Down by the Riverside – 41/820

I, apparently, should work harder. I spent most of last week doing admin and logging all the hours I spent on my business last year and I could account for 820 hours.

Those hours include doing shoots (obviously), editing photos, writing and editing interviews, writing press releases and invitations, blogging, networking via email and social networks, business meetings, admin hours, updating and maintaining my websites and doing research on copyright laws in the NL and SA. And that’s it, I think.

 

Those hours don’t include time spent traveling (50 hours on planes alone) to and from jobs, going to gallery openings, phone calls and browsing the net or books for inspiration. I split the time when business meetings moved into social meetings. So without any creative book-keeping I got to 820 hours. The thing is that if one spends 1,255 hours on one’s own business you can get great tax breaks and refunds but, and here’s the real catch, those tax breaks only apply to the profit you made but hey I made non so it actually doesn’t even matter…

 

I worked for 41 weeks out of 52. I had visitors over for 5 weeks during which I did work a little but then again I logged 4 sick days so they level each other out, was out of it for 2 weeks due to an operation, spent 4 weeks abroad in Namibia and the Netherlands.

 

When I worked at the design office we worked 8 hour days but only had to properly book 5 hours a day on projects. Out of those 8 hours about 1.5 were spent on lunch and coffee, it was fine to book an hour a day browsing the net or looking at magazines and books for inspiration without being able to book it on a project which comes down to about 5.5 hours a day. So I pretty much worked about the same  and traded an income, social security, an apartment and “stuff” for what? For experience. And even if I feel like I have to justify what I did in the past year, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. In fact, I’m going back for seconds:-)

 

820 hours…. 41 weeks of work. I have to do more. I will do more. And it will be awesome. Can’t wait:-)

Listening to  ‘L’Oncle Soul’ by French musician Ben. He covers ‘Seven Nation Army’ by the White Stripes… sacrilege? Oh well…  I still love this song by Danish singer Agnes Obel…

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Thinking of Dean Moriarty

Here I am, with suddenly only nine days left to go before the exhibition. It’s wonderfully weird and a little frightening somehow to see it all come together. Slowly but coming together non the less. I keep waiting for the bomb to drop but no bomb has dropped yet and hopefully it never will. Some old 80’s Dutch band sang about “Dansen op de vulkaan” and that’s how I feel today. Excited but not everything is finished yet and there’s still a long swim ahead.

 

We did the last shoot for the behind-the-scenes video today. The video is being made by Pierre De Villiers and Cait Pansegrouw, an awfully talented duo and I can’t wait to see the end result.  It was an awesome day today, hot and muggy but we did good work. We interviewed 3 different people today, just shot a location that I have used for this project and had coffee. Received a call about the project from Cape Town Magazine and hopefully they’ll feature it on their site as well. Driving around, meeting people, beautiful scenery and a cool project to work, what else could one possibly want?

 

 

I secured the fourth “go ahead” from a band today saying that we can use their music in the video. There’s four now; Tristan Waterkeyn, Guy Buttery, Hot Water and Miss Texas 1977. It will be a wonderful eclectic sound, I’m sure.

 

 After the shoots I went to Orms to see the final prints and man do they do stunning work or what? I printed out 11 A2 sized metallic C-prints but chose 10 to be framed and exhibited on the walls of the Grand Daddy Hotel. The others will be shown digitally, together with the video and quotes taken from the interviews.

 

The last shoot was done last week and will start editing it on Friday. We met up in Obs, got the stuff in the car and headed to Guguletu. the idea was to shoot at Mzoli’s but when we got there I didn’t like it very much so we shot in the spaza shop across the road and on the road next to Mzoli’s. Then we had *lunch* at Mzoli’s:-) Much better. We took the long way round out of Gugs and ended up at some run down building. The sun was a little less bright by then which helped the shoot for sure. I am not a fan of shooting in bright bright sunlight.

