Undercover Critics: Degas and Dali

Some days you feel like you wouldn't mind a little more art in your life. These are the days that you go to the gallery. Dressed in simple, casual wear with an accessory that shows you are of 'the art pack', you cruise down in an understated, purposeful way, as if this is something you do all the time. You've been to plays, theatre acts, local exhibitions - never mind that was a couple of years ago whilst you were still at uni. You appreciate the craft of acting - on Home and Away. Going to the gallery is just supporting your love and local passion for the love of art - right? And so this same conversation plays, it seems, in the heads of 85% of the people visiting the exhibition with you.

Red Tree FB Profile Pic: The Real Reason People Go To The Gallery

 This was the reality of an exhibition I saw a couple of weeks ago called Degas to Dali. I should've known before I set foot in the place that this would happen - it is a  exhibition about the history of Western art, a topic that people love to relay information about at the dinner table, along with philosophy and politics. Somehow, by knowing the place where Van Gogh did his first famous painting, or being able to recognize a stroke of brush as this or that 'ism',   you can jump a couple of places in the class queue.

The great thing about exhibitions is that they provide most of that info to you - if you are patient enough to read the plaques. All you need to do then is fill in the blanks. And so, amongst a flurry of scarves, berets, and OE-inspired accessories, you find yourself wanting a quiet space but instead being engaged in a sophisticated sizing-up of the competition. What might seem a low hum of comments is actually a war of sublety, of who can pass what witty comment at the appropriate moment.

A Typical Art Gallery War Scene

 Personally, I put this phenomenon down to New Zealand's Tall Poppy Syndrome. For surely if we were allowed to toot our horn we would not need to go to the gallery to do it. Quiet in decibels, many of the exhibition's elements screamed self-recognition and hopeful praise. Neon belts yelled for style. Red lettering screamed designer desire. Scarf wraps egged on education. So many minute details, so little formal recognition. Cascading chatter bumped on keywords like 'Impressionism', and 'Japanese print', but no bossy art critic lauded his views to the gallery masses. So much for all those hours they must've spent listening in art classes and trawling creative sites.

But why write such a lengthy account of what is, at best, a two-hour experience? Because it's just another little gem that I've found of New Zealand culture, along with our being unable to form lines and cheering at the last moment. Turns out that so many of us are brilliant but have no way to foghorn out our talent. And when we do want to, at the art gallery, it's as mice-men, quietly nibbling away our rough edges and placing a foothold in modern culture.

Impolite Delight

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 20 years, you'll know we've been living in an age of technological excuses. Wearing an IPod means you didn't hear the fire bell. Having a smartphone means you can check emails during meetings (or, among the slack of us, play Words With Friends). Having three computers at your desk, each angled for wider screen viewing, means that you don't have to interact with people anywhere within an 180 degree visual radius. They are good excuses, and they tend to let people off the hook for a number of social crimes. Was he ignoring you? No, he just didn't hear you. Not returning your emails? Spam filter. And the list goes on.

 The secret to all of this technological blocking is, of course, that most of the time people aren't actually occupied. They just want to seem occupied. For those of you reading this that think you're above dock-blocking, I ask you to look deep into your soul and ask: Have you pretended to text someone whilst avoiding someone you know on the street? Perhaps unplugged one earphone out of your ear to listen to someone, only to turn up the music a little when the conversation got boring? Yes, I know you have - not to mention the 'not available to chat' functions on Facebook and Gmail. You see, it's human nature - and with technology it's just far too easy an opportunity to pass up.

But what is the real problem with dock-blocking, you ask? Since when did we have to be available 24/7 to any old acquaintance you've added on Facebook (especially when you've only added some to stalk their pictures)?

I hear you. I've had the same dilemma myself. Perhaps there is some etiquette, just like there would be with any other social phenomenon, that needs to be applied. Social media sites could easily bypass some rules around not ignoring people. Emails - well, it depends on whether it's work-based, whether you know the person, how much legitimacy the subject carries. Face-to-face interactions are really the sore point of distraction here - it is a rather decaf, and resentment-inducing, task to talk to someone living half-screen, half-reality.

Since multitasking has been outed as particularly inefficient,  perhaps the idea is to live a little more in the less-pixelated, more natural atmosphere; to love and leave the IPhone; to recognize the dead-end of Words with Friends. For though we shouldn't be expected to respond to everyone, perhaps the question has now reversed: since when were our responses not expected?

A little Friday food for thought.

Descending From The Dead

For those who are interested in a bit of small-cinema production, George Clooney's newest film The Descendants might be on your hit list. Featuring Gorgeous George and enough of Fiji to chase away those autumn blues, it may seem the perfect anecdote to the end of summer.

 The Descendants, however, is a bit more than you would expect with your average Choc-Top. A refreshing change from cliches and a new surge of mindless-Naughties-movies, its stand-out point is that its main character is in a coma. Yes: a coma. Mouth open and ungraceful, mother-of-two Elizabeth King (Patricia Hastie) is a centrepoint for all emotion, past happenings, and, in the case of this film, discovered secrets. Her skin pales as those around her flush with anger and excitement, chasing down her past in neighbouring islands and cursing her misdeeds.

 Some who have watched the film may disagree that Elizabeth is the main focus; after all, there is much acting work devoted to the screen by Clooney and the two daughters he reconnects with. Yet the way the film is structured is much like an autobiography - it appears to be about the person who speaks (or writes) but is really an account of how other people have influenced them. In the case of The Descendants, this autobiographical form is played with: it is not about the main actors, plural,  but about the one actor who cannot speak. In this way, all the other actors speak for her silence; whether they are friends, family, or just people who knew her, her presence and now quasi-presence affects them all.

