Cinque Terre: The Land of the Five Lands

What follows is an unnecessarily detailed and dramatic retelling of the time I did a walk. It’s a well-known walk, one which many, many people have done before. I did it too, though.

I am a fairly spectacular urban walker, of this there can be no doubt. But I’ve never really enjoyed walking as a pastime. It’s slower than its close relation ‘running’, and contains a higher risk of boredom. To spruce up the whole endeavour, I decided to listen to the entire Radiohead back-catalogue in order. Well, just the albums. And I started at The Bends - I’m not a psychopath. I swear this just happened organically, at least for the first three albums. After that, it just seemed rude to change.

The journey began in the tiny Commune Di Framura. Framura isn’t actually itself a town, but rather a collection of minute villages dotted across the side of a hill. What it does have is a dynamite little hostel, quieter and far cheaper than its touristy cousins in the Cinque Terre. It’s run by a charming chap who speaks no English. I don’t think he speaks German. I didn’t try French. I assume he speaks Italian, but how would I know? Our relationship consisted mainly of “ciao” and thumbs-ups.

[Sidenote: This really was a great little hostel (Ostello Perla del Levante). At check out time, I wasn’t quite ready, and he was off somewhere to do Italian things, so could I please leave the key in the letterbox, and just drop some cash on the desk to pay for the room. All of this communicated in hand gestures and trust.]

With base camp set up, it was off to Cinque Terre. These are five little towns amongst the hills, connected by train tracks and walking paths. I had done little research, but I guessed I’d go to the other end of the track, and walk until I got to Monterosso, the nearest town to Framura (and the one with a beach). The German woman in my dorm had done some of it yesterday, and came back looking like she’d done several back-to-back Tae Bo classes (back when that was a reference). I asked her whether it might be too much for one day?

“For me, yes. But I haven’t done any sport since last September.” It’s a little weird that she gave a specific time period of non-sportingness. She probably expected me to ask further questions. I asked no further questions.

She continued, “but you probably do a bit more sport than me.”

“Oh, you know, occasionally,” I replied humbly, but I could tell she knew. “I’ll give it a go. There’s always the train if I need it.” I had no intention of needing it. What she didn’t realise was that she had challenged me and all of New Zealand, and I would not let us down.

“Where do we go from here…”

While waiting for the train at little Framura station (10am), I decided to listen to The Bends. It was sunny, and sometimes I listen to The Bends when it’s sunny. I had packed the essentials:

-     - H&M shoes;

-     - H&M shorts;

-     - H&M socks;

-     - Towel that’s too small for proper beach use, but saves an insignificant amount of space in one’s bag;

-     - H&M swimming shorts;

-     - Biscuits which weren’t very nice, but the good news is they were expensive;

-     - Water;

-     - All Blacks shirt, because patriotism is a responsibility.

The plan: Walk really fast; cursorily observe the history and culture; get to the beach at the end; forget most of the history and the culture. Oh, and I pass you, you don’t pass me. (I’m competitive, it turns out).

“You’ve got to feel it in your bones…”

I arrived in Riomaggiore (10:35am), the first (or the last?) of the Cinque Terre, and I was pumped. Let’s hit this trail. Stop - culture; history! Also, KISS graffiti:

So I walked around a little. Yeah, cool town; funny colours; don’t need souvenirs, thanks. Let’s hit the damn trail! Normally, this part of the journey is the easiest. There are nice, flat, seaside pathways between the first two towns – a gentle warm up:

This would be true, if it weren’t for landslides. So we’re going over. It was at this point that I noticed that a lot of people had hiking boots, and moisture-wicking clothing, and backpacks with chewy straws which you can chew on while pretending to hydrate. Some people had ski poles, so maybe there’d be chairlifts? Oh, and all the shoes were brands named after Himalayan villages and such, and were in earth tones so you knew they were serious. I didn’t see many pairs of DIVIDED by H&M.

After walking around for an eternity trying to find the trail, I spotted the sign to Manarola (let’s say 11ish):

Hard to believe I missed it the first time!

