Archives for posts with tag: thoughts

Questions for L’Artiste

December 12, 2012 //

L’Artiste was still wearing his unique tunic. He must have copyrighted his appearance as I haven’t seen any other puppets taking up the fad.

When L’Artiste sat down, Devil shuffled the cards to make us believe the questions are random, but honestly, when you’ve heard today’s questions one wonders if Devil rigged it. Isn’t it just a tad suspicious that L’Artiste, of all candidates, got the two questions posted by German artist Jürgen (or was it Buchalov?). But then does it really matter? This round is an exercise about how fast the candidates can think on their feet and finding out more about their personalities.

The first question didn’t go down too well though. Devil read out:

1. Where do you want to be in five years’ time?

As soon as the question was read out, L’Artiste jumped up from his seat shouting indignantly. “What sort of question is that?… Where do you want to be in five years’ time?” He shook his head while pacing up and down. “I am not in a job interview here, am I? How dare you ask me this middle management crap! I am an artist and if I am still alive in five years time, of course I want to be an artist. It doesn’t mean I will still do the same thing as I do today. Who knows what my art will be!” He stopped pacing and smiled at Devil “C’mon, Devil, Challenge me! Give me a question with some beef!”

Devil calmly explained again that all the questions were random before reading out the remaining two;

2. What are the three most beautiful things for a puppet?

3. What do you think about ‘Eden’, the special place humans are longing for?

L’Artiste was obviously a little happier with these and remained seated for the rest of the session.

“The second question, what are the three most beautiful things for a puppet? I can only answer from my personal perspective, as we are all different. Number 1 on my personal list is our very close-knit and supportive network. Number 2 is the mutual respect we have for each other and our ability to kiss and make up. We do have our fights, but they never last terribly long. Number 3 is the space we have from each other. If we need to we can have some time out. We can virtually drop of the planet, but come back some time later when we are ready and are welcomed back with open arms.” He paused for a moment nodding slightly a couple of times, then he continued: “Let me summarise this. The three most beautiful things for a puppet are ONE: Friendship, TWO: Friendship and THREE: Friendship. No question about it!”

“The third question is right down my alley, isn’t it? I have thought about it a lot. Ever since I first saw Hieronymus Bosch’s painting ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ as a little whipper snapper.” He turned to Devil and said with a little wink: “But I can assure you Devil, it wasn’t Eden that attracted me to this painting.”

“Does Eden exist, or doesn’t it? If it really existed, we Dedes certainly would be in it. But let’s be realistic, ‘Eden’, ‘Paradise’, ‘Arcadia’, every culture has such a place, different only in name. They are first and foremost places of harmony. Unfortunately, true harmony is a figment of the imagination. As soon as two people, or puppets for that matter, are in the same place there is potential for dissonance. We Dedes certainly strive for harmony and a good place to live, but I don’t think we will ever achieve it. I strongly believe the reason for our existence is to strive and do our best! After all we are only Dedes, just as humans are only human!

What do you think about L’Artiste’s answers?

Tags art, character traits, Characters, competition, creative writing, dede puppets, friends, imagination, Philosophy, story, story telling, thoughts

Categories Art

The week that was

December 8, 2012 //

All the performances I wrote about this week happened last Sunday – one after another – it was pretty exhausting. At the end of the first stage, L’Artiste and Cash Cow sang an impromptu duet. I mentioned it before, none of the Dedes can sing, but it is the thought that counts. The audience didn’t mind, it was just such a lovely finish to the first part of the competition.

At the moment there is no clear favourite, but definitely one bogeyman. The worst thing is, Harvey is totally oblivious to how much he offended the girls. Even some of the men are cringing. How do you tell somebody they were so terribly off the mark? Ah well, it is a competition and he will notice from his rating. This brings me to the next point… Have you rated all the candidates? There is a star system at the bottom of each post.

Devil and Detail called me for a meeting and asked what I thought of the calibre of the candidates. If I read them correctly, they were a little disappointed by the performances and they might have hoped for my confirmation. I reminded them that it was the explicit wish of the Dedes that I should hold back – it is entirely their show – so I won’t disclose my opinion. I am only there for administrative support.

Next…

The next round starts on Monday and this week our contestants will have to answer questions. Devil asked me to remind the readers that the organisers of the competition would be delighted to receive questions from the audience. So if you want to ask the candidates something, write a comment…. Every comment to a post made during the competition will go into the draw for the Dede puppet book Hermit’s Web or the few friends I need I hand-craft myself, a little hardcover book with pictures and stories of the initial Dede community. The second and third prize are a pack of Dede postcards (10 postcards each).