 In addition to this interesting film dynamic, there are some other winning qualities of the picture. The way in which it is shot is relaxed and realistic; spit between people's teeth and terrible Hawaiian shirts are no problem for this piece. The disconnectedness of the family is also well played out - evident but not over-dramatized. The best feature, by far, would have to be the sustainment of awkward moments, which grip the nerves in mysterious ways.

So, was it good? Sure. I certainly enjoyed it. Just another one to muse over a coffee to at your local independent.

Top Tips to Stop Tearing Your Hair Out: How To Make the Everyday Exciting

Boring. Banal. Usual. Nothing to write home about. These, even in the most high-powered jobs (probably more so in the  case of high-powered people, since they made the climb) describe work that we have to do, but don't particularly want to. The little tasks. The hard yards. That mathematician-friendly-looking spreadsheet, or project you just never seem to get right. Again: the boring bits.

Gaaaaah....A dictionary-entry of a mis-spelt word.

Thankfully, as we are all such diverse creatures, not all the things that bore us are the same. I happen to be a fan of editing spelling mistakes and spread-sheeting my life. There are people out there who love cleaning, maths equations, programming, or tracking the progress of dust over a year in a contained environment. These are the people that save us the hassle of doing something we hate. And, as shown by my loves, most of us have a secret passion for something nerdy that is akin to a guilty pleasure - never coming out of the closet, but there to aid the rest of society. It's just  as well we do - after all, just like rubbish truck drivers and public bathroom cleaners, someone's gotta do it.

The love of lustreless, laggardly tasks is what I would like to use as an inspiration. Surely, if we can be interested in watching the Jersey Shore cast members spray-tan, amateurs cook and experts re-do badly renovated homes, we can find motivation to get the tasks done that we have to do anyway. The fact that these things are perceived as boring is besides the point: it is the fact that they are presented in an interesting way that makes them seem worthwhile. If the insight here is that the quality of x being interesting is that it is perceived as being so, then we can warp our own brains to make dull things dapper, The Matrix-styles. Take these tips as your dose of activity acid for the day.

How to make common things cool: a style guide.

1. Make up a war-style fight between the topic/object and its main competitor/enemy. Believe it or not, margarine's nemesis is butter.

2. Go on fan sites for the topic/object. There are nuts for everything in the webisphere, and their enthusiasm is contagious.

3. Find awards for the 'thing' in question. For example, if you are doing a project on watching paint dry, find the Guinness World Record for the person who did it for the longest.

The Proverbial Ball in Action

4. Find a spoof of the item/topic on YouTube. People posting videos know it the best.

5. Ask someone what they like/hate the most about it the item/topic. It will give you a new perspective on why you think as you do.

6. Get inside the mind of the object/subject's creator. Stalk their habits and have a look at their spouse. Once you know why the subject/item was invented, you can perform your tasks much better, too.

Six steps for someone who has a spare minute, or maybe a few more (myself). Just another way to keep the old proverbial ball-rolling.

The Myth of a Naturally Ordered, Organized Life

This week I thought it was time we covered a banal topic (as if public toilets weren't enough). A boring, organized, completely unspontaneous topic - and why are we reading this again, you ask? Well, because it concerns you, and a little myth called naturalized organization.

We all know one -  an organized, orderly person whose personal lives run to the same tune as an office would. The catch - some of them never appear as if they are running their own lives at all. There's no snippiness when a coffee date is cancelled; they never seem to double-book engagements; no frown lines or stress veins ever impinge the peacefulness of their face. Hell, they might even dress like a bohemian and practice yoga (maybe therein lies the secret?). The surprise at  their orderliness is not that it is there, but that it is there outside of work hours. It appears to occur organically, as if a person naturally organized during the week just reaps the benefits of such timeliness in the weekend.

Bohemian: The Attire of the Effortlessly Organized Person

Yet the week and the weekend, it seems, are such different realms of socialization. Monday arrives and your voice carries responsibilities of things you must get done; tasks you must wrap up; people you must appease. It's ok for your voice to change in these circumstances because everybody else is the same: they all have a job to do, and it's nothing personal. The weekend, though, is of such a different timbre: casual, relaxed, full of silliness and funny mistakes. If there was ever a time to be called a 'hardout', it is definitely within the frame of the weekend. Time becomes flexible; losing a half-hour here or a half-hour there is really not a cause for disdain. You don't call before 11am. Cafe menus and idle chatter becomes the centre of the world. If anything, the weekend is organized around anti-organization, structured so that no structure can firmly hold it in place.

A face of calm, secretly masking explosive anger

During a weekend structured on a lack of structure, where does the effortlessly organized person come in? Well, that's where the mystery still lies. For surely someone who is organized during the week would be annoyed at someone wasting their time in the weekend? And surely the most lax of people would be annoyed at someone preaching organization during sacred weekend time? Perhaps the effortlessly organized person is a compromise between the two, between respect for personal time and respect for the sanctity of the weekend. As Kiwis, we know that the weekend is most definitely sacred.

In lieu of a simple answer around the organically organized one, I will treat this post as an ode to those that fit the description. Because, really, you make our weekend world go around. Organizer of get-togethers and quellers of arguments, you make things happen in the weekend without being annoying. Although this sounds rather simple, considering the extremely different realms of week and weekend (and the range of people dealt with), organizing weekending people is not always an easy feat. Ease and effortlessness always ensures an entertaining end.