Saturday 14 November 2009

No Smoke Without Soya: The Most Photographed Man in Bermuda

I’m scrutinizing the advertising on the wrappings of two plants I can’t seem to live without: tobacco leaves and soya beans.
"Because what you eat shapes your lifeMake your body a better place to live". "Fumer tue" (smoking kills)

Two constants: cigars and soya: daily, orally, necessary; I have to swallow a contradiction. Yet there’s a harmony in the imagery; a sublime synchronicity unites my two favorite brands.
If I were to trace both the leafy-sleepy-island-nude and the poised panther, I'd have almost identical tracings.
Cheek to cheek.
Leaf to leaf.
But it has taken an out-of-time postcard from Bermuda, ironically, a place associated with disappearances, to reveal (through pataphysical association and pictorial logic) that there’s no such thing as “smoke without soya”.

On the reverse of the postcard there's a map of Bermuda: a country you wouldn't struggle to draw from memory - no need to 'know it like the back of your hand' - you could just trace the side of your hand.
"The policeman who directs traffic from his bird cage in the Island's busy capital is, perhaps the most photographed man in Bermuda".
I wonder how many photographs exist of this policeman's hand mimicking his native land?
I burn a book a day; smoke 20 Panthers every day; 2 tins of 10 cost €9.50 (£8.99) in France, where I go to import mine. The average paperback costs about £8.99. If I bought my Panthers in the UK, where they cost £8.99 per tin of ten, I’d be burning a hardback a day!
Look, I'm getting as mean as the Dean!
Pyramid of panthers/2800 cigar triangle.
Leaning tower of soya.

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