(This Bird Has Flown)

 Toru and Naoko and Toru and Midori

Images from Norwegian Wood, an adaptation of Haruki Murakami's much cherished novel from 1987, released late last year. I am uncertain as to whether or not I would like to foray into the cinematic version, as I hold the novel so close to my heart. Along with Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, it is one of a select few books I can open randomly on any page and pick up where I left off.  I am apprehensive because I fear that Norwegian Wood will leave me with the same bitter after taste of disappointment as Mike Nichol's 1970 adaptation of Catch-22. The images I have built in my head, the sound of the characters voices and intonations and the environments they live in, will always seems more complete and real than any film. Perhaps, as a novel in one part about memories, it is best to keep your version of it inside your head.


However I am sure my curiosity will trump my well intentioned Murakami purist mindset, and if the opportunity arose I would watch it.

Line and Length


































































Shusaku Arakawa
morning box, portrait of a civilization (1969)
via Ro/Lu

Macrame on wood
via an ambitious project collapsing

Langley House by Warren & Mahoney
(1965)
17 Michael Ave, Christchurch, New Zealand
via Christchurch Modern


continuing exploring my interests in lines, and lengths of materials used to make other lines, mainly in craft and architecture.  sometimes it is hard to gather up all these different threads of interest in my head and to try and arrange or make sense of them in a more linear, less scatterbrained manner. perhaps once i recommence employment in a library, beginning on the first of next month, my catalogued and ordered surrounds will transfer into the rest of my life.

A Hazy Shade of Winter


[click images to enlarge]

ASH KILMARTIN
'RAIN'
 12.02.2011


A special parcel received in the post today travelled halfway across the world wrapped in paper adorned with colourful donuts. Inside was the eagerly anticipated publication made on the occasion of my great friend Ash Kilmartin's single-handed one day sculptural exhibit 'RAIN', situated in an abandoned lot in Melbourne.

Ash asked if I would contribute a piece of writing to accompany her exhibition as part of a small one-off publication, and I readily obliged. I penned a short piece about my first impressions of snow, (which is hopefully legible in the photo above) and thought about my feelings towards snow in relation to Ash's installation, delicate hand stitched fabrics draped over minimalist wooden frames.

The publication design is by another good friend, Claire Cooper. I am particularly partial to the horizontally bisected green hued centre-fold, opening out to reveal the text and various youtube stills.

A great project to be apart of and one which has already given me ideas of like-minded scenarios.

A Cowboy in Sweden



Momus in Sweden: giving a lecture in Lund which I sadly could not attend, and performing at Brogatan last night in a cramped and sweat inducing cellar, which was rumoured to have posed as a strip joint in a previous incarnation. The small confines and slightly disreputable hearsay of the venue only complemented Momus' intoxicating and beguiling presence, such an entertaining time at a gig I have not experienced in quite a while.

A friend asked me if I had spoken to Momus, and I had to reply that sadly no, I had not. I suppose, having only heard a few of his songs, and followed his tumblr, I preferred to keep him at an arms length, uphold the enigma and all that jazz. Besides, I would have had no idea what to say. Sometimes I would rather just be an innocent bystander enjoying watching everyone else.

17 Lies About A Shed In Lund lecture photo via Mrs Tsk*.
See more of Momus in action here.

A Cross Country Fantasy

photographs from the site of Henry S. Gurr

Amazing photographs from Robert M. Pirsig's original 1968 motorcycle excursion across America with his son Chris and John and Sylvia Sutherland, which in turn inspired the 1974 bestseller 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', which I am presently reading. Both these images and the book are fuelling a sense of wanderlust and desire to escape the dreariness of winter, of the grey monotony of the city, and I have a yearning for spring to arrive and bring with it long bicycle rides, berry picking, ginger ale, and walks through forests.

If I Were A Carpenter

Last Thursday night I had the rare and always appreciated pleasure of being on the receiving end of a song dedication. The band (La Sera) dedicated their rendition of "Dedicated to the one I love" to us (the DJ's - well I was more of a musical advisor less of a dj I suppose), and the whole scenario felt a little more special as we had played The Shirelles' version earlier on in the night when no one was there bar us, the bands, the guy setting up the merch table and a staff member writing up the evening's specials on a black board and making a bit of a hash of it. If I was ever in the position where I could do a really swell cover of a heartfelt song and dedicate it to someone, I would choose this:




To take a squizz at the mammoth list of pretty excellent songs played by the tally ho's partner in crime 'RECORD TURNOVER', please stop by.