“Sometimes you sulk, sometimes you burn…”

Immediately, we were going up. And up. Stairs made of (not necessarily flat) rocks. And narrow. I could see that some of my colleagues – the ones penciled into Death’s To-Do list – were finding the going difficult. I, however, had done the Tongariro Crossing when I was about 10, so I had a good base fitness to build on. Also I figured that, if “up” is the worst way, then doing it slower will only make it take longer. Better to go faster.

Eventually I made it to the top of the first hill, redfaced and gleaming thanks to a sweat comprised largely of olive oil and a little house wine from last night at Sylvia’s, a nice family-style joint in Costa, Framura. By this stage, I was well onto OK Computer. These albums are surprisingly good for walking to, by the way. But maybe the message is just that walking to whatever your favourite music is will always be a great time. Flight of the Valkyries would be spectacular, I imagine.

“Such a pretty house, and such a pretty garden…”

“Fitter, healthier, and more productive…”

Walking down is obviously better than walking up. What is especially nice about walking down is passing people going in the other direction, and giving them the little “you’re nearly there”, “great job”, “this is really impressive, for you” looks.

Eventually, I made it to Manarola around 12:15.

Manarola

Here’s the truth about the Cinque Terre: the first few towns kind of look the same. The exciting part is doing the trail, hating every second of it, then spotting the next town, then realising there are two more “ups” before you get there. When I was in Riomaggiore, Manarola and Corniglia, I was mainly thinking about the next leg, filling up my water bottle, that sort of thing. I’ll bet the guide books say something else – that each of them is unique and spectacular and there’s all sorts of history. Anway, if you want to know more about Manarola, read one of your precious guide books. Just know that I was there, I looked at it, then I left it.

“It’s gonna be a gloooooorious day…”

As much as I’d like to whinge about identical towns, steps, and that nagging feeling that I was on the precipice of chaffing, the scenery and the climate combined to make it an extraordinary experience. Now back to cynicism.

“Hey man, slow down. Idiot, slow down…”

In all my excitement to be the king of the mountain, and thanks partially to the incredibly inadequate signage, I got lost:

I battled through some bushes, and I battled some more. Here I was, in a populated, tourist mecca, lost like something out of a Rudyard Kipling novel (never read anything by Rudyard). Lost like something inaccurately translated. Lost like those guys in Lost. I pushed through, and stumbled upon grape vines, in what seemed to be someone’s backyard:

I had two options: Go back down to the last legitimate path I’d seen (maybe 20 minutes of climbing), or head right (if I had a compass, I’d tell you the direction. Also if I knew how to read a compass), jump a few fences, and try to find the track.

I weighed the two: I really didn’t know which way the track was. I didn’t know what lay ahead. Would I be shot? Would I walk on forever, never to find the path, trapped in a sort of Waiting For Godot narrative, in which Godot is a path?  

But I couldn’t go back. I was winning. King of the Mountain! To go backwards would be to admit defeat, or at least non-total-dominance.

I chose to be bold. For whom does fortune favour? That’s right, the bold. Well, in this case it really favoured me, because the path was about 10 metres to the right. It’s possible that this whole episode was far less dramatic than I imagined, in hindsight. But hindsight’s 60 Minutes, as they say.

“Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon. Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon…”

Lemon trees are EVERYWHERE

Yup, we’re on to Kid A. It’s now starting to feel a little weird listening to this very minimalist, industrial-sounding music from the turn of the millennium in this context. Where’s the mandolin? Maybe some alt-country would make more sense?

Corniglia

We’re also onto Corniglia (1:30), the third of the towns. This one’s different because it’s perched up on a cliff. Other than that, though, it’s not heaps different. They do have their own Westpac Stadium, though:

I stopped here for four biscuits. As I told you earlier, they were pretty lousy:

And in produce news, I purchased an apple and an orange. The sign outside said they were  2.20 a kilo, but I paid  2.60 for one of each. In hindsight, I don’t think I bought a kilo worth of fruit. On the plus side, the woman who served me was holding a slice of pizza in her spare hand, and it’s fun when stereotypes bear out.

