down by the water front

The Shock of The New

Shock of The New?

 

 

Susie bubble's fashion condundrum and Chris Ofili's creative originality.

 

 

A couple of weeks ago Susie Bubble posted a fashion conundrum she came across in this email which not surprisingly spawned over 160 comments, if only through disbelief;

 

Maybe I'm a little old school when it comes to fashion, but I am having a hard time finding the appeal of today's looks.  My girlfriend is studying fashion and frequently shows me new styles online, some I like, others I think are just silly.  After living in New York City for several years, I have noticed countless styles...and the more eccentric and colorful the outfit, the more snobby and arrogant the individual.

To me, fashion has turned into cries for attention rather than practicality.  Either outfits are designed to sell sex, or scream out for attention by encompassing bizarre trinkets and bright colors.  To me, good fashion requires class, practicality, and creativity. Where has this gone?  I enjoy several of your styles, and find others not so intriguing.  Of course these are my opinions, and I wouldn't have an opinion if I didn't care about the subject matter.  I'm afraid people will think I'm ignorant when the reality is I just dont see the practicality behind a lot of today's looks. I would love to hear your side of the story, and your views on what I call "dramatic" fashion. Thank you so much, and continue blogging!  I'm finding it all very interesting.

 

So beige cardigan thinking aside a lot of views were raised due to the term “dramatic” fashion.

For anyone unfamiliar with Susie’s site although totally fashion oriented it is very creative, eclectic and inventive while at the same time holding the fashion zeitgeist angle, not surprising because her day job is centred around Dazed and Confused magazine.

I put in my two penarth on the subject that as usurp flourishes in dress go, it is usually based on a creative gesture and, as in general creativity overall  will be one that smacks of difference, the kind of thing I’ve been talking about in my blog; “falling into step with the crowd is still a one-way ticket, not least for creative originality (and god knows how difficult it is to create something absolutely and completely original).”

 

Susie replied that she had thought about the shock factor in fashion “it's a dichotomy that I've struggled with for a while….that fashion seeks the shock-factor but also is quick to criticise those who step out of line...”

 

 

Picking up on Chris Ofili’s tentative come back if that is the right word this week at Tate Britain -  I kind of got what Susie was saying. Shocking has always come with the new, but more specifically recently has also become old hat; a lot of what has gone before has not only been done with the reasoning because you can, but because the market has been dictating and being chased by artists and their agents just like in the literary industry; as a crock of gold, the new improved version, the next tantalising thing, and in so was always going to be vulnerable to the rejection of the commercial establishment and its slavish followers. Selling your work on that level like competing washing powder brands so that soon the difference between each work of art is whittled down to minutiae and the fickle choice of consumer whim.

 

I didn’t know at the time but Chris had apparently not sat comfortably with the art market status quo, so much so that he felt obliged to move and reconsider his approach to making art, because of its relevance to him rather than the market. He basically couldn’t work like that and found he was increasingly putting on his Chris Ofili “artist” hat to engage with that side of his life and return to Chris “the Man U fan” away from his work – the two he felt had become separate and pressure to be “the artist” not a real part of him, so much so he couldn’t see where his work was going next. I am guessing here but almost like his life blood (art) was drying up.

 

In an interview this week with Ekow Eshun he noted that; “too closely watched by dealers, buyers and museums from too young an age, he had not had the time or the space to dig more deeply into himself, and discover exactly who he was, who he is, who exactly he will become. "It got to a point where I felt the work was really known in a public sense, that the division between public and private was like a thin membrane,"

 

I have heard this mentioned in a different way a lot in business, of people putting on their characters for the various aspects of work they do and in a way it is nothing new, any Christmas party will throw up the unexpected sides of work colleagues that we never knew existed.

 

But I think there is something a little different here that Chris has maybe been toying with, people have and are having to address their values and how they approach their lives, after nearly 50 years of consumer driven rhetoric. The back to basics, back to this, back to that, is one of the spin offs for a lot of people, if not also a convenient agenda for a lot of politicians pushing for the luddite.

