A Thousand Shades of Twilight

Wallpaper troubles me

(Marlborough Sunworthy Wallfashions, date and designer unknown)

Why does the human race persist with wallpaper? It never ages well. It bespeaks denial and a lack of moral fortitude. It is an absolute bugger to remove.

I say all of this because Dear Patient M and I spent most of the day contorting on ladders, spatulas in hand, steaming up the kitchen in my old house to a level that made us turn pink and almost caused us to expire. All of this in an effort to rid my kitchen of its pesky, cursed, grubby, shoddily painted-over by me in a fit of pique, pseudo-Laura Ashley wallpaper.  

I was going to write some meaningful sort of reflection on the person I was when I bought the house five years ago compared to the person I am now.  I wanted to write about how nothing ever really seems to get finished in life. How things that are heavy become light, and vice versa. How the ground seems to be constantly shifting beneath my feet, in a good way. But that all started to sound a bit like a voiceover from some NoughtiesTV show (you know the type, "funny, yet sad", with lots of boring indie guitar music accompanying montages of characters clinking glasses or staring vacantly at the TV or watching their lover sleep)(Ugh).

No, instead, I was overcome by a righteous fury and felt capable of little more than this hyperbolic rant. My fingernails are too sore to accomplish much else. So I will simply shake the scurf-like flakes from my head and surmise as follows: There is something naive about people who put up wallpaper. Short-sighted. Dare I say, selfish. If you know such a person, sit them down and ask them to take a long hard look at themselves

And, PS, do not even get me started on Wallpaper magazine.

Shopping troubles me

 

(Poster for Au Moine Saint-Martin in The Poster in History by Max Gallo, Hamlyn 1972)

Whatever happened to shopping? It used to be fun.

These days, my enthusiasm for shopping has dwindled to almost zero. I am sure I am not alone in saying that I find clothes shopping particularly demoralising. My actual size is usually something like the secret floor in Being John Malkovich, mysteriously stuck somewhere between L and XL. And the dreaded change-room experience is something like the last scene of All About Eve, but even more chilling, and with added love handles.

Last weekend I set off with gritted teeth, clenched fists and an optimistic wallet, determined to buy myself some sort of goddamn treat. I have been a good boy of late, keeping my head down, working hard and staying off the turps. I have been squirrelling away my pennies for a forthcoming overseas jaunt (Only 36 sleeps to go. I should know. I have been scratching them on the wall in crossed fives, with my own blood, like a delusional convict). I demanded some instant gratification, some distraction from creeping time, and convinced myself that I deserved it. Needless to say, I was thwarted. Instant gratification was nowhere to be found on the boulevards of Adelaide.

I looked at all manner of objets but felt disappointed and paralysed with indecision.  I have learned my lesson about impulse buying. Consequently, something as simple as buying a cucumber could involve at least five reconnaissance missions. I soon resigned myself to the fact that I may well go home empty handed. It also takes a lot to drown out the austere voices of my childhood which admonish that objets will not, or, more accurately, should not make me happy. I was always haunted by the Bible Story of the Rich Fool and his silos of grain. That said, I liked the bit before he died and went to hell and all that.

Lest I sound like I am on a high horse, let me say that objets can and do make me happy. The frippery I surround myself with helps me construct a comforting little retro fantasy that distracts me from the fact that my life is far from the glamorous, world-conquering existence I dreamed of as a child.

The day was not entirely a wash out. As I traipsed, stoop-shouldered under grey skies, a whole raft of happy memories started to filter into my consciousness. I wandered into dusty corners I had not visited since I was a tyke. I thought about when shopping "in town" was something to look forward to. Travelling in on the bus with Mum or a sister on a Saturday (everything was closed on Sunday). Getting dressed up for the day in my 'trendiest' outfit. Having a cappucino or maybe even a cheese roll or something fancy like a quiche at a cafe. Maybe even seeing a film at a cinema long since demolished. Mum buying dresses that I was told not to tell Dad about. Lustfully fingering coffee table books stacked up on remainder tables. It was not often that we bought them (unless they were drastically reduced), but just knowing that they were there was comforting. Buying posters. Incense. Singles. Badges. All those book and record shops which have disappeared or been taken over by chains. What does "in town" mean these days? It seemed then that anything could be found "in town". Now it seems the opposite is true. It seems that anything can be found on the net. Which is not as much fun. And, alas, does not involve cheese rolls.