After my biscuits, I left Corniglia.

“Cut the kids in half. Cut the kids in half…”

You know what would make this whole ordeal even better? A baby! These two were keeping an open mind about the mess they’d found themselves in (both in the moment, and in the bigger picture), but I can’t imagine it being fun after 20 or so minutes (ditto).

Ps, the baby was crying.

[We’re on Amnesiac now, by the way]

“15 Steps, then a sheer drop…”

So many steps. It was like how Melissa Moon used to do those races where skinny people run up all the steps in a really tall building. I was the Melissa Moon of Cinque Terre. I’m not actually comparing myself to world champion stair runner Melissa Moon, but I’m also not not.

[Sidenote: Melissa Moon used to teach at my high school, when she wasn’t running up something steep. I never actually met her, but I like to think that she remembers me fondly.]

“I guess I’m stuck, stuck, stuck. We thought you had it in you but no, no no…”

I’d be lying if I said the mood was still high, the pace still quick, and my feet not sore. As cost-effective as these shoes were, they are not really any match for the oddly-shaped rocks these stairs are made of. Mood was low, and I forgot to fill the water bottle in Corniglia. The great carrot was the beach at the end, but first I had to get to Vernazza.

“Down is the new up…”

It didn’t feel like much more climbing to reach Vernazza. That’s probably due to Corniglia being on a cliff, and Vernazza being down at the water. Still, it’d seem a waste not to go up at least a few stairs. So we got that out of the way, and then it was a more considerate rolling path back down.

Also, along the way I finally found a sign that I liked:

Disappointingly, “playa” is just another word for “beach”. This really had the potential to be an elite sign. Still, I had a little giggle, and then it wasn’t far to Vernazza.

Vernazza

Vernazza is probably the prettiest of the Cinque Terre. It’s right on the water, and it really felt like it was designed to be looked at from within. I didn’t stop long, because there was only one more path to climb, and then it was beach time!

Vernazza

“Yeah I might be, paying attention, paying attention, paying attention…”

[BIG SIDENOTE: Diligent Radiohead fans will have noticed that I totally neglected Hail To The Thief. Congrats. That was a test. Actually, I forgot it entirely. I remembered about it on the way to Monterosso, but I figured I would add it on at the end if necessary. In the end, it was not necessary.]

“Little by little, by hook or by crook…”

I was officially over all the stairs, the climbing, the other people at this point. I felt that my ‘if something is worse, do it faster’ mentality made sense, and started really moving.  Feet hurting, sunburnt and thirsty, I was determined to end this thing. The good news was that this was the last leg. The bad news was that people had told me that this was the hardest leg. I don’t know if it was any harder than the first two, but I guess you are supposed to go “around”, not “up” for them. Anyway, it was annoying, hard, and I was over it. The beach was calling, and it was time to greet it.

They say that this part is meant to take an hour and a half. I don’t know who’s in charge of that, because it took more like 40 minutes. [“God defend New Zeee-eee-land”]

Gloriously, mercifully, the beach finally materialised (4pm). Freedom. Monterosso is the biggest of the towns, and probably the one that I would choose to spend my free time in, mainly because of the beach.

Monterosso

“The water’s clear and innocent…”

Because it’s Europe, this is a bikini tops-off friendly beach. Naturally, I took mine off.

The beach, with it’s cold-but-not-impossibly-so water, was exactly what Dr Whatman ordered. You’d be a nutcase to do this trip the other way around, since there are no beaches at any of the other towns.

All in all, it took about five hours. It’s meant to take more, and I definitely could not tell you the deepest secrets of any of the little towns I visited. It was a nice, healthy challenge. For all the whinging about sore feet and the seemingly inevitable onset of chaffing (never actually arrived, miraculously), plenty of geriatrics were there, cranking it out. She’s no K2.