 

There is also a sideways shift though, values are having a reshape and the evolution of doing art for the pure bottom line of money is an old bone of contention but has been shifting for a good few years now, I know of a lot of artists actually earning a living from their work who did not feel comfortable with the way the art market was going, I genuinely believe this was not sour grapes about the top earners but a gut feeling.  So it didn’t surprise me that with art, as with all creative markets recently the absurd need to stand out because of the shock of the new  - bolder, brighter, better with clique value add one up-manship etc., was going to find its doppelganger to genuinely new and possibly shocking.

 

Ofili's work is, for me, wonderful, I remember seeing his work at The Turner exhibition in ’98. The vibrancy of his work is stunning but at the time the headlines he caught, were, in a lot of arty and non arty corners of the press all about the elephant dung (I saw The Virgin Mary and it was not the whole of that painting but maybe the beginning of the wrong time for that for him) – the shock of it.

 

He obviously knew what it was he needed to do and has come back to do again at the Tate, which will I am sure be evolved and possibly shocking and this time not be received the other way round being given the tag of shocking and new.

 

In the same interview Chris suggested that “We can only say looking back in terms of chronology. Ideas are recurring and do not only exist in the past. So I wouldn't want to relegate something to being an old idea, the date doesn't matter. You hear an amazing Thelonius Monk track, and the last thing that occurs to you is whether or not it was made at the beginning or at the end of his life. First thing that strikes you is that it's just a surprising arrangement of sounds. Of individual sounds to make a whole.”

 

Things evolve and there will always be a man in a beige cardigan to be shocked, but when it becomes a rule of thumb commercial or otherwise to shock, however well crafted, just purely to stand out, the newness or relevance, for me doesn’t ring true. But the genuine gesture of creating something new and inventive as a creative endeavour, in my book, can be as shocking and arrogant as it likes

 

 

Oh Yes It Is! - Oh No It Isn't!

Oh yes it is – Oh no it isn’t

 

 

 

The phrase “It is” – is a statement of fact, a here and now thing not a doing word, more a set in stone, done and dusted. Oliver Burkeman’s recent delve into the Shakesperean question of "to be or not to be" had a crack at doing away with it.

 

In his article he tried to omit the “is” word or the verb “to be” (not easy!).  I understand the ambiance that seems to be created by not forcing an opinion or making an observance an unequivocal fact. It is very refreshing – no hammering home ideas, and ideals, no fists banged on tables to demonstrate the fact –would be a great improvement – the bullies and ideological lecturers could be at a loss with this altogether softer more factually ambiguous speak. I was amazed just by obliterating this one tiny sentiment of a word in a few sentences how things seemed altogether more inclusive, less us and them, more accepting of others opinions.

 

And as David Bourland’s original thinking around this over 45 years ago, I suspect sort of proved; not with people just saying it’ll never be accepted, but more on the lines of how do you really vouch for the fact that in our minds we are, well, sort of in the here and now, which if we pinch ourselves gives rise to “is” as fact “we are” “be-ing”. Even if we have difficulty relaxing into that thought and are always seemingly chasing on to the next thing to validate our existence. How do we corroborate it with the fact that we are in transience, especially when some other being in the same transience could just as easily bop you over the head to prove it is real.

 

I like the idea though and l will try and use it, but I suspect there will be, at some point, a very strong urge on my part to say - feck - yes it is!

O Lucky Man Part Two

O Lucky Man Part Two

 

 

Brian Duffy, belligerence and how not to take things lying down

 

 

I have had this film kicking around in my memory for a week or two now, in one of those I don’t know why but I suddenly feel inspired by the soundtrack moments, the film being O Lucky Man an early 70’s culty comedy/drama with Malcolm McDowell – sort of Clockwork Orange meets Abigail’s Party – a surreal endeavour to understand a young man’s ideals being swayed or engineered by cultural messages of capitalist behaviour. Out of the blue I found myself humming parts of the songs and unless I had been receiving subliminal brain messages and the film is on tv next week.  I can offer no explanation even on the general daily level of subconscious stuff absorption, as to why I would think of it.

 

 

After too much time spent  Utube-ing the film and all its songs. I dragged myself over to the tv (yes it still seems like I am in Christmas festivities couch mode – but reality is I trapped a nerve in my shoulder so any exaggerated movements other than remote controls etc., are not a place I want to go). So I was very pleased to see something on my radar of tv likes and switched to a beeb preview of the London photographer Brain Duffy ( he of the David Bailey, Donovan triangle) talking about his recent show of surviving photos spanning his career in the 60’s and 70’s.

