I grew up on a small town. Well, not in it, but near enough for me to consider it the place I grew up. I went to boarding school there, I learnt to drive there, I, well, I was suffocated and hated it, but it's still home.
Masterton is a typical New Zealand town, an industry hub for surrounding farms, it's main attraction the annual Golden Shears, it's most beautiful feature the Queen Elizabeth Park. It's a nice town, surrounded by rolling hills and vineyards, full of schools and suburbia, graveyards and gossip.
And, of late, it's spawned a (small) glut of talent - both Pip Brown of Ladyhawke, and the endearing duo Flight of the Conchords were born and raised there.
Being in towns like Masterton always makes me think of Derek Henderson's beautiful photo book, the Terrible Boredom of Paradise, which you can see here. I think he captures that rarefied, stultifying feeling of these town so well - it's a seductive, hazy rut, where nothing ever happens and the minutiae is ever so important - twitching curtains, long drives, river swims and those creepily immaculate flowerbeds. Small town novels, like Peyton's Place, or A Confederacy of Dunces, or Revolutionary Road are so painfully, perfectly boring it's excruciating - just like Masterton. I love it, I hate it, and I love to hate it.
