I guess that this blog post, rather than be dedicated to the many many things I've got sitting on the backburner and have been eyeball-deep-in-uni-so-could-not-post might be a bit of a letdown. After all, it's really just more uni work. But it's also the core concept behind one of my photography subjects; specifically, Silver.
Silver is a third-year photography elective. Which means that next semester when I go to pick subjects, I won't give myself three ones that are a year up from my current level. Stupidhead. Anyway. Third year elective specific to film photography. Films and negatives and darkrooms and stuff. It's quite a bit of fun, and I enjoy the process and concept behind this type of photography more than others. I guess that's because there's a much smaller margin for error when creating photos. They're harder to fix when you get to developing the negs, and in general, you have to know what you're doing.
So. Concepts and stuff.
The course, as always, gives us a theme to work to and start with and the theme for Silver was 'Investigating the Shadow'
This sounded quite dark and intimidating to begin with, and in the first couple of weeks, I continued with printing photos from negs I had taken last year, along with stuff I'd taken for 'getting my eye back in'.
The only other thing you probably need to know at this stage is how I operate in the darkroom. This is pretty similar to how I used to work in TAFE. Don't feel like chatting while working. Stick headphones in and go. And the waiting period that you have to have while waiting for test strips to develop and then fix allows you to think in between working on things. So while the music is going, I don't always pay full attention to it.
This particular afternoon, I was walking out of the darkroom with Switchfoot in my ears. It was this song.
"we are
crooked souls trying to stay up straight
dry eyes in the pouring rain,
well,
the Shadow proves the Sunshine
the Shadow proves the Sunshine"
And like a bolt from the blue, there was the core idea. Sort of. I was going to talk about depression and hope in the brief. Shadow and Sunshine.
This initially was thought out as a series of constructed studio photographs, a bit like what I had done in the previous year with photography, where myself and some friends got to sit down and play with masks and stuff.
And stuff.
And then I went to Sydney three times during March. Each time I had a camera, and each time I took photos of the city.
There were a lot of skyline photos, but there were some odd ones that cropped up too - tiny observations that kept crawling into my lens. I couldn't stop taking photos of them.
And then I talked to the tutor about it. Very quickly, the project evolved into something else.
Depression and Hope in the City.
I have to admit, I liked where this was going; a take on the city which, while certainly investigated before, could have something added to it. Ack. Too many pronouns.
The city.
There was probably still stuff left over in Brooke's head from last year, where this clip got used for the Mask unit. Can't remember why it was relevant specifically. I think it got included because it's a beautiful clip.
But this got to pull the project more and more into that view of the city and the black and white and the soul in something so large and grey and paradoxical.
Add to that the fact that Anberlin, who have been mentioned earlier on this blog, are popular with me, and the album that the above song is called 'Cities'
Look at that album artwork. That is some beast work. It even looks like a city.
This album, which I've probably mentioned before, is my favourite out of all the work they've produced so far. It...ah.
It explores so many large themes and manages to do it with some kind of deep understanding that I love. And there's the music and the lyrics and the yes. It just feels like the city; at times peaceful or sunny, but also rushing along at the breakneck speed that comes with life and construct and all-of-the-things-I've-been-trying-to-express-this-afternoon.
Look. Just go and buy a copy of the CD. I was a muffinhead and bought the CD/DVD copy, so it was pretty expensive, but the standard twelve-track wasn't too pricy.
I guess that the song I explored more than the others in the making of this project (which is slowly turning into another 'Brooke really loves Anberlin' post) was actually the seventh track on the album, 'Hello Alone'.
From a lesser known, I'm here. And there's hope. There's hope.
I'm going to decide later whether making this was work or procrastination.
Hope is such a powerful thing. It keeps us going in the darkest of times. It gives us something to look forward to - My phone dictionary, as sad as it is, says '(any reason or encouragement for) the state of feeling that what one wants will or might happen.'
It's a pretty soggy definition, but it'll have to do for now. The point that the above definition is missing (I think) is that in order for there to be hope, there has to be some pretty unfun business going on first. We never hope when we're in a good patch. It's like a little candle, and it serves its greatest purpose at night, when we have little else to guide our steps.
