My old friend Hone told me a story a while back where as part of the University course they were on, Maori studies and he's a Maori but a city boy born and raised, they went and lived on the Marae ( tribal spiritual meeting house) in a total immersion thing.
He was the stupid one 'cause his language ability couldn't work fast enough or describe the complex ideas he was used to in English while there was another guy there who was an absolute wizard in Maori but then when the course finished seemed entirely stupid in English.
Where I was brought up here in New Zealand everybody was a half caste of some description, an outsider that couldn't fit on where they came from. Alot of it was straight inter marriages between ethnic groups but alot of it was also inter marriage between beliefs... so it was always a total melting pot for us roving bands of kids to make it up as we went along.
As I'm writing this and figuring out what I actually want to say it has come to me that a kind of default in New Zealand, which is starting to die out a little, is that unlike the rest of the world is that most people are accepted as clever until it's fairly obvious they're not.
People are given the benefit of the doubt I think simply because we are very young in world terms and we're still very much building what we actually are and could be.
So to be perfectly frank when you guys do the boys from the backwoods thing I'm looking for a setup. It's a classic trick I've grow up with where we'd use some new groups idea of what we were to get one over on them.
But at the same time,'cause it's a part of the survival mechanism in New Zealand, while the cons going on you're throwing out hints to pick out new friends who can see beyond the obviousness that isn't really there.
It just occurred to me that the time for words is over so here's some of my pictures.
Bunch of artworks I made a few years ago which didn't sell so I got my marching orders.