Greg Dulli’s voice is filling up my room. Nice. No one can beg and plead in such a seductive way as he can. Well some, but not a lot:) This should help my mood on this dreary, grey December day. Oh well. Bears have the right idea – hibernation.
At the close of 2011 I entered the Mono Competition by Gomma Books and filed an application for an artist residency in Cape Town. Fingers crossed it will work out:)
For you photographers out there the Sony World Photographers – Open Competition is also still open. The deadline is on January 4, 2012. And kudos to Gomma Books and Sony for not charging an entry fee.
I don’t know about you, but I am totally ready for 2011 to be over and 2012 to start. I just know adventures are waiting:)
The title comes from the album ‘Gentlemen’ by, you guessed it, the Afghan Whigs.
The photo above is one of Lauren Fowler, a hugely talented illustrator from Cape Town. You can see her work at www.laurenfowler.co.za
I updated my website www.kathalijne.com. There are new photos in all sections, like the one below of Lauren Fowler which is found under the Portrait tab. You can find work made in France together with a few portraits in New, there’s Guy Buttery and DJ Akio in Music and work made in South Africa under the Travel tab.
Seeing my friends and family again is truly wonderul and I realize I missed them more than I thought. As for the rest? I really am trying to see the positive side about being back in the NL. I am trying to see it all as part of the big project. That having to go back home broke is also part of Swimming Upstream, just like trying to get a refund for your seriously broken and ruined frames, or trying to get published, paid or an agent. I try to ignore the depressing darkness and do useful things with my time while I figure out where to go next.
So in week one, I applied for an editor’s position (even if I don’t get it, updating my CV and thinking about hourly rates etc must be useful), have updated my own website with tons of new work, set up meetings, wrote emails in advance that I can send out as soon as Cape Town gets back to work after the 16th and have been doing loads and loads of admin for the past 3 days. I’ve sent stuff to my accountant, medical insurance and travel insurance. All very .. uhm.. useful stuff. And useful is good, right? Useful is what you should do, what is necessary or expected. But ai, what if useful is not contributing anything to your soul’s well being?
For you see, with my mild ‘Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Toden betrübt’ and according to some mild ADHD ( cough Joy cough) disposition, doing just what is ever so useful or expected just makes me wake up early, feel worried and I am easily moved to tears without ever really crying. Maybe I should. I hold on to the idea that there must be some good in spending time here like sorting out admin, spending time with my family and friends, networking on this side and that maybe, hopefully, there will be an idea or job in there somewhere. And I also know that it is good to sort stuff out properly, be responsible and adult about things and that not earning any money for more than one year is *not* the way to go so yes, something must change. I know what I want and as usual I am pretty inflexible about changing that which I personally think is a good thing:-)
Besides how hard can it be right? If you can visualize or verbalize it you are able to get there or some other appropriate dogma.
So there we go once more. I want to go back to SA for approx 6 months and finish my project properly by throwing those events with Instant Grass/Overtone and others, by taking Duncan up on his offer to teach me all about video making and *make* those music videos, and by getting in with some of the agencies and get paid jobs for cool (music or travel) magazines, get my project published and get more paid jobs. Then with the money I earned, I want to go travel across southern Africa: Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana and hell why not add Malawi to the mix while I’m at it?
Really, how hard can it be?
the photo is of Lauren Fowler. I took it a while back in Kalk Bay. As for the video, it’s an oldie by Neil Young. I love Neil Young. Seriously. And there’s something sweet and naive about this song that i have always loved. I also want to live on Sugar Mountain, with the barkers and colored balloons:-)
Fuck, I’m tired today. And no amount of coffee seems to help. Just dragged a puking cat outside as well, not helping either. What is helping are the new Sufjan Stevens album, The Age of ADZ and Mark Ronson & The Business Intl’s Record Collection:-) The first song Bang Bang Bang features Q-tip. Nice:-)
I had a fab day yesterday. I met up with illustrator Lauren Fowler at the Olympia cafe in the morning for a photo shoot and interview. I’ve loved her work for a while now but had never met her in person and chatting over coffee worked wonderfully. There’s a link to her work on the Blog Roll of this page (Lost Is A Place Too). After 30 mins or so we made our way to her house so we could choose some outfits for the shoot. I had thought about possible locations before I got to Kalk Bay but also decided to play it by ear and just see how things go. Possible locations were: Polana’s or the Harbor House because of the light and views of the ocean, a black wall of a store along the Main Road, the Kalk Bay trains station as that is quite picturesque and also offers great views of the ocean and perhaps her place if light allowed it. When we got to her house we pretty much immediately decided to do the first half of the shoot there as the light’s quite good, the atmosphere is great and there are lots of cool little things around the house.
I love shooting girls (yes, men too:-)), you can play dress up, play with make up etc and Lauren has tons of cool clothes:-)
After shooting in around her house for a while we headed outside and used that black wall at Aardvark. We were both jumping in between passing cars and got quite a few raised eyebrows. Cool;-) We shot at the train station as well but after a couple of shots we were both hungry and tired. Made our way back to Olympia for an awesome lunch (penne with tomato, olives, Parmesan) and some wine. Finished the whole day up by doing the interview as well and got home late in the afternoon.
My favorite pic so far is the one I posted above. It was shot in her garden.
I edited some pics, sent them off to her and went to Observatory in rain to meet up with Toby Twoshoes for an interview at 8 pm. The day ended with me crashing on my friend’s Lieve’s couch in Woodstock for some tea and chats. Got home at nearly midnight. Cool day.
KATHALIJNE VAN ZUTPHEN 