Here is an interview I did quite some time ago with the awesomely resourceful Melbourne directors collective Krozm. You can also find it in the most recent edition of POP Magazine. Click below the cut and while away the next 10 minutes of your life. It’s a longun!
Dear House,
You don’t know me yet, but I’ve thought about you a lot. I’ve thought about the parties I would have inside you and how you’d make me cool. I know exactly where you are. Though sometimes I imagine you being in a different place, like New York. I can’t wait until we meet. It will be so grand. The first night I will stay up late because I will be too excited to sleep. I’ll eat hommus, sip chai tea and read imported magazines. You’ll be there for me, and keep the temperature just right. I’ll wake up in the morning confused and walk into your cupboard. It’ll be the one where the bathroom used to be in my old room. Don’t take it personally – they say it takes 28 days to break a habit. We’ll get over that little hurdle and then you’ll show me around the neighbourhood. You’ll introduce me to the 32 year old guy next door who lives in his mums basement and trains dogs for TV commercials (following his late Father’s trade – who was third in charge of Skippy the bush kangaroo). Then you’ll show me all the really great bars and thrift shops just near you. I’ll buy an old bike and ride it to a café I once read about in ThreeThousand. Someone I used to go to uni with will walk past and see me. They’ll ask me what I’m doing there and I’ll drop your name. They’ll tell me a long-winded story about how they’ve just moved back in with their parents in Lilydale. It’ll make me feel good about my new relationship with you. They’ll ask me about the coffee I’m drinking. I’ll tell them it’s probably the best coffee I’ve ever had and the look on their face will tell me it’s better than any coffee in Lilydale. They’ll leave, eventually. You’ll whistle loudly and tell me to come home. The other people that live inside you will be making pizza with fresh basil from your garden and prosciutto from your good friend Bruno the local butcher. One of them will have lived in Italy and will be making the base from scratch, in a little glass bowl. I’ll ride home quickly and nearly fall off my bike because I hit an unusually large gumnut. I’ll push through your smiley gate and lean my bike up against your strong exterior. The smell of basil and prosciutto ham will pick me up and I’ll drift effortlessly down your long corridor. As I float towards the kitchen I’ll hear my new friends having a really intelligent conversation about MadMen and I’ll smile to myself… And think I’m home. Finally.
To Make This Story Come True:
Please send all vacancies in your house to
tim at timpashen dot com
Salvador Dali. To some he was that crazy guy with a curled-up pencil moustache, to some he was the dude that designed the Chupa Chups logo and to some he’s the guy who just had an exhibition at the NGV that you didn’t go to see (if you’re that last one – it sucks to be you).
Probably everyone here gathered in this little sphere, reading their little computer screens has seen pictures of Dali’s work in books and magazines and just about any other form of paper based medium you can think of. I was one of those people until a few days ago. And I thought I knew my shit. I thought I had well formed critical opinions and views that would stand up to the interrogation of other self-congratulating ‘culturites’ like Marc Fennell or Robert Hughes (if we’re naming names). Well, I can say this, if I hadn’t been to see the actual, real-life, in the frame, touchable (when the guards aren’t looking) art; the worth of my opinions would have stood up like a 102 year-old man with 7th degree arthritis.
There is one simple reason for this. His shit glows. And the only way to know how goddamn much it glows – and then be able to communicate that fact – is if you went to the exhibition and pressed your nose to the canvas. Walking down the gallery aisle was like walking down the main strip of Vegas – only in this case the content of the glowing things was a little more sophisticated. At one stage I even convinced myself that the curators had conspired together and planted little neon lights behind each picture or payed out of work Glow Worms and Fire Flies to rub their luminescent glow-juice over the works to lure in wilful paying customers. Thanks to stupid old reality, this was not the case. And to think that some of this work was done in the 1920’s was nearly enough to expose the inner lining of my brain cavity to nearby civilians; I just stared and made strange quiet noises instead.
