We are living, and forgive me for stating the bleedin' obvious, in unusual times.

While we ponder moving to Level One, much of the world is tearing itself apart. America is burning. There are few times I have been happier to live in New Zealand.

We are so lucky. And I say that with full awareness that a lot of the country is still in serious difficulty, especially the entertainment sector. The music scene has been ravaged. After years of declining CD sales, the ubiquitousness of streaming platforms that don't pay and the removal of pretty much any income apart from playing live, that last avenue has now been gutted. These are dire times for musicians, however much fun Facebook concerts from lockdown may seem.

This week I wanted to note the passing of an artist who did things that no other artist has done. That's a rare thing to say about anyone. I'm talking here about the Bulgarian artist Christo Javacheff, who died this week aged 84. You will probably know of him, even if the name – he popularised the use of a single name, Christo, long before Madonna came on the scene - doesn't ring a bell.

Christo

Basically, he's the guy who created artwork the size of the landscape, filling huge areas with gleeful colour, or wrapping landmarks in coloured cloth. In 1995 he wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin, in 100,000 square metres of made-to-measure silvery fabric panels, all trussed-up with nearly 10 miles of blue rope that took 90 professional climbers and 120 installation workers to put into place.

It stayed that way for two weeks before all the materials were recycled. He and his artistic partner Jeanne-Claude funded the whole project themselves.

They wrapped the Pont Neuf in Paris, art museums, medieval towers and Roman walls, staircases and rooms; they surrounded a group of small islands near Miami with floating pink fabric, and created extending floating, interconnecting piers covered in yellow fabric across a huge Italian lake; they draped the 7,503 gates in New York's Central Park with saffron-coloured banners and in 1991 put up 3,100 umbrellas, simultaneously, in Japan and California.

Oh, in case you're thinking 'Umbrellas? What's the big deal?”, each umbrella was the size of a small house, 6 metres high by 9 wide. 2,500 people were employed to erect them.

This year Christo was planning to wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. That has been delayed because of Covid-19 but will still happen in 2021, a final grand gesture from an artist who boggled so many minds. He made the world a more surprising and colourful place – what more can you ask?

Magnetic Fields

Talking of grand gestures, a band that I love who produce little but grand gestures has a new album available online and it's what you might call a grand gesture in miniature. The Magnetic Fields have just released the album Quickies, comprising 28 songs, each between 13 seconds and 2 minutes and 35 seconds in length.

The band's last release was the 5-CD-set 50 Song Memoir, 50 songs, one for each year of the writer's life, and before that 69 Love Songs which was just that with 3 CDs each comprising 23 songs. This new one is equally quirky and delightful, the best moment being the rather brilliant (I Want to Join A) Biker Gang.

Meanwhile, on the local front, guitarist Sean Bodley has just released a new single - on Spotify, Apple, Google and Bandcamp - Sunday Drive, which he describes as 'a throwback to the kind of vibes I got in my 20s driving around in my car on a Sunday, enjoying the views and the peace of being behind the wheel.”

His plan is to release eight singles throughout the rest of 2020, each with its own style and personality. He isn't looking at doing any live playing and is enjoying recording and writing at the moment. Sean has also been teaching throughout the lockdown via Skype and I should pass on that his Skype lessons are available for anyone who is interested!