The overarching message from today’s exercise in re-badging my leather jacket, now returned from the cleaners, seems to have been that you can make statements without appearing to do so.
I started badging it some years ago, seeing it as a very personal form of ‘rock chic’ and absolutely refusing to add any obviously ‘political’ badges.
Over the last few years, it’s attracted plenty of comment and enquiry. Perhaps counter-intuitively, I think it says more about me and what I believe in than if I’d dressed the jacket in rather more obvious pins.
Loosely, there are themes. And as Thomas Mann once said: “Everything is politics”.
So here’s a guide to my newly badged jacket.
From top left (approximately) – travel is good. We start with a flag pin representing Lübeck. This was my destination as a 50th birthday ‘thang’: I’d never been out of the UK on my own before this and it was a (long overdue) rite of passage to prove I could travel to ‘Abroadland’ all on my own.
I chose Lübeck because of Mann and Günter Grass and because I’d spent around 10 years teaching myself a bit of German so felt a certain confidence in the idea that I might be able to communicate at a basic level.
It was a fabulous and seminal trip.
Füssen? More German stuff – Bavaria; the Alps; simply gorgeous. Ties in with the edelweiss pin.
Then Thomas Mann – I have spares ope this pin; that’s how important it is to me. I loved Buddenbrooks … but then I read Death in Venice and my mind was well and truly blown.
The travel section includes Collioure – of course – plus Vienna, Sorrento and Sicily: all are special to me.
Beethoven is crucial: I love classical music and Ludwig in particular. And his 250th birthday is next year, so it would be poor tom leave him out.
That Concorde? A lovely pin, bought in Folkstone, together with a Spitfire pin. But at present, wearing a Spitfire could send out all the wrong signals, while this suggests European co-operation.
The Royal Opera House? Well, if you read this blog regularly, you’ll know why.
The Haring ‘resist’ pin? Haring at Tate Liverpool was my art revelation this year and resisting the Establishment and racism and bigotry in general is good.
The birds? Well, I saw a kingfisher this year and interacted with a raven (my absolute top bird). I love corvids in general, including those beauties, magpies. Red squirrels – only seen in Germany and Austria – but wonderful nonetheless.
Stephen Sondheim is a god, Star Wars is a big part of my cultural life, along with The Wizard of Oz (and as some of you will know, I’m a ‘friend of Dorothy’), while Captain Haddock represents comics and cartoons, and Shakespeare … well, I ‘dig’ The Bard big time.
This is how to make comments about yourself but leave others imply enjoying the colour!
