Anamelech

Anamelech - bearer of ill news. An obscure demon.
Anamelech - was worshipped at Sepharvahim, a town of the Assyrians.
Anamelech - reveals himself in the shape of a quail.
Anamelech - his name, we are told, signified a "good king".
Anamelech - some declare that this demon was the moon, as Andramalech is the sun.
Anamelech - today, the son of a bitch paid me a visit.

Tommy

Today I met Tommy. Tommy, for a few years, lived where I grew up.

I grew up in Ta’ Giorni, a government housing estate in St. Julian’s. The housing estate is surrounded by the old quarters of St. Julian’s on one side and Ta Giorni Heights on the other. In the former lived the real Giljanizi, in the latter those that had the money to buy a nice piece of land and settle with tal-pepe. In the middle there was us, a bunch of low to middle class families that managed to get hold of a government flat or house. Most of those who lived in government houses stayed there while those who lived in flats and had built up a good career for themselves left, leaving a vacant space which would soon be filled by others.

Tommy’s family wasn’t one of the early settlers in Ta’ Giorni. They replaced someone. I don’t remember which block of flats they lived in but I know that they came from Valletta. Tommy was a little older than most of us and he was what one today would call a bully. He was bigger than average, he swore, he smoked and he was always fighting and bullying other kids. He had his little gang of rascals, always running around with him, vandalising and terrorising. After a few months that he came to St. Julian’s, Tommy was king.

I cannot say that I was bullied when I was young, not even by Tommy. I was always big enough to stand on my own two feet and intelligent enough to stay away from people like him. Most of my friends weren’t that lucky. I remember once he stole a girl’s hair band threw the band in the middle of the road and peed on it. Another time his gang stole someone’s bike and hid it somewhere, with the poor kid in tears trying to explain to his mother that he does not know where he left his bike (or else his teeth would be knocked out).

Tommy today was very kind to me. He let me park my car in those 100sq.m. he controls. In his own way Tommy is still king, he is king of his own parking lot. Tommy, today, is a parking attendant.

Finally

Finally I managed to force myself to start work on my next exhibition. Well not exactly, I was commissioned to make a painting for del Borgo, and managed to finish it before the official opening, which is tomorrow. Forcing myself to paint puts me in the right frame of mind to continue work. Today I have planned my first couple of paintings for the exhibition and made a series of studies for the first. I am not one of those artists (if I might call myself so) that all he has to do is sit down and wait for inspiration to knock on his door. I have to work hard and prepare my work diligently. Only a small percentage of my work is the result of inspiration, most of it is the result of perspiration. How true Alfred Chircop was!

On a different note I noticed that other bloggers too are using their blog to present their artistic work. I very much appreciated Antoine Cassar’s multi lingual poem found here and Archibald’ song found here. Good work guys.

Artissa

Just a small note to inform those of you who might be interested that the auction at auctions.artissa.com will close tonight at 20:00. The auction, organised by Friends of St. Luke's Hospital Foundation and Lions Club Valletta seems to be the first of its kind, locally, and in my opinion quite a success.

Furthermore the Artissa guys are doing a terrific job to promote Maltese Art (whatever that might be). At the moment there are 23 galleries of local artists or artists with local connections and 2 collective galleries online. The least we all could do is spread the word around.

Brag

Today I have been woken up by an sms from a friend of mine, “Cefai ara it-Times, IM Beck”. Since I rarely buy newspapers on a Saturday, (I follow my news mostly on the net) I had to get out of bed, dress up, walk 100m buy the newspapers all the while thinking why did IM Beck mention me in his article. In fact he did not. He mentioned del Borgo, which I designed and that’s why I’m blogging and bragging about it. I have been bragging about it all day.

He made one of the most beautiful comments I have ever read regarding my work and coming from bocca, who usually is very critical about everything is quite satisfying. About del Borgo he wrote “where the old and modern have been married to a degree of perfection I hadn’t thought was possible”.

He made my day.