 

The weekend saw us heading towards Stellenbosch and Franschhoek for a hell of a lot of wine tasting. La Motte won hands down… awesome awesome wine! Their Pierneeff range is simply to die for and I’m sure my brother would have stayed there if he could.

 

Just had a look at the new releases and they’ve got to be kidding… all oldies; Brian Eno, Brian Ferry, Monster Magnet even Jamiroquai (why hasn’t he disappeared yet?) Fair enough, Giant Sand are oldies too.. but Howe Gelb, what can I say, it’s Howe Gelb 🙂 The video btw,  is of Jack Kerouac reading from On The Road… just because I like it. Thinking of Dean Moriarty…

 

 I do kind of like Shaking Godspeed’s album ‘Awe’ on Suburban Records. Am listening to Gold Panda now which doesn’t exactly do it for me so I moved to Warpaint ‘The Fool’ on Rough Trade which I do like so far:-) Will check out Zwart Licht’s “No Juju” later.

 

The Facebook events page for Swimming Upstream is up and running and can be found here: please RSVP… don’t just RSVP but say *yes*, attending for sure and bring people with:-) http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=159213667451942

 

See you there! I for one can’t wait:-))

 

 

Ou est le Swimming Pool

Busy and awesome days. My family from the NL just got down here last Saturday and I am trying to mix spending time with them and working a “full day in half a day”. So far so good except that I haven’t blogged or tweeted all that much. Otherwise, all’s pretty darn good.

 

I have a shoot this morning with a fashion designer,  an online campagne is running on Overtone, press releases are being sent out as I type this, negotiations are being held with Orms who will do the printing and framing, talks and drinks are being had with the Grand Daddy people who are doing a fab job on organizing the party side of it all, a video is being shot and edited, copyright clearances are being made for the music in the video. The project is the first thing I work on in the morning and the last thing at night. I’d say that yes, absolutely, I am becoming slightly monomaniacal about it all but it’s cool too.

 

In between all this I am showing my family around town or places like Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, Noordhoek, Bo-Kaap, Woodstock or Cape point and we’re eating food and drinking whiskey & wine like there’s no tomorrow.

Oh and I moved from Noordhoek to Capri to Fresnaye in a week. I am quite the “schlepper” by now:-)

 

In other news, yay, I see Giant Sand has a new album out. I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet just like so many other records at the moment… The title for this blog post comes from a UK band called “Ou est le swimming pool” … I haven’t listened all that much to them yet but the title seemed apt… Yet now I really just want to listen to Harlem… Gay Human Bones! Friendly Ghost! I live in a graveyard, I want to go out but it’s too hot…. lalalalalala”. It’s been out for a while now, on Matador Records… and well, damn, you gotta love Matador home of Belle & Sebastian, Interpol, Bettie Serveert, Cat Power (Cat Power!!), Pavement, Yo la Tengo, Dum Dum Girls, Sonic Youth, Solex, Bettie Serveert… :-))))) Yeah! That yeah should be said like the mc (G.E. Smith or Kris Kristofferson, can’t remember) said it when introducing Johnny Cash at Bob Fest (Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary celebrations with Booker T and the MG’s as the house band, how awesome is that?!) explaining that when Bob Dylan first met Johnny Cash he just walked up and around him like he was a big tree and said Yeah!

That’s the “yeah” i mean:-)

 

Pinelands Left Foot Step Down

Yesterday’s was an awesome day of  shooting. A long day but an awesome day. I met up with Verity late morning and just made our way to the Hip Hop clothing factorystraight away. I had never been to Hip Hop and had no idea what to expect. Turns out the factory is above the {field office} in town. Cool. I like that place.

The pink curtains didn’t make me feel very confident about what we would find *inside* but man, as soon as you go inside it’s like you falling down the rabbit hole. Clothes, clothes, clothes. Green, red, black, yellow, grey, purple, checkered, stripes, flowers, embroidered, sparkly, see through, petty coated, long, short, shiny, it’s all there. It’s awesome. There were four racks of clothing we could freely chose from and if we needed any help, just say so. That’s another thing about Hip Hop, everybody is super friendly, helpful and enthusiastic about what they do. See, it really like falling down the rabbit hole and being twirled around by a smiling hare offering you a hoompa-loompa accompanied trip down the yellow brick road.

