We have this monthly competition over at DIY stompboxes and I’ve already won two times, the first time for something that didn’t end up working, the second time for something I haven’t actually finished, and I’m up for the third time for something that I quickly designed after talking to Paul crowther and possibly have no intention of building…
Admittedly the first two were quite long winded in their construction and may have been quite inspiring to some concerning the scope of their actions but the simple fact that they haven’t yet made a sound ranks me as one of the worlds few who seem to be able to win at things without actually keeping to the unspoken rules.
This morning I had a first look at the voting thread and had a bunch of laughs that a drawing has garnered the first vote… well, I haven’t actually checked the voting but lets re-phrase that… the first published comment. I do find it incredibly interesting that, with my incredibly limited knowledge of electronics, and believe me that it is limited, that I could have so much acknowledgement by what can only be the worlds most intense collection of guitar FX builders. I don’t mean intense in that they’re all beady eyes concentration freaks hanging out for their next fix of solder fumes but that as far as this tent is concerned a vast majority of the best are crammed into it… in – tent.
I think, if anything, it’s my constructional abilities combined with my efforts to keep doing things that are completely beyond my actual abilities, to walk the high wire line between patience and frustration that keeps testing my ability to keep at a task, and I think that may be the thing that this collection of fellows see as something worth… admiring?
I had a saying, I made up, below a drawing I did years ago “we chased away the apathy of modernity and … became the divine losers.” and that kinda sums up my life I suppose. Well, I hope it does.
The saying was at the bottom of a poster I drew with Shakespeare on a skateboard and I did it because a movie I was in, about the early days of skateboarding in NZ, had just come out and my old boss, Frank Edwards, had talked about doing a signature board and so I was doing an artwork for the bottom of it. Nothing happened but I did do a drawing.
The name was taken from a Stranglers song which has that infamous line about Trotsky getting an ice pick in the back of his head.
Theres a photo, I’m rambling now, thats one of my favourites and it was taken in Mexico and features Trotsky, Diego Riviera and that guy who was the father of surrealism, thats him, Andre Breton. That photo, for me, is or sums up the greatness of the twentieth century. I’m not a great fan of Breton, nor one of surrealism ( except for the art of that Spanish woman who went to live in Mexico, really alchemistic and obscure, nope, can’t remember her name at all. She influenced a whole generation of woman artists but has never really found popular favour… alike Lee Bontecou… who is my favourite artist of all time. Got it! Remedios Varos! check her out. ), but it was a great thing to have happened when it did and tempered the excesses of materialism which were the all prevailing concept of that century of industrialism turned to consumerism. Combine that with the greatest social experiment to go completely wrong, socialism, and the peoples art of Diego Riviera and so that photo of those three men goes down in my personnal mythology as one of the best and inspiring things to highlight the meaning of an epoch. And each man got into lots of trouble during their lifetimes, they just wouldn’t hold to prevailing attitudes and kept pushing the envelope that was their own life. I suppose thats what I’m talking about when I say Divine loser. It’s kind of about winning by default I suppose, never actually winning within the time one lives, almost being onto another climb when the flag is finally raised, and the cameras are rolling, on the previous mountain of acheivement. Or maybe it’s about knowing when you can see the top that thats enough and actually standing up there to be seen to be on the top isn’t what its about at all.