 

I noticed something about his on screen personality that I have certainly seen before in friends and the like –not very often, but when you do you certainly notice; he came across as one of those belligerent, defiant types the ones who are sometimes difficult to be around especially if you are on the receiving end of their usually very dry wit! But boy do we need people like that.

So with a few decades distance between us, together with the tv screen, I voyeuristically took in the programme. One thing surprised me even for someone who it seemed would play devil’s advocate just for the hell of it, was his reference  to “some sort of social engineering” on talking about his wayward adolescent behaviour, being taken in hand by a special college of education  who introduced him and various other difficult lads to the Opera, Ballet and the arts in general, with them subsequently becoming full of enthusiasm for it, enough for the lads to consider art school – and for those familiar with Brian’s impact on photography the rest is history.

 

But what went through my mind on hearing the words social engineering, I thought, yeah right come on! even though this is the sixties and you are/were one of those defiant maverick types to describe your introduction to the arts as social engineering is a bit rich. Dostoevsky life, Kafka’s works and whole swathes of society’s past could have the term social engineering attributed them – but not a sixties east end photographer on the cusp of going to art school.

 

I thought it had always been a given that art students rebel against the thinking of their lecturers as a sort of rite of passage, a necessary act in order to establish your own agenda and not follow the sheep, either that or proving you are a petulant ego-centric primmer donna. So I understood the lean toward the shock factor in his attitude but I guess at the time he went to college things were still steeped in old etiquette on recovery from the Second World War and he would have been at just the right time and place to become one of the new vanguards of the new.

 

 

Later on it clicked, on someone suggesting that the song Poor People from O Lucky Man was a suitable song for credit crunch times; It’s the timing, we are one- two- three years in? depending on your in depth knowledge, of all things financial and meltdown, that, the story of O Lucky Man, Brian’s belligerence, my general preoccupation with fairness and ethics buzzing in my bonnet at the moment, and the random way these things came together.

 

 

Poor People for me is sort of a sad/pathetic angry lament; Malcolm McDowell’s realisation that there was only one way for him to go, I say angry because the whole premise of the film was about lack of choice but at the same time offering untold freedoms and wealth if the status quo were adhered to, so, angry as in no choice and the resignation to that. This is where Brian Duffy’s belligerent attitude strikes me as being even more relevant today, the song Poor People is wider than credit crunch music, as is Duffy’s war baby, east ender art school lad defiance, in the face of old ideals.

 

 

How much of what happened recently has been addressed as being unfair? apologies and real gestures have been attempted but to any measurable benefit of fairness? time to move on indeed. However much Duffy’s belligerent attitude was seen as being defiantly obnoxious he was also defending his sense of self. Today that has become almost politically incorrect de facto, we can take up causes and fight other people’s battles at the drop of a pc key but when it comes to our own lives and livelihoods we manage a moan and then carry on with our lot. Admittedly some people’s lot has been so fraught and time scarce that anything more than managing a moan would have been physically impossible, but surely there are still a lot of people of Duffy’s ilk able to offer some sort of irreverent insights and foresights. I just hope that Duffys attitude, is not totally lost and relegated to the pc bin marked bully  – if put under a microscope most of his attention and bite was just what was needed in response to working in a sometimes privileged and exclusive environment of advertising, fashion, music and art.

 

Bullies want control - he didn’t and it seems he couldn’t give a damn - a typical slice of his attitude  posted by The Guardian this month “By the 1970s, he was doing most of his work in advertising – with people he didn't like, on briefs that bored him. "The more I got into it, the more I ­realised I was hanging out with things I was diametrically opposed to. And they wanted me to keep a civil tongue up their rectum." Resigned he was not and subsequently successful he was, on his own terms. O Lucky Man indeed – or maybe the luck was more of his making.

 



How to Talk Yourself into Things

How to Talk Yourself into Things

 

 

 

I have been meaning to sort out my fairly plain DIY web site and off the peg blog for a couple of months now, and in the absence of an all round computer genie summoned at will, I have been making must do noises to myself about moving to wordpress or my own site with the advantage of no additional monthly hosting fee, just so I can do a few more things with the look of it – like having one of those nice fadey backgrounds with trendy bits around the edges.

