The Jamjar

Memory's the First to Go

My ankle has been sore for a week or more - time has lost all it's meaning lately. I've had a bruise on my right leg since I crashed into the open filing cabinet drawer the last week in January, so having an equally painful happening on my left ankle was something that's been aching around my periferal memory until the last few days when I swear it's got worse.

I couldn't for the life of me remember what I had done to cause such swelling, bruising and discomfort - until the wee-small-hours of last night while I couldn't sleep.

The day I bought my new telephone it was raining - and amoung his charming attributes, Shane doesn't like to get wet and it was raining - so spotting a Corporate Cab up off Queen Street we dashed across the road so he could ride the last 3 blocks to the office in dry comfort.

The cab doors were locked, so the driver hoped out in the rain and opened them up for us and threw ourselves in - laptops and breathless ohmygoshes. Shane then proceeded to tell the driver where we'd like to go. The driver looked in his rear view mirrow and said "you're not Mr So-and-so?" and Shane hesitated for a moment and admitted he was not. The driver laughed and said "sorry mate, I'm booked, you sound just like my fare too".

Opening the doors and exiting the vehicle after our far-too-small respite from the rain, my stupid tractionless Pulp sneakers slipped on the drain grate and I went over on my ankle into it's hard metal. Graceful? always. That'll do it everytime you want to wreck a body part - slam it into a solid iron drainage grate.

Shane and I walked the very damp three blocks back to the office - in all fairness, he didn't have to, but he's a gentleman even if his mum teases him about being a little shit, he still walked me all the way back before making his way to his parking building.

Shane Cotton at the Auckland Art Gallery

On Saturday, I paid a visit to the Auckland City Art Gallery - partly because I haven't been in a very long time, and partly because Shane Cotton's exhibition had opened the night before. I'd never seen his work before except in reproductions and online images. His work is larger than I had thought, and powerful too, in a lot of ways. The last time I'd been at the Gallery in that space was Colin McCahon's huge sheet-like works and Shane's aren't so disimilar in that they look at landscapes and writings, light on the dark. I was suprised at the other works outside the collection - Tissot, William Blake, Marc Chagall and a couple of Picassos. All and all it was a nice day at the Gallery. For all the time I worked in town I didn't visit it, and now i don't I want to make an effort to make it a regular item in my diary. I don't know enough about art to blatheron about it here - although a brushstroke here, or a fall of tone-on-tone there doesn't stop me flounsing on at the Gallery - I would like to share one of my favourite quotes from Hyacinth Bucket of the BBC Comedy Keeping up Appearances "I don't know much about art, but i do like a good frame that doesn't gather much dust." Okay so here I am, June 1st and I've come back to this entry because I am going to say what I was going to say at the time of writing but got the confidence *wobbles* about sounding like a complete pratt. I was standing in front of his 1995 work "View". Looking at it I could hear the click-clack of a train on the track - the repetitive lines and the landscape made me think of traveling by train. Of a journey - maybe, one journey and the mountain growing larger as the destination came closer; or maybe a journey that is repeated every day - seeing the same landmarks, hearing the same sounds day after day making the same journey - maybe it was time I could hear between the click-clacking/the basketballing/the tick tocking of this painting. Is it a journey we all make? back to our home? to work every day? Maybe it's the journey of a culture through the landscape that is changing and the culture's changing/notchanging/vanishing over time. I don't know a damned thing about art, but I know a thing when I see it. Shane Cotton has that thing.

No Free Lunch

It's both interesting, and typical, that I change my content management system to MoveableType at the same time their company growth demands it is no longer free for developers and commercial installations.

This, of course, sent a fairly unhappy ripple through MoveableType users. Reading a lot of the posts concerning this one theme has shown up time and again, that US$69/US$120 is "too much to pay for a hobby".

I beg your pardon?

I know many people with hobbies - I'm one of them - and they invest thousands of hours AND dollars on their hobby. Heck, I was at the Gaming Workshop on Saturday and there were people in there parting with hundreds of dollars for metal figurines and fake model trees, paints and all sorts. Women on shoe-string-budgets used to be able to sqeeze incredible amounts of money out of their budgets to buy fat-quarters and liberty fabrics when I was patchworking. Wanna try stamp collecting on less than US$69 per year?

Hobby's aren't free - never have been.

MoveableType have developed this wonderful tool and ask for a fee - annual I am guessing - that seems extremely resonable to me, and I live in New Zealand where the exchange rate demands I part with $130 for the lowest tier of developer licensing. They still have a free version for the everyday *hobby* blogger so I'm not entirely sure why so many panties are in a bunch.

And for all those who have a wad of pantie fabric up their whazoos, don't forget Blogger is still free and wonderful - you can have as many authors/blogs as you like and is has Google backing it so might remain free a while longer.

And, while I'm on the subject - I hate the word "hobby". It insinuates something that's not so important, a sideline interest or activity - something to do to fill in the time when everything else is done. I used to be insulted when people mentioned the "number of hobbies" i had/have. The way I express my creativity is not a lightweight sideline activity for me. It's the reason. It's the reason I work, it's the reason I squirrel money away each week, it's the reason I read technical books in bed at night, buy coloured pencils one at a time, have a dedicated area in my home to work at my art, go out on raining wet nights to night classes clear across town to draw. My creativity is who I am, and if it were to cost me US$69 per year I'd be happy to get really creative in finding the cash on a shoestring budget.