 

After about an hour or so of trying on outfits we made our way down to the {field office} for  some coffee and a sandwich and we were good to go.

 

The idea was to shoot at Oude Molen in Pinelands, find that hippie, trippy car or some broken down wall and just start shooting. While  driving around the place we spotted some old beat up bus in a vegetable pad and that seemed way cooler than the hippie, trippy car which also happened to be covered in shade and wasn’t nearly as cool as I remember. Beat up bus it is then. Or so we thought… The darn thing was behind a closed fence… Off we went trying to find somebody who could let us in. The bar lady? Nope. Some random guy? Nope. The horse guy then? Aaahhhh maybe. The horse guy could at least lead us to The Guy Who Could Let Us In If He Like Us. As soon as I heard the Guy Who Could Let Us In was also known as Opa Jono I knew we were in. And yup, we were.

 

So off we went, pretty dresses in our arms and a camera in hand. Opa Jono and the horse guy settled down nicely on a chair and watched us for a while but fortunately grew tired of it pretty quickly. We shot on, in and around the bus, trying out different outfits and poses.

After nearly two hours at Oude Molen we figured we’d done enough and headed home to the deep south. Relaxed a little bit at Verity’s house and decided it was a pity not to use that gorgeous black dress so should we maybe try for a few more shots? Hell yeah. Must have been around 6 o’clock already and the sun was slowly setting, the wind was picking and it started to get cold. We wondered around the wetlands for a while, took a few photos and called it a day. I say it was a fab day.

Oh yes, there a new The Bees album out! Awesome! Love love love The Bees. Every Step’s a Yes:-) Title … yes from The Bees ‘Octopus’ album….

As Long As You Can Whistle

It’s one of those in between days – Not feeling  100%, not sick either. I have sent out emails requesting a shoot but am waiting to hear back. The designers are busy are making online banners and an email invitation, and the press release is under review on a friend’s computer.

 

I watched ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ last night, the original of course. I can’t be bothered to watch the 1999 remake. I think the story is quite thin but man, Faye Dunaway is stunning and love love some of the outfits she wears. The dress she’s wearing when they’re playing chess, wow. The chess scene is hot in any case; the close-ups of faces, lips, arms, hands caressing chess pieces, you can feel the sexual tension rising. I love the late 60’s feel of the movie. The clothes, the cars, the use of split screens, it’s old-fashioned but in a good way. The pace of the movie is good too.  I’ve never been a big fan of Steve McQueen but after having seen Papillon, the Great Escape and now the Thomas Crown affair and must admit the man is handsome to say the least;-)

 

 Thing is that I’ve been watching quite a few escape movies lately and ‘Papillon’ was cool but apparently the book is better (Shannon:-)) and the whole isolation cell scenes are terrible but not nearly as claustrophobic and upsetting as Javier Bardem’s scenes in ‘Before Night Falls’ or even Paul Newman in ‘Cool Hand Luke’.  ‘Before Night Falls’ wins hands down in the claustrophobic department. Speaking of that movie, Johnny Depp as Bon Bon is fabulous, never realized how hot Olivier Martinez is until this movie and Sean Penn as Cuco Sanchez is cool too.

Cool Hand Luke spawned the classic line “What we got here, is (a) failure to communicate” which, according to Wikipedia, made it to #11 in on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 most memorable movie lines. I should check out that list.  

 

My personal favorite must be on there, I’m sure: “you do know how to whistle, don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together and blow” by Lauren Bacall in  ‘To have and have not’. It’s not just the line that I love. It’s the tension between them, the black and white, the lighting’s stunning. Yes, I got a thing for Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart:-)

 

 

Time to go outside. Hope you’ll have a great weekend:-) I’m watching Butch Cassidy & the Sundance kid tonight. I’ll post about the project some other day.