Considering the emotions I have encountered in myself and others since moving to the metropolis of Newcastle, and the feel of the city in the first place, this seemed like a good place to start. Buildings and pavements and arriving here with the smell of London still on my shoes, used to the beat of a thousand floors - cobbles, gravel, pavement, bitumen - always hard and unforgiving.
(Pretty sure tears came to my eyes when I went for a walk through Hyde Park on the grass.)
Right about then.
But that's what the city is; it's rough and big and scary and it doesn't give a rats arse about you. It's grey and smelly and there's people everywhere but none of them see you. Not the real you, anyway. It sounds kind of unfun.
Through the project, I just really wanted to be able to show that; the simple play of dark and light in the city across all of it's artificiality. That as unforgiving and dark the city appeared, that there could also be something worth hoping in as well. Something outside of the grey stones and grey skies.
So, henceforth begins the mile-long absent note, or excuse, or list. Anyway. Many things happened last year. I think it was probably the most manic year I have lived yet. So much went down, and there was also a lot that I didn't blog.
So, here's the blog post shortlist of things that happened last year that I didn't post.
The rest of London.
My overseas trip at the start of last year was something insane and unforgettable. I wish I had blogged more of this because it was interesting, amusing. Sometimes slightly terrifying. Like the first couple of days I spent in the city when I kept getting lost. Or the debilitating effects of jet lag. Wait. I've told you about those. Everything from the Metro in Paris that reeked of urine to the wooden box I bought in Portobello road and got through customs. There was a lot that I could have talked about.
hey, wait. picture = 1000 words. yes?
London in pictures.
Trafalgar Square. Wet on windy days.
Moot is in this picture of an anatomically incorrect lion.
Watch for long enough and you'll see Sora and company.
Globe.
Flipping enormous door at St. Pauls. Moot is in this picture also.
St. Pauls in all its Baroquian glory.
Graffiti hunt.
Me and Fat Watson at 221b Baker St. I wanted Jude Law.
My mate the Squirrel at Regents Park
Westminster Cloisters
A postcard I sent to a friend. I adjusted it.
Sightings of the TARDIS at Earles Court
Julian the photographer I met at Kyoto gardens. We took photos of the Peacocks.
Said Peafowl and Moot. Moot felt slightly stressed.
Beanbag stack at Camden
Portobello Road
It came after the Strawhenge and Stickhenge.
Bath at Bath
There was the stump of what I hoped was a lime tree in the front yard.
Dunster
Me and Will.
And this kinda gives away the photo of me and Will.
Stairs at Tooting Bec Underground station. I ran up these.
Peter at Kensington.
Best tree at Kensington.
Look! Muggles replaced the fake wall with another fake wall!
There was more to London. And there's more to the Backlog. I'll do what every other franchise in Hollywood is doing at the moment and create a couple more sequels, not because I am running out of ideas, but because shortly I am heading down to the archery range again and I have to go find my kit. Happy viewing.
Initially I was going to call this post 'The second-best day of my life', but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the title of the event was perfectly adequate in describing the event, the evening and how I felt about all of it. But it was also probably the second-best day of my life.
The Best day of my life happened about nine years ago in November. It was a stinking hot day and I'd done a walk-thru the Old Testament seminar and post-seminar, asked God to direct my life. I don't have any photos from that day. I cannot actually remember what date it was either. But it was in November, and I highly doubt that anything else I will experience in life will surpass the importance of that day.
Currently, I shall divulge to you the events of last night.
Also, I apologise in advance to those who don't understand my language. I revert back to Brookespeak when heavily fatigued.
The concept started about two weeks ago, after returning from a weekend away with my bible study group. My mind had been wandering, and suddenly ratcheted onto my most-favoured band. This was partly because it was the time of year when they had released albums for the previous three years. I had been thinking, "I wonder if Anberlin will be putting out a new album soon?"
So when we arrived home, I hopped onto their website to check.
I didn't find information on a new album release. But I did find information on a tour.
This prospect was exciting. I had never seen them play live before.
I clicked madly around the site, collecting the data that would tell me whether I could make it or not. An idea formed, and after mulling over it for a couple of days, was sent out to a couple of friends.
