It's Easter weekend here and I've used it for some much needed catchup with (a.) some of my long neglected friends and (b.) my even more neglected sleep.
It really feels like I've been running since I came back to Auckland from Palmerston North... I have definitely not been living the languid life of an artist (most of my friends don't think I'm capable of living the languid life of anything). University, various gigs that I was and still am organising and the panicked writing of Lantern have seen to that.
Anyway, one of the leisurely pleasures I had this weekend was making a new friend, Cat. Cat is my creative partner on Metonymy, one of my projects that grew out of the "what-if" and "why-not?" conversations that I'm always having with people. The idea behind this one was that artists and poets are natural creative partners, but the two worlds often don't touch enough for people to properly collaborate. So me and some other poet/artist friends created what is essentially a blind dating service - artists and poets send in details and a sample of work, we match people (including ourselves, of course, or it wouldn't be any fun), sit back and wait for the creative explosion. (we've also set up an exhibition, wider networking/sale opportunities and performance gigs).
Cat is one of those awesome artistic types who doesn't know how cool she is. She lives with her equally artistic partner in her studio, a two-storeyed space next to an art gallery - how cool is that! And she has the requisite cat who thinks she's human.
More importantly, she and I can riff for hours (as we found out) on our favourite co-obsessions: the artist as object, body morphology, the twisting of truth and appearance and the hollowness of those who think they know what they're talking about. It was great, easy, deep conversation of the sort I always crave, all washed down with tea, girl guide biscuits and some damn good icecream. And we're meeting up again next week to do some more riffing - and hopefully to start work on our joint project. Yippee!! Have bought a new black notebook in readiness and already started scrawling in my old one.... strange diagrams of bits of anatomy mostly.
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