Conversations With Calvin

Calvin is very much the passionate young man (with the accompanying great smile), especially when he started talking about his most consuming passion – music. “I can’t sing, dance, DJ or play any instrument, but I love music. I’ve spent way too much money on my audio set-up!” he confessed. Dressed comfortably in a denim shirt and moccasins, the barista shared that the first concert he went to was Paramore’s. “Hayley Williams has vocals that are amazeballs live. The atmosphere was feverish and I came down with a fever the next day – the Hayley Fever, as I like to call it!” Calvin lists other bands such as Florence and the Machine, The National and Of Monsters and Men as his favourites, and cites his biggest regret as probably being unable to ever catch Oasis or Radiohead live. “Oasis breaking up made me sad and angry – but I shall not look back in anger,” he wittily concluded.

His dream dinner date though, is not a musician but the American photographer Vivian Maier who was discovered to have taken over 100,000 photographs of people and cityscapes, yet never published them. “Her privacy baffles me,” Calvin mused. “The passion to take so many photographs out of pure passion and interest, yet keep them only for personal consumption with no one to share them with, is something almost impossible in this day and age.” He continued, “The urge to publish whatever good photo we have taken immediately, to share for critique or to show off, is why we most probably will not have a Ms Maier in our generation. Instead of asking why, I would ask her how?” We’re sure it would prove a most intriguing dinner, Calvin.