Ever since a career aptitude test in the 5th form determined I was destined to become a sign writer, I've had a wee thing for hand painted signage.
As the last vestiges of the 1990s extension to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery were torn down yesterday, it revealed some historic gallery branding - hand painted no less - the same day I came across a trailer for a movie to the humble art of painted signage.
In central Wellington there’s a
humble little Japanese restaurant, run by a humble little Korean man, down a humble
little brick alleyway. There’s a humble little dish there called Katsudon
–rice, egg, onions and a crumbed pork cutlet.
Over many years I’ve had this dish while sitting
alongside lovers, workmates, family, friends, co-conspirators, innovators and artists.
That one dish has been the start point for hours lost to passionate debate,
nights lost to karaoke and days, if not weeks, lost to ideas and dreams sparked
in that humble little restaurant.
2.Memory card games with the four year old before
breakfast. 3.Making 3 bowls of microwave porridge while feeling very Poppa Bear. 4.The ride to work. 5.A rarity these days: the tie. 6.Driving to Stratford to submit to the Council. Cause of tie. 7.An office-wide discussion about pancakes. 8.New Zealand Music Month provides a soundtrack to
a library visit. 9.A chocolate cake randomly appears on the office table. Is consumed. 10.The building across the road gets demolished. 11.48 hour film festival team meeting. 12.
Excitedly perusing the latest Art+Object online catalogue. 13.Reading back through 6 old Wallpaper magazines which I'm thinking of selling. 14.Cutting my daughter’s hair in the bath.
Call it peer pressure, call it an emergence from the fog of parenting, or call it an attempt to vent, but it would seem I'm blogging again. And what better way to kick things off than with a month-long blogging challenge.
Here's the first post. Hopefully I'll maintain some form of momentum.
1.Playlist: Choose
songs that mean something to you and tell us why.
Paul Simon, Boy in the Bubble (1986)
Paul Simon’s Graceland provided the soundtrack to one
of those endless summers we all had as kids, the summer I got my first surfboard, and cruised the beaches of
Mahia in my fluoro board shorts. Fun fact: Paul Simon would later
marry Edie Brickell, who was a serious contender for this list in her own
right, for similar reasons.
Red Hot Chilli
Peppers, Organic Anti Beat Box Band
What is it about teenagers and movies? In my case it was Thrashin, a story of a country boy who
moves to the city, wins the girl and the big skateboarding contest. It was a
story of hope, dreams and beating the odds to achieve them. It was also a story
that had a very young Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing live at a skate club. I
dutifully mail ordered their latest tape – 1987’s Uplift Mofo Party Plan – from
the back pages of a Thrasher magazine. It was a gateway drug, first into skatepunk, then to the broader alternative music genre.
Blur She’s So High
Later in my high school years, my art teacher/creative
mentor/barometer of cool went to the UK for the summer holidays and came back
buzzing over a new band he’d heard called Blur. He made me a mix tape (!) that
featured their first single which had just hit the market – around 1990 I
think. I traded this for the aforementioned Red Hot Chili Peppers tape. And
that, kids, is how I got into indie.
The Stone Roses, Fools Gold
A couple of years
ago I rode a mountain bike 4 hours up a gold mining trail up a very large hill
in the South Island. Fittingly, this was my earworm.
The Smiths, How soon is now?
I was a latecomer to the Smiths, who were pretty much a rite
of passage for anyone with an older brother or sister when I was growing up.
But from the moment I first heard the searing soaring guitar intro I was in
catch-up mode. It’s the song that reminds me what technology has done for (or to)
music: my kids can sit at a computer and discover entire movements in music
with a few mouse clicks – something that once took dozens of swapped mix tapes,
glimpsed moments of student radio on visits to cities with students, and months
of trawling NME.
Fly My Pretties, Nato’s Theme (2005)
2005 was a pretty big year, peaking on 17 September
when Helen Clark, for whom I then worked, was re-elected Prime Minister. It was
a closer result than many had predicted, with a strong showing from Don Brash on
the back of his polarising Orewa Speech. Two nights earlier I was
sitting in Wellington’s Paramount Theatre – one of my favourite places in the
world – when Fly My Pretties mastermind Barnaby Weir instructed anyone brave
enough to admit they were voting for Brash to leave the premises. It was a rare
moment when work and life melted together.