I celebrated by lying on that beach for two hours, acquiring further sunburn, and then with a delightful spaghetti and a bunch of beer:

Most people probably prefer to make these sorts of journeys with friends and loved ones, laughing gaily and enjoying the sights. I preferred the thrill of victory. I looked mother nature in her eyes and laughed scornfully. She, with her stone steps, tiny signs and dusty walkways; she, with her souvenir shops and overpriced fruit; she, the creator of obstacles and the burner of skins, could not defeat the human spirit. I laugh at her as I laugh at moderate foot pain, as I laugh at estimated journey lengths and I laughed at the children I brushed aside on the road to victory.

But mostly, I laugh with pride, because on this day as on every other day since time began, New Zealand was better than Germany.

Moroccan Roll All Night (and barter every day)

Over the weekend, I ticked off Africa. We (being myself and the Baguette Winner) hopped on a Transavia flight from charming little Orly Airport, straight into the heat of the desert. [Side note: when picking a discount airline, always go for the one that makes you think of vampires.] We didn’t know a lot about Marrakech, so we watched a Jamie Oliver video to get familiar:

It all looked easy enough, but, when we got there, we couldn’t see any little lads running around with their mothers’ bread. Thanks to the lack of little boys to chase, we didn’t have a plan. Luckily, the Moroccans are never short of something to sell, so we spent our time shopping. First, however, I needed to be shorn.

We walked into the first barber we saw, early on the first day. He seemed pleasant, and he kept caged birds (yes, they were singing).

There is little need to provide a play-by-play of the haircut. Where there was once much hair, there was soon less hair. It’s not a complex scenario. At the end of the unhairening, we encountered the first of many bartering techniques we would meet in Marrakech. The friendly and very-hardworking barber simply asked me how much I would like to pay. The trick is to seem very sincere, and to never indicate whether what is offered is a reasonable amount, but rather to repeat that you’ll accept whatever’s offered. We ended up paying 100 dirhams (roughly 10 euros), which seemed fair. That is, until we managed to buy lunch and drinks for two for 80 dirhams. It’s a good technique.

It’s Riadical!

Staying in the Medina (the old town in Jamie’s video) usually means staying in a riad. These are sweet old houses, built around a central courtyard. The courtyards keep them cool, much like when you sit in a rubber ring in a pool and and get a wet bum. In fact, the word riad comes from the Arabic word ryad, which loosely translates to “soggy bottom”. In English, the name Ryan has the same derivation. Both words trace back to the old rubber ring in a pond paradigm. It’s in the Bible or something.

Anyway, our riad was not quite the palace in the photo above, but it was still nice. I do think, however, that the description on their website is a tad misleading:

“Riad Minorisa is a private palace from XVIIIth century with a familial hosting inaugurated in December 2007. Located in the calmness of the medina (old city) declared Universal Human Patrimony by the UNESCO. Situated near of the Jemaâ El Fna square, one of the most famous in the world.

Riad it means garden in arabic language. To be hosted at a riad is the best choice to live Marrakech spirit and beneficed its charms, without renounce vitality’s souks bazaars neither the thousand and one magic nights.

This is a mixture of oriental and occidental decoration that ofers all the comfort, relax, elegance and simplicity.”

That’s a copy-and-paste from their website, and I take issue with a few notes:

• I won’t criticise the use of the word “palace”. If a house can be a castle, I suppose a riad can be a palace. Probably not what you think of when you think “palace”, though.
• “Calmness of the medina”: When I think of calm, I think of peace and quiet, serenity; Bonnie Doon, basically. Inside Riad Minorisa, it was very quiet and calm, so that’s right But the Medina itself is a constant throb of people, motorbikes, donkeys, smaller people (children), cats, some horses, music, yelling and singing. It is always befuddling, and it is never calm.
• I don’t know where they got this “riad means garden” business…
• I really like the last sentence. “This is a mixture of oriental and occidental” is a lovely phrase, and then it all falls apart. Shouldn’t judge though, as it seems that everyone in Morocco speaks dynamite English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic, obviously.