The 90s trouble me

 

(Photo by Ellen von Unwerth in The Face, August 1993)

As is abundantly clear from this blog, I strive for balance in all things. Oh, what a wicked, wicked lie that is. Anyway, occasionally I feel the need for a rant-ette. A need to let it all out and accentuate the negative. To kindly share that which troubles me. And this week, I am troubled by the nagging feeling that the 1990s were, indeed, kind of...stupid.

There have been two things that set me off.

Firstly, I saw two teenagers on the train the other night who had a kind of clean, designer look that was a cross between Kurt Cobain and Beavis and Butthead. They spent a lot of time fiddling with their sincerely unmatted hair and their brand spanking new beanies. Bless 'em. Now, I know that I am quite out of touch with the Modern World, but I figured that there is some kind of 90s revival going on. Somewhere. But it made me wonder what there is to revive. The 90s, to me, was an unadulterated mess.

Secondly, I was flipping through some old Face magazines from my formative years. I tend to think that if I have dragged them around with me for this long, it would be a shame to throw them out now. But instead of inspiring misty-eyed fondness, they left me kind of cold. Even a little peeved. Perhaps because it was just a silly pretentious magazine to begin with. But there have been worse offenders in the silly and pretentious stakes. Perhaps it was because the death knell of The Face's 80s heyday was sounding by the time I got round to buying it. Perhaps it was because the magazines I perused were full of images like the one above. Full of heroin-chic, rich people slumming it, and so, so, so much smug "irony".  How I hate the "I" word. Look at the picture: the pretty pseudo-junkie is wearing a glamorous gown and eating American-style ketchup in a low rent diner. She even has a 'hard core' tattoo. How very clever. All that fake street-cred. What a bunch of clever-clogs. Oh my giddy aunt. Yawn. 

My Face magazines from the 90s seem to be full of three types of articles. Tediously defiant articles about drugs. Pointless interviews with supermodels spouting banalities about body image. And endless numbingly-dull  and esoteric fussing about dance music and adidas trainers. Ugh.

I saw a woman from my 1990s art school days the other day. Her opening gambit was "Do you mind if I just spend some time bitching about Gen Y for a bit?" Naturally, I was delighted and responded with a hearty "Be my guest". And off we went for a good half an hour or so. When we Gen-Xers are not bitching about the Baby Boomers who took all of our jobs, we are bitching about the Generation Y kids who all live at home still and only worry about clothes and alcopops and frippery, who do not know what it is like to be poor and are heading for a fall etc etc. As reactionary as this all sounds, deep down, I think we come  from a generation who are still pinching ourselves with surprise that:

a) we are still here, not having perished under a mushroom cloud

b) anyone ever took us seriously enough to give us proper jobs

c) some of us even have mortgages and marriages and babies and shit.

In other words, we will probably become to Gen Y what the Baby Boomers were to us - Lucky Devils who have had all the breaks. Although it did not feel that way at the time. We were too busy being grim and ironic and blaming everyone else for our real or imaginary woes.

[Usually, at this point I would say something balanced about how my own circumstances in the 90s jaundiced my view, how I was never at the centre of all the riotous ironic fun and may just be bitter because I spent my 90s listening to Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, how a generation raised on Raymond Briggs' When the Wind Blows had a lot to be cynical about...but what fun would that be?]

I can understand fondness for the 60s, the 70s, even the 80s. There was a sense of boundary-pushing, even when vigorously exploring and reinterpreting the past. In the 90s, however, it was as though we finally buckled and were crushed by the maxim that there is nothing new under the sun. It may be true, but let us at least pretend it is not true. The one word that springs to mind when I think of the 90s is...

"ERSATZ".

So to all the kids who are planning that 90s revival: you should by now have learned that there was a catch phrase that was very popular at the time. Not Just do it. No, it was the other one:

JUST. SAY. NO.