About a Boy


Charles Ninow from 'Dance Yourself Clean' at Ozlyn.

Last month my friend Charles had a show at a gallery in Auckland. He asked me to write a short piece to accompany the works. This is what I wrote.





ABOUT A BOY – 823.914

  1. The library I work at in Sweden has a split personality. One half in Swedish, the other English. The signs, the books, the general information, the students: both in Swedish and in English. I spend a lot of my time translating text from English into Swedish, and vice versa. In high school I studied Japanese. But now whenever I try to think of words, phrases or sentences in that language it comes out as Swedish. I guess my head only has the capacity for two languages at one time.


  1. In the early twentieth century, Malmö – the Swedish city I live in – had a city registry for dogs. Every hound, pooch, mongrel and bitch was duly recorded and archived. I learnt this on a trip to Malmö’s city archive with the Interloans team of which I am affiliated with. Did this mean that in circa 1910 there were no stray dogs in Malmö??


  1. At the library, we are currently in the process of transitioning over to the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Previously, they used SAB (the Swedish Classification system) which ordered material into different fields using letters as Dewey does with numbers.
    Letters into Numbers. The transition is an ongoing project, and at present both systems rub shoulders with each other on the shelves which the collection of numbered books steadily increases, while the lettered collection slowly fades away.  It seems strange to think about numbers replacing letters in a building housing the written word. I could say it’s the way of the future, but it’s been around since 1876. 
    As a library assistant, one of my particular roles is to change books over from SAB to DDC. It is a mind-numbingly simple task: delete some letters, add some numbers. Suddenly a book is reclassified – if it could think it would most likely have an existential crisis.
    If they could invent a machine to do this task they would.
Instead, they have me.


  1. Every dog owner was required to pay a ‘dog tax’ in order to keep the animal; hence the registry. The dog tax wasn’t much – perhaps a couple of öre. In fact, the monetary unit ‘öre’ is obsolete now, finally phased out a few years ago like the 5 cent coin. What was once the cost of registering your dog these days wouldn’t even get you a match stick (incidentally, a Swedish invention). The dogs were well documented – noted down were their respective breed, age, colouring and address, as well as the name of the owner and that of the dog. I would like to say that the dog registry was organized by the name of the dog, but on second thoughts, now I can’t be certain.


  1. The Swedes, being stereotypically a socially tolerant society, are not especially taken with the Dewey Decimal System. They believe it sexist, racist; too hierarchical. I would say they are probably right. Take for example, the 200’s: 
    Religion. 
    200 – Religion / 210 – Natural theology / 220 – Bible / 230 – Christian theology / 240 - Christian moral & devotional theology / 250 – Christian orders & local church / 260 – Christian social theology / 270 –Christian church history / 280 – Christian denominations & sects / 290 – Other & comparative religions.
    But I guess when your classification system is invented by a 25 year old white Christian male, what can one expect?



  1. Like baby names, ships names, and street names, dog names fall in and out of fashion. In Malmö at the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘Boy’ was THE NAME to call your dog. An exorbitant number of dogs were registered under the name Boy. Why was this? Boy is not a Swedish name. Heck, it’s not even a Swedish word. Were unsuspecting Swedes reading English literature and mistaking the generic phrases of ‘Good boy!’, ‘Who’s a good boy?’  as the poor mutt’s actual name? Or perhaps this was the Swedish dog equivalent of John Doe – a dog with no name. I image this heightened popularity in the name Boy would be particularly problematic when one needed to beckon their faithful companion.




HERE BOY!



and they all came running.

Fountains flowing into musical streams









click image to enlarge! 

"Here is a musical streams-of-story, an appealing history of 'marketing trends and stylistic patterns in the development of pop/rock music.' Topping the chart is a time-series of popular and rock music as a share of total record sales, although the names are not scaled in proportion to their contributions to the grand total. Bold letters indicate some of the 24 stylistic categories, fountains flowing into musical streams,  (eg Schlock Rock, lower left). Several fashions, including Bubblegum and Surf, did not last, to the relief of a grateful world. In these overlapping parallel time-series, a few names of the 470 artists are repeated, as they resurface in fresh currents. The multiple parallel flows locate music-makers in two dimensions - linking musical parents and offspring from 1955 to 1974, and listing contemporaries for each year. With an intense richness of detail (measuring in at 20% of the typographic density of a telephone book), this nostalgic and engaging chart fascinates many viewers - at least those of a certain age. Also the illustration presents a somewhat divergent perspective on popular music: songs are not merely singles - unique, one-time, de novo happenings - rather music and music-makers share a pattern, a context, a history.

Library find of the day: Chart of musical groups and movements from 1955 to 1974, discovered in an Interloan book 'Visual Explanations: images and quantities, evidence and narrative', Edward R. Tufte, 1997. A fascinating chart, which I have also printed out to put up on my walls, and hopefully will work as a blueprint by which to discover more bands. And I could even do that chronologically.

Office supplies

In an effort to add a little colour and personalise my at present rather drab new work abode, I pinned up these four postcards - featuring artwork by Clinton Watkins, Claire Cooper and Simon Esling; and a postcard sent from my grandmother while she was holidaying in Florence in 1990.

Soon my office (the fact I have an office to myself is still a foreign concept) will be the 'library triage': full of forlorn books needing immediate medical attention - broken spines, torn pages or loose leaves, as one of my duties is to mend and tend to damaged books, surely one of the funnest responsibilities of a library assistant.

