davidthedesigner

happy new year

A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,

To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree

I came down the steps with my pitcher

And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough

And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,

He sipped with his straight mouth,

Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,

Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,

And I, like a second-comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,

And stooped and drank a little more,

Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, if you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel so honoured?

I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:

If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,

But even so, honoured still more

That he should seek my hospitality

From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough

And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,

Seeming to lick his lips,

And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

And slowly turned his head,

And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,

Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,

A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,

Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,

Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,

I picked up a clumsy log

And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,

But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,

Writhed like lightning, and was gone

Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,

At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.

I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,

And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

And I have something to expiate:

A pettiness.

 

D.H. Lawrence, Taormina, 1923

award winning contractors

Hey Mr Builder: that doesn't quite ring true, does it?

way to go

I popped into the Pitt Rivers Museum yesterday (as one does) and was rather taken by this Ghanaian coffin for a shopkeeper.

can't you see how happy we will be?

Well here we are - safely landed in 2013ville. And for most of us (designers that is) the first day back at work. The time, usually, to reflect upon the year just gone. Which, for 2012, invariably means the Olympics. Although I'm not going to go there (however much I admire the tremendous feat that Danny Boyle managed to pull off).

So what else of 2012? For me, it turned out to be a lazy blogging year. Looking back I suppose it started badly when Damien Hirst threatened to sue me. And that was such a negative energy field to come up against when all I was doing was pulling his leg. Still, look on the bright side: at least I don't live in Ilfracombe and have to look out each day at that f****ing awful verity. 

But looking on 2012's bright side, one of my real highlights was Wayne Sleep's 'Two for Tea' routine at David Hockney's Royal Academy exhibition. Which is all the more wonderful - I think - because unless you were there, you're not going to see it. A lesson, perhaps, that sometimes life is better lived (or at least experienced) away from the tether of the internet.

Anyway, back to 2013. Let's all use it to spread some joy, shall we?

All those in favour say aye.

fair to moderate

My life's taken on a different rhythm this past year. And one of the consequences is that blogging has moved down the agenda (you may have already noticed). Or it may be that blogging has lost its way somewhat, because I'm not the only one who's stopped or faltered. Partly, of course, it's the fault of Twitter. Which is a shame, because it's very difficult to talk about or discuss design on Twitter (because to do that we need pictures, don't we?).

Or perhaps it's the platform itself. Because, as Ben remarked when we last met, Typepad seems very clunky these days (Typepad please take note: Twitter's blisfully easy to use).

Anyhows, I've not completely disappeared. And there's a lot of activity goes on here, even though I might not be posting with any regularity.

The first is spam commenting. Don't you just hate it? And what do they expect to gain? Well, the fact that commenting on here can no longer be as open as it's always been - or as open as I'd really like it to be. So in future all comments will need to be moderated by me before they appear on the blog. Don't let that put you off though. I still like to hear from you. And it's moderation, not censorship, remember. I won't be doing any editing, just clearing out the junk (and all the wedding dresses that you might have noticed a little earlier today).

And the other hot topic which has attracted an enormous amount of off-blog attention over the past few months is what's going on at the Chartered Society of Designers. It seems that I'm far from being the only one who's been wondering what happens to their membership subscription. And who find themselves given the cold shoulder (or worse) should they dare to raise the subject. I suspect that things there might be coming to a head.

I'll keep you posted.

hey twitter, thanks for the emails - just something you might like to note, though...

...I'm not Scottish, I don't live anywhere near Scotland, and I don't have even the faintest interest in any form of sport - especially football.

So maybe you could just take me off your list, eh?

if i say this am i being extremely smart, or extremely stupid?

...facebook is an extremely engaging place - or so they tell me:

Seems to me that that's 3,200,000,000 reasons to avoid it. Unless you want for nothing but being advertised at.

Is this really what the internet was invented for?

room 206, southampton college of art, 1969-70

This is one of those things that I can't remember doing. 1969-70 was the final year of our graphic design course, and there were 15 people that I shared a studio with. And I photographed them all.

And what strikes me over 40 years on? Well, just how 'English' they all were. And how many of them smoked - including many of those who aren't smoking here. That was a bug that never bit me. I wasn't born to be a smoker. But, looking at these again now, I just wonder how much the cigarettes were shields - something to hide behind and disguise their insecurities.

And the surprises? Well, that they all agreed to be photographed - even though they wouldn't all acknowledge the camera. But more surprising than that is that I have absolutely no recollection of two of them (one male, one female).

I'd like to tell you that I could name them all, but I can't. And for only two could I give you both their christian and surnames. And those two, I guess, were my best friends at the time.

But we all moved on. I wonder what happened to them all. And what stories they may have to tell.

Who knows? They may even be looking at themselves on this post right now.

Here they (or you) are - in no particular order:

And in case you're wondering: what's with the double exposure? That's what the inside of his head was like.

just doing it for the money

I told you last week that I've been having a bit of a clear out. It's stuff that's been hidden away in the attic for years. Stuff that has no other purpose but to remind me of where I've been and what I've done. And most of this batch seems to consist of either college work or artwork and print samples from the 1980s. What surprises me, looking back, is just how productive I was. Or how productive I had to be - which is probably more like it.

And the other surprise is that there are things in there that I can't even remember doing.

Anyway, most of this stuff is now on it's way to the recycling facility. It's pointless keeping hold of it any longer. But so that it doesn't completely disappear without trace I'm going to post a few things up here. Which at least will mean that they continue to live on for a little while longer.

So let me introduce you now to my very first 'proper' professional assignment - a little leaflet for what was then British Rail. And the story is this: I didn't design this. I just artworked it. And only for the money.

You see, I left college on a Friday and (you'll be astounded at this) I already had my first two jobs lined up for me, the first of which started the following Monday. (I told you about those jobs, or at least the buildings they were in, here and here.)

One of my college lecturers was off on holiday at the end of term, and therefore asked me to artwork this freelance job that he'd been working on, and to deliver it to the British Rail production office on the Monday morning. Which I was pleased to do. The money was good. And I remain grateful for that.

And the moral of this story? Well, you may very well have your sights set on a black pencil, but sometimes it's necessary to do this job for nothing other than the money. And that's OK.

But not all the time - that would be soul destroying.

a week of beautiful things #5

House N by Sou Fujimoto Architects.