 

I was bitten with the web design bug thing a few months ago and have been following Elliot Jay Stocks (he of UK CSS mafia) watching all his vids on cool streamlined and well, just effortlessly cool web sites.

Thing is I don’t know as I will manage that cool approach as with all these videos and their “here’s one I made earlier” thing, it just ain’t the same in real time when the air turns a bit blue and things generally get their knickers in a twist and bits disappear and drop off the screen.

What’s that called? Oh yes ! learning curve – been on a few of those recently 3d build (was worth it in the end) some 3d animation, lots of adobe illustrator, some css/html basics and a couple of rough rides with Maya (even built my own universe!) well its sounds more impressive than it really is – I built a few balls that can fly round each other, but you know it’s all good –  I digress though - learning curves, plural.

 

So basically I’ve been putting  it off; to me it is a bit like moving house – I’m comfy  in my current web zone if not happy with all the features and/or my lack of comprehension on some levels  (well a lot actually) the term “don’t make me think” was made for me.

So I have a moving house analogy in my head about moving parts of my blog onto different and new pages anticipating my best vase getting broken – never to be repaired – not being able to remember all the new numbers and where the on and off switches are (that’s another one – on and off – that is as complicated as I need thank you). But I will have to because I would like a more personal arty freedom with the blog.

 

So if you come across an upside down version of this blog in the next couple of weeks – you can rest assured I am working on it – from the inside out – just hope I don’t get stuck. So if you find you can’t understand or read the type try substituting; artist gets stuck in css html hell - sort of Doctor Livingstone meets his Waterloo and is rapidly morphing into Jekyll and Hyde in the face of adverse reaction to understanding css etc., etc.,......See you on the other side....

nb;

Nope - too scary... I’ve decided to move the furniture round and build an extension instead. Upgrade to Typepad Unlimited it is – they’ll talk me through it.

O Lucky Man

 

O Lucky Man

 

Class, Fairness and the Scope of Social Media

 

 

I am quite excited because hopefully I am going to help contribute to a month long discussion/exhibition at the Winkleman Gallery in Chelsea, New York who, with the artist curators Jennifer Dalton and Wlliam Powhida have opened its doors to artists and people to share thoughts on class and fairness within the art world, the event is called hashtagclass and takes place from 20th February for one month and will I believe, try and show all sides of the process from actually making the piece to the value of its social worth and how that squares with what has and is going on in the art market.

 

The dialogue and art will range from hands on in and around the gallery, to wider internet/social discussions and contributions (including my two pen’rth ) toward the project, which incidentally, I came across through social media.

 

Funnily enough  class has been on my radar for a while now, (or maybe not so funny – it is a bit bloody obvious isn’t it in the wake of last year’s polemic of no jobs, lives down the pan and pie in the sky bonuses). So yes I have been thinking about not necessarily the word class itself but the ethics that have been stifling the life out of social cohesion.  Class also seems to have been leaping out at me from every media source in the UK recently possibly with the advent of the political mudslinging that is no doubt going to become even more childish as the weeks wear into the pre election reasoning.

Will Hutton, never one to be swayed from his resolve hit the nail on the head in one of his weekly articles, pointing out that the PM’s joke directed at David Cameron and his buddies, although funny, instead of joking about Eton, educated toffs and inheritance tax had missed a more vital point. That of fairness.

 

A lot of this resonates even wider not least because from nearly every angle of the last 50 years or so the idea of the rat race, and the misplaced Darwin-esque theories that were entrenched into a social market place, the idea of dog eat dog, and tough luck has long been the social mantra of the more fortunate and therefore least likely to suffer from any of this anachronism. Unfairness is definitely the word best used to describe – not jealousy – not miss appropriated aspiration – just bloody unfair.

 

So with that in mind I was taken with other references to class that I had made here, when talking about comedy, fashion, and protectionist stances in the name of fairness and ethical issues.

As far as I can see fairness is a gesture made with the knowledge that you have not excluded someone from the possibility of also making or engaging with that gesture.

A wide task! But for some it is not a case of the scope of the task but the fact they have chosen to wear blinkers, a denial; what is not evident is not fact, and the protection of that.

