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| L to R - Christian Thorvaldson, Steven Hamm, Ziggy Sigmund, Terry Russell and Thomas Anselmi |
Zemblanity
William Boyd coined the term zemblanity to mean somewhat
the opposite of serendipity: "making unhappy, unlucky and expected
discoveries occurring by design". A zemblanity is, effectively, an
"unpleasant unsurprise".
Serendipity
Serendipity means a "fortunate happenstance" or
"pleasant surprise". It was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a
letter he wrote to a friend, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had
made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip.
Wikipedia
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| A Graham Walker Christmas |
There is a bit of both in today’s blog. The serendipity
is that in the heels of having found the envelope that contained the
Christmas card from my graphic designer friend Graham
Walker I found today in a box of old LPs a small 45 RPM sized record (it plays
in 33 1/3 RPM) the 1985/1986 Christmas record sent to me from the folks at Zulu
Records. It contains four Christmas songs (unusually performed) by four
Vancouver alternative/punk bands called Slow, Go Four 3, Brilliant Orange and
the Enigmas.
Having decided to blog about it and to use the special
photograph of Slow that I took for Vancouver Magazine I went to my Slow file.
It was then that I remembered (zemblanity enters the
stage here) that a few years later (or perhaps earlier the Cramps had performed
at UBC and Slow and the Modernettes where the warm-up bands. We photographers
have been known to make mistakes and here was one of my worst. After taking
pictures of the three bands I forgot I had film in my Mamiya RB-67 and when I
opened that back to insert a new roll… I need not go on. The fact that zemblanity
did bring a tad of serendipity in that a few of the images were salvageable.
As I write this blog I am filled with the warmth of a
rosy past about Vancouver bands that were as good as anywhere else in the
world. They did not take themselves all that seriously.
I suspect that the photograph of Slow with toys may have
been a Vancouver Magazine Christmas special for Les Wiseman’s In One Ear column.
Others can be seen here.
