Urban de-spray

So I wrote this a while back and didn't publish because I'm a lemon, but I still like it so it's going up.
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Do you like graffiti or not, London?

You commission graffiti artists to decorate the Olympic village, to put up themed street art in skate parks. If you're paying a tame painter to do something on the theme of community then their command of spray paints and perspective is amazing, and it's so gritty, and urban, and emblematic of your regeneration project.

But the minute the artist is doing it because they have something genuine to say, because they want to put their stamp on their environment, to spend their time and money and risk their liberty in order to communicate with every goddamn passerby in that neighbourhood - that's malicious mindless vandalism. Got it? If you're not being paid (or being Banksy, for some reason the sole graffiti -artist- around) it's mindless and it's meaningless. If you want to be recognised as an artist with a message you need to be a corporate sponsor's baggy trousered hand puppet.

Never mind that the corporates already own the billboards, the screens, the papers, the public transport network. They own words like love and beauty and summer and they use them to sell chips and face cream and souvenirs.  In return for your expression, your daydreams on the tube, they'll decide what you want and you can give them your money for it. Motherfucking bargain of the motherfucking year.

But their greed and their power is their weakness. They are so greedy people shut down. stop noticing their clamour as they shout all the time for you to like them, follow them, flash your loyalty card, buy your children their cuddly toys, because you can't ever care enough for their exponential profit projections. 

And that's why they're interested in graffiti because they think we haven't noticed them leaching it yet. They think we can't tell the difference between someone's urban improvements and an exploration of brand values rendered in pantone matched colours. 

They think we're stupid.

And now they are scared that their poodles - and hey, I got nothing against tame graf artists, poodles gotta eat, man, like the rest of us - might still have a few teeth. Right at the back. Usually saved for grinding Supa-Dehydrogenated Texturized Meet-U-Like biscuits, but maybe they could skin a nose or two. So they wire their mouths shut.

And so the police - servants of the people, keeping us safe and orderly - go find an urban artist  - who's done work for the olympics for Christ's sake, that's how they know where to find him - and tell him he can't have paint. Can't travel in his city. Can't go near the bloody Olympics show that you've sold to the world on the strength of all us urban cool cats and handbag dogs. 

You'd make cool Britannia hobble her patent-stiletto'd lambeth walk on cut hamstrings because you're scared that your fucking people might have feelings and expressions that your fucking branding partners don't approve of.

Some might say that a country exists for people, not to generate profits for synthetic entities.

Others might say: fetch the markers

Nowhere Notimes (part 3)

Oh my gosh wrestling is fun, and the Northern boys are really giving it their all: but it's hard to be half hearted on a trampoline.

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Chris asks me if I'd spend 10 minutes digging. I say sure, but I know I'm going back to painting my beloved toilets with Natalie afterwards.

I go to join the guys - a team of 4 working to fill in a trench. It's mid afternoon and rather hot in the desert, and there's a lot of dust that needs to be shifted to fill that space. It's also booty short day. 


So the first thing visitors to the festival see is a row of us shifting dust and flashing flesh. People shout encouragement and ask when our calendar will be out as they drive past. 


Goku welcomes newcomers 'to Nowhere, the festival of the working class', and you can see a flicker of concern pass across the hippies' faces when they think that maybe they've signed up for a week of digging holes rsather than hedonism. Naturally, we don't reassure them. 

The hole never seems to be full and we're stuck into the repetition of digging now, with our hands doing the action despite the blisters coming. I'm getting tired, and these guys were digging long before I came to help out. The sun pounds down, but we don't want to leave the job undone so we count off. Just fifty shovelfuls more. Another fifty. Another.

And eventually, the hole is filled and we have saved at least two hippies from breaking themselves falling down holes. We are working class heroes, we tell each other, and are rewarded with a cold beer and an extra helping of tomatoes at dinner. 

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We're drinking martini on top of the toolshed, but becuase I'm up there with French contingent, olives are provided.

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I touch Raven's arm and ask where he got his scars, stupidly not remembering that it might be a painful question. He tells me about getting run over in Thailand, being broken and unconscious for weeks and his mum choosing to leave him there in the country he loved rather than fly him back to Ireland. And he tells me