Maybe that is why so many who are in a position to make gestures with money don’t like the idea of seeing where they could be without that freedom. Many do though, and look fate in the face, but the closed worlds of class have not been eradicated as some would have us believe; class is very much here and now.

I always thought the word class had become so entrenched in older ideals and categories that the Tony Blair exhort of a classless society to be a rather ambiguous use of the word. Categories do exist, financial categories especially, they demark how we live what we aspire and are able to aspire to, and pathways to these aspirations are just as relevant today. The days of I know my place; I’m poor and happy kind of propaganda, are thankfully no longer a convenient label posted in that tick box by people who would prefer it to stay that way.

 

The status quo like the market place is no longer in control of its customers, just as when social marketing took hold and customer profiles began to lead the product, it is having to reappraise its values. Social groups are having to look each other in the face, some very reluctantly but they need to square up, with fairness as its benchmark; aspiration yes, exclusivity, no.

Public interest and ownership of wider affairs is much broader now and is not the sole property of a fortunate few even if the jobs are. National and International law are having to change with human rights, privacy and information sharing. The closed structures of commerce and education are having to, if not actually believing in it at least look fair. The guarantee of the fairness of a gesture whether financial or social is hopefully coming into its own, and most certainly needs a strong focus.

 

The public realm of education is much more accessible, even if the formal institutions are still dogged but awareness of what can be accessed and public ownership has come with it. Social media can offer this access and even things like the XFactor have, regardless of the ethics of the format and content, involved a wider more engaged public and with it highlighting those sorts of creative possibilities (and not just through a lottery like structure). The baby doesn’t have to be thrown out with the bathwater here.

Public art and institutions in the same way must be pro active now and not follow suit only after something has become a commercial success. Now the word popular can almost be said in the same sentence as the word populace. Never before have Public Art and institutions been so in need to realise and engage with that.

Olympics Britannica

 

Olympics Britannica

Anything that is attracting so much public expense is going to have a rough ride on its worthiness – not least The Olympics. So leaving actual efficient management, politics and spending aside – one of its detractors along the way seem to be groups who feel they are more worthy of funding ie; the arts in particular, well yes you have to shout to be heard or disappear where funding is concerned but the Olympics does encompass a lot, not just sport and until someone raises the bar and creates an arts Olympics this is the best we’ve got to a global fest in any sphere. So it was a great relief to hear Eddy Izzard giving the Olympics a big thumbs up the other day – not just as a great opportunity for athletes but sport in general at a time when malaise and get up and go certainly seems to have been left to the Jane Fonda fitness videos of the eighties, at the end of a decade when sitting watching others on one screen or another with or without a game stick became a national sport. So anything that gives a fun big-up to a sports event, that however finely tuned and steeped in athletic prowess and tradition, is beginning to look like an expensive and ageing white elephant has got to be good.

 

Grayson Perry gave a very funny take on how our Olympic torch should be lit – the building work just scraping in on time picture the last high visibility workman flicking his final fag butt into the torch ...and... poof! It would be lit, seamless, and somehow very British – no airs or graces very matter of fact and by accident.

 

Brazil are going mad at the thought of hosting – no doubt seizing every given opportunity to engage and promote. Britain is not prone to wild spontaneous fiestas in the streets. But Eddy does have a point a really great opportunity is in danger of being missed in the UK through what seems like inward looking squabbles and that great British trait of not having much pride – cos you know what happens there – too much pride comes before a fall. And we should know we’ve knocked enough people of their so called pride pedestals to prove it.

 

Grayson and Eddy both have a point we should take our own pride in how we approach and do this event, not least because we need some civic and social big-ups – some social mutual respect, that can be shared through this event (even if the majority is taking place in Londinium)  but that’s another story – or maybe it isn’t....

Someone pointed out to me recently that in the olden days when it had snowed you would help to clear the pavements, so neighbours could walk ice free, done as a mark of social respect and just plain neighbourly-ness. A sort of collective respect that for many has all but disappeared. He juxtaposed this remark with the pride of someone chucking a Maccy D’s carton on the ground and in the same breath purporting to be full of national pride and respect.

