Thank you all for another year of support. All of your retweets, #FFs, “likes” hearts, just taking the time to browse around here- I really appreciate it and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope that we can carry on doing this because it makes me SO happy.
On Sunday Ideal Brown and I went to go and get a Christmas tree. We’re not going to be around for Christmas- or New Year for that matter, but why not drag an arm of nature into the house and festoon it with bright shiny breakables for the days dotted around the two holidays?
Indeed, they’ll be the ones on which I can say what I think, control the TV remote and above all, not have to agree with things I don’t believe in for the sake of saving myself a petty discussion that will just shorten my life. That’s what Christmas is about, isn’t it? Being stuck somewhere.
I mean, I always love the people I’m stuck with (sort of) and for the most part I really enjoy it- but I am stuck and every year I do wish my company into oblivion. I’d wish myself into oblivion, but then who would feed the cats? Come on.
There’s a loft alcove that we call “The Hole” which is allocated “for shit”. Example “I just went into The Hole to get the Christmas garb. You can do it next time. I’ve had it. Jesus Christ, there’s so much shit in there.”
When we were at the tree shop (a rugby club that had sold space to a couple of guys selling felled Nordman firs) I hooted “Ooh, this will be Little’s First Christmas”.
I say these things because I’m
a) gently mocking new parents and
b) because I’ve realised that we have a bag of “unknown reactions” to discover when we introduce our kitten to a vast thing peppered with dangling bits. Above all there’s reason
c) and that is: I like to press the ceremonial underwhelming with a trite announcement that nobody gives a fuck about. Not me. Not Ideal Brown. Not the cats.
We didn’t actually call our cat Little. It’s just that we already have a cat and given that he’s older, he’s also bigger than her and on top of that she’s really small, so often I just find myself saying “where’s Little?” or “I’ve fed Little” or “have you seen Little? Big’s upstairs, but I can’t find Little.”
Big’s real name is Stanley, a name that has since been butchered thusly: Stanley> Stan> Tan> Tanny-Tan> Stink> Spotty Back and bird (for when he sits on the floor because he looks like you could put him on a pond surface on which he would float, duck-like)
Little is actually Brodie.
This is all to say that when the Christmas tree was torn asunder (not really – it was just knocked over) I figured we were partly deserving of it.
Ideal Brown flew into a rage “Fuckit, I know it was Little! Right. Right! Get her. Right LITTLE!” He says “right” a lot when he’s losing control, which is funny because I think it means he’s grappling for some and it’s not aaaaaaactually the thing you say when you’re slipping.
I wouldn’t actually tell him this, but I was so glad the tree fell over. I’ve been verging on losing my shit for the last few days. When the tiny things that I can’t control mount up, they all just chip away at the ol’ mental demeanor and I start to crack. A tree on its side isn’t cancer or divorce or a choked bank account.
Indeed, it was the best fuck up for me to take on given the simplicity of the situation: if something falls over, you can set it right again. And I did.
I didn’t know much at all about Blake Lively’s art collection until yesterday, when I saw this Artlog post on Twitter. It’s so cool to see that she collects according to taste, regardless of how established an artist is.
It takes a collector with balls to do that*
*cue raging argument about art vs money and whether your purchase is swayed by investment value over buying something potentially worthless that you adore all the same.
My shipping guy’s name is Andrew.
I email him with the What Where and When. He replies with the How Much and Crunch.
The Crunch is the time we arrange for him to come and make the collection. To explain, I really hate handling my prints; they’re so easy to damage and if I do, I’m letting down a whole string of people who have or are scheduled in to be part of the job to make sure it successfully navigates all the little obstacles that pop up between “start” and “finish”.
Ideal Brown’s family talk about throwing money at a problem: If you chuck enough dollar at something, it will usually stop being an issue (like AIDS). This is obviously a luxury for people who have dollar to throw around. It’s something I’ve picked up on but only works to a point with prints. Suffice it to say, there’s no other or more able bodied “me” I can pay to check and sign the edition. There is however, someone more capable of packing work for a shipment; and that’s Andrew.
I want to know that I did everything I could to prevent a canvas from getting damaged in transit and that’s paying a professional to do a job I’d likely fuck up.
This morning The Crunch spanned 8am to 10am, when Andrew arrived to collect four canvases, due to be sent to Black Rat Projects for my show with them next June. The hours leading up to The Crunch are when I paint the sides of the canvases in acrylic, so they look all clean and decent and presentable.
While they dry, I have to sit around and wait. I can say with the utmost confidence that the worst time to notice something you’re unhappy with, is in the last two hours you have before it gets sent away. I might be able to work fast enough to rectify the situation, but oil paint will just never dry that quickly.
I hate The Crunch. It’s a drawn out yet frantic slice of time in which I think about how dissatisfied I am with my own ability as a painter.
But then Andrew arrives and I can’t say “do you think this is too shit to send?” because there’s no more time left for dithering and most likely, a fuck is precisely what he doesn’t care to give.
So anyway, that was my morning; I sent off four canvases. Now I can relax; there’s still time to GET BETTER and I don’t have to stare down my own work anymore.