Do you want to come and see Anberlin live with me?
Sadly, all requests came back negative. I had previously run the plan past my mother, who had lived and breathed Sydney in her uni days. She said that the Enmore Theatre was small, and that if I wanted to go, I'd have to get a wriggle on. Eventually I made a snap-decision. I'd done London for six weeks, flaneuring, by myself. Sydney should be no problem. Bookings were made, memberships were entered and I studiously checked the train timetables. I was going and I was going to enjoy it, by jove.
So, with much anticipation, the day drew near. Finally Thursday arrived, and, after dropping in on the classes and errands I needed to run, I headed for the train station and began the trek to Syd's knees.
<<Wow. It is getting late.>>
Arriving at Central, I dropped in long enough to deposit my stuff and meet my roommates. There were two girls from Norway and an American girl who was looking for work. I met one of the Norweigan girls and spoke to her, and the other one I probably woke up when I arrived back from the show. But I'll get to that. Slightly befuddled by traffic and my shoddy sense of direction, I followed the black-shirted youths that travelled in groups and were murmuring things about live shows, all the time thinking to myself, "Should have brought some water. So thirsty"
Which is of course completely unrelated unless you happened to know that I had been a stupidhead earlier that day and forgotten to take water to drink. Thus, dehydration was getting kind-of, well, bad. This problem was rectified and the blog post moved forward in time and space.
Suddenly, I had finished making my way down Enmore lane and was standing in the line outside the door, clutching a piece of yellow card with my name on it and inwardly cursing the fact that I hadn't strapped my ankle up fully before leaving the backpackers.
Oh, that's right. I'd failed to mention that. My ankles have a tendency to pack it in with minimal provocation. Performing a minor stunt in the car park after church the Sunday before I went had been provocation enough. I'd spent the week with my foot in a pressure bandage.
However, this was not to get in the way of what was ahead. The doorman took part of the ticket and in our line poured. Some people gawped, some walked straight to the stage; some headed to the merchandise stall. I went down to the floor level to observe the surroundings, thinking, "Mum was right. This place is tiny." The size of the venue did not detract in any way from the ten-metre-tall stack of speakers I observed to my right. This was going to be a lot of fun.
It is important to mention at this stage that, after having an inner-turmoil battle-of-the-percieved-stocks-of-merch-table, I went up and purchased a T-shirt and poster. Then I went back down to the D-floor and tried to think of what I could do with them. For once, I'd not taken a bag and instead taken my jacket with 11 pockets. The jacket required some rearranging, but eventually the T-shirt found a pocket. It was only after the line-up band finished that I figured out what to do with the poster.
In the interim before that though, I was stuck with the poster in one hand, thinking, "What kind of idiot goes and buys a poster and then takes it into a mosh pit?"
The idiot in this case was obviously myself.
Holding the poster became less of a problem once it had been tied inside my jacket.
Eventually, the lights went down and that sent up some kind of signal, because a lot of people started making a lot of noise. Then the opening band came on - they were called 'Tonight Alive', and while I'd never heard of them before, they reminded me a lot of Paramore. Well, Paramore back when the Farro brothers still played: Five Man Band, with a female lead. The songs felt rather similar too. Well, the lyrics of which I could make out.
The sounds were...loud. Really, really loud. Make-your-ribcage-buzz-when-they-hit-the-bass-drum-loud. But exciting too. There were fists pumping and headbobbing and minor mosh activity.
And then Anberlin came on.
This roar went up from the crowd, and I looked on, slightly dumbstruck, as the band members took up their positions.
I got to know, got to hear of Anberlin about four years ago - when Cities was released. I had known that they'd changed their 'look' for the band since the Tooth and Nail years but was still very much used to their faces from 'The Unwinding Cable Car'. (I used it as an inspiration source for a uni assessment on 'Identity' and deconstructed the music video into storyboards.)
Anyway, they looked different. But they still sounded very much the same.
The crowd had already been revved up by the opening act, so with much gusto the band launched into Dismantle.Repair. The audience followed, singing, roaring. We moshed like....Masai warriors. Sung along like the words were battlecries for the soul (Some of them were, mind you). Danced like mad things and fist pumped like we were in an Anberlin concert.