If you are earning French, Morocco is a great place to do so. You see, the trouble with the French is that they speak French like they own the place, messing with the words and making them sound different. Then there’s slang, and speaking all fast, and suddenly it doesn’t sound like the nice Irish man on Coffee Break French says it should. The Morrocans, on the other hand, seem to really have listened to Mark (the nice Irish man) from Coffee Break French, because they say the words the way they are meant to sound. So for us, two intermediate French learners (who come across as novices in Paris), Marrakech was great! In fact, between French and English, we didn’t even need to bother with Arabic. In hindsight, they might have liked us more if we did.

ArabiYum Nights

Moroccan food is good. You probably know this, what with it being trendy to not just eat the same thing all the time. Our predominant eating experiences were of tagines, the cool witches’ hat pot lid things above. Tagine is just the name of the dish it’s cooked in, and it usually comes full of a given meat product, spices, a few potatoes and carrots, and some dried fruit or almonds if you pay a bit more. If you watched all of that Jamie Oliver video above (it’s only “work”, after all), you’ll have heard him say that you can just cook it in whatever you’ve got.

Put simply, the tagines were good and the cous cous was less good. Not bad, but tagines were clearly better. In my brain, I had imagined there would be cous cous in the tagines. This is not how they roll. Tagines are actually fairly sparse in their filling: just a couple of good chunks of meat (think chicken legs, lamb chops, etc), with some token potato, carrot, zuchini, etc. They are great, thanks to the slow-cooking of the meat, and the excellence of the gravy. It’s really all about the gravy. This is very important, because all Moroccan food is served with firm - but not unpleasantly so - bread. You put the bread in the gravy, and therein lies the beauty of the tagine.

Cous cous provides far less opportunity to dip bread in gravy (as there isn’t really any), and this is why we don’t order the cous cous. My advice: let someone else order the cous cous, and you get the tagine. Tagines with dried fruit and/or nuts are usually better. You eat the tagine (dip the bread!), and they will hate you for it. They’ll probably trade you some cous cous for the right to dip some bread in your gravy. And then you have the single most important thing in the history of civilisation: leverage (and gravy).

Jemaa el-Fnaar out!

You know how, when you’re a kid and a (trusted) grown up tickles you, and you wriggle and try to make it stop, but then as soon as it stops you miss the attention, so you go back for more? This is what it’s like being at Jemaa el-Fnaa, the big town square in Marrakech. It’s loud, and people are trying to sell you things, and then there’s a monkey on a chain, and then there’s a live cobra, and all the food stalls want you to eat at them, and someone keep an eye on that cobra, and this guy wants to sell me a live turtle, and here’s a wooden snake, and all the food smells amazing, but some of the food looks awful, and WHICH SNAKES ARE WOODEN, AND WHICH ONES ARE THE FUCKING COBRAS?!

It’s a confusing place, and the second we arrived I was thinking about leaving. But here’s the thing: It’s the only place in the Medina which you actually recognise, and which you actually think you can get back to. So every evening, when we were thinking about where to go, it was “back to the square?” Because it was definitely interesting. The good news is there are restaurants all around the square, where you can sit up on the terrace and watch all the goings-on going on. It also makes for a killer sunset:

Plus, there are a couple of bars there, if you know where to look. [Top tip: If a person says they’ll show you a “happy hour”, you can follow them. They are actually taking you to a happy hour. Besides, how unhappy would the hour have to be for you to regret it?]

I guess it could be worse. So then you leave the restaurant and walk back down through the square, and immediately you remember that you hate it there. But you also want to go back tomorrow. I imagine this is exactly what swimming with sharks feels like.

Moroccanclusion

Marrakech is very nice, if a little lacking in actual ‘things to see’. It’s cheap, tasty, and not as dangerous as it might seem (well, we survived, at least). Also, we didn’t get sick, which apparently is a minor miracle.

I do have the following questions, however:

1. Why are they selling live turtles?
2. What are people doing with the turtles they buy?
3. They know we’re tourists. Are people taking the turtles out of the country?
4. How do you get a live turtle on a plane?
5. How much is a turtle in, say, London, anyway? Is it worth smuggling?
6. They also had iguanas...