So what can we take away from all this reading kids (apart from the 1 minute and 44 seconds you could have better spent watching this)? Never trust anything you see or read in books; they’re never as good as the real thing. Here’s to living. And if you really didn’t see the Dali exhibition, I feel sorry for you. Unless you’re going to Italy, in which case I’m jealous.
Ice Creaaaaaaaaaam!
Inspiration is a funny thing; it can influence you to do things you don’t even realise you’re doing. Make you wear your ideals on your sleeve so hard that it hurts. What is it about our influences that make us want to be like them so much, when we know we can never be anything but ourselves?
My latest hair-brained scheme is for my good friends at Junior. They need a poster you see, and I have this great idea for them. So great, that it involves a Monkey and a Typewriter. The only problem is I don’t have a Monkey or a Typewriter. If you have either of these things please let me know by email or by royal post if you feel so inclined. I hope to get it done before the summer comes.
In the mean time enjoy this by our old friends The Kinks, it sums up the torn conundrum I feel between whether I should be working or outside lapping up the sunny, sunny, sun.
A man far cleverer and much better read than me once said, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. That man is Eli Horowitz of Mcsweeney’s fame, and I have to say I tend to agree with him. So for now I will heed his words and leave you with this. This song is not new, nor is it hard to come by. But it is good – good in a lasting way.
Stay tuned young world shapers; I have some big things I need to discuss with you soon.
–tim.
Well, I’ve had a brief hiatus sorting out insignificant things in my life like finding a steady source of income and milking the government for every cent of tax they owe me. Thanks to that I’ve now got a very small cushion of green, so it’s back to blogging. Don’t worry, I’m not going all serious on you; I’ve also balanced this out with some well-earned partying at fashion week. But what you really need to know is just this. I have been working for quite some time on tracking down the crazy deranged people who made the video for Architecture In Helsinki’s, ‘That Beep’. You all the know the one I’m talking about, with the blue people dancing like it’s the last song at Meredith and they just found a tab. It’s going to be in an upcoming issue of POP Magazine, and it’s possibly (definitely) one of the most entertaining interviews you will ever read! I will post it up here when it’s kosher to do so.
Be well – Woooooooooooo.
This new idea is for good ol’ TAC. They’ve been pumping out ads for years, hopefully this one is a little different. Please take your time have a good look at it – it took me a while to piece together!
Due to unforseen circumstances tim has been unable to post lately. But don’t worry folks, tim will be back in it’s usual form full of stuff that’s just too good to keep in my own head.
tim.
Has anyone seen the featurette for Disney’s reworking of Alice In Wonderland? If you haven’t, I highly recommend that you have a team meeting with your eyes and get them to watch it. From what I could guage in 2 minutes and 40 seconds of goodness, director Tim Burton has created an ambitiously avant-garde world that’s as full of abstract metaphors and eerily odd characters as it is of illicitly lucid looking colours laced with dark undertones.
So why am I talking about Alice In Wonderland in the song of the week section? Inspiration, that’s why! If ever there was a song that brings together the contradictory natures of old and new and the constant seesawing of light and dark, it is this unsuspecting slice of junk-fi, electropop from Brooklyn’s new kids on the block Neon Indian. The song I am referring to is ‘Deadbeat Summer’, which laconically drifts back and forth between cheery summer charm and a substance induced coma. Laced with double meanings the backing track conjures familiarities of the Chemical Brothers and when combined with decidedly ethereal vocals produces a sound in the realms of M83 (or Mystery Jets at the more tame end of the spectrum). However the contents of the lyrics – if one listens closer – speak of a more sinister or absent-minded side. For me this fusion of worlds would best be described by a group of New York Hipsters playing croquet on an artificial rooftop lawn, taking breaks to drop some acid and dance on the skyline.
And what of Alices new world? Well, I could believably see Neon Indian snuck secretly beneath a giant mushroom making sweet sounds for a captivated audience of white rabbits, curious flamingos and otherworldly passers by. So drink your magic potion and skip down the narrowing path and through the tiny door to uncover tim’s favourite song of this week.
Neon Indian – ‘Deadbeat Summer’.
Enjoy.