Funny that.
I wish....I wish I was still there. I wish they had a live album recording. I wish I'd taken some initiative and given at least one of them a hug after the concert. More about that later.
The songs continued on, and so did we. I moshed until a giant cramp in my side advised against further activity, and eventually the songs plateaued into some of the quieter ones. It was really very awesome to hear all of these other people singing along - so loud was the music and the people that I could barely hear my own straining voice along with the multitude. For a long time, the only other people I knew who were into Anberlin were those who had introduced me to it. The Old Guard (those who were the last generation of youth group) back at my hometown church all listened to them in varying degrees, and I am fairly certain we all were stuck on Cities.
My point?
For a long time the only people I knew who even knew who Anberlin were I could count on my fingers. And then I met my (now)ex's cousin, who had Paperthin Hymn and two years later, went to see them at Soundwave and made me rather jealous. So, there weren't a lot of people who knew about them. And suddenly I was in a room with people who knew every lyric from every song, and Stephen Christian and Joseph Milligan and Christian McAlhaney and Deon Rexroat and Nate Young are there and we're just...just...
<<brain short-circuits.>>
It was amazing. I really, really enjoyed it.
At this stage, I'll give a brief overview of what happened next and then tell you a little bit more about a couple of the songs they performed and what I thought of them.
Fast-forward to the end of the night, where we, after thronging inside the theatre, began to throng on our way out past the table where the band members were sitting and signing things. I saw a couple of guys walking over clutching drumsticks that Nate had thrown out into the audience, and bit by bit made my way over to the table, fiddling with the poster that had somehow remained intact for the duration of everything.
In the end, I didn't get to say much. There was a 'thank you', a 'you played excellently' and an 'I really enjoyed listening to you'. But I got to look Stephen Christian in the eye. And in hindsight, I wish I'd been able to say something. Shake hands. Tell a joke to. Buy a beer for. I'd scribbled a note mentioning some part of the amount that I wished I'd expressed and had it in my hands. It was given to Deon, who was at the end of the line, along with the words "Have a thing."
I'm so eloquent.
And thus, the theatre was exited. Oporto was the next stop, where a much-overdue dinner was sought out at the time of 11:40pm. It would be considered a late dinner if I was in Europe, where they eat late anyway. NZ dinners FTW.
Walking up the street, it was easy to spot the fellow concert-people. Many were carrying white rolled-up posters, much the same as my own. Eventually the night bus came, and, at the end of it all, I arrived back at the Backpackers at about half-past Friday.
Mum got a message to say that I wasn't dead, and I proceeded to consume my dinner, which had all the connotations of being 'a slab of fried gold'.
It certainly tasted like one, all the way up until I got Oporto sauce down my shirt. I don't know how. It just happened.
As silently as I could muster, the bed was crawled into and I closed my eyes at 1am, wondering when the ringing in my ears would die down. It had been a long day. But it had been marvelous and I was very thankful for all of it. Except maybe for getting Oporto sauce on the pants that I'd have to wear the next day. But that kind of paled into insignificance next to everything else, so that was okay.
<<Now I think I'll tell you about some of the songs. Expect ranting.>>
Pray Tell. This song is probably my favourite off 'Dark is a Way, Light is a Place.'
Despite the fact that there are already some videos from last night on YouTube, there isn't one for this. But that is okay.
Before going, I was being busy getting wound up over actually getting to go. Then I listened to this song and went, I really, REALLY hope they play this!
It's like the track was made to be played live. The drumbeat is unreal. And one minute we're standing in the crowd, and the next I can hear the start of the drumbeat and I know that the next three minutes is going to be freaking awesome. The Art of War.
Another from 'Dark is a Way, Light is a Place.'
I don't know if it's ironic or what. This album was given to me by the only person I want to sing this song to right now. Listening to it being played live, I hoped and hoped that maybe they'd hear it. Maybe they'd know. But while singing along, my whole heart was in it.