A Guide To Very Modern Art

Today, I want to talk about very modern art. Like ‘right now’ sort of art. It’s what you would probably call “modern art”, but if you don’t want to be the dumbest kid in your class, don’t call it that.

Technically, “modern art” went on between the 1860s and 1970s, a period that began with a book named “Ragged Dick,” and ended with All That Jazz, a film starring Rob Schneider Roy Sheider. Other significant events during this period were: basically all of the significant events ever. There was also some very important art, but we are not dealing with that art today. Today, we discuss the art after modern art. You might think that this would be “postmodern” art, but unfortunately, universities have ruined the use of “post-“ anything. What we are talking about is now commonly called “contemporary art”.

For fun, here are some of the Wikipedia entries that fall under the umbrella term “contemporary art”: Lowbrow; Plop art; Froissage (sounds filthy); Bad painting. There’s a long, long list, and most of them sound like second year university courses with eight students apiece. For us, the main criterion is that the art we want is found in a “modern/contemporary” museum (not even they know what to call it). Also, we are going to mainly focus on “installations,” because you’re sick of paintings anyway.

WARNING: You may not be ready for contemporary art. You probably won’t get it. Luckily, the following video is just what you need to understand the past, present, and even future of super-modern art. This lesson begins with Tom Green:

Maybe the trouble with Tom Green’s career was that he was too highbrow for us all.

 

Baitagogo by Henrique Oliveira

As you can see, this is a plywood tree coming out of the beams of the Palais de Tokyo. It is meant to resemble a Gordian knot. If you don’t know the story of the Gordian Knot, it goes a bit like this: there was an ox-cart tied to a post with a confounding, twisting knot (it was pre- Girl Guides). This was in Gordium, Phrygia, named after the founder of Motown. The cart remained there ages later, when along came Alexander the Great. Alex cut the knot with his sword, hence solving some sort of problem that had befuddled the Phrygians FOR CENTURIES! I always thought the Trojans had set the bar pretty low, but this is a new kind of stupid.

This is one of those old Greek tales that is meant to celebrate the greatness of a Greek hero (in this case Alexander). Some of them are impressive, and then some of them are pretty crap. For one of Hercules’ “Twelve Tasks”, he just hosed out some stables, which isn’t exactly fun, but is hardly heroic. Anyway, the Gordian Knot now symbolises an unsolvable problem. It’s like a metaphor or something.

Since we’re doing installations, we should probably look at a shark:

This is – honestly – called The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. It is by a very rich man named Damien Hirst. I reckon he regrets calling it that, now that the coke has worn off. I don’t reckon he regrets much else.

As I always say in these Guides, you need to look at these artworks and ask yourself how they affect you. How do they make you feel? For me, I am reminded of one thing: the seminal 1999 movie Deep Blue Sea, in which LL Cool J hides in an oven, and for which Samuel L. Jackson is still awaiting his Oscar:

You might remember in our Guide to portraits, we saw a lot of tops-off action. Real racy stuff. Hiroshi Sugimoto gets a little more 3D with it:

Aujourd'hui le monde est mort [Lost Human Genetic Archive]

This is probably meant to be a comment on society’s growing fixation on artificial stimulations, about how everyone’s losing grip on reality. It may also be a covert advertisement for “sex dolls”. For more on that, watch what might be the weirdest interview in morning TV history:

 [Skip to the 5-minute mark to have your only question answered, bald-facedly.]

 

Now, I don’t normally like to criticise art. When I do criticise, I prefer to give constructive criticism, such as “try using more purple.” Purple is the best colour. But I’m about to show you what I think is the worst piece of art I’ve ever seen. It’s called Drink Europa, by Charbel-joseph H. Boutros:

That is a glass of water on a shelf. It is probably an IKEA glass, and an IKEA shelf. You might even have one of those glasses at home. Why is it art? Well, apparently it contains water from each of 27 European countries, so if you drank some of it, you’d be drinking geography. To properly convey my feelings, here’s a Q&A section:

-       27 countries, eh? That must be all the countries of Europe! Nah, there’s like 50 countries. It’s just some of the countries.

