Whew! It’s been a while since I last wrote my blog. And not without cause: the last few months have been busy, busy, busy. Ironically enough, my blog posts dried up the very moment I began working as a copywriter. Strange though this may sound, given the writing-intensive nature of my job, it does make sense: after spending hours in front of a screen agonising over words, the last thing I want to do when I get home is spend even more time in front of a screen agonising over words. In fact, you could go so far as to say that writing for a living actively discourages writing on the side. I’m sure the same applies to people who work in a fish and chips shop; after inhaling all that unholy oil, fish and chips would be the last dinner idea to cross their mind. As they say, familiarity breeds contempt.
And yet I’m back. And there’s a reason for that. For try as I might to put down my pen and live in mindless bliss, I can’t. To do so is to ask the impossible; my mind won’t permit it. Because however arduous the writing process is, it’s the one thing that keeps me sane. In no other activity do I feel such a sense of relief, as if the weight of my thoughts had been gloriously suspended, for a short while at least. For once recorded, my thoughts have no more need to pester me, for I then know that even if I were to forget them, they would live on right here, on this blog.
Which brings us to this blog post. As a native of New Zealand, a country in the South Pacific, I’ve a natural interest in our flag referendum, which proposes to replace our current flag with a completely new design. As someone with republican sympathies, but who nonetheless acknowledges the stability of our constitutional monarchy—which effectively ensures that no single individual could do a Cromwell and begin enacting draconian laws against the public’s will—I’m excited about the prospect of my country’s taking a leaf from Canada’s book and introducing a completely new emblem. Having taken a history paper on the British Empire while I was at the Sorbonne, I am only too aware of the role grandiose ideas can play in stirring nations, states and tribes into performing the most despicable acts. Hence while I personally love New Zealand’s current flag, it being the only design I’ve ever known, I feel it behooves the government to adopt a design that doesn’t draw so much attention to our colonial history.
Of course, given the way the flag referendum is going, there’s almost no chance of a change of guard. The five alternative designs are so uninspiring that I’d actually prefer to keep the status quo until something better can be mustered. Something with class that speaks to the hearts of all kiwis. Something, in other words, that I myself designed.
Just kidding of course, but for a while the government did encourage the public to submit flag designs. And because the criteria for entering a design was so low—you were in the clear as long as your design included no words or offensive emblems—I managed to sneak my own creations past the censors. So for my first design, Rule Fritannia, I decided to put colonialism into its historical context. And boy, I think I succeeded:
But it wasn’t all plain sailing from there. My next three designs were rejected, supposedly for breaching design criteria. Somehow, I cannot fathom why this may be so. I mean sure, flags aren’t allowed to include words. But if New Zealand’s flag is constantly mistaken for Australia’s, adding the words ‘Not Australia’ in comic sans may turn out an eminently sensible solution.
The exclusion of the next flag from the referendum was even more baffling. I mean sure, I did simply use a (copyright-free) image from Wikimedia or somewhere like it, but think of it this way: such a flag has incredible educational power. Because it depicts every single country in the world, school teachers the world over could hang it on the wall as a world map, thus ensuring that every child would grow up knowing where New Zealand is (or that it exists).
And ok sure, The Blue Ensign (Dj illuminati remix) may appear unserious on the surface. But hey, we live in a postmodern world, where remix culture is everything!
Alas, my reasons fell on deaf ears. Undeterred, however, I resolved to make my designs subtler—so subtle, in fact, that no hapless government employee would detect the hidden message in my designs. In other words, I had to adopt the mentality of a WWII prisoner scribbling coded messages to compatriots back home. Sure enough, my next flag Victoria survived the unscrupulous scrutiny in one piece. At first glance, it looks like the current flag design, the only difference being the addition of a running track, on which the four stars have been repositioned.
But that’s only because I left out the clef and the bar. Once included, they signal something else entirely—Allegro con brio. If you play the flag on piano, you may recognise the motif because it’s probably the most famous motif in the world. And they appear in Beethoven’s 5th symphony, which is also known as the Victory Symphony. Hence the flag’s name Victoria.
What’s even better is that I submitted the design under the name of my rabbit; and because the name of everyone who successfully submits a design is to be engraved on a flag pole in Wellington, her name is sure to echo down the halls of history.
For my final act, however, I decided to go lo-fi. After seeing the remarkable similarity between the spiral-shaped Koru, which means ‘loop’ in Maori, and the Spiral Hill in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, I thought it fitting in my final design to reference the movie.
After all, as everyone knows, a sheep performing yoga in the moonlight atop Spiral Hill in Halloween Town is as kiwi as it gets.
Samedi Quelquechose 