 

Quite, I agree, sport the arts or whatever national (nay national/ global!) event it is that brings us together, it its well past time for in-squabbling and time indeed for a group hug and more power to the high viz jacketed guy and his fag butt lighter...it’ll never happen the responsibility of physical health and safety is way too important ...Would be funny though, maybe Grayson and Eddy could do a double torch lighting act; Eddy sprints up the stairs hands the torch over and Grayson curtseys’ to Her Maj and lights the flame like a modern day Alice in Wonderland reaching up to that giant tea cup of Olympic togetherness on its pedestal.

 

 

 

 

Shameful

Shameful

The countdown for the TV awards is here again and lots of media words are being written about the whys and wherefores of the various categories. I have long had my own, probably biased opinion that as soaps go Corrie has been the most credible, if only because of its desire to have a vein of humour running through it and just not because of outlandish climaxes or horrendous crimes. But that is my opinion I am a humour junkie; given the choice humour over horror any time; I’m a wuss and a sucker for a laugh.

But over the last few years I have been taken with the newer less old school era of Jack and Vera and although Corrie will always have a place for me, and although this is not a soap Shameless struck some vital chords.



I was slightly surprised to see one of the media dissections suggesting that Shameless and this type of gritty take on working class life is now sort of selling out into a condescending stereo type laugh at rather than laugh with programme, an accusation which has been used many times for various comedy characters on a certain side of the tracks and that kind of accusation shouldn’t be taken lightly. Sarfraz Manzoor pointing out in an article last Sunday in the Observer that some script writers were writing only from the perspective of rose tinted memories "we were poor but happy" and that a more comprehensive gritty look at modern society needs to be tackled in drama, well yes, things change, but isn’t that totally different from being condescending?.



Frank aka David Threlfall made a general remark about that idea as "bollocks you middle class journalists , if it was condescending , I’d know because people on the estates where we film Shameless would come and tell me".



Well I suppose so, if you are of a mind to walk up to a film crew and impart your take to The Famous Telly Programme People filming on your street, but yes I guess so. Shane Meadows said pretty much the same thing about filming in St Ann’s, in Nottingham for This is England a couple of years ago. I can get that, my daughter lives there albeit up from the town end and although she would love to leave her small one bed flat and settle in a house that she might have children in, her job as a young teacher does not fit the rent bill and so she stays. The social mix seems pretty similar to when I was living on a city centre estate in Derby in the 80’s, and the aspirations to leave similar. The all night drug buddy neighbour and his suped up car had not fully emerged at that time admittedly, and walking through the estate was not necessarily a routine avoidance after dark, but unemployment was not funny then and it is not funny now, different yes, but not funny.



So I am sort of the same mind here with Threlfall... just as Yozzer  ‘Boys From The Blackstuff’ never struck me as a happy character – he might have done things that resonated as funny against the absurd backdrop of 80’s mass (industrial) unemployment, but he never struck me as happy. Neither Jim Royle (Ricky Tomlinson) of the Royle Family or a whole wealth of working class characters spanning the 60’s 70’s 80’s and beyond; funny situations, lovable even but never through and through happy and poor.



For what it’s worth my own personal memories timed almost to the button with the screening of Boys From The Blackstuff and Auf Wiedersehen Pet, but boy did that help put it in perspective even more so because it was a comedy or black comedy drama. These episodes coincided with my marriage break-up and shortly after my ex being made redundant from Rolls Royce Aero Engines in Derby – he managed to find work at Lufthansa in Hannover and moved. I had a nearly- two year old child and relied on the ‘SS’ (social security) to pay my council rent and help with bills – the usual thing – not enough – but also no places then for the under 3-4’s  in public nurseries and the few private nurseries that were knocking about cost almost as much as I would be able to earn – I did work it out - I would have been down about £20-30 which is a lot when you’re on that level but was lot anyway in 1982-3. My mum helped me look after my daughter when she could, and friends were always round or I was round theirs while the children played.



It was rubbish I do remember not having enough food in the house, or only enough for my daughter and worrying about finding the money to pay the electric and heating, I tried to find a balance but I was relatively young – well very young actually and at age 24/5, despite this a smile was never far away, even though sometimes I felt very - well – sort of how can I change this, very frustrated, and alone.



