Spring has Sprung

[WEDNESDAY 18 MARCH 2009]
Spring has sprung. I know this because:

1. It’s a glorious day outside.
2. The birds are chirping up a beautiful cacophony in the garden.
3. I have eschewed the thermals for the first time this year.

Yes it is a glorious day out there, and here I am in my window-less loft, hoping the early chill will soon be displaced by the joys of spring scuttling up the ladder.

On with the show…

[note to self: film the days travails, then speed up the footage. Post it on YouTube. Dispel the myth of the artist, by showing every step of the process. Imagine the viewing figures: Zero.]

On with the show…

As if to perpetuate the overall feeling of goodness, the Pod of i has been selecting some choice music to soundtrack the moment: Bubblegum by Kim Fowley; two Belle & Sebastian songs in a row; Range Life by Pavement; Stereo Total; Dusty singing about The Windmills of Your Mind. It’s all sweet, sweet music to my ears.

In a bid to spoil the party, along comes Mark E. Smith with a curmudgeonly retort to all this gambolling-lamb joie de vivre.

11am: A quick cup of tea and some sunshine to warm me through.

As well as a preoccupation with neon, I must confess to having a deep fascination with rust, mould, decay, and anything that looks distressed. This is probably rooted back in my foundation year, when I spent a lot of time shivering under Worthing pier, sketching and taking photos. I tend to romanticise the fragility of battered and weathered artefacts, and find myself attracted and repulsed by their decomposing patina.  Hence I am compelled to take photos of things like this:

This explains why I was in heaven breathing in the lead-fumes and poring over the topography of Kiefer’s monumental canvases and loitering amongst Richard Serra’s lurching slabs of weathered steel on a trip to the Bilbao Guggenheim a year or so ago.

Note to self:

Like so: