Monday, late afternoon.

There have been many visitors in town because of the Tom Kreisler opening on Saturday night. (see posting below) Went to the after-after match party which for me is staying up late. Bed somewhere around 3.30 Sunday morning, hence no blog yesterday!

Noise control came to the party, not because of me I hope. Certainly, on the front page of the Taranaki Daily News this morning, there were no photos of Peter Peryer being forcibly restrained by members of the Riot Squad.

One highlight conversation I had was with Wystan Curnow, and it was about Buick Dynaflows. He told me that Ray Charles uses the word Dynaflow in one of his songs. I need conversations like this, where there is cross-connection, it's brainfood.

I missed out on the opportunity to ask Wystan if it's true that he is named after W.H.Auden, (Wystan Hugh Auden). I heard this many years ago and I've never asked him. I hope it's true.

I'm sorry that over this weekend, someone wasn't employed to make a documentary of this event, or at the very minimum, even if it had been done in the most rudimentary manner, take some photos. I would like to be able to link you to a page that showed you snaps (preferably flattering) of who was there. Oscars New Plymouth style.

Saturday afternoon I cleared out surplus spectacle cases and laid them on a table so that guests here as result of the Kreisler opening, could help themselves. I fetched a camera but I don't think that this image below passes, but all the same, I was surprised that I was still burrowing into this territory because I thought that Matisse 2005 had solved it. I'd written up the theorem so to speak.

It was a time when I felt a connection with Surrealism in general and Dali in particular and when I came to have a new respect for him. There were others too of course, I mean no disrepect to their achievements. Miro I come to appreciate increasingly, for example. Arp as ever, Calder's kinetics. And seeing two El Greco works in Spain in the late 90's changed my thinking somehow. They had power and it was raw.

Here are some photos from the last 18 months.
The one at the top is the spectacle cases, Saturday evening. I bit mannered I feel. Matisse is better. After Dali 2005/06 I still think is too interesting to consign to the dustbin.

Matisse 2005

After Dali 2005/06