One time I awoke at 4am to find all four canvases crowded around my bed, watching me sleep.
Here’s the next one on the way:
I’m trying to crank out a few more drawings these days. You know, for the sake of progress. Really though, they only happen when I’m waiting for some paint to dry or stuck between audiobooks, listlessly moving the shit around on my desk. Jesus, that makes me as cranky as a guy in the 90′s who couldn’t get a clear picture on the telly during a sporting event.
Anyway. This is my favourite scrawl to date, right here. Think it trumps most of my canvases.
Also, I’ve got a new print on the way. It’s early days right now, but it’s definitely a-go-go. To illustrate the current status: Black Rat Projects go “Hey, Candice, let’s do another print” and I go “Yeah, how about this?” and they go “Yeah, that would work” but really we sound more excited than that and then I go “alright cool, soon as it dries, it’s on the way” and then I get nervous excited.
There are a lot of days that are really good for having a slightly irresponsible father, but none that touch Guy Fawkes.
My dad could make everything more fun with with some white spirit and an open flame. Our patio said “we barbecue!” which we did – but more than that, what we did there was “burn shit!”.
Even if all the shit you have is a flammable liquid base and a table spoon. My dad would light it, my brother and I would hoot and squeal and then when it was all done, none of us would really hurry inside, because we (at least I know I was) savouring the smell of After.
Needless to say, bonfire night with my dad was guaranteed to be good, mainly because he didn’t poo-poo the small stuff. Yes, he wanted big explosions, but I never got ninny down-talking for my sparklers and tom-thumbs. If it hissed, it was alright by Dad. The word of the night was “another”. I remember when a tom thumb went off in my face. I remember when the catherine wheels spun right off the garden fence and flew around our feet. I’m pretty sure we burnt some garden furniture by mistake.
I know I went to big displays at schools with fire marshals and teachers and rules, but I can’t remember any of the particulars. I do however remember all of my dad’s “shows”, because you could never be 100% sure of your own safety. And that made them more fun. Obviously.
Despite the safety, this year’s Bonfire night was good. Sally said “I can’t believe this shit” referring to a perimeter around the bonfire that had been made by the red jump-suited fire-guard daddies from a local school. “We used to go right up to it and stick out candy floss in there”
Not all was lost though, there were some duds that started to shoot out of the bonfire in the direction of the dispersing crowd. Sally enjoyed that, as well as laughing at the retreating mumsies. I can’t really blame them. I don’t have the balls to have a regular kid, let alone a kid blinded in one eye by a spitting rocket.
It was dangling by a thread until the very last second, but in the end I had a Halloween night out.
I didn’t even take the photo of the blue person, I found it on my phone the following morning. I figure it must have been taken by Shaun of the Dead (dude called Russell?) who found my abandoned phone in the disabled loo where I had last been weeing (with Sally) and taking photos (of Erin lying on a fold-out table).
He rang “Liz” to ask what colour hair I have and to explain that he’d be easy to find since he was “the only Shaun” at the Baltic. When he discovered that my “friend from New Zealand” (mom from South Africa) was actually in London, he told her that he was very happy to be “uniting the people of the world”.
Russell, Shaun, whoever you are – thanks, man. He found me at the bar, offering the phone to Erin, with a photo of her lying in the disabled loo bed thing (that wig is a winner if you need to be found according to a phone photo)
Goths. On the tube.
I used to think they were so wonderful. Not them- Christ, that’s a bit generous – no, just the fact that they exist in such an abundance that they’re ignored is what I like.
To explain, where I grew up you could get ostracised for wearing as much as a lick of liquid liner. On the weekend. At 17. Sport tinted lip balm at school and you were a fucking retard.
We went to “GOOD” schools; traditional. Totalitarian in their approach to learning.
In winter we wore waist-high brown skirts, mustard shirts, choke-hold brown ties, brown jerseys and brown blazers (the emblem, oversized probably due to their location on our left breast and therefore designed to mask even the most mammoth tit, was an embroidered red lion nestled in a crown, with a lewd tongue lolling out of its mouth. It grasped a flag pole) I would have been lynched had I admitted it, but I quite liked it. The lion and the uniform. I still have my school shoes.
Regulation hair: your natural colour, tied back in a regulation brown hair band. No errant strands hanging in your face. Clips or bobby pins need be brown, black or invisible.
Regulation tights: winter brown opaque 30 – 50 denier. Summer, your choice of white ankle socks (folded twice) or nude stockings.
Forget about make up – what are you? Hooking?
Between the lion on your breast and the nipple itself lived a hymn book. This little coaster gained you entry to assembly. It lived on your heart in a manner that mocked given that it’s flimsy cover couldn’t protect you from a speeding acorn much less a bullet. Without it, one of twelve or so ambitiously misguided prefects would be liable to take your name in one of their anally neat notebooks and later transfer it to the detention board. They manned every entrance of the hall, like pimply guards. Or worse, like perfect PERFECT guards. Inside the hall we would stand until our headmistress would greet and seat us.