<<Maybe Brooke would stop going third-person on the rest of the readers.>>
Alexithymia. Finally, I know how to pronounce this one! Stephen Christian mentioned before starting it that this song was the one 'that got the most tattoos'. I'd never heard it played acoustic before. So worth it.
Fin*
This is from 'Cities.'
They'd just finished, and left the stage. There was the roaring of the crowd, and in a relatively short period of time, a distinguishable chant could be heard: One more song! One more song! One more song!
There was a moment of uncertainty, and then the most excellent and probably completely exhausted gentlemen made their way back to the stage, finishing the night with (in my opinion) the greatest song they've ever made. What was really cool was that the audience pretty much formed the choir part that occurs in the song.
What was also insane was that Stephen finished the performance by dropping the mike onto the stage.
Now that I sit back and think about it, he was probably completely drained. I do not blame him in the slightest.
<<>>
I can't think of how to finish this post.
I may stick up more videos as they trickle onto YouTube.
Or I may just go and try to draw out the humungous knot that has formed in my leg from excessive moshing.
Whichever way the cards fall, It's late and I am really, really tired. So bed it is. Bed, sleep, and dreaming of the cause of justifiable hearing loss.
If you had asked me when I first discovered that I was going to London what I wanted to see, it probably would have been 'The London Eye'. Admittedly, it did number at 3 on my bucket list (after Tower Bridge and Big Ben) but it was definately in the forefront of my mind in the planning stages.
For some reason I left it to my second-last week, but that's cool because I could see most of the landmarks and go 'I've been there and there and...' well, you get the idea.
Decided to go on the 'flight' in the later part of the afternoon, so we'd get to see lights on the skyline as well. Moot and I arrived when the sun was still doing the 'eye-burning' thing, so I went looking for the fourth thing on the bucket list -
4. Cafe Manga (behind the London Eye)
So, I got a coffee and wrote a musing in the Travel Journal:
"Manga Coffee. So, let's hear it for more incongruities with Frommers! (The travel guide I got for this adventure) I was so keen for Cafe Manga that it hadn't crossed my mind that since the book was printed in 2009, that some things might have changed... ...evidently. Either that, or I was expecting a themed-cafe. That is what the blurb said, after all. So now I'm in County Hall, and there is no Cafe Manga. There is a Chopstix with anime painted on the walls. It's an all-you-can-eat though, and I don't feel like spending £8 when I'm not really that hungry. So 'Zen Cafe' it is. They have a 'manga coffee' which I am dissecting flavours on now. It is really odd.
There was half a mountain of whipped cream on top and since I stirred about half of that in, it is sweet and bitter at the same time.
It tastes like they've mixed chocolate in with the coffee, which might-or-might-not-be-flavoured. It has a slightly burnt flavour. The taste was smooth, but the smell is not. I suspect it's hazelnut. The barrista is probably trying to figure out what I'm doing.
*UPDATE* I asked the guy. It was a coffee with chocolate poweder and hazelnut shot."
So, post the pulp-fiction coffee I went and watched the red pod on the giant ferris wheel make about three-quarters of a turn and suddenly noticed the expansive cloud cover ruining the clear day that was predestined for sky-soaring. The blue owl and I made it past the metal-detector and boarded the great hunk of steel.
The pod was constructed from a steel skeleton and double-glazed glass windows, and the skeleton stuck far in enough that Moot was able to sit on one spot and enjoy the whole ride. It got more exciting as we went further up. As we rose above the skyline, more and more of the buildings melted into the cityscape below us, until finally we sat on top of London.
At this point, I was moving from vantage point to vantage point, taking photos like a busload of Japanese tourists would when accosted by a Koala.
It. Was. Captain. Awesome.
I really enjoyed it and got to wanting to go for another circuit. As we descended I took more photos of the vista to the south of the Eye. I think that Moot really enjoyed the experience, whether he was animate or not.
If it is not yet clear, Big Ben is south of the Eye. And the clockface had lit up.
I seem to have developed some sort of stigma with the iconic clock. It's like, a first impressions sort of thing. Well, maybe not entirely first impressions, but definately...ah.
See, every time I see this I half-expect to also suddenly see Sora and co. fly around from the back, sweeping wide circles and firing fireballs at some giant wraith. I am also certain that the save point is located on the other side of the tower. I've seen it from three sides and still expect the glowing green thingie to be on the other side.
Nerd tendancies aside, I finished the ride on a high and impulse-bought the picture that they took. After all, I don't actually have many images of me doing things here. One of the many reasons one needs a bro' when travelling. Moot is in the photo also - my family has a tradition of anticipating ride photos and doing interesting things in them.
I don't know who the other guy is.
Here's to taking a photo of a photo of me acting like an idiot.
It was either last year or the year before that my sister came home from art at school and promptly introduced me to the artist ‘Banksy’. After we checked out some history on the guy we learned more about his stencil-based works and origins. Banksy is from Bristol, and there are a lot of his works in and around the city of London. There was a few in Sydney and Melbourne a couple of years back, but they were buffed, so you can’t find them anymore.
I’m in London. So, in short, I went looking for Banksy pieces this week.
I should probably take a moment here to express my opinion in general about graffiti.
It started more as a coping mechanism than anything else. I mentally divide what I see into two groups.
The first group I classify as graffiti. This includes general vandalism, ‘tagging’ and slogans designed specifically to offend some group or tell the rest of the world about someone’s conquests or the contents of their pants. I don’t really like these. They are frequently messy, and do little to make the environment a better or more interesting place.
The second group is ‘Street art’. These guys take more than thirty seconds to create and usually less than three beers. They house signs of intelligence behind the piece and show pride in the work. It’s usually evident that more than three brain cells went into producing whatever it was. Also, street art is often relevant in some way to a current issue.
Banksy pieces fall into the ‘street art’ classification for me.
Seeing Banksy stuff was cool. Like, they were actually there. Where the directions said they were. They existed and you could see them. It’s significantly cooler than looking for a Van Gogh or Monet in the National Gallery because even though you still search for it, there are an infinitely larger amount of things that can happen to a piece of street art/graffiti over the same period of time. And the local council doesn’t try to paint over a piece of post-impressionist work because of its location.
I’ll admit; this can be considered a hard point for councils to argue. Leaving a Banksy means you would have to leave all the graffiti. I don’t want to leave the stuff about someone’s pet goat because that is offensive but then, I’d have to define what is ok and what isn’t, and in the end, we have double standards. Double standards, along with Facebook, large parties and trash-mag-journos don’t seem to work very well for governing bodies. So in reality, it means that it is up to the owner of whatever-got-attacked to decide what to do with it. Sometimes they try selling it on eBay. I have heard of a lot of people going so far as to remove walls or doors to sell pieces, frequently for thousands (of whatever currency you please. If we’re talking yen then it’ll be in the millions.). That isn’t very fair, in my opinion, because the contributing artist gains no monetary benefit from the work.
But then, this guy could go into business if he wanted. It’s highly possible that he gains some benefit from the escapades, since he can so obviously maintain an agent, however anonymous he might be to Joe Public. But that would involve becoming part of the system – dancing because the man wants you to, not because you wish to step outside of the box.
I like metaphors.
Anyway. Where were we?
Over the course of the week, I researched what pieces were still in existence, scribbling notes down from a combination of internet and a book I’d picked up from the Tate Modern. Its nickname is ‘BLT’ (Banksy Locations and Tours, volume 1, from Martin Bull). So, I’d flick through the book, looking for the status of the piece. The tours are pretty much obsolete, since so many pieces have been either removed or flogged off on eBay. But I scribbled down the ones that were.
Directions kinda looked like this:
So I’d set off in the morning with my notebook, a compass the size of my thumbnail, and my tube map that was literally marked with several ‘X’ points – tube stations I’d disembark from. Maps weren’t easy for me since they’d either be too vague or too direct. Instead, I’d walk in a cardinal direction until a bus stop turned up – they would have a local map and that would be the method for finding the piece.
