Vivienne’s Diary: New York

I need to go back into the diary to tell you about New York.

Saturday 4 May: Yoga. 4pm plane for New York.  Slept.  Arrived evening.  Hotel Carlyle (near the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Sunday 5 May: Woke 5.30am. Reading Matthew Arnold, “Culture and Anarchy”

11.00am interview at CNN, a four minute piece with host Alina Cho, to be aired on CNN International and in the USA on June 1^st.

1:00pm Interview with Vanity Fair back at the Carlyle. Immediately after I walked to the Met. Chinese painting gallery closed but okay because in that case I looked at the Japanese paintings. Chinese culture was a major influence on Japan from the introduction of Buddhism in 552 AD. They mastered the Chinese technique of painting and for centuries you can’t tell the difference, the paintings are as good. I was carried away- there’s just you, a white heron and the grey calligraphic stem of a lotus pod.

At closing I met Julie walking down the street. Reading in the hotel.

Went for an hour to the bar with Andreas. He is fascinated by the taste in dress of rich old American gentlemen, eccentric and super chic. My friend Gene from Brooklyn, now living in Japan and fashion editor of Vogue Nippon and Korean Vogue – though not so old, has the same taste.

Andreas went to the flea market today (near the Natural History museum) with our friend Sabine, originally from Vienna (she too was a pupil of mine in the same class as Andreas) now a stylist in New York. She bought a monkey coat (Gorilla, a lot of money) These coats are amazing. She’s got a nerve but she lives for fashion more than anyone. I couldn’t do it even though the coat is second hand.

Andreas taking tea at the market told me of the old ladies there (probably my age) who all look like Raine Spencer – hair and make-up. You don’t find them except in America. Eccentric. Why? Could be because of American isolation.

Andreas went to the Frick Collection. Frick was a Coal Baron who visited Europe around 1900 and was inspired by the London Wallace Collection to form an art collection – not only paintings but furniture etc. He built a mansion on 5^th Avenue to house it. For twenty years he made a point of collecting only the best works of the world’s great artists. His home and contents is open to the public. Andreas says that experiencing art in someone’s house is different, walking on carpets. The art is tremendous. Frick achieved his aim of buying the best. His mansion is the only one standing on 5^th Avenue, other people demolished theirs and built giant blocks of expensive apartments – families who had once made their money from industry, turned to real estate.

Mon 6 May:  I met my friend Terry Doctor but only for an hour. We got coffee to takeaway and sat on a wall in the street. He knows everything about fashion and politics. He and his wife Louise were part of the fashion crowd when fashion was at the King’s Rd in the 60’s. Then I walked to the Met for an interview at the punk exhibition.

The clothes inspired by punk didn’t work; exception Gianni Versace and one or two others – Hussein Chalayan.

Then though the museum was closed, Andreas and I were allowed to look at the Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity exhibition which included one or two sensational Worth gowns. Worth is the first creator of fashion – others had trimmed and decorated existing shapes which changed slowly over time. By dynamic cutting Worth changed the silhouettes and movement of gowns according to their rapport with the body.

 

And a so-great painting by Manet of Berthe Morissot in a white dress, getting up from a sofa and saying something: totally engaging. Its originality had shocked at the time –“she’s not sitting, not standing” they scorned.

Evening the Met ball. In the picture with me and Andreas is Lily Cole. She is wearing a dress we made for her in wild rubber she gave us – she is promoting it’s use because she is working with the people who collect it in the rainforest.

Yes, it was glamorous because of all the actors and models who were there, Andreas found Linda Evangelista who he adores. She gave us a lot when she did the shows.

And what about Bradley? Mostly people didn’t recognize the photo. When I said the  name then one or two knew him, when I said Wikileaks they all did. The reaction was guilt that they didn’t know already but glad to know when I explained. Yet of all these people every one knew American justice is a travesty and they were all sympathetic to Bradley. The people who did recognize him were democrats who still believed in Obama even though he is personally responsible (ahead of the military) for deciding Bradley’s trial is in secret court.

Tuesday 7 May:  Bill McKibben was coming to see me at the hotel. He’s the man from 350.org. and they have just succeeded in stopping (we don’t know for how long) permission for the pipe line from the tar sands. He wrote the article in Rolling Stones magazine, “Do the Math” naming the fossil fuel industry as Enemy Number 1.

I had invited my friend Irina and Bill arrived with J.B. a lady I shan’t say anything about until the day I tell you what she and the NGO’s she works with have been doing. One of the things she said which stayed in my mind was that to continue campaigning for justice and to hand onto your initial outrage and live with it is (morally) an act of courage – we were talking about building protest.