The council house we had found as a couple in 1980 was on a city centre estate and it had its good and bad sides. After the start of the mass unemployment shift in 1981 there seemed to be a lot of people moving in and out of our block of maisonettes, a few were not far removed from the Shameless stereo types if you like; some people who couldn’t look after their dog, one who beat up his wife, another who was just – well  - lairy and a police special and his wife who were swingers, all of whom either weren’t or were good pals and neighbours.  Neighbours would help me with the pram to carry it up and down the stairs, which for the first few months after a caesarean section (and the c sec was because of emergency not lifestyle choice) was a real help. And so my life sort of unfurled as life does, where I lived, and I certainly can’t say I was happy, poor and divorced but I did have happy moments and memories.



I never felt because I lived on an inner city council estate, found myself on the Social and had some neighbours who could be more than a bit iffy that programmes like the Blackstuff or films like Saturday Night or any of that working class drama on TV and in the cinema was in any way condescending.  Maybe that was because I had not grown up on the estate, so could be described as an outsider; mum being an owner occupier buying into the idea of owning your own home in the late 50's  – but I don’t actually think so no more than any other neighbour; most had been placed by the council for different reasons and came from a widish range of backgrounds, including Mrs Pimm - who was definitely an old school council tenant - who probably - if asked about Yozzer and his pals would not have wanted her estate to be tarred with that brush, but like I say a mix of people.

And council houses for the generation brought up during WW2 meant a much needed home not a sink estate. The people of Manchester for example and many other cities who were bombed to the ground found in the post war years (and some parts of Manchester were still being cleared well into the 60's), that moving from private renting to council or corporation (county council) renting was a move from a bombed out shell or area to a new home. It was only in these years after, that buying your own home became an option. Not possible for a lot of people today.



I didn’t need to define myself because I lived on an estate or by that estate – I did need money for food and bills and I did relate to a lot of things that were on the TV up to recent programmes like Clocking Off. When young I had always liked the character of Terry Collier (James Bolam) in Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads. I got their characters and their attitudes to different situations. And to be quite honest if there hadn’t been a desperate Yozzer or a Margi Clarke’s uplifting gobby and funny Theresa in Letter To Brezhnev and subsequent programmes like Making Out to make me feel that what had happened personally around me at the time was something that had actually been acknowledged on screen by a writer, all I would have been left with was the view from politicians and newspapers who had their own agenda or seemed in denial. Whether I agreed with the factual content of these programmes was another matter – but the fact it had been recorded and it was not just me was definitely something to reaffirm with, when in reality I did sometimes feel like it was just me and alone could be a very powerful emotion.



Manzoor talked of "raw working class life" being more represented in home life scenes from shows like the X Factor's Stacey Solomon for example; while drama's tend to romanticise the picture "In fact, these people often want a massive house and to be famous. You don’t get so much of that we were poor but we were happy". Without wanting to miss represent Stacey Solomon her (life) story is still pretty unique; Performing Arts student, on TV even with the 15 minutes of fame allegedly attributed to everyone it is still a fairly unique rite of passage.



Well I can only talk from a personal perspective here but I also wanted a bigger house – or one that had a garden for my daughter, I was not poor and happy. I did make the best of, had a laugh and aspired to a lot of things. I did live on a city council estate which had a mix of types. I did not live on the early 80’s beginnings of the notorious estates in Manchester like Longsight, Moss Side or London’s Rotherhithe. I knew people on them and had walked on those streets and like St Ann’s and various areas in Nottingham’s city centre that fear of being caught up in something violent or difficult was and is there, but you have to get from a to b. No, that side of it is not something I relished, that’s why I wanted to leave, to see things change for the better.



But as far as saying TV like Shameless is not dealing with "hard hitting, socially relevant issues to inform the wider audience", is that not just as patronising?  where does one person’s reality start and another’s end? especially in comedy/drama. To suggest that authors of works dealing with class to be writing with a rose tint because they escaped – I don’t really get – writing about a different era because things have moved on – maybe, yes. I have a specific memory of a spate of someone putting lighted stuff through peoples letter boxes in our block – to take a typical thing like that and make something humorous of it takes skill, not rose tint.



However much TV and media is rebuked for creating an illusory society for not being real or out of touch, this kind of drama/black comedy affirms assurance, however stark, however funny – funny being one of the operative words because to be able to affirm, identify and laugh at a situation or character because of its otherwise bad press or depressing realness, was for me a very cognitive step and certainly not to be sniffed at.



