Weekly Stuff - My Birthday's Coming Up, Museum Of The Home, Trombone Tunes - Aug 23 2024
Weekly Stuff is a series from me to you in which I keep you updated on the best stuff I've read (and sometimes seen/heard/watched) this week. It won't always be made or from this week. I'm sure you can deal with that.
Working's kept me busy, but not too rammed to miss out on getting that sweet, sweet enriching creative inspiration. I've really enjoyed actively carving out time in my week to actually experience interesting things. Something I'm realising I don't do enough.
I've also just got done hacking away at some old t-shirts to make vibey crop tops. They look extremely tacky and I won't be getting a job as a tailor any time soon, but they'll be great for the right occasion.
It's my birthday soon, too! Mark your calendars for August 26 - bank holiday Monday. It's lovely having a bank holiday birthday, but also everyone bloody goes away for that time! Not to worry - I've got a big wedge of Hackney pub booked for Saturday night, it'll be a real treat.
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On a whim, I decided to pop over to the Museum of the Home in Hoxton, East London on Thursday. It's another one of those things I'd been meaning to do but never got around to. Well, this week I decided enough is enough. I romped on down Kingsland Road, had a nice little iced coffee in the museum cafe, and popped my head into the free Rooms Through Time exhibit.
The exhibit showed East London from 1878 to 2049. I am aware that 2049 hasn't happened yet. We'll get there.
While nosing around A Room Upstairs In 1956, I heard a tour group chatting at the next installation: A Terraced House In 1978. I spent the next hour enraptured by the tour's leader, curator and playwright Michael McMillan.
He spoke in so much depth about each and every item in the front room, as a crowd of older folks from the London Caribbean community pointed out certain aspects they recognised from their childhood. From the afro comb, placed deliberately as a sign of the inherently radical nature of Black hair in a racist society, to the flammable insulation often used at low cost during building projects of the era, each detail was meticulously selected to evoke a specific time and feeling.
One of The Front Room's goals was to represent cultures across the diaspora, with a particular focus on the role and representation of Black women in media. With colonialism's impact treating Black families as pathological and dysfunctional, McMillan's room depicts an alternative, and much more positive, representation, with the Front Room being a cultural touchstone, a meeting point for social and political activity, and in some ways, a matriarchal space with the mother of the house having control of the space.
Afterwards, I asked one of the organisers and found this tour was set up by Voyage, a charity with a mission to empower young Black people and transform disadvantaged communities in London. It was beautiful to witness such reminiscence, as McMillan never shied away from ensuring the cultural context of the Windrush Generation remained front of mind.
Oh, and there was a speculative room from 2049, with things like autonomous vehicles, patrol drones, and a farm-free food machine producing synthesised protein for dinner.
I guess this reveals a key limitation of the future. It hasn't happened yet.
After the excellent recreations of rooms throughout London's history, particularly when one was so well-outlined and guided, I was always going to struggle to connect with what came across like a set from a slightly outdated sci-fi B-movie. We were all supposed to be driving flying cars and talking to aliens by now according to previous predictions of a similar type.
This might be reductive - Innovo and the Interaction Research Studio are pulling from real-world scientific possibility, but given the rest of the exhibit, showing home designs across cultures and time, I felt the final room wasn't quite on the same level, and never could be.
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What else? I've been digging through my dad's old vinyl collection and man, the guy loves the trombone. He has a fair few records of J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, a duo of trombonists who worked extensively together during the '50s and '60s.
One caught my eye - Jay and Kai +6. Plus six! That's EIGHT TROMBONES. Ridiculous. That has to be too many.
I had a great time with the album, though. A trombone octet isn't something I ever asked for, but the arrangements made for a deep, rich sound across the album of standards and original compositions, probably helped by the fact that these are some of the greatest musicians ever to slide a slide.
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Right, you have a wonderful bank holiday weekend, will ya? I'm gonna get my trumpet out and play along to Jay and Kai. Make it a trombone octet PLUS A TRUMPET. What a feeling.
