I met a man who wasn’t there

Back in January, David Bowie died. There was an outpouring of grief and many, many think pieces, tributes etc., that I didn’t feel I could add anything. This loss hit me hard and quite unexpectedly. I was not a “fan” although I was of an age to have been very enthusiastic about Let’s Dance in the 80s, but before and after he was mostly background music.

The thing is, when the back catalogue was played over and over in January, I knew all the songs and most of the words. The visual imagery surrounding Bowie was as familiar as the family album. In going through my vinyl (kept in a box in the basement) I found this – a relic from my older brothers I guess.

Bowie was part of my whole life, I was born the year of one of his biggest hits. He (and his music) was always THERE. While I was the sort of person who eschewed “pop”, I was very fond of his movies particularly Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Hunger. I knew him through his work with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. In fact when he released “Tonight” in 1984, I already knew it from Pop and those instantly recognisable backing vocals which can also be heard on Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love.

I hadn’t heard Blackstar when news of Bowie’s death came out but I agree with many others that it was a startling end point. I still wonder where the fuck did Monday go.

I suppose I have nothing new to say. I still feel a loss, a gap where Bowie was and now isn’t. We all had our own version of the mercurial Bowie, and we still have the music. However I am amazed at the pervasiveness of his influence. Although he …isn’t here, we will still find him in unexpected places.

      
Paint mixer at Resene, Dunedin (Jan 2016)                                                           Paint Colour “Bowie” Resene Paints

 

 

 

Both sides now

I am reading a book called “The Theory of Clouds” by Stéphane Audeguy. It is, like much of what I like to read, a mix of fact and fiction and focuses on a history of cloud watching.

A section of the book  tells the story of the painter Carmichael (supposedly based on John Constable) and his obsession with capturing clouds in paint. I had always considered Constable a painter of mills and bucolic settings, but you can see from this google search the extent of his cloud paintings, just a few reproduced here.

The difficulty of capturing the cloud is discussed at length on “A Theory..” however now the camera captures clouds with more ease, which you see everywhere in photography from Aotearoa.

Laurence Aberhart. Catholic Cross, Puketapu, Hawke’s Bay, June 1982

On Walking

I have recently succumbed to the tyranny of the pedometer. I need to move and get outdoors because the winter gloom of Southern New Zealand affects me quite a lot and sun and exercise helps. Thing thing is…exercise. In my much younger days I climbed and tramped and the thought of “artificial exercise” eg the gym, chills me. I have friends who walk and I am a fan of flâneury on the page at least, see here and here. Related to this, some of my favourite books relate to psychogeography, brilliant examples being Martin Edmonds’  “Chronicle of the Unsung” and “Dark Night: Walking with McCahon“. More recently I discovered WB Sebald whose “Rings of Saturn” which I cannot recommend strongly enough.

So can I walk with purpose in my small town, and is it big enough that I can also wander? Initially I am being guided by the 1970s books “Taieri Buildings” and “More Taieri Buildings” by Lemon and Bascand, and am trying to locate all the buildings still there that are within the build up area. Sadly some, like the old Flour Mill (in this photo just before its demolition), have been reduced to gravel carparks.

Recently on a night walk I managed to circumnavigate, by accident, the grounds of what was Holy Cross College, a former seminary. This photo was taken around 1900 I am guessing, as a new chapel was built in 1902.

 
DCC Archives, postcard in Taieri County Council Photograph Series. Photographer: AW Bathgate

And today I took this – from a similar position. You can see a former convent just in front, now a house.

 
Poor phone camera photo taken today of same view.

So yes….more to walk and write about. I am also excited to compare urban, rural and small town journeys. In Rebecca Solnit’s “Wanderlust: A History of Walking” she writes “In the country one’s solitude is geographical – one is altogether outside society….In the city, one is alone because the world is made up of strangers, and to be a stranger surrounded by starkest…is among the starkest of luxuries”.

Long Island Sound

For most of last year I was immersed in geographic academia and geographical detail remains intriguing to me. This morning I chanced to hear just the beginning of a radio interview with Jake Gorst, director of Modern Tide, about modernist architecture on the East Coast of the US.. The first thing that struck me was his statement that Long Island was 100 miles long. I don’t know why this hadn’t registered with me in the past. But on reflection it makes sense, as many of my literary/arts favourites have some sort of connection to the island and yet I had never really connected.

Jackson Pollock lived and died there. The Pollock Krasner house in Springs in the Hamptons is now a study centre and museum of sorts.

Both Armistead Maupin and Edmund White’s (especially Forgetting Elena) stories of Fire Island.

Large parts of John Irving’s “Widow for One Year” takes place in the Hamptons also at Sagaponack. This is not an easy book but captures human nature so well like much of Irving’s writing

The wonderful book “Architect of Desire” about the infamous Stanford White was largely located at the Box Hill estate in Smithtown.

The decline of Box Hill led me to research the fading history of Long Island and I discovered this website about the mansions of Long Island and the architectural relics of its heyday.

The mansions of course bring us to one of the most know Long Island stories “The Great Gatsby” and I was surprised how close to New York in modern terms Gatsby’s Estate was. Wikipedia states that ” In this novel, Great Neck (King’s Point) became the new-money peninsula of “West Egg” and Port Washington (Sands Point) the old-money “East Egg”. Several mansions in the area served as inspiration for Gatsby’s home, such as Oheka Castle and the now-demolished Beacon Towers.“

Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby and I am sure there are many many others….

Finally Rufus Wainright’s song Montauk is also a great favourite