{"id":473,"date":"2012-02-14T14:08:47","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T14:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/?p=473"},"modified":"2012-02-14T15:02:35","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T15:02:35","slug":"an-old-friend-an-end-and-a-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"An Old Friend, an End and a Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The one thing I didn’t like about being in Japan was that I missed my old friends<\/strong>. Then I discovered one living in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This giant monster looming over Tokyo Tower<\/strong><\/a> is Maman<\/em>, by Louise Bourgeois<\/a><\/strong>. I’d last seen Maman at a wonderful exhibition of Bourgeois’ work at London’s Tate Modern<\/strong><\/a> on the day of the launch of my second published book, Tim, Defender of the Earth<\/strong><\/a>. Here’s that entry on the Tim News Page<\/strong><\/a>, and here’s a pic I took of her attacking St Paul’s Cathedral<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As you might be able to guess, Louise Bourgeois’ viscerally sinister oeuvre<\/em> was a massive influence on Crawlers<\/strong><\/a>, which I’d just begun writing at the time. So with the Crawlers News Page<\/strong><\/a> soon to come to an end and the My Name Is O<\/a> <\/strong>one about to begin, the timing of my second meeting with Maman was eerily perfect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I wasn’t totally convinced by her current setting in Roppongi<\/strong><\/a>. Surrounded by trees and skyscrapers and Christmas trappings I felt that Maman didn’t look quite as imposing<\/strong> as she should.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

…But the angles were there if you looked for them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If you’re reading this on the Crawlers News Page<\/strong><\/a> then the time has come: as happened with my previous News Pages for Tim<\/a> <\/strong>and Black Tat<\/strong><\/a>, we’re now at a fork in the road. Though this site and page will remain live for as long as possible, future posts will appear elsewhere. If you’d like to keep following what I’m up to, the next place you can do that is the My Name Is O News Page<\/strong><\/a>. Hit the link and take a look.<\/p>\n

Thanks for following me this far. On with the sinister masterplan!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The one thing I didn’t like about being in Japan was that I missed my old friends. Then I discovered one living in Tokyo. This giant monster looming over Tokyo Tower is Maman, by Louise Bourgeois. I’d last seen Maman at a wonderful exhibition of Bourgeois’ work at London’s Tate Modern on the day of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.theycrawl.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}