Current mood: SORE....
Category: SORE.... Writing and Poetry
After my brush with yesterdays late night christ, I spent today meddling with broken computers, saying 'OHHHHH!!' with a pained face, (just like my mother does when she gets up from the sofa) and wondering what in the hell is going on in astro-land to make so many curious things happen in so few days...
It's all been a bit Pete Tong:
Running battles with 2 computers (including 'old faithful') I fall off the bike, Manchester United win The Champions League, I'm not drinking and enjoying it - shit, I even took a certain ammount of pleasure in mopping the floor yesterday for our 6 monthly 'HAVE YOU RUINED MY YUPPIE FLAT YOU WORTHLESS SCUM!!!!' flat inspection....
I tell you what's been good though: I've only recently got my head around Billy Childish, and the more I read and learn of him, the more I find him to be the wisest of sages and a very good game player..
Yes boss, BC has that inherently important (in fact THE ONLY IMPORTANT) artistic skill - he's able to see things as they are, and not how either the mass of people or the guiff publicity says they are....
I mean it, when I say 'THE ONLY IMPORTANT' artistic skill...
People hark on about talent and ability, originality and creative merit, but surely the point of the reformation of art led by the likes of Marcel Duchamp was to simply say
'Look it's about what you're saying not the fact you can flip more hoops than anyone else..'
Unfortunately, as Childish regularly notes, that particular lesson hasn't been learnt at all, and now every half wit, with nothing better to do is knocking out bad copy Dadaist art and thinking they're clever with it, when in fact they're just being professionally lazy...
Yes boss, art today is now more often than not cheap entertainment crossed with decoration and advertising...
Anyway, In this wonderful interview (thanks for the tip Brigid) Mr C slays (with remarkable accuracy) more sacred cows than a Hindu undergoing a severe crisis of faith,,,..
It's perhaps a little wordy, but this piece is quintessentially good critique. BC's targets are always firm and correct - not least when it comes to writers like Amis & Rushdie....
I've always despized these two clever and respected harridans..
In my creative writing clases at art school, we were always being directed towards them. These were THE GREATS OF OUR TIME!!! THE LEVIATHONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!!
But I could never see what there was to get excited about?!?
Sure they could string clever words together endlessly, but Amis in particular, never seemed to have any reason to write or anything at all to say. It struck me he only bothered with writing to annoy and trump his dad, Kingsley Amis - and if there's one thing I definately disaprove it's writing running in families....
Yes boss, if Paul Junior ever says 'Daddy, I want to be a writer...' I'll go spare...
'BECOME A FUCKING POLICEMAN!!! OR AN ASTRONAUT!!! WORK FOR Mi5 - ANYTHING BUT BE A FUCKING WRITER!!!'
So, if you're reading this Amis: Quit and become a plumber or a civil servant - in fact, I think that's his ideal job for Amis - a civil servent...
Of course my dislike of Amis and Rushdie curried me no favours with my supposed writing teachers. It was pretty much essential to write that kind of flowery and over elaborate guff OR ELSE!!!
But I suppose in the sense that those teachers required, I've never been and will never be a writer. I don't see the point in putting words down for the hell of it, or to be smart, and I'm not bothered about frills unless they serve a purpose.
You're either saying something worth saying because it's erupting out of you in colour, or you should go do something more useful instead....
Oh and if you're about London tomorrow and want to sit on a boat and hear music, come along to this...
(This is the best coloured flyer I've seen in ages - the text could do with being a little clearer though..)
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