31/03/2026
Letter to GLEN BAXTER
Dear, very dear Glen,
Sunday March 29th 2026... The “Frisson”, a lasting “Frisson”…
Uncle Frank, Brenda, Robinson, Robin, Janet, Uncle Henry, Hank, Pierre, Tony, Emil, Tim, Tex, Didier, Hugo, Sandy, Mrs. Griswold, Uncle Bernard, Uncle Elmer, Uncle Julian, Mc Culloch, Big Jake, Alice…
All the sheriffs, deputies, critics, connoisseurs, librarians…
All of them stuck in the frame, “Arrêt sur image”…
No words today… Silence.
I remember the first day we met in 2016 for a lunch at your Club in Soho, and me, telling you I didn’t have too much of a problem with understanding Shakespeare, but… I had the feeling some of your texts were twisted, upside down…!
We talked about the strategy of using words, fear and fun, about Beckett, about the absurdity of the world, about the way as a child we do look at grown-ups’ strange behaviors…
Meeting you was such a relief: You allowed us, me, to join you and be proud of following the rabbit in Alice’s wonderland…
Nonsense, makes terribly sense…
Few days after our conversation, you sent me the image of a new drawing, a theatre writer on stage, he looked like Shakespeare still writing until the final curtain… This drawing is at home, if this seems to be the final curtain, we know it isn’t really, Uncle Frank, Brenda and friends keep on talking about your meeting with them…
I thank you for your trust, for allowing me to stand by your side across the Channel, for inventing your shows rue Chapon, for the giggles and laughs of visitors in a contemporary art gallery!
I thank you for your malicious, delicious way of looking at us, for the melancholy, and for the Poetry, definitely…
ONWARD! Would you say, even if we don’t know where we are going, just go on and stay curious…
All my thoughts go to Carole, to their children, grandchildren, to their friends,
and to those who give light to Glen Baxter’s drawings.
Isabelle,
trying to stay still on a bicycle…
(English joke I discovered at Drama school in London in the eighties: “Is a bell on a bicycle”)
“Completely, Absolutely, and Utterly Baxter”
isabelle_gounod
