Have I read this? Would I remember it?

Reading Vittorio the vampire by Anne Rice. I picked it up at the markets and had to buy it to get away from the nice-but-too-chatty marketer. I don't think I've read it before, but perhaps I wouldn't remember because it has very little substance. It is the slightly flowery language and it is the tapestry of the historical world. It is well written, but seems to lack something. I wonder if I look on my bookshelf if there is another copy or was it so nebulous I wouldn't have kept it? I'd like to think that my memory would at least retain books, but alas, lately.... I do tend to remember covers, but this cover is remarkably bad so I might have wiped it from my mind. Will I ever know and does it matter? Hanging out for the next installment of Game of Thrones.

Aged a hospital burden - The Sunday Mail page 6 Feb 28 2010.

A lovely impartial headline there. They aren’t quoting someone – that’s the title. I’m sure that would make older Australians feel great. You are a burden – shoot yourself now. Being older increasingly sucks, but once you get to ‘old’ our society seems to want to take away everything – your choices, rights and individuality. No longer happy with a lack of respect for someone who’s made it through life’s pitfalls to an advanced age, now we are openly begrudging. They need more aged care facilities, but rather than just building these purpose-built hells I suggest we create places that are multipurpose in every suburb. Child-minding combined with aged care and a community farm will do for a start. (And don’t even get me started about public transport and the aged!)

No creative control = No job satisfaction

I know it’s silly and unimportant in the big scheme, but I’m having a creative crisis.

I have little creative control in my work at the moment and it is cracking me up from the inside. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself it’s just work and that I have to do it to keep the roof over my head. Once you engage your creativity for a project, it becomes something else.

I keep telling everyone I’m not a real graphic designer and this proves it to me. I am much better at free-form creativity than following a plan. I am much better at following my own plans than working to someone else’s design. I will always resent it when I don’t get to decide where the thing I am engaged creatively on is going.

Graphic Design is where you present a draft based on the clients brief. They then tell you the ten things they forgot to mention. You redraft. They then change their minds and give you the ideas that five other people had. You then attempt to bolt everyone else’s creative ideas to yours and wonder why everyone couldn’t have gotten together and brainstormed in the first place. Brainstorming with other people is so much more acceptable than having to redesign or attempting to amalgamate ideas that don’t mesh.

While I’m whinging – The never-ending job – Where the client gives you changes in dribbles and continues to change even as the resource is deployed, so that you end up with a resource that goes out with different details and you begin to lose track of which version is correct. The client throws in a couple of incorrect details, so you will keep all your old versions, because you may need to go back to them – some versions go out with mistakes because of the client and some because you are confused. Some versions go out with mistakes because there are 5 different permutations of the job for different end uses and not all get updated during the rush to change, fix and meet deadlines.

Jobs just seem to run into each other now with no light at the end of the tunnel – it all seems endlessly wrong.

Next person who says that it must be nice to do ‘Art’ all day, gets it.

(Link is to - Clientcopia : Stupid Client Quotes... Because this is what designers do when they are sick of beating their heads against walls, and even fake designers do this....)

tough Aussies

Our neighbours have their airconditioning on. It's very old and noisy, but that's not my issue. It's airconditioning at all. Ok, they have a baby and their house is small and has had the verandah closed in, as well as a whole heap of windows sealed off for unknown reasons. They have a deck and it's dark now - the temperature has dropped.

It has only been one day of heat and humidity. Why can't people live in the real world? I'm not saying no airconditioning ever - just that when it's killing the planet you live on, that maybe you should ration it for those really hot days or for people who really can't survive without it and until we wake up - for buildings that don't have windows. Not just people who are a bit hot, who have other alternatives as well. All the traditional ones - like going outside in the rain, eating frozen grapes and using water-pistols. It seriously irks me that that the society I live in pulls up the image of the 'tough Australian' at any excuse, but they can't even cope with one day in their own climate - in the shade even.

So this is Christmas....

Christmas - where people appreciate your food (or at least your effort). Where they appreciate your attempt at gifts. Where they know you and give you things you might have a chance of liking or else they admit defeat and give you a voucher. Where there's conversation that everyone enjoys. Where people are considerate of each other. Where there are no spoilt children who just want the presents, the lollies and then to get away as soon as possible. Where the fun is decorating the tree, waiting in anticipation and awe and enjoying the ritual. Where the variety of food and drink intrigues and you all embrace the concept of a special feast. Right?

Life: It's not all crap, but, yes, some of it is....

Let's just admit that life's not perfect. I'm not perfect. Some people don't like me. Even some people who do like me don't find me a comfortable person or even seem to want to have much to do with me. But, if they did contact me I'd be all shaking in my boots from humanity proximity anyway. I think I might be better off doing some art.

Time enough for self/art

I have done awful things to preserve my freedom/time to myself/art time. Not visiting my mother enough when she was dying of cancer; not moving back to the parental home then, because my father would have made it impossible for me to leave. Even at twenty I knew instinctively what was most likely to happen and how to best avoid it. So, not for love….

What about money? Will I give up the time I have to myself now, that is sometimes used to make or learn art, or write or just think about things other than ‘work’ - time that doesn’t involve sharing with another human being. Time where I can do mostly, (work has been eating at this time a lot in the last few years), what I want. The bit of my life where I am ‘me’? Will I give that up for money, to be like and possibly more accepted by other human beings? To spend more of my life pretending?

My life is probably half over. I too may die of cancer before my time, and even if I never create that masterpiece or write that prize-winner, then I think I have to at least be able to say, in the words of the dead but immortal Frank, I did it my way.