The Rambling Life Fantastic

“You see, I have a strange serendipitous relationship with Hot Water, but I don’t think they actually know this. Looking back it seems that I always see them around the time of changes in my life.”

Those are my words, written when I interviewed Donovan Copley for Portfolio Collection’s Travel Blog nearly two years ago (full interview here: Talking To Hot Water – Connecting The Dots Through Life And Music). Strangely and amazingly enough, those words are still true. I saw them perform in The Hague this past weekend and it occurred to me that once again, decision-making and the changes that come with that, are on the horizon. Self-inflicted deadlines and self-inflicted limits between failure or success. Why do we do that? How does it happen that one loses faith when first you had the conviction to that what you felt and thought were right? It’s easy to point the finger at others, blaming them for messing with your head, while in fact those voices have always been there and it never stopped you before. Not making decisions has a paralyzing effect on me. I do know that there is only one way back from to and that is to get back on the proverbial horse. I hope it rears up and gallops straight into the fields of possibility.

In case you were wondering about the Hot Water gig last Saturday, it was awesome as always. The band consisted of Donovan Copley (vocals, guitar), Ronan Skillen (didgeridoo, various drums), Andre Schwartz (drums), Soubry Makupula (back up vocals) and I am ashamed to say I don’t know the bass players name. They played, roughly, for an hour and half with songs from their 3 albums. During one of their new songs ‘Lekker Sakkie’ they invited people to come up on stage for a dance contest, a “langarm” dance contest at that. Unsurprisingly, there were not many people in the house who knew what “langarm” was, in fact there was only one couple, a guy from P.E. and is girlfriend. Not surprisingly:)

I hadn’t seen them perform in over a year, and it was cool hearing some new songs as well as a Bob Dylan cover, watching Soubry dress up as a woman and Donovan climbing up onto the rafters during the encore ‘Tribal Man’.

Climbing up onto the rafters… to get a new perspective on things, perhaps? See, I told you I always seem to meet them when the times are a changing. Soon, I’ll be wearing shades:)

The photos photos were taken on Red Hill, just outside Simon’s Town, on a cold winter’s day. The title comes in part  from the Man Man song ‘Life Fantastic”

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Itch

I submitted work to South Africa’s online art magazine, Itch, just a few weeks before I went on holiday. They issued a call for work for there upcoming Infinity issue and I figured my Leon Visser image would work well. Apparently they liked it:)

You can view the page here: http://itch.co.za/?article=631

P = for Print

I came back from a meeting in town with the Museum Gallery guy, Dylan, just now and he showed me the prints for the exhibition. They are beautiful! Orms really did a stunning job and they were *fast* as well.  All prints are all C-grade prints which means they are printed on photographic paper using a chemical process. They are also guaranteed to not fade in color for the next 85 years. Got a sneak preview of the whole set as well and it’s going to be an awesome exhibition. It is such a diverse body of work ranging from landscape to portrait to super imposed collages.

The photo is of Leon Visser (of Hot Water fame) or ‘the one that didn’t quite make the selection’. It is a personal favorite and was shot on a beach in The Netherlands in 2008. I love the idea of a South Africa and Afrikaans man at that, sitting on the beach in Holland facing the landscape with the sea behind him. Like he’s come full circle. Even if it is a pity that the photo didn’t make it into the exhibition, I do like the fact that the photos that will be shown were taken during my stay recent here in SA.