This method was fun. An adventure, if you like. I would frequently get lost, walk to a bus stop, check the map and head out again. There was a lot of walking involved, but walking was kinda what I had not done so much of since getting a driver’s license last year. I would seriously stake that fitness in young kids goes down once they are able to drive – no more walking places (!). Anyway. Lots of walking. I enjoyed it because the shoes were able to take it. And there was sun, in spite of the cold (you know, enjoying a high of 7 degrees – that sort of thing.). Tips? Don’t panic. Use landmarks rather than ‘take the first right, then the third left; diverge to the south and take the second exit on the roundabout’ (Give me directions like this and I’ll nod dumbly, knowing that the info is going straight in and straight out.) I will gladly take ‘keep going past the chicken shop’ over that any day. Even pointing and vaguely saying ‘it’s that way’ will work better.
Initially, progress was slow. My first day saw a grand total of two pieces visited. Admittedly, I didn’t head out until late morning, but once the method was better defined, searching became a lot more fun.
What became interesting as the days of searching went on was that my mind became more aware of wall-scribblings that I passed. On more than one occasion, I passed a piece not on my list and wondered idly if it might have been a new piece that wasn’t yet listed.
This little guy was on the other side of the road from the ‘Tesco’ piece. At the bottom of the art deco cinema. And it was unmistakeably an art deco cinema. I had my doubts as to where the building was when I first entered the street, because it wasn’t immediately next to the station I had listed in the bearings. And then I started looking around and on sighting the…thing…it became clear, without a shadow of a doubt, that that was the art deco cinema. It wasn’t so much a ‘light bulb’ moment as a confirmation of perfect clarity. Because there was absolutely nothing else on the entire street that was as tiled or as gaudy.
Of course, not all of these finds were in tiptop condition. Workplace hazard, I guess.
Of course, there was also the Gas Mask girl.
Kathy (my aunt) and I encountered her in Brick Lane, post-leather-jacket adventure that was Saturday arvo. We were walking towards a bus-stop, and suddenly as we walked over to the corner I realised what the slew of black and white was.
Me: “Hey! It’s the Gas Mask Girl!”
Kathy: “What?”
Me: “The Gas Mask Girl. It’s a Banksy. It’s like, the only one left in Europe or something. Just gimme a sec here. (Takes photo)
Kathy: “Well I’m glad you knew what it was ‘cause I had no idea.”
I hadn’t put Gas Mask Girl in my shortlist, simply because the information that went with it from the BLT read like this:
“Status: Extremely faded and often attacked by the remanets of fly posters (July 2010), but it’s the only example I know of in the UK, so it might just be worth a visit if you are desperate.”
I wasn’t desperate. I didn’t even know that it was in Brick Lane. But it was rather cool to stumble across it, even if it was almost unrecognisable.
BTW This is my photograph; the one up the page is from a googlesearch. So you could see what she looked like.
A couple days ago, I started putting pen to paper over the idea of graffiti. I’ve not been in the middle of it, but there were taggers in my year. I knew them and ‘who’ they were and what they did, since I’d often see it around town, or, back when we were in school, I’d hear them talking about what they’d done the night before. Back then, I asked them how they developed a tag. They had explained that there were two things you did.
The first was that you found a word to become your ‘tag’. It had to represent some part of you – it was, after all, yours. It also had to be short and simple – a logistics point, so that you could throw it up quickly. The second part was choosing how it looked – usually involving finding a font on the internet you liked or simply developing the tag over time. That was it.
Well, almost it. My headspace was placed somewhere in between these massive pieces of street art and the simple science of scribbling part of your essence on someone’s wall. So, I started thinking about the logistics. This is what happened after that.
“It seems to me that graffiti is, essentially, a point of identity. No human wants to go from the cradle to the grave unnamed. Each of us, as individuals, seems to house an innate desire to be recognised as a person. As someone who mattered.
Graffiti is one of those outworkings – I was here. I was here. I existed. I mattered. I want to matter.
In this way I see God’s character reflected, as oddly as it may seem – that this scribbling has manifested as a desire to see individual character and existence recognised.
One of the reasons I have come to appreciate some street artists is because they are akin to…how do I say this?...like, if this was the Matrix, they’d be the ‘glitches’. The little things to give us evidence that the Agents are up to something. Some sort of black-humour reality check. All is not well; that somewhere in the system over our heads, something is going on.”