After seeing a screening of Ayub Kahn Din’s East is East for Spanish adolescent students in Granada, one of the lecturers asked Kahn "why so many references to toilets?" (if you hadn’t seen it; outside lavs in 70’s Salford back to backs and the all important ‘po’ or potty kept under the bed for very cold nights ) which not surprisingly for a mainly adolescent audience provoked lots of sniggering – Auyb replied "because that was how it was!".



I don’t think the terms condescending-funny, rose tinted and rose tinted realism are the main issues here, the fact remains; things change and certain sections of society feel the brunt of that, and to be able to get some sort of reflection and perspective with humour helps, rather than Denial Utopia or True Shock Horror – recoil at your leisure with phobias type of offerings - which let’s face it when Shameless first came out, I don’t know about you but I would sometimes have difficulty in rationalising what I saw when I opened my front door with what was actually put on the TV or in the media. I think that’s what first got to me about Shameless  - I might not see Frank out and about on a daily basis especially as I had long since moved from the council estate, but I certainly got his character much more than the evil hoody gang fever that was being scare mongered as factual reality around that time.



So condescending class- isms aside, drama, comedy whatever it is that floats your boat has always, and always will hold up a mirror; it’s just whether the people passing comment on it see the reflection in quite the same light – maybe they have their own rose tinted version - as for Frank - well you'd have to ask him.

Busy Bee

 

 

Busy bee's and motivation

After the diet of festive tv and boxed dvd’s I found myself listening to Radio four Midweek with Libby Purves  - all that lovely slow deliberate speech that calls for a cup of tea and a ponder out of the window. It is almost therapeutic by itself without paying too much attention to the content. But this week I was tempted to listen more closely because Libby had a wide range of guests on including Billy Childish – recap – (not) famous for being in The Stuckists an art group believing in traditional values of painting – less conceptual forms of work, dating Tracey Emin and then denouncing all things material and going to live in his mums attic.

 

So I was interested to hear him speak with a wider range of people, which included a nun an actress and an architect. And if you try to put aside the obvious pfffnarr jokes that may spring to mind, the overall conversation was interesting as they all touched on an aspect of people’s lives which is, it seems, as elusive as the words used to describe it; spirituality or as Billy put it trying to be. One of the pervasive things running through the discussion was how creativity is linked to motivation and motivation is linked to connecting with something – an idea, a piece of work or a person - but "because you feel like you’ve found a friend" as Billy put it on finding an old penguin book of D H Lawrence’s poems.

 

I never really understood Billy’s apparent rejection of the art scene in the early nineties – he did at the time sound a bit Luddite. But listening to him articulate (something I had really only done second hand or in small sound bites before) what he said did make sense – I have always thought the creative process is more about what makes you do it in the first place – not the carrot at the end of the line (and I’ve said before I know - but for most there is no actual carrot).

 

So the idea of being in the moment creatively as a place to be has always held a fascination for me – if only through wondering at how anyone  can actually achieve it – like Buddhists and people who appear to have given material things a miss. How the hell do they do it?.  I have done paintings where no actual thought process is apparent to me (don’t laugh!) between placing the brush on the canvas and making the mark. A sort of instant form, but life is a process of thought and construct – that’s how stuff happens and succeeds; buildings don’t get made by just being and life has more of a plan than random gestures.  So I do get the idea I just don’t get the practice - is it like the difference between capitalism and socialism? somewhere in the middle there is a balance?. But as far as the Young British Artist’s were concerned (shouldn’t that be extended to include Europe and other countries? – I seem to remember there were a lot of global artists of similar vein around that time too). Anyway, as far as they were concerned their seemingly out and out embrace of materialist ideals and The Stuckists luddite anti-materialists stance was a point I guess that had to be defined by someone and The Stuckists certainly did that.

 

What I did get listening to Billy Childish this time was his interpretation of connecting with something inspiring as though you have found a friend – without friendships our motivation is a singular or one dimensional activity – I need to eat, sleep, I want, I desire.....etc etc., but connecting with friends brings other views into play and we warm to and react with these. So the idea of a creative connection and inspiration as a friendship rings absolutely true. That for me is the motivation to create, not necessarily the carrot at the end of our desires.