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David Bowie Is…
We went to see the David Bowie Is… exhibition at the V&A over the weekend, and most excellent it was to. It’s been sold out for ages now and we had to join the V&A to get in, but it was well worth it.
Two things left a big impression on me. Firstly it was the level of control and input Bowie had into everything he did. We all know he wrote the songs, but he sketched out stage sets, costumes, film treatments and photo shoots. The result being that virtually everything on show in the exhibition came directly from his imagination. A startling realisation…
The second thing was watching my And watching the video for Life on Mars.. It was playing in a perspex box with the suit, tie and shoes that Bowie was wearing on a mannequin next to it. She was totally transfixed, and must have watched it three or four times all the way through, moving her gaze between the whited out image of the film and the sharp colours of the clothes.
She walked away only reluctantly and with a far away look in her eyes that suggested I might have a rival for her affections….
This is for you And, so you can watch him whenever you like…
Possessed…
A number of my friends seem to be doing cool art stuff at the moment.
Take Sarah Faraday for example. A photographer by trade, Sarah is working on a project based up in Liverpool called Possessed, in which she is considering issues around the value and status of a photograph of a thing, compared to the actual thing itself, and asks the question, which of your own possessions could you give up in exchange for a photograph of it…
Good question eh?
There are obviously different levels on which this can be considered. At one end is the ridiculous. Giving up a body part (although I see someone has offered their wisdom teeth.. ouch) or a million dollars or your flat/ house in exchange for a photo of it, would I suggest be a step too far.
At the other end of the spectrum is the very easy thing to swap. Sarah can have as many of my old Weekend Guardians, Kit Kat wrappers or as much household dust as she likes in exchange for one of her lovely photos…
In between these two extremes however, are some real conundrums… A love letter for example. As long as you could still read it, do you really need the actual paper with the words on? Or a present from someone who is no longer around. If it’s just sitting on a shelf, or even worse, shut away in a box in the spare room, wouldn’t it be better (or at least as good) to have a picture of it in a little frame on the wall?
I’ve thought about this for a while now and have decided to send in some of my favorite stamps…
They were issued in 1957 and celebrate the World Scout Jubilee Jamboree. Whilst they may not look much to you, I’ve had these for many years as they were given to me by my parents when I was an, erm, Boy Scout.
There seem to be a number of levels at which this issue operates, and the image below is an attempt to represent some of them. Firstly there’s me holding the actual, real set of stamps I’m proposing to send in, then a (not very good) photo I’ve just taken as a record of my stamps before I send them off. Then there is a stolen digital internet picture of the high value stamp which is far better than my effort, and shows the finer details of the design. And finally another internet picture this time of a first day cover, which in terms of value alone, could be argued would be a far nicer thing to own…
So four versions of the same thing. The ones I’m holding I’ve owned for at least 35 years and although it will be a wrench to give them up, I know I can easily get some more, and to all intents and purposes no one (except me) would ever know the difference, certainly not my parents (unless they read this of course) and anyway, whose to say that’s not what I’ve done already…
In the end, it all comes down to the attachment generated by sentiment, how much emotion we have committed to the object in the first place before we are asked to give it up, although monetary value I suspect will usually have a part to play.
All in all I think it’s an excellent idea, one with huge scope for argument and discussion about the value we put on things. This post for example is now record of this process, and having spent a couple of hours putting it together, it has already accrued some value that may help soften the blow of losing my stamps….
One final thing, I’m a big fan of the ambigramic project logo, very clever…
Some Very Special Portraits…
These most excellent portraits were a present from my 4 year old niece who drew them from memory over Easter…
Those of you that know us, will no doubt agree that she’s managed to get our likenesses pretty much spot on, especially my bodyshape.. its uncanny..
Truly a remarkable talent…
Our Revised Social Standing…
We’ve just watched the BBC news and seen the article about the new seven social classes. Upper, middle and lower are no longer sufficiently descriptive and/or inclusive apparently and after asking over 160,000 people, the BBC have today published their findings and theories…
I won’t go into what each category means, as the names are illustrative enough: elite, established middle class, technical middle class, new affluent workers, traditional working class, emergent service workers and precariat (a rather clumsy hybrid of precarious and proletariat)
There’s a calculator on the BBC’s website here that tells you where you now belong in our society, and having just filled it in, Me & A are now officially Technical Middle Class…
From what I can gather this means that we’ve got lots of mates (who are probably all TMC like us) we appreciate culture, we know how to turn the computer on and we’ve got just about enough money to enjoy life… Which I suppose is about right, which in turn is a relief because it means I can stop worrying about it now…
Any ideas on how we can progress up to being elite? Will being from Coventry help do you think?
Spot the Diggers Fans…
At the beginning of October last year, me & A went on one of our several annual trips to see John Digweed play repetitive dance music very loud for long periods of time…
Undoubtedly (in our book anyway) the finest DJ in the world, Diggers has an enviable ability to choose and sequence wonderfully uplifting deep electro house music that in the 20 years or so that I’ve been going to see him play and the 13 years we’ve been going together, I can’t ever remember coming away disappointed… although often these days, we can’t really remember coming away at all…
I digress. And got the Live in London CD for Christmas, and unusually for me I didn’t really take any time to look at the art work, a symptom I suspect of Spotify and downloading, as the music and the artwork become more and more divorced, something that I find rather sad and that I’ve commented on before…
Anyway, we had the CD on quite a lot over the weekend, and finally getting around to picking up the booklet, I was most surprised to see a largish figure in the centerfold photo, that can only be me… And is a bit more difficult to make out, but is just about visible if you know where to look…
Our first Digweed excursion of the year is coming up shortly (the annual Bedrock Easter bash) with support from two other favorites of ours Jimpster and Tom Middleton, and we fully expect yet another great night out…
Is this all there is? Strange feelings on my daily commute…
I don’t mind commuting. I’ve lived in London all my working life and a journey on the tube is just another part of my day.