-       Is it actually 27 countries? Good question. His website says 27 countries, but at the Palais de Tokyo it said 28. There are 28 countries in the EU, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this is what he means by “the 27 European countries,” and that he got his numbers wrong.

-      Could the extra one reflect the fact that Croatia acceded to the EU in 2013? Probably, but fix your website, guy!

-       Must be some fancy water though, huh? Some rare water? Nope, he went for the most popular branded mineral water available in each country. For example, Evian represents France.

-       Woah, but Evian is a really flash water company! Not in France. It’s just like Pump here.

-       But imagine, it’s like drinking geography! But you don’t drink it; you look at it. Why not look at a map? A map is a much better place to look at geography.

-       Ok, but it’s probably a really creative, unique thing to do. Putting a glass of water on a shelf? I mean, where else can you see that?!

The Tate Modern, in London, is the correct answer. You see, you can’t even defend this as being a creative and original piece of art. Drink Europa was made in 2013, but in 1973 a wacky Irish chap named Michael Craig-Martin put a glass of water on a shelf too. His was called An Oak Tree, and came with an accompanying diatribe explaining why the glass was really an oak tree. Said diatribe included the following: "It's not a symbol. I have changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. I didn't change its appearance. The actual oak tree is physically present, but in the form of a glass of water."

That is, of course, everything you might hate about art. “Wankery”, I believe they call it. [It won’t surprise you to learn that M C-M went to Yale.] However, when you see it and read the full caption, it does leave a certain impression. I saw it when I was 14 (that age when you simply must visit modern art galleries), and have never forgotten it. It is original. And challenging.

Drink Europa is neither original nor challenging. When a 9 year-old goes on holiday to Europe, they might decide to collect a bit of dirt from each of the countries they visit (and smuggle it back through customs). Now, imagine if that dirt was mass-produced and could probably be bought at any decent British supermarket. It’s not water from an oasis in the desert, or from under the ice in the Arctic. If a Primary School class did that, you’d think ‘that’s a fun little project’, and then be pissed off because your kid had to bring the expensive water from Luxembourg. And then some kid would knock it over, and the glass would break, and then another kid would vomit – because they’re kids – and you’d take a photo of the vomit because it might actually look more like art than the fucking glass of water!

As an aside, I like imagining art forgers walking through the Tate Modern thinking, “I reckon we could do that one. See that urinal over there? Could probably buy one like that at Park & Clarke for $40.”

Sometimes, contemporary art is just provocative.

The Wall's Shout by John Giorno

Gross, but it might still be a better phrase than “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall”.

One of the big differences between contemporary art and its older counterparts is the effect that modern technology has had. Film is a good example. Films in Da Vinci’s time were pretty patchy, and the sound and lighting quality left a lot to be desired. Today, films can be art (see: that Tom Green clip above). Michael Bay, for instance, is going with the “more is more” approach in his filmmaking. About 75% of The Meaning of Life is just weird art.

In his art/film The Clock, Christian Marclay used scenes from movies which show the time, and put together a 24-hour clock. So if you go in at 2:45pm, there will be scenes which include a clock reading 2:45pm, and this will change at 2:46pm. So you’d have to watch the movie for 24 hours to see it repeat. Pretty good, nerdy stuff.

Here’s a clip featuring Colin Firth and a coked-up, shirtless Richard Gere. You’re welcome, ladies.

The Youtube caption says you were supposed to have watched that clip at 0.04pm, but I don’t think that’s a real time. It is a strangely addictive movie/clock/installation, mainly because you spend the whole time waiting for a movie that you’ve seen before, and then getting excited when you recognise something. Also, when you see it in a museum, it’s exciting because it’s like a movie, and you didn’t really want to go to a museum anyway. A movie is much better.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of contemporary art here. It’s so varied, so various, so varietal, that we couldn’t possibly hope to cover it all. And the best part is, there’s new contemporary art happening all the time! You know what, you could do some. I’ve already given you the kid’s vomit idea, or you could do something really conceptual where you draw on a crayon using paper…that’s definitely something an arty person would do.