my tangerine taxi

the kindness of strangers

I've been in pretty desperate need of a haircut and beard trim since even before I left on this trip. I kept putting it off because one I thought it was kind of amusing to see how long I could let the hair grow but also because I was apprehensive of what kind of hair cut I might end up with given my myriad language barriers.

I got over that pretty quick last night.

I'd just left a Starbucks in Munich and I had stopped to take a photo of something that caught my eye. My camera was away in my day pack and so I crouched next to a building out of the sidewalk and opened up my bag. There were some water bottles in there on top of the camera that I had to remove first.

I noticed a pair of feet stopped in front of me. I looked up. A well-dressed older gentleman had stopped. His wife a few feet away. His hand out-stretched. I stared at him. He stared at me. And then I noticed the coin.

"Oh shit! I'm not homeless!"

We both laughed. Both embarrassed. He patted me on the back and walked away with his wife.

I woke up this morning and got my hair cut.

why bilbao

I dock in Bilbao in a little over 5 hours from now. I'll spend two nights there before travelling across the country on a train to get to Morocco.

Why am I going to Bilbao? Because I love this song.

Lowest of the Low, "Letter from Bilbao," Shakespeare My Butt, 1991.

the victoria & albert

A few days ago, on my last day in London, I spent three hours at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Three hours despite being ruthless with what I saw there. 

My cousin Becky was disappointed I didn't see there collection of wedding dresses. She also thought I was cracked for racing through the jewellery collection on the way to the photographic exhibition.

Here are some of the things that stuck out for me:

The museum, especially their design collection, was a breath of fresh air after so much of the old stuff seen earlier on the trip.

In the design collection they have a Handspring Visor. An iMac. A Sony Vaio which, only 10 years old, looks ancient.

I had a Handspring Visor - the follow-up to the Palm Pilot.

They mention the iMac as being designed by Jonathan Ive. You hear his name a lot over here. This must be because he is from here.

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Seeing David Bowe's "Aladdin Sane" album cover and one of Elton John's outfits it seems that they might be more properly considered Lady Gaga's main influences more so than Madonna

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In the Gold exhibit there is a portrait of Charles I on bone china. Portraits of him are everywhere in this country, which I find interesting because it was he that was beheaded at the start of Cromwell's interregnum.

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Theatre and Performance exhibit

On Creating

"The process of creation differs from artist to artist but always springs from the premise that something must, could or should be created."

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Post-Modern Exhibit

"…the working parts of electronic devices were so small that they did not dictate anything about form: 'if mechanical design is about function, then electronic design will be about decoration.'"

-George Sowden

This was echoed by Ives in the documentary Objectified where he pointed to an iPhone and talked about how to this point in time, the purpose of an object was obvious from its design. A chair looked like a chair. A toaster looked like a toaster. But now, with the iPhone, it's not possible to discern the objects utility from its shape.

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They had a copy of the cover the May 1986 issue of the New Socialist Magazine. Despite being 25 years old the front cover stories wouldn't be out of place today:

"Style Wars"

"israel's Unholy Alliance"

"Feminism and class politics"

"Fall-Out Over Libya"

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"As the 'designer decade' wore on and the world economy boomed, many post-modernists participated enthusiastically in a culture obsessed with wealth and status. Ultimately, this was the undoing of the movement. Postmodernism collapsed under the weight of its own success."

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Magnificent that the PoMo exhibit ends by spilling you into its own specialized gift shop.

every step i take

As I sit here on the Cap Finestere in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, it dawns on me that from now on, with every step I take, I will be travelling further away from home than I have ever been.