the sourcerer: The Kings of Patina.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

The Kings of Patina.

I'm on the hunt for retro props for a commercial. When I arrived at Braam's house this morning he told me it was "Airline Carrier Day" and led me to the patio table.

Braam is a legend in the film industry in South Africa. He's a collector extraordinaire. Over the years I've seen his house get fuller and fuller, until lately it's become quite a feat to go there without knocking something over.

Nothing new here - everything is gently worn by time. He's notoriously unsentimental. He's quite likely to rent out the pot his long-suffering wife is busy cooking the supper in.

He has various properties, all of them stuffed to the rafters with stuff. We know them by street address. Now, after all these years, there's big news: the rentables are all being moved to the new house, which will function as a prop house proper.

I popped in at Indwe to see the progress. It's wonderful to see everything spread out.

I think most of Glynville Terrace is in, but the whole of Impala still needs to come over. I heard a mumble that there wasn't enough room.

Later I went to Mister Music in Long Street, with the usual words ready on my lips: "I know you don't rent out, but... ", only to have the man say to me: "Today you may rent anything in my shop - R50."

I fell in love with a blue guitar.

My other desire is this fringed dress at Theatre and Film Costume Workshop.

1 comment:

sam said...: Blue guitar. Red tassle dress. You should play dixie at Albert Hall.; July 15, 2010 at 11:29 PM

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You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.
- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to."
Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.