Reading, England / Reflections on a past life

Dec 21 After meeting with my old high school friend Andrew last week, and confirming that he had not become a depraved molester of children – or worse – a hunch-backed miniature painter working for Games Workshop – I jumped on a train to Reading and spent a pleasant 24 hours catching up on old times, devising plans for world domination, etc. This was the first time that I’ve caught up with a friend after having not seen them for more than 10 years, and many memories of times past were brought to the surface of the silted lakes of my mind. Andrew is one of just two people I have remained friends with from high school who could attest to being one of the ‘Puddle Laners’, the group of social outcasts from which the original characters of the unfinished Stan Wars epic were drawn. Andrew, along with Troy and myself, actually knew ‘Stan’ personally. ‘Stan’ was a rather tall, one dimensional fellow with particularly large hands and a Vanilla Ice haircut – with red hair (I once branded him ‘Vanilla Stan’). Andrew witnessed one incident, since passed into Puddle Lane folklore, in which ‘Stan’ punched me in the face. In the fleeting moments leading up to this incident, I foolishly engaged ‘Stan’ in an argument and got wound up enough to strike him – but I only had the courage to do so when he had turned his back towards me. I shoved him quite viciously, and of course he whipped back around to throw a large fist at my petulant bonce - it connected, I momentarily blacked out and the rest is history. Andrew filled me in on what happened in the aftermath – I reported to the students office to seek medical attention and must have informed the presiding staff of who punched me, and evidently this lead to ‘Stan’ being threatened with suspension from school, According to Andrew, ‘Stan’ only just managed to escape suspension by colourfully describing my gutless actions as arousing a temporary wrath resulting from a recent back injury he had suffered. Anyway, such stories will only interest about three people in this world so I will get back to whatever it was I was talking about. I think I was possibly the most annoying friend Andrew ever had, yet during our senior high school years in South Australia we shared a common, deranged love of fantasy Dungeons and Dragons-style roleplaying games and associated trappings such as miniature painting. This is an example of Andrew’s later miniature painting, after he moved to England in the mid-nineties. This particular little creature won him the 1994 Golden Demon Award. He has since moved on from such labours and now leads a more balanced, healthy life. Here is one painted by Andrew’s older brother, Mark. He also partially sculpted this one using pieces from different miniatures. Mark now spends his creative energy producing electronic music. Like me. So of course that is very cool and highly admirable. In any case, I had forgotten until now exactly how competitive we were with eachother. At dinner with Andrew and his fiancé I was reminded of how art and design-driven I was at school, and evidently from Andrew’s perspective I was something of a force to be reckoned with. It was always my favourite subject. For a few minutes over dinner I was transported back to my year 12 work experience placement at a graphic designers firm in Adelaide. Being a dripping little year 12 student I took everything they said at that firm as gospel, so when it was grimly explained to me that the graphic design industry is basically not much fun, too competitive and almost impossible to succeed in, I pragmatically decided to pursue more ‘realistic’ career goals. That was the beginning of the end for my graphic design career, and I can’t help but wonder how things may have turned out if, at that early, soft age I had been placed in a more inspiring artistic environment, say at a firm which was actually doing very well for itself, full of staff waxing lyrical on the importance of following your passions etc etc etc. In more recent years I have made little more than vague attempts to reignite my passion for graphics, with little more than momentary bursts of light which ultimately flicker out. I’ve suffered from a terminal lack of direction. I’m still a creative guy who likes to draw and lay things out nicely, but up until now I’ve been – I think – too fearful of failing. It didn’t help that my one and only stint as ‘freelance graphic designer’ saw me designing logos for M.O.R (read: Middle of the Road) nightclub events which I found utterly soul destroying. During my final weeks in Calgary I did at last spend some time learning the basics of web design and even mocked up a little website for my musical identities at tj7.org, however I have since suffered problems establishing web hosting and I won’t get everything sorted again until I’m settled somewhere with an internet connection. I’ll keep you posted, anyway.