TAG

July 4, 2009

Memory Lane, Memory City

A city. Imagine a city made of roads all more or less straight and more or less perpendicular, and many buildings, from the air, all square and light-blue and flat [Ravensburger Ravensburger Ravensburger], down there.

The finger hesitates, wanders a little. Then the stretched index chooses, plummets like a bird of prey, turns the card. A white rabbit, sitting in a yellow cart with a red handle, on a green background. The rabbit has chubby cheeks, black eyes. At the edges of the city are sitting my Mum, my Dad, and I. My Mum used to always lose, minding the pans more than the game. My Dad sometimes lost on purpose, to make me happy. My favourite card was the one with the yellow teddy-bear, on a red background.

I loved that one especially because for some reason that teddy on the card was my own teddy, Robinson, the one I used to sleep with. I was chubby at the time and my front teeth whistled, on a blue background.
Now they don’t.
Now I don’t play memory anymore.
Now the child me is a white rabbit, sitting in a yellow cart with a red handle, on a green background. The rabbit has chubby cheeks, black eyes, an X-shaped mouth as if silenced by the plaster of the present.

July 3, 2009

Memory Lane

Ok, so i’ll start at the beginning.

This is me. Lisa Marie Davis. Born 18th December 1987. Blonde haired and chubby cheeked .

I’ve decided to take you all through a very quick journey through our family photograph album.

We’ll start at the beach. You will notice we’ve seem to have spent at least half of our childhood on the beach (by we, I mean me and my parents / siblings).

The above photo depicts me, and my mother. Look at me with my blonde hair and baby curls! Sadly the curls would grow out as I grew up, but alas, they will make a reappearance later on, so don’t worry just yet!

You will probably notice in most of the photographs that they contain myelf, and my older sisters. My brother wasn’t around quite yet, so here’s a pic of us together. Me, teasing him as always.

Here look, another beachy picture!

Whilst staying every other weekend at our caravan down in the South, it was quite often that life would be bought back to basics. This includes a bowl of water, which became the BEST play-thing ever!

It also included 3 children sitting on a skateboard, and repeatedly cruising around the site.

Please excuse the yellow scribbles. Kids will be kids, of course.

So here we are, we’re all getting a little older, and my best play-mates, my sisters abandon me to go to school. But it was okay, because I got to go aswell and have my picture taken too!

There were fun times. Like going to fairs, and riding all the big-kid rides with other family members.

Or spending, yet more time at the beach. But it’s okay, because I was never alone.

Here we are, at the end of this little ‘journey’ of sorts. With a little glimpse of where my photography interest stemmed from. Always the one with the camera, taking snippets from the past to add to my own personal ‘Memory Lane’.

Lise x

July 3, 2009 1 note

Art History

Possibly overlong, hopefully not too dull.

I’m going to post a bunch of old work I did for Fine Art back in school, and mix it up with a mildly embarrassing tale from around the same time. All fairly personal, so I’ve no idea how interesting it’ll be for onlookers, big but not clever, OK? OK.

Whilst an unfortunate combination of grievous whisky abuse and the internet has left me a broken, bloated husk of a man, I was a fairly fit youth. Back then I dived, fenced and rock climbed, amongst other more mundane things. This story involves the diving.

Swimming costumes are designed by perverts. I am thoroughly convinced of this.

So a bunch of us older teens and a gaggle of younger kids (but what teenager in their right mind would deign to acknowledge the presence of a younger person?) standing around discussing the usual topics of teenage interest (genitals and the various functions of genitals), only functionally naked and soaking wet. For an hour. Every week.

It could be a hard time for me.

One of the lovely young ladies asked me out, once. I immediately turned bright red, spluttered something incoherent and body slammed the pool from 3m up. We never really spoke again.

It was a bit of an anti climax for me, too.

July 2, 2009

Memory Lane

More big chunks of text I’m afraid. I lack the ability to do anything else.

Such an odd phrase, I wonder who came up with it? It makes one picture a bright, cheerful suburban street. All trimmed lawns and white picket fences. Clean. Orderly. You can imagine yourself driving down the street, you cruise slowly, there’s no other traffic to be seen, admiring the houses of your memory. Sometimes you stop and investigate one in detail, all laid out for you. Simple. Elegant. Beautiful.

My memory has never been like this. My memory is neither simple nor elegant. It is not a quiet suburban street, but a convoluted mass of roads, streets, and alleyways. It is a concrete nightmare. It is, without doubt, a city.

It is not an American city either, all laid out in simple grids that are easy to navigate, instead it is a British city, one that has grown organically over the years without real planning or design. There deserted areas no longer in use; whole areas of geometry lessons are abandoned and only rarely visited. There are high streets bustling with regularly accessed knowledge and vast motorways connecting frequently travelled areas. There are alleys that no longer lead anywhere (my hometown has one of these, it’s called Needless Alley, says something about our sense of humour) complicated one way systems, embarrassing memories that have been fenced off as danger zones, not safe to venture into.

I can lose myself in this city, if I’m not careful, if you stray from the beaten paths. I can circle endlessly around the antique architecture of the treasured memory of my first kiss (twelve, behind the curtain at a theatre, I nearly missed my cue). I can wander vast industrial districts processing facts and figures listing the cast and crew of various films, or long lists of football players and their clubs throughout the years.

The edges of this city give way to wilderness, half realised, vague memories, little more than gestures on my mental canvass. Vague, stylised landscapes charting what might have been and what never was.

To call my memory a lane is a disservice, it is a city, complex and wonderful, warped and fantastic. And it is me, through and through.