This first post represents the first of many that will feature images and text that will eventually end up in a hardback book to be printed. I felt that some of my experiences were worth sharing outside of the small core of people I spent time with in Morocco, and so I present here the text and images that accompany a small feature in the book. This story concerns my fascination with these pencil drawings that covered a lot of wall space in the small fishing village of Taghazout in Morocco. Taghazout is primarily known as a surf destination, due to its world class point breaks. It was also a favorite on the hippie circuit  back in the 60’s thanks to its laid back attitude. I even read somewhere that Bob Marley tried to buy land there sometime way back! Anyways this is where the story starts….

Intrigue and mystery are words freely bandied around when Morocco is talked about. Little was I to know that our own little trip was to provide me with a little mystique and a fair amount of time traipsing around the back alleys of Taghazout chasing an enigmatic figure who goes by the name of Brian.

 

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Halfway through our trip I was increasingly aware of these unassuming pencil drawn designs that literally riddle the walls and alleys of Taghazout. Always rectangular in shape with almost architectural elements and decorative devices inside the frame, they range from the very loosely scrawled to highly detailed motifs. With lots of high numbers, either inside or outside the design (I usually took this to be a numbering system for the amounts drawn.) They either sit alone or are stacked on top of each other in two’s and three’s, and usually in their favored spot next to the utility boxes that adorn the outside of the village dwellings. The occasional beginnings of a design can also be found carved into walls and ledges, putting you in mind of prehistoric cave etchings.

My curiosity was immediately piqued by this rampant army of hand drawn designs. Early comparisons with the urban tagger of western cities was easy, this guy or girl was UP!!

One afternoon while sat outside a cafe drinking coffee an old guy dressed in a traditional djellaba and woolen beenie sat some ways from me on stone steps. He proceeded to draw on some cardboard he had been carrying.  I meanwhile paid him scant attention and got on with whatever had been amusing me before he arrived. After about 10 mins I noticed him putting his pencil away and walk off, duly leaving behind the doodled scrap. On paying up I walked over to where he had been sat and took a look at his handiwork…Boom…right before my eyes was a half finished version of what I had seen countless times on the walls of Taghazout. I am not exaggerating when I say I was surprised that some old guy with a Father Christmas beard and traditional garb had been hitting up walls with a pencil.

For days I went around documenting examples of the drawings and pondering on the meaning of them. There had to be some kind of story behind it all. Why the repetition in design? Surely some old guy was not in it for the fame game.

 

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One detail about the drawings that was a constant was the presence of an outlined head and torso topped off with what seemed to my eyes to be a western style tie….

For some time I entertained the notion that maybe he was some leftover from the 60’s when Taghazout was popular on the hippie trail. A westerner gone native no less, and his scrawls a coded nod to a materialistic past. My next encounter with Brian (as we later found out was his name) was completely unexpected. I had spent the best part of a morning getting some footage together as reference for my own artwork when who should come shuffling past and start badgering me for a cigarette but the Sultan of Staedtler pencils himself.

I tried to engage in some small talk (albeit small due to me not speaking arabic) but Brian was having none of it. On first impressions he is either barking mad or an eccentric of the highest order. I like to think the latter. Anyways, after a few fruitless mimes of someone drawing on a wall (performed by myself) he was on his merry way again. But not before gifting me with some great shots of him doing his ‘tag’ on a wall, and then seemingly to think ‘to hell with it’, he sprawled out for an afternoon nap by the roadside…legend.

 

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It was only a day or two before leaving for home that I finally pieced together the rest of the puzzle….

Myself and my brothers Andy and Scott were admiring a few choice ‘Brians’, when suddenly Scott realised the designs were an abstract of sorts, the Moroccan Dirham no less. I hastily pulled one from my wallet. Yes there it was, on the right, the king resplendent in suit and tie. The mysterious numbers accompanying the drawings obviously represented the various denominations of the Dirham..1000,2000 and so on.

Why draw depictions of Dirham notes everywhere? I started to ask myself. It did not take long before that question was answered. A local guy who had noticed our group studying Brians handiwork promptly came over and told us in broken english that the artist was called Brian, and that he had once been very wealthy in the past, and then he had lost it all. We were unable to ascertain the exact details behind Brian losing his riches due to the language barrier.

I was asked while recounting this story to a guy I met while still in Morocco, wether finding out the story behind the scrawls lived up to my expectations. My answer, yes…and then some. There is something romantic and altogether sad about the old guy who spends his days armed always with a sharpened pencil and scraps of cardboard. And for reasons known only to himself, decides to decorate his village with hand drawn currency. A lot of questions still remain as to why he does it. I myself prefer to leave the answer open ended, on the walls and in my imagination.

 

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Apparently premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend..looks brilliant!

If you walk from the ferry along Seacombe promenade there is a tract of beach where what can only be described as an urban elephants’ graveyard for shopping trolleys can be found.

A legend exists in Africa of a place known as the ‘elephant graveyard’…

It is speculated that sensing their time is up, elder elephants would travel to the graveyard to join the last resting place of the many thousands of their ancestors that litter the grounds.

The scene along Seacombe parade reminded me of this story….dozens of shopping trolleys and other random 2 & 4 wheeled modes of transport (I counted 3 wheelchairs) lay spread out half buried in the sands,their twisted steel and aluminium frames reminiscent of fallen bodies shed of their flesh.

Theories surrounding the elephant legend suggest that during lean times starving elephants gather in places where finding food is easier and subsequently die there, which probably accounts for why elephant skeletons are found in groups near permanent sources of water. The similarities to Merseysides own coastal graveyard had me imagining fleets of shopping trolleys redundant in the recent economic crisis, slowly making their way through the dead of night along quiet back streets, drawn to the large expanse of water to the east and like Lemmings, hurling themselves to the beach from the promenade wall….

The wall is interesting visually itself along the same area as the ‘graveyard’.

There is hundreds of names and written pieces in the vein of ‘Julie Loves Dave 4 eva’ that look like prehistoric cave etchings. These have been rendered onto the wall by scraping away the lurid green lichen and moss which grows upon it.

One of the pictures featured below was actually used awhile back as background texture on my image ‘Bad Squid Beach’, which can be found in the gallery.