Because of the urgent need to stop the destruction of the earth and in time to hold back climate change we all feel the need of mass protest – particularly Bill on his laptop he showed me photos of protest events. 350.org. has linked with people in every country in the world except North Korea to stage protest and to maintain contact (jaw-dropping –  what can one man do) 350.org. has mobilized students on over 300 campuses in U.S. to stop their huge financial investment departments investing in fossil fuels. These students are now building activist groups and coming up with their own ideas for protest. Bill’s wife told him he’s been in jail for more days than at home this year.

I wanted to know how you maintain contact with groups, e.g. for Climate Revolution, for the people we talked with at Haringey College in London – so they build their own ideas for agenda. One thing we can do is keep in touch with 350.org. through the internet. That of course was the reason for me meet Bill; Climate Revolution and 350.org. must stay connected.

Climate Revolution’s agenda for protest is to link with other NGO’s and all go on each other’s demonstrations so that, for example, if you fight to “Save the Arctic” you also fight to “Save the Rainforest” and also fight for Bradley Manning because we are fighting the corrupt global power mafia who are causing the destruction. Everything is connected.

Irina is so pretty, the more serious she looks, the more pretty she looks. Bill liked her, especially as she came from Lake Baikal, the largest fresh water lake in the world, and one of his favourite places on earth. She is Inuit, an author, a model and an activist- her focus is on precious water. 

She told me of the environmental destruction to the area of Lake Baikal enforced by Putin who has out his own men into the local government. She is too scared to protest even from New York because she has family there.

Had three hours to spare, went to the Met and looked at Chinese vases and Buddhist sculptures. You feel affection for the Met because everything about humans (that we know of) that existed, is housed in one building. In London our vast buildings with their enormous collections, specialize in knowledge of the past, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert, the National Gallery. With the Met you feel that if you came once a week a year you would know everything in it, then you could keep going back and know it all better. And in London we don’t have a collection of Chinese painting. Their bookshop is the best art bookshop in the world. I just had time to look at a book of photos of the Civil War – tragic – rows of dead soldiers against the fence of a field or on top of each other and sprawled in ditches alongside the rail track. Julie came up to me – I saw her again – then left for the airport.

Politics. John Pilger:  You remember in my last Diary entry I wrote a letter to Pamela that I described some of the Clinton’s nefarious activities when he was in office and that I quoted from Pilger’s “The New Rulers of the World”, and that I told you to read him if you want to wake up to what’s going on in the world. Please read the chapters on Vietnam of his book “Heroes” – that is an eye opener on the powerful scale of cynical and sinister politics for the creation of war.

I want to comment and quote from the “New Rulers of the World”: chapter the “Great Game”.

At the end of World War II the countries of Europe were sick of war and at a conference at Bretton Woods in America they were in favour of implementing a new and fairer economic system which had been worked out by Maynard Keynes with checks and balances on profits, which they hoped would bring peace to the world.

America did not agree and because they were all in debt to America the European countries had to accept America’s proposals. America then laid the foundations for the present global economy.

The conference gave America’s military and corporate establishments’ unlimited access to minerals, oil, markets and cheap labour. The World Bank and the IMF were invented to implement this strategy. No wonder America feels the world and everything in it belongs to them – and they think they deserve it- the liberators of WW2 from the Land of the Free.

They knew what they were doing. They knew the earth was finite.

In the process of this strategy they created a new imperialism and raped the earth. England has colluded in the American Imperialism. ( Didn’t our satirists called Tony Blair, Bush’s dog as he lurked under the table picking up the bones of our “special relationship”)

Pilger is a war correspondent. He describes a scene of carpet bombing when he was in paddy fields near Saigon. Carpet bombing kills everything.

Cluster bombs cause slow death as dart-shaped shards migrate throughout the body. You can’t operate.

America creates war for two reasons: 1) Because they think they own the world and want to make sure they control (and get as much of everything in it: 2) Because they don’t want any socialist political and financial system to operate as an alternative model to capitalism (others might follow).

And since World War II, America has destroyed good things everywhere e.g. In the 1960’s a liberation movement brought in a new government in Afghanistan.

The latest twist in this scenario is that the Mujahaddin could not become strong enough to take over the whole country. Therefore they are no longer useful to America as a potential partner for America to take control of a pipeline to get the oil out of the area.

At this point in time as I am getting the diary up I shall be going to the demonstration in support of Bradley Manning outside the U.S. Embassy on Saturday 1st June at 2pm but as to what happens then and in between this Diary and that you will have to wait till the next Diary entry.