An Open Letter To My New House.

open_letter

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

posted by tim on 26/10/09. (The Incredible Hunt). Comment

That Shit Glows.

dali

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!

posted by tim on 5/10/09. (Avida Dollars). 1 Comment

Youth, Girls, Nostalgia.

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?

posted by tim on 2/10/09. (Super 8). Comment