On a completely different note…

Philosopher took me to the side yesterday for a quiet talk. He is one of those puppets who don’t want to have a bar of the competition, but thinks if others believe it is fun they should go ahead. However, he aired his concern about Deutsch Fraulein (German Girl). You might know he cares a lot about her. He is secretly in love with her (from a distance). He told me Deutsch Fraulein spends a lot of time on German blogs at the moment. Everybody over there writes about Advent and Christmas and he has the feeling she might be a bit home sick. So he asked me – oh no, he begged me – not to forget all those puppets who are not part of the competition and maybe I could do something for them.

I asked what he had in mind. I can’t change the weather… we do have summer over here now and there is no snow. I absolutely hate fake snow and plastic christmas trees. It only gets dark at half past nine or ten-ish. Or have you ever tried Christmas cookies in summer? I have… they don’t taste that great…they have to be eaten in the dark and the cold! It’s comfort food.

“You are creative” Philosopher said “You will think of something!”

“That is such a cop out!” I answered, but he only smiled at me. He knows I can’t refuse any of his requests. He is too good a friend.

Tags art, character traits, Characters, competition, creative writing, dede puppets, life, mood, story, story telling, thoughts

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

The audience has spoken…

December 2, 2012 //

First things first, you are certainly all sitting on the edge of your chairs wanting to find out who will compete in the ‘Super Dede 2012’ competition.

Drum roll! Here are our finalists:

Pig and L’Artiste Dede scraped in with 12% of votes each, Cash Cow collected 15%, Mouse 17% and yes, Harvey gathered a whopping 23%. Who would have thought…. Certainly not me!

After the poll had closed, Devil, Detail and I discussed what had happened in the last week. Maybe due to the time of night – voting finished at midnight – we reached an agreement relatively quickly. We decided not to disqualify Harvey. The consensus was, if he is cunning enough to rope in a canvasser, good on him! Detail actually pinned the whole darn situation on me. She said, if I had kept my mouth shut and not talked to Mr XL about the election, the whole kerfuffle would have never happened. I basically gave Harvey a foothold. All he needed to do, was walk up to Mr XL right after I had left, play his heartstrings and ask him for help. I really should have known better….

“But, but…” I said.

Devil looked at me, shook his head and threw his arms in the air. “It doesn’t matter now… What happened, happened. And Harvey hasn’t won the competition yet. So far he has only managed to secure himself a place in the finals. Now he has to convince the audience with his performance and this will be far more difficult.

What’s next?

Detail explained how we will proceed. First, the finalists will give us a speech about themselves. Then they have to answer three questions and finally they will entertain us with their specific skills. After a lot of consultation Devil and Detail decided to allocate one post for each candidate and task.

Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “This will take us up to Christmas!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, correct” Devil replied “but five candidates in one post would be far too much for anybody. No-one can take in that much information! The other Dedes want to have a chance to give their feedback too”

“It’s also easier for the ratings!” Detail explained the practicalities “each post has a star rating system attached, so that the readers can rate the individual performances.”

“We really would like the questions in the second week to come from our readers and in general it would be great if the audience participated” Devil said “but we need some sort of incentive…” All of a sudden they both turned to me.

“What?” I said. I had the feeling I was missing something.

“Couldn’t you be the sponsor of the competition?” Devil asked and Detail nodded eagerly.

“Meeee? Am I not supporting you enough? How can I sponsor you?”

“We’d thought you could offer a signed Hermit’s Web book. We could put all the names of the people who comment into a hat and at the finals we draw one name and that person wins the book.”

“I guess that would be better than a meat pack.” I replied.

“We even could rename the show to the ‘Zeitgeist Publishing Super Dede 2012’ competition” Detail suggested.

“Oh, no! c’mon!.. I will give you a signed ‘Hermit’s Web‘ book and I even will throw in two additional packets of Dede postcards (10 each). But don’t do any of the naming crap. That makes it sound so cheap.”

Prize draw

“Can I write it like this into the rule book?” Detail read out aloud what she was writing “The name of any commenter goes into the draw for a signed copy of the book: ‘Hermit’s Web or the few friends I need, I hand-craft myself“. The more comments you write the more you increase your chances. Second and third prize are one pack of ten Dede postcards each.”

“The wording might have to be fine-tuned, but yes, that is correct.” I said and packed up my things.

Tags art, Characters, competition, creative writing, dede puppets, imagination, personalities, postcard, story, story telling, thoughts

Categories Art, Books, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

A puppet called Dipstick

November 21, 2012 //

May I introduce: Dipstick! The new puppet, that’s me – I admit it!… For all my second language readers: no need to look the word up in the dictionary, once you have read the post you will know what it means.

It was one of those days yesterday – you know what I am talking about – absolutely nothing goes right. Okay, this is not entirely true as “those days” don’t really exist. There are just days, when the negative is unfairly pronounced while the positive fades into the background. I call “those days” puppet days now. The first client set me off…. Never a good start to the day. And it continued until seven at night, when it was time to go home. As it was such a frustrating day, I decided to take some work home… Doh…, How is that for punishment? No really, I wanted to take home one of the projects where I have free reign creatively. For me that is the best way to relax.

