Books

A Dog so Small by Phillipa Pearce

I read a lot of books, I always have done. When thinking about a book from my childhood, this one immediately sprang to mind.

Themes of loneliness, desire, longing, fantasy, imagination, dreaming and introspection. Ben lives in central London and longs for a dog. His parents say that he can’t have one, it’s not practical in their small flat.

His grandfather promises him a dog for his birthday but instead Ben is given a picture of a chihuahua. The chihuahua becomes his fantasy dog which Ben can see when his eyes are closed. The book is about the boy’s inner life, he’s so lonely he needs an imaginary dog to keep him company. When his parents move closer to a greener space he is given a puppy by his grandfather but the dog doesn’t meet his fantasy and he initially rejects the puppy.

“People get their heart’s desire, she said, ‘and then they have to begin to learn how to live with it.”

Music

Everything changed when I was seventeen

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Punk rock was a break from the past. It was a time when bands were teaching themselves to play their own instruments, customising their own clothes, designing and distributing their own fanzines. A time of youthful energy and counter culture.

I heard New Rose by the Damned in 1977 and my world changed. I passed my driving test and drove to Manchester regulary with my best friend Rae to see punk bands at the Factory in Hulme, Manchester. I felt as though I was finding myself, it was a break from my parents and the first time that I felt the music was mine.

Graffiti

Keith Haring

In the 1980’s strange chalk drawings began to appear on the New York subway. Radiating babies, cartoon dogs, people riding dolphins, space ships, hearts, graphic lines drawn onto black unused advertising spaces depicting imaginary beings a bit like cave paintings.

Keith Haring had a joy and energy that he put into his drawings and paintings. He created his art compulsively drawing on cars, vases, walls, furniture and found objects. His art was often produced in public spaces and became political  focusing on themes of HIV/Aids and the end of apartheid in South Africa. 

Berlin in the 1980’s

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In 1981 I went to live in Berlin for 6 months. The experience was strange, exhilarating and mind expanding. I travelled there by train, journeying through an East German landscape of tanks and soldiers to the West German island that was a divided Berlin. Berlin was occupied at the time by allied forces of Britain, America, France and the Russians on the Eastern side. I was fascinated by the wall graffitied by artists from around the world.

So strange to be able to visit the eastern part through Check Point Charlie, changing money to East German Marks which could hardly buy anything. Then to see the car free streets apart from a few Trabants. 

Billie Holiday

When my heart has been broken, Billie has always been there to hold my hand. 

Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in 1915 in Philadelphia. As a teenager she began singing in clubs in Harlem. There were a number of racist incidents throughout her career. While working with Artie Shaw’s all white band in 1938, Billie was asked to use the service elevator in the Lincoln Hotel in New York instead of the passenger elevator because white patrons in the hotel complained.

In the late 1930s she was introduced to Strange Fruit, a song based on a poem about lynching written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. For her performance of “Strange Fruit” at the Café Society, she had waiters silence the crowd when the song began. During the song’s long introduction, the lights dimmed and all movement had to cease. As Holiday began singing, only a small spotlight illuminated her face. On the final note, all lights went out, and when they came back on, Holiday was gone. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Holiday

Billie Holiday’s music gives me comfort when I’m sad, she has an authenticity to her voice that few singers have. I’ve played her music over and over again she finds a place to tap into my feelings creating something raw and real.

Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

Art

Robert Rauschenberg

I first really became aware of Robert Rauschenberg’s art at the Tate Modern exhibition in 2016.

In his Wikipedia page it says that he is a painter, sculptor, printmaker and performance artist. This gives an idea of someone who is restless and forever seeking out new ways of expression, constantly trying out new techniques. Moving away from conventional materials he finds rubbish discarded in the street, umbrellas, buckets, light bulbs, planks of wood and incorporates this with dripping paint to create his ‘combines’.

Using a quilt with paint dripping downwards, the story goes that Rauschenberg lacked the funds to buy a canvas so he used his own quilt.

“And if it wasn’t a surprise at first by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by it’s context and therefore became a new thing.”

In 1958 he began using printed pictures and photographs. He soaked the images in solvent and then transferred them to his art. His work was reflective of the time in which he lived using imagery of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the moon landing. He called attention to what was going on in the world.

Film

Little Miss Sunshine

I have seen Little Miss Sunshine approximately six times, I love it and there is one particular scene near the end of the film which makes me cry with laughter every time I see it.

The film is about a dysfunctional family, living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The family come together in a yellow VW van for a road trip to take daughter Olive to a beauty pageant in Redondo Beach, California. Members of the family all have their issues but seem to get along with each other on the trip for the sake of Olive. Olive seems mis-matched to be in a beauty pageant she’s very different from the other girls.

When it comes to the talent part of the competition Olive dances to Super Freak by Rick James while doing a strip tease, a dance taught her by her Grandfather. The organisers try to get her off stage but the family come and join her in the dance.

The film does have some dark moments, these are a contrast to moments of pure joy, the van breaking down, the horn getting stuck, the dance sequence near the end of the film. There’s something about a road trip which brings out different aspects of people’s personalities, we see the best and the worst of the family.

Pageant

Prior to writing the script, Michael Arndt, scriptwriter read in a newspaper about Arnold Schwarzenegger speaking to a group of high school students and saying “If there’s one thing in this world I hate, it’s losers. I despise them.” As a result, Arndt developed his script lampooning the thought process: “And I thought there’s something so wrong with that attitude … I wanted to … attack that idea that in life you’re going up or you’re going down … So to a degree, a child beauty pageant is the epitome of the ultimate stupid meaningless competition people put themselves through.” Co-director Jonathan Dayton also commented on the importance of the pageant to the film: “As far as the pageant goes, it was very important to us that the film not be about pageants. It’s about being out of place, it’s about not knowing where you’ll end up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Miss_Sunshine

Place

The Horniman Museum

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The Horniman Museum gardens in Forest Hill, South East London, a place I come to sit and think, reflect and observe. The view is incredible, you can see right across London to Wembley stadium and beyond. Lying in the gardens in Summer, I’ve seen a Buddhist monk with a gong bless the grounds, exotic butterflies in iridescent blues and greens housed in the humidity of the butterfly house. Extraordinary pumpkins grow and happy bees land on brilliant yellow sunflowers.

Woman in her yellow dress,
Sound declines,
Breeze blowing pages, waiting for calm,
Bird call, tree rustle,
Strand of forgotten song playing in my head