Cotton Anniversary


































Portrait after having lived for one year in Malmö, Sweden. A small milestone!

Efter tolv månader i Sverige, har jag nu:

- mastered enough of the Swedish language to articulate my thoughts to Swedish friends and acquaintances in both sober and less sober states of mind, attempted to read my first Agatha Christie in Swedish, written short pieces of text about ABBA, Twin Peaks, and my old flat in Auckland, followed American TV shows by reading Swedish subtitles, watched an Ingmar Bergman film without subtitles, however the extent of my comprehension of that film is highly debatable.

- become a fully fledged cyclist about town, no other mode of transport can compare to the bicycle, especially after one has learnt the necessary cycle etiquette and rules, thus avoiding any awkward cycle faux pas or potentially hazardous accidents.

- been offered full time employment as a library assistant at Malmö Högskolas Bibliotek, the huge success after months of job coaching, awkward phone calls, applications I didn't understand and seemingly pointless business networking. Good things, do apparently, take time. Was told I had 'made a great impression and had really good references', so those must be the secrets to employment.

- not cut my hair for 12 months. It is at present the longest it has been in my life. The goal is to leave it that way at least until I can successfully explain to a Swedish hairdresser what I actually want in a hair style.

- travelled to more cities than I ever have before. Copenhagen, London, Glasgow, Berlin so far and counting. With the incoming funds from the above mentioned employment, hopefully this year the list will continue to expand.

- read an impressive number of  classic books, taking advantage of Malmö public library's excellent English fiction section. Titles include Rebecca, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Steppenwolf, The Remains of the Day, Pan, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the short stories of Truman Capote, all of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. I hope this reading trend will continue, with high literature in English and low brow pocket detective fiction in Swedish.

- experienced my first northern hemisphere winter, and in turn seen my first snow. A truly magical experience, and now, after many snowfalls, the wonder of it still gets me in a bit of a tither and I feel the need to uselessly announce the fact that snow is falling. These thoughts and feelings are documented in a short text about my first impressions of snow.

Shelve/Bay/Stack




T.Shelf_Mountain by J1 Studio. Thinking about shelves more often these days, I have just submitted a job application seeking employment as a library assistant at Malmö Högskolas Bibliotek. Fingers crossed I will soon be fossicking amongst aisles and bays of books again.

I would like a shelving unit such as this to house my murder mystery/crime book collection, I believe 2011 is going to be the year I acquire more books - I wonder if I can continue to resolve to only read fiction. I think it was the best decision I ever made.

Recent Acquisitions



Recent acquisitions accumulated during Alex's visit and the following weeks. Alex arrived laden with marvellous gifts including a copy of her recently published novel The Constant Losers, and another Ngaio Marsh mystery to add the the growing collection. During our day of op shopping I unearthed an orange sweater emblazoned with a galloping horse and jockey amongst a plethora of psychedelic tie dyed t-shirts and a few days later, some sturdy yet becoming winter boots, excellent for stomping around leaf strewn footpaths and staving off numb toe syndrome.
While kitted out in my new jersey and chimney-sweep boots, I can carry around my high literature in a brilliant University of Auckland Library bag, featuring the classic 'This Book Must Not Be Borrowed' slogan previously found in library reference books.

Wood from the Trees





obsessed with the forest green penguin crime & mystery titles. the only problem lies in whether to begin collecting the works of Ngaio Marsh or Raymond Chandler?
and so to begin the florence wild crime library.

Whilst working at Special Collections daintily vacuuming mold off rare and old books, I began taking Ngaio Marsh novels off the shelves one by one to reread as I cleaned.

I would be satisfied if my personal library held the complete works of Ngaio Marsh, Raymond Chandler, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming, along with sundry others.

I am always surprised I can read murder mysteries again and again, I would have thought the interest and intrigue would have worn out after one reading.

ISSUES

LIBRARY CARD PROTEST OVER WITCHCRAFT

NZPA

A Wairarapa Christian minister is crusading against what he says is Masonic paganism by renouncing his library card.

John Cromarty, of St David's Church in Carterton, objects to a Masonic Lodge being used as a temporary library because he says the group is connected to witchcraft, the Wairarapa Times-Age reports.

In a letter to Carterton Mayor Gary McPhee, Mr Cromarty said he and his wife had handed in their library cards and were asking their friends not to visit the lodge, which was housing the town's books while a new events centre was built.

He said while Freemasonry did some good in the community and portrayed a facade of being compatible with Christianity, its foundations were rooted in witchcraft and paganism.

A past master and a Freemason of the lodge, Warwick Cashmore, said Mr Cromarty's attitude was extremely disappointing.

"The basic tenants of freemasonry are brotherly love, relief, and truth," he said.

Private Libraries


Shelving Trolleys as bookshelves. Reminiscent for me of a work I installed at Elam's Fine Arts Library in 2007, when I catalogued my room by Dewey Decimal System and filled trolleys with random room detritus waiting to be shelved. No more messy floors!
Would solve pretty much every storage problem, with space for the 'q' books as well. Probably the only piece of furniture I want to buy.
But only if I could sort my books by Dewey Decimal System, naturally.
Perhaps this could be the storage and display model for my dream of running a private library/archive/business/entrepreneurial scheme.
If the whole artist hoopla falls through, you see.


via Brutus Magazine