This morning though, I had a very strange moment. I got off at a different station to my usual one and I as queued for the lift to get to the surface, an image from Fritz Lang’s masterful film Metropolis from 1927 came rushing unbidden into my conscience…
There must have been twenty or thirty of us all waiting for the lift. One of the two lifts was broken and the wait seemed to take ages. We all had dark coats and clothes on, most had hats and headphones and some if not all, were looking down either at phones, books or newspapers.
Apart from the clanking of the lift cables and the echo of trains along the dirty, tiled corridors, there was silence. No one talks in this situation… And when the lift finally arrived, we all silently shuffled along into the space vacated by those leaving via the other doors…
I suddenly had these overpowering feelings of futility and helplessness, that we’re moving inexorably towards the end, all in grey, all the same, relentless and unchanging, with little or no say in what drives us on…
It quite took me by surprise. I really am not given to existential worries like this. I love life and genuinely try to make the most of every day. I don’t believe in fate, our futures are not laid out before us in some predetermined plan and we can make of it what we want…
Deep, dark thoughts for a Thursday morning. Hopefully after a good night out with my little A and our friends tonight, I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.
Tell you what though, I don’t think I’ll be getting off at the Elephant & Castle again. Far too intense a start to the day for my liking…
Snow in Mudchute Park…
As I’ve written before, living here on the Isle of Dogs, it’s sometimes easy to forget that you’re in Zone 2, a short journey to central London and within sight of Canary Wharf.
I took these photos of footpaths and routes around Mudchute Park and Farm whilst I was out walking yesterday morning. I was taken with the way the trees and fences seemed to point towards something unspecified in the distance, enticing me onwards towards the end of the track…
The grey skies, white snow and dark trees all conspired to create a monotone landscape that only heightened the sense of the unfamiliar, so that for an hour or so on a Monday morning, I was able to step out of my usual surroundings and be somewhere I hardly recognised, only 5 minutes walk from home…
(And no I didn’t use Photoshop to remove any people.. there really was no one about at all)
Home…
A quick post of an amazing photo I’ve just found online of the place I call home.. The Isle of Dogs in London. That’s us bottom right, with Canary Wharf at the top in the centre, and Greenwich just out of shot at the bottom…
How wonderful the River Thames looks as it lazily meanders its way west, under Tower Bridge, past the City and on into the distance…
Munich 1972 Olympic Sticker Book…
This is the cover of a book I had when I was a youngster. It was produced by Esso Petrol to celebrate the Munich Olympics of 1972 and in it you could collect all the stickers that your mum and dad were given when they filled the car with fuel…
To say that I loved it, would be an understatement. My mum reminds me that I carried it around almost constantly for about six months around the time of the games.
With all the excitement of the London Olympics last year, I was reminded of this book, and bored my little And telling her how cool it was and how, thanks to my understanding parents, I had managed to collect all 40 stickers, (christ knows how much that must have cost them in fuel). I asked my M&D about it before last summer’s games and although they both remembered it well, neither knew what had happened to it.. So that was that really and I thought little more of it..
The reason for writing this post however, is that I am now the proud owner of three copies of this book….
The first one I bought in a second hand market near London Bridge back in October. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, and was even more chuffed when the woman only wanted 50p for it. It was a bit knackered unfortunately, and the previous owner had only managed to collect half the stickers, but looking through the pages I was amazed at how familiar it all seemed, despite not having seen it for nearly 40 years.
Roll forward to a couple of weeks ago and we were in Leicester killing time between Christmas and New Year (as you do) when in a £1 sale box outside an odd little second hand bookshop was another copy of the album, but this time with all stickers present and correct and moreover, in pretty amazing condition as well… I snapped it up, knowing full well I really didn’t need two of them, but easily justifying the purchase as it was complete…
Then guess what, last week I got a parcel through the post. My M&D had only gone and found the original sticker album lurking somewhere up in the loft… so from none to three in as many months without resorting to the ever giving interweb.. (where there are of course hundreds available…)
Looking at it again now, what I like about the album is its graphic simplicity. Hardly any information overlaps, there’s not too much text on each page and the combination of photos, stickers (obviously) and the now dated but still to my eyes, rather stylish drawings, results in a thing unquestionably of its time, but resonant I would suggest of the optimism and excitement of the Olympic Games (especially if you were a seven year old boy).
Was that the quickest 12 months ever? (Lets hope 2013 lasts a bit longer…)
Regular visitors to my site will have noticed a distinct paucity of posts over the last 3 weeks or so, in fact I managed only 5 throughout the whole of December for which I can only apologise. This was caused in equal measure by a very busy end of work year, excessive socialising over a pretty excellent Christmas and New Year and a very well earned holiday in Denmark with my Little And.
Still that only means I am now fully refreshed and chock full of ideas for things to write about… So I hope you’ll visit again to find out what’s occupying my scattergun mind over the coming months…
It’s always a cliché to talk about how quickly time flies, but 2012 did seem to go by extraordinarily quickly. It feels like we only had about 9 months worth, so I for one am hoping for a rather more sedate 2013.
Those lovely people at WordPress.com have prepared a rather fetching annual report of my Blog Stats for 2012, which is very nice of them. Feel free to click the link at the end and take a look if you fancy it, but the key points (for me) are that nearly 300,000 people viewed my musings over the year including a mind boggling 15,852 views in a single day…
I have to admit that I’m not overly confident that I’ll be able to increase on these numbers in 2013, but unless I write it, I’ll never know…
Here’s an excerpt:
About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 290,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 5 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!