We were ladies. Taught to speak, look and behave as such. Even when we were getting bollocked, we were “LADIES! PLEASE!” *hysteria* and the main reason we resented being addressed as such was because as ladies, we had to always represent the school, upright and honourable. That is of course, until we had to sit in the hall where there were no chairs. We presumed the lack of chairs was owing to overcrowding. Or you, know. Being cheap. Seating every girl in a ladylike manner would have required both hockey fields. Putting us on the floor also served to physically heighten the staff, who were on chairs. On the stage. Looking down at us. As if we needing to be reminded of our status.
“You may be seat-” would barely be uttered before every skirt was flying up, arses gunning for the floor. Sure, you might crack your coccyx, but getting a seat on a broken arse was ultimately better than standing, wedged in around a sea of sitting girls, incapable of finding a spare square inch, let alone the space required to accommodate your entire pubescent bum.
You weren’t allowed to talk (to ask for room). A prefect would spit “sit down” through gritted teeth and then “make space for her, make SPACE” While the headmistress would pointedly look away and say “please find a spot, ladies”. As if this were an exercise in simply identifying a vacant area of floor as opposed to summoning one with the power of a pleading stare. At a time when everybody is ashamed of their shape or size, this little fiasco goes a long way in confirming anybody’s feelings that they are, indeed, simply too large for this earth. “I couldn’t even sit down in the HALL”.
In earlier days we would arrive, be seated, rise for the hymn and then be seated again, but I recall the hymn being moved to accompany our greeting to avoid the up-down saga. The teachers had to have known there were too many of us and I take this as confirmation. This was good and bad; good because it meant that if you snagged some floor, you would keep it until the end of assembly. Bad though, because on more than one occasion I rose from assembly and fell straight back to the floor, like a giant immobile clothed sack of meat having lost the feeling in one or both of my legs.
In our mid week moulds, we were so efficiently and tightly packed into a picture of decency that it was difficult for anyone to break out and be anything different on the weekends. Anyone trying too hard would come to look a dick the following Monday when they entered our great tide of normalcy. The fact that you chose to be in any way different wasn’t what lynched you, it was the fact that you had to make an effort and then shelve it from Monday to Friday. And if you found the time and energy to do so after school – well, that spoke volumes about the time you took to think about your image.
If you wanted dirty greasy hair for your angry look, you had Friday afternoon to achieve it (I don’t know- some people like that shit). Piercings and tattoos were difficult too.
It was hideously constrictive. Nobody ever did anything if it would put them at risk of looking stupid. This extended to sex and drugs and yet nobody was above wearing socks with active-wear sandals in the winter. What UTTER DICKHEADS. (ladies, WHY?!) Plenty of people played instruments – but nobody was in a band. We all loved fashion – but nobody would make the first move. Or if you did, you would get a bit of stick for it. (oh, that single inch of modest kitten heel, it was a no-no… until everyone got theirs. And what everyone says, goes)
Dresses were deemed too dressy.
When we would flock to the clubs, we did so in much the same fashion as we did at school; in the same colours, styles, fabrics. Some prick wears a scarf, everybody prick wears a scarf. Hoodies are cool? We all wear hoodies. A dress… What? Did you go into your mom’s closet?! *cue laughter* If enough people wore something, it was fine. Regardless of what it was. If catheter bags were popular, you could wear one like a bum bag while the girl next to you would get rinsed for sporting a yellow skirt. “Yellow?! Oh my Go-ood, yellow. Ohmagod, Jess look at Megan’s skirt, don’t you LIKE it? I WANT one, let’s both get one too. I’m telling my mom to get me one toDAY. After SCHOOL.” from here the offender would receive such a high volume of compliments and praise, she’d be almost willing to wear a bin liner in place of it just to get the menacing thing off her body. To get everyone to stop.
You didn’t dress for your shape, the weather or you know, how you wanted to; you dressed for the hive. It wasn’t looking bad or stupid or too pretty. It was looking different. It was a strange environment to grow up in, mostly because any other person I know who went to such a school would rebel with her peers (camaraderie!) by fucking and snorting and drinking and doing anything they wanted just as soon as they got the chance. We were like the Hitler Youth in our single-mindedness. And gullible. I have friends who still think that one encounter with a class A will render you AN ADDICT.
I mean, we’d still do stupid shit and break the laws most teenagers piss on, but we’d do it as a unit. Like one ginormous teenager, who utterly hates part of herself but remains, unfortunately, just one big mass.
I say all this as if I weren’t as much a part of the problem as any other girl. Of course I was. I too remember when Tara came to school on civvies day in midnight blue lipschtick and a shiny pencil skirt. It was more an act of bombing the harbour than pushing the boat out. Her look didn’t pain me. The fact that she was wiling to suffer silent abuse was what frustrated me. Like an obese person ordering 7 pizzas. She had to know what she was getting herself into.
So anyway, I saw these two goth kids on the tube. 7 years ago I would have been delighted by their fuck-everyone attitude and the fact that “everyone” has bigger fish to fry than getting upset by what people wear.
Unfortunately though all I could think was “those bat-imprinted padlocks must have come with the jacket. I wonder if when he loses one, he’ll replace it with a regular old brassy number from the garden gate” and the pleasure was gone.