A spanner in the works





The door to my mind / forlorn fishing nets / dual 'Persona' /Naval Star gazing

It feels like lately I have been swamped by a deluge of swedish vocabulary, verb tenses and other such thrilling components which make up the untamable beast known as svenska. It is not as bad as it sounds, in fact, I thoroughly enjoy learning languages; nothing is so satisfying as drunkenly rambling in another language and people being able to understand you, as my friends and I discovered on saturday night. While my previous party trick may have been exclaiming 'How did I get so drunk?' in swedish, I am now able to give a detailed description of this inevitable demise.
Last night I prepared for my final swedish test by watching Ingmar Bergman's Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) without subtitles. Judging by todays effort in my listening comprehension, it was perhaps not the most suitable method of practice, but in any respects the most engrossing. I am satisfied by the fact that I understood enough to figure out the plot lines.


The above film still is not from Smultronstället but another Bergman film, Persona, featuring the same actresses, Bibi Andersson and Ingrid Thulin. I have always liked the director who has a stable of trusted actors whose names become synonymous with the directors own.

I am also now completely intrigued by star charts, islands and fishing nets, to add to the ever growing list of 'things that inspire me that I really should do something about'. These include birds, faux bois, whittling, and such like. A collection of "things" laid out like in the positions of stars / faux bois embroidered stockings / balancing bird Alexander Calder-esque mobiles / whittled bath feet / tunnels of fishing net / on an island?

It all makes me feel rather intrepid. I definitely have more exploring to do in the coming warmer climes.
Spend my winter thinking, and my summer doing.

The mind boggles.

Love Story


Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator

(Serbo.Croatian: Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice P.T.T. )

Yugoslavia, 1967

Directed by Dušan Makavejev

Quite a strange feeling watching a film from a country which no longer exists. Perhaps it is due to living in a foreign country and learning a new language, but I am now continuously drawn to films in other languages. Just so I can hear how different languages are spoken.

The second film still feature amazing film cartoons! Early tetra-pak perhaps?

Matinee Idol




[clck photos to enlage]

IL GATTOPARDO 1963
Luchino Visconti


Known for its lush colours and and decadent costumes and scenery, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) is a true epic of Italian cinema, a production of a grand scale with exacting attention to detail. I first saw this film in a small cinema on Auckland's North Shore called the Bridgeway, on a quiet saturday afternoon in 2004 in a near empty theatre with the attendees comprising of my friend and I and a smattering of elderly who probably saw it when it was first released in '63, or just used to harbour unrequited feelings for Burt Lancaster.

The first film which started my fascination and love of Italian cinema.


"Where so many widescreen epics merely use the image to bludgeon the audience with production value, Visconti maintains a constant dialogue between the grandeur of the prince's surroundings and the minute gestures that define him in the midst of historical upheaval."

-Sam Adams, Los Angeles Times

Dens of Inequity



images via

Spreads from Benjamin Critton's project, EVIL PEOPLE in MODERNIST HOMES in POPULAR FILMS. A publication printed in a pleasing red/yellow colour combinations, and includes quotes, diagrams, film stills, essays and more, delving into the relationship between architecture and cinema, and the association between ill-morals, vices and evil masterminds with modernist homes, traced through films along the lines of Diamonds Are Forever, The Big Lebowski, Blade Runner, L.A Confidential and Twilight amongst others.

Ideas like these interest me - I think about my embroidery floor plans of fictional settings from film, television and literiture connected by also their dual locations - existing in some manner in the 'real world' while only wholly residing in the imagination. The cliches 'picking up the common thread', and 'that nothing is ever a coincidence' are phrases oft repeat in the many murder mystery stories and screen adaptations I digest and that act as a sort of back bone to my practice.

I recently posted some photos of rock stars in their parents' houses and I was struck by how Frank Zappa and David Crosby were attired to seem in sync with their surroundings, while their 'modern dress', long tresses and full facial hair were at odds with the more conventional clothes of their parents. The photo essay was intended to highlight the different lifestyles and ideas between the different generations I believe, and this sort of contradictory outcome of matching someone to a surrounding meant to represent 'old' is intriguing.

I think about characters and their personalities reflected in their environs, and I can understand the cold, shiny surfaces, the hard right angles and the looming rooftop overhangs that cast ominous shadows mirroring the mentalities of the people who live in them. The character must embody their abodes and vice-versa. The brutalist nature of the buildings is apparent in the architecture, scale and materials. Grand concrete cubes with misleading panels of glass maybe not so that one can see in the house, but that whoever is inside can see them coming.
The 'evil people' of these popular films could perhaps be described as cold, clinical, calculating, corrupt, conniving, controlling and cruel, while also being charming, charismatic, clever and compelling. (I have run out of apt adjectives beginning with 'C' now), and possibly the same could be said about their dwellings.

I suppose this is why Ernst Blofeld only wears grey.


on a side-note, check out Critton's CV. As someone who is trying to wrangle a job out of Sweden (who is not being particularly forthcoming about it) I have taken a particular interest in other people's curriculum vitaes at present.