And here the story starts: To take work home I needed to transfer a few files onto – I am a bit of a fossil – a memory stick. The only one I could find had a fault. It still could be read and as the info on it was unimportant I thought I would quickly format it… That will do the trick.

Format… Done!

Oh, You haven’t….!

Yes, I have…

I have formatted my 300 odd Gigabyte external hard drive on which I keep all my personal art projects. It is a virtual studio and as big a creative mess as the physical one, oh dear! You might not believe me but that is a real account of what happened. I was so exhausted from the day that I didn’t even have the energy to explode – what use would this be anyway?

So, phone call to good mate: “How do I get my files back on a formatted hard drive?”

“You can’t”

“Yes I can, it only renders the FAT unreadable” Thanks to my elephant memory (usually more of a curse than a blessing ), this info was stored away somewhere in the grey matter…

Phone call to hubby: “Dinner will be late!”

So I go on the Internet and luckily find a program on the first try.

Ha, ha – Note! Luck on a puppet day! I have to point this out so not to despair.

So I download and start the program. It takes over 3 hours to collate the information. I let it run, go home, cook dinner, watch a bit of brainless TV, go back to work. Program is just finishing collecting the info. Six more minutes, I can wait for that…

Then it needs to build the file tree and tells me it can take hours. Luckily it is finished in under ten minutes…. All I need to do now is click the “Restore” button. But what does the program tell me after I have done that? “Yes there are files, but the free version of the software can only recover 100 MB.” That’s laughable…100 MB is not even one of my high res layered photoshop files.

So basically it works. I see the file names on screen, but I have to download the full version. 100 NZ$ is a small price to pay for being a Dipstick. So I obtain a code to continue. Shouldn’t take long… Wait for the email…. Code arrives….Copy into box on screen.

Code doesn’t work. The instructions say it can take a few minutes before it is active. So wait….

I try again… It still doesn’t work… Wait…. Try again… Still doesn’t work… Wait…. Try again…. You get the picture. I feel like Homer S – Doooh!

I find a few spelling mistakes in the program while I wait. This doesn’t bode well. Spelling mistakes, in my opinion, are a sign of sloppiness. I hope they took more care of the coding, but now I have paid my $100 can’t do much about it! In the end I download the program again via a link from the code email. Copy the code in here – it works – but it has to re-read the entire hard drive. It tells me this will take over 3 hours. Sounds familiar… I am at Square 1.

I haven’t been in to work yet. I write my posts before breakfast. If you hear a scream in an hour or so, that would be me!

Should any of my students read this post: Yes, guys it happens to me too :)

Needless to say the puppets kept a low profile. They are masters in reading my moods!

Tags art, blog, digital art, digital imaging, life, mood, reflections, story, thoughts

Categories Art, Fun, Life

Identity crisis

November 14, 2012 //

It is not all honkie dory in the Dede household at the moment. The Dedes and I are not on particularly good speaking terms for the time being. I told them about a blog I came across, written by the German artist Jürgen Küster. He writes his blog together with his Alter Ego art figure Buchalov (there is an English translation at the bottom of each post).

My very first thought (cross my heart!) was: Isn’t that typical, here is a man – all he needs is one (1) figure to discuss all the issues. Then here I am (female) and I need at least thirty (30)! and still don’t come to a conclusion.

But then there are more differences. Buchalov is very supportive of his artist. As I understand it, he critiques the work of Jürgen in a helpful way. He is more like a mentor. They have deep and meaningful conversations, beneficial to the artist’s progress.

Oh, I wish I could have a deep and meaningful conversation with my lot, but no… intellectual the Dedes are not! Look at them, they are all over the place. All they want to have is fun. And when they get into a pickle, it is me who has to bail them out. No support from them at all. They are unruly little creatures. Even worse, whenever I say something, they say “Yes, but…” and then they give me this long spiel about why I can’t be right!

So I got a bit annoyed with them yesterday. I said they should be a bit more considerate. They are living in my house and it would be very kind if they wouldn’t challenge everything I say. Then I pointed to the art books on the shelf and said they should go and study for a bit. They looked at each other and said: “What’s wrong with her today?” and disappeared, leaving the art books behind. Only Philosopher continued his nap on the sofa unfazed.

“I will sell you all and only keep one!” I called after them.

“No you won’t” a voice from the sofa replied

Tags art, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, friends, images, imagination, life, mood, personalities, relationships, story telling, thoughts

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Who still sends Postcards?

November 13, 2012 //

Something unexpected happened yesterday: The Dedes got a postcard! Yes, a postcard – Who still sends postcards?

