Metaphor

13 September 2007

When I was 12 I bought my first LP, paid from 3 weeks saved allowance. I still can dream every detail of the black cover with the colored insignia of Queen. With a determined patience I manually had copied and reduced the size of the insignia and pasted on the front of my school agenda, after I first had made it completely black with a marker. Then coated with strips of transparent tape.
Those days it was important to have the thickest diary of your class mates, caused by all kind of stickers and extra pictures. The first thing girls glued inside the cover was a small mirror. You was on the right track if your school agenda needed to be held together with a post rubber within a couple of weeks.

Back in the days for pop stars it made sense to pay attention to the cover, because LP’s were large. Cover illustrator seemed to be a respectable profession to me. Although inaccessible, but something to pursue in my adolescent dreams.
By now I’m not sure if it was a real profession anyway. But it would have been such a nice preface for the glamorous coffee table book, “Life and work of Mrs. Van Lubeck”. It would have been a good story if because of that youthful career plan I would have ended up on the graphical school, and soon afterwards became a widely sought illustrator/record cover creator …
That did not happen. Because to enroll the graphics school I needed a certificate of mathematics, which I hadn’t.
And to get admitted the art school I had to show fifty (50!) … (Yes, fifty !!!) artworks to show my talent. I was seething. I had never heard such a stupid thing. You go there to learn making art, isn’t it? If you wanted go to the school for veterinarians, you also don’t need to show 50 surgeried* cats in advance?!
I think at that point I got my first major frustrated rage against society.

In hindsight, I’m fine without art school. I became an artist anyway. And … I even became a bit of a record cover designer too! Of a Real American Progressive Rock Band, called Metaphor! Yeah! They asked me if there was a possibility to use one of my paintings for their newest cd.

*Yes I know, a non existing word. But you know what I meant, right?