I look at his work – and only with him: that the people are alive and that when you look again they won’t be in the painting. I spoke to my Austrian friend Elke who was working that day in her studio down below – indeed she came to see me. She is a picture restorer – top class. She works on world masterpieces. She knew just what I meant and explained some of the ways this effect happened. One of them being that some parts of the paintings are out of focus.

Which painting would I save if the fire bell went? I’ll take the little Infanta Margherita Theresa aged 3 which belongs to the Vienna gallery. It’s like Velasquez just dropped her into the painting and there she is, good as gold and patiently waiting to leave.

Tue 4 Nov: My neighbour in Clapham Julian Hall who risks getting kicked out of his house so the council can sell it – same thing Russell Brand is campaigning against – well, a film crew has come to talk to me about it.

There is an anti- lethal imperative to build a green economy. The only way is to actually do it starting with renewable energy. Meanwhile we must fight the present opposing system which is capitalism in extremis. Austerity, short term cash to fill a gap or plug a hole! Storing up problems for the future. The worst problem re. these council evictions which sell the property to rich people and add to the housing list is that it breaks up communities; something good is lost forever and the money the council gets is lost in the sand. The only party who wouldn’t do that are the Green Party. The others are all alike, I call them the block. Communities are essential when we build the green economy. Julian indeed stood for election as a Green councillor. Next time he should get in.

Tues afternoon: Another film. This time Craig McDean is here doing a documentary on my old super-friend Gene Krell now living in Japan and fashion editor of Korean Vogue and Vogue Nippon. A very very interesting innovator of fashion. Without him a lot wouldn’t have happened. Of course he’s in my book and Craig’s film. And of course we need a film about him. Thanks Craig.

Wed 5 Nov: Bonfire night is such an important night for an old girl like me. I’ve been to one every year of my life and the best ones were when I was a country child – a do it yourself country family festival, rituals and special foods. For whatever reasons I’m not going to a bonfire tonight but we’re off to the Million Mask March in Trafalgar Square. I meet my friend Juergen Frisch from Berlin days when I was teaching fashion. He was my assistant.

He teaches in Hamburg and he’s here with 10 students. Alice Delall also comes (I hope Alice can help the revolution).

The trouble with the march is that I don’t know what it’s about. It seems to be about: We’re against everything. And it has no focus. I get bored and feel guilty about inviting people. What if it’s their first march? They won’t want to go on another. There were no speeches.We fucked off to the pub and enjoyed ourselves. But then we found out that Russell Brand spoke for ¼ hour while we were gone. Well, nobody told us that was going to happen.

Thu 6 Nov: Doodle Bar. To welcome the German students and talk about End Capitalism we had also invited the students from the Royal College who are neighbours across from our studio. Alice came.

The idea is we will work with the Green Party. Main reason why: we need a focus for action and they have a national structure. Young people don’t vote and if they voted green it would send shock waves through the UK and through the world. Because Britain has more prestige re. the Capitalist set-up than any other country.

As I mentioned before our young colleagues from work are enthusiastic about Climate Revolution and come to our meetings and they are up for fighting for the Greens. It was brilliant! Out of 70 college students, 50 want to do it and pooled their e-mails. So now I shall go to other colleges – one a week, starting soon. Contact me.

Fri 7 Nov: Royal Opera House, invited by Alex Beard the director. 3 new ballets. 1^st and 3^rd – choreography and costumes – room for improvement. Middle ballet: Andreas said it “the best ballet I’ve ever seen”. We were blissfully dazzled.

Liam Scarlett. This choreographer is a star – Fresh, new. Ballet :The Age of Anxiety. The 4 dancers were all equally superb, the girl was great and one of the men, Steven McCrae, I’ve seen before. He has inexhaustible energy. Fast and flickering like he’s held on elastic. He was a sailor who came into a bar in the 40’s – The set was a small segment, the rest of the stage blocked off. The back wall of the bar was shelves of bottles full of coloured liquids and all lit up, lighting the room. He made friends all at once with the other 3 customers and got them all relating.

When they got chucked out of the bar they went to the girl’s flat. Then in front of the curtain, 2 of them – the salesman in a worn light-brown suit and trilby and the young kid in a leather jacket, said goodbye. The kid was upset. He fancied the sailor and it didn’t work out and the salesman, who wasn’t gay kissed him on the lips as a token of affection and gave him his business card. When he’d gone the kid purposely dropped the card.

I mention this detail to give you an idea of the subtle relationships and endearing qualities of the characters and indeed all expressed through dance.

The end was super happy when the enormous full stage opened up and the kid had the whole world before him and he ran and ran through the space as if he were flying.

Mon 10 Nov: Dinner party hosted by Tracy Worcester to raise money for her Pig Pledge campaign. Remember we supported it in our fashion show. Nice restaurant, Bellamy’s not vegetarian but you can usually find something but I had fish. I do eat fish sometimes on social occasions. Some of my friends were there and Tracy did the auction herself. She’s tall and skinny and she was wearing a tee shirt and a sarong – just nothing, a long bit of cloth. Chic!

Tues 11 Nov: I joined 2 dedicated American ladies Pamm Larry who initiated the campaign “Prop 37” to label GM foods in the US. And Diana Reeves, founder of GFMO Free U.S.A. and we took their petition signed by groups and organizations representing 57 million Americans, (including Daryl Hannah, Susan Sarandon and Robert Kennedy Jnr) to No. 10. I’m afraid I said something that sounded stupid and annoyed people but the press then brought up the public concerns over the farming methods of Big Ag and so we got the right publicity.

Sun 16 Nov: Worked with Andreas. Helping him finish the selection of clothes for the campaign shoot. These clothes will be sent tomorrow to Nurenberg. We are doing the shoot in the art school where Juergen teaches.

Wed 19 Nov: We met Paz and Marcus her boyfriend in the airport on our way to Nurenberg. Paz is our model and Marcus will probably get involved and if it works out the students can join in.
I’m not allowed to show pictures of our new shoot yet, but I can show pictures of our last shoot with Stella Schnabel. We’re shooting very strong women at the moment. I chose this picture because I love the coat. It’s classic Westwood. Harris Tweed.

Paz is Spanish and an actress living in California. Her name means peace but her real name is a long string of many names so that means her family is rich. I ask her, they’re a branch of Spanish royalty and she starts telling me her life story. I won’t tell you her story. I’ve never heard anything like it. I can’t tell you all of it so I’ll say nothing. But I will ask her to make us a list of 10 important incidents – just write them down like bullet points and I’ll pass them on.

I’ve never met anyone like her either. She uses her power all the time and what happens is that other people use their power too so we’re all interacting on full power. Andreas was really relaxed and enjoying himself.

Everything was so well arranged: dinner in the hotel. Early start next day. School – various Bauhouse type buildings in the woods outside town. I talked to the students and gave out my leaflets (End Capitalism). The students cooked dinner, performed in their really good rock band. Shooting till early hours.

Throughout all, this spectacular woman played a whole drama. Once I thought she’d lost her mind, then I realized she was play-acting. She did this more than once when someone dropped a remark that could be taken to mean something else, then she spontaneously re-invented us all in her play. Between changes she was completely nude. She had ongoing jokes e.g she loudly and beautifully called out “Juergen, I’m ready” and because she persisted it got more funny. She continued dancing while the band played and people dressed and undressed her on the dance floor. The students, everybody was on full energy. The photos are something else. Paz and Marcus are sincere and very serious people. They met while doing energy work with the native American shamans. They went back to California in the middle of the night – to continue the energy work. Marcus has had a lot of experience personally and makes the connection between this and the revolutionary discoveries for energy supply made by Nikola Tesla whose work was sabotaged by business interests around 1900 because the energy supply from his inventions was continuous and free. Obviously we are interested as to how this can be used a.s.a.p. I asked Marcus to let us know about this work, one point at a time for Climate Revolution. Paz has her own charity helping poor Mexican kids get proper hospital treatment.

Wed 26 Nov: John Sauven from Greenpeace came to pool ideas.

Thurs 27 Nov: We went to Jerry’s(Hall) for Thanksgiving dinner I talked quite a bit with Gabriel’s friends – about 10 of them. He’s Jerry’s youngest son. I gave them leaflets for which they really respectfully thanked me because they knew nothing about End Capitalism and what it means. I give the leaflet out all the time (you might have noticed) and then I was talking to the grown-ups about (you might have guessed) Climate Revolution.

Marsha Hunt was telling me about the book she’s written on her friend Jimmy Hendricks. Jimmy had to make it big in England. It couldn’t have happened in America. The true story-the group, “The Jimmy Hendicks’ Experience” was Jimmy and two white British boys who together created the sound. That story was “airbrushed” – Jimmy was marketed by the U.S. media and in all the 170 books about him as just Jimmy: one black boy, not a mixed race group. It makes you realise that Obama probably could not have been president (no loss there) if Michel was white. Andreas was all the time talking to Jerry whom he adores – and I do. Also to colleagues of Armand, Jerry’s beau – as she calls him. He’s a teacher at Imperial College so now Jerry has entered that intellectual milieu. (I want to talk to the students there. It’s my plan to talk to young people to build Climate Revolution in time for the next election: vote green.)

I talked a little to Armand. He gave me his book “The Lagoon”. Well, this book has been waiting for me. It’s filling all my interest re. life and thought of Aristotle. But now I’m at a point where we go into detail – Aristotles descriptions of each animal taken one by one from observation and dissection. I’ll have to let you know how I get on. Armand is an evolutionary biologist.