What a wonderful surprise. We love to get letters and postcards. But nowadays when we trundle down to the letterbox it is usually to get bills and real estate advertisements, not handwritten notes, not even around Christmas time. I sometimes wonder what future historians will research when they want to find out what was going on between two like-minded greats. Their twitter accounts? Mmmhm, I don’t think so.

But I am digressing. Yes, indeed the postcard was addressed to the Dede puppets at my place. I couldn’t identify the handwriting at first. It was pretty scrawly and I had a very hard time deciphering it. But of course the Dedes wanted to know who thought of them and in the end Foxy Lady, who has really good eyes, took on the job of reading it out aloud. It said: “Dear Dedes, I am having a lovely holiday and will have lots to talk about when I get home. I have been at a dress factory. You wouldn’t believe how many dresses there are!!!…I am looking out for a nice one, but it is so hard to choose. They are all so groovy.” At this point I felt a knot in my stomach, because I had ordered 10 plain black robes again. After all I am a designer and I love black myself. None of the Dedes has ever complained about my lack of fashion sense before, but now I could clearly hear it between the lines.

Mouse was sitting in the corner chuckling away to herself. Of course it was her, but by dede… her handwriting! It looked as if she had too many G and T’s while sunbathing in the wicker basket there.

Tags art, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, images, imagination, postcard, story, story telling, thoughts, vacation

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Monkey as police?

November 10, 2012 //

I went to the pub with Philosopher last night. After all it was Friday. I was so annoyed with Bobby that I couldn’t stop talking about him. I went on and on with blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah. You know the story. Philosopher is not the right person to have a rant to. He just sits there, lets you get it all out, but doesn’t respond. And I have to admit that gets boring very quickly. If you have a rant, you want to have someone who tells you that you are right and who understands your problem, not someone who just sits there with his eyes closed, smiling mildly. So in the end I started to get annoyed with Philosopher. This doesn’t happen very often.

What he finally said – though infuriating last night – makes sense the light of morning. He said: “So far, Bobby has done a fine job in my opinion. If you want someone to bend the rules for you, you should have employed Monkey as a policeman, not Bobby. But then, Monkey would bend the rules for anybody who gives him a banana, not just you. So what use would that be?”

Tags art, character traits, creative writing, dede puppets, life, Philosophy, reflections, story, story telling, thoughts

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Oh, Bobby…

November 4, 2012 //

Bobby got his colours yesterday. It was a very nice ceremony. Congratulations, I say with a smile …and gritted teeth. I can tell you guys, I am very disappointed!

Yes,we all knew Bobby will become a policeman one day… He looked like such a fun guy while he was still at the Academy and we were all looking forward to having him on neigbourhood watch. But now that he is finished he turned out totally different.

Have you ever experienced this? You give someone a tincy whincy bit of authority and overnight they turn into real pricks and start terrorising their old friends – only because they can do it, because they have the power. Bobby seems to be one of those. Yesterday he cried tears of joy for winning the election, thanking everybody and shaking hands with every single puppet. Today he is a stickler for rules. He stands upright and has this “don’t-mess-with-me-look” on his face. All the fun seems to be gone. He is like a brick head.

I certainly hope this change of behaviour is because he is young and inexperienced and has to prove himself to the world… He takes his new job seriously and doesn’t want to muck it up… – not because he is a red-neck idiot!

Only time will tell.

Maybe it is my fault, and I was a bit too hasty when I said to my reader Whichwillitbe that if Bobby stuffs up he will be out of his job faster than you can say “boo”

Tags art, character traits, Characters, creative writing, dede puppets, life, story, story telling, thoughts

Categories Art, Fun, Hand Puppets, Life

Another riot

November 2, 2012 //

It isn’t my week! I really need a break, to go away for the weekend and leave this lot behind. We just had our little tiff at Halloween when they took the mickey out of me, and now, only two days later, I have another riot on my hands. I wish they wouldn’t always jump in, boots and all, before they know the entire story.

I went to a Gallery yesterday to sound out the possibility for an exhibition of the Dede puppets. Procrastinator, even though I haven’t started him yet, has held me back for a long time. But finally, finally, finally, I went. It was all very positive. Usually I would mull it around in my head for a while and quietly discuss how to proceed with my partner. But as it happened I skyped with my brother in Germany last night. Unfortunately, when I skype I shout as if I have to be heard on the other side of the world without the aid of technology. So all the Dedes overheard the conversation and they took issue with what was said.

I told my brother that the curator suggested it would be better if I sold the puppets. All of a sudden I heard this kerfuffle in the living room and through the glass door I could see all the Dedes huddled together for a group hug and then they scurried off towards the studio. I continued my conversation telling my brother that I am not ready yet to part with them and certainly not with the original cast. However, I might, and only might, think about creating some new characters to sell at the exhibition. But of course by that time my Dedes were already up in arms and painting placards.

They slipped this picture I posted here under my bedroom door and I haven’t seen any of them this morning.