I'm reading The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami. He is my favourite author by far. His work can only be described as surreal. It is often impossible to be entirely sure, or even fairly sure, what is happening in his stories. Whatever happens does so in beautiful and astonishing ways, so it is worth the confusion.
There is one paragraph in this book that really struck me and perfectly captures what it feels like to be in Tokyo on a bad day. If you've ever lived in a big, crowded city, you may have experienced this feeling:
"This occurs to me as I'm riding the Yamanote Line. I'm standing by the door, holding onto my ticket so I won't lose it, gazing out the window at the buildings as we pass. Our city, these streets, I don't know why it makes me so depressed. That old familiar gloom that befalls the city dweller, regular as due dates, cloudy as mental Jell-O. The dirty facades, the nameless crowds, the unremitting noise, the packed rush-hour trains, the gray skies, the billboards on every centimeter of available space, the hopes and resignation, irritation and excitement. And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, but all we get is a handful of zero. That's the city. That's when I remember what that Chinese girl said.
This was never any place I was meant to be."
The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami
Big wall
While we were painting, lots of middle aged guys made passing comments like, "better than a plain brick wall". I agree.
Yes! T-shirts
About a month ago I was jogging and this graphic popped into my head. I was sketching it out and my studio homies got excited about the typography, so I made some stickers. The people I gave them to seemed happy, so I made a limited run of these t-shirts. They all got snapped up before I had a chance to put them up on our e-shop so I'm making a second print run, then they'll be gone forever. I'll do new colorways perhaps, but I want to keep the original very exclusive to thank those who were quick to snap them up.
Giant wrap
Illustrations I did to pretty up a construction site. All up the illustration is 31.6 m long. Thankfully I didn't have to paint it by hand.
Visit the Treehouse
I spent a fair chunk of the weekend getting the Treehouse site to a half respectable level. Have a squiz...
Best Friday in the Treehouse EVER. Finally got Joel's decks hooked up. Even better, finally got Joel on the decks. Plus we tried Shanghai beer and it was very good. Result!
we made a book
My studio homies and I have published a book. The launch is 14th August at Right Hand Distribution (Ebenezer Place, Adelaide) from 6. 64 pages of never before seen scribblings. Look how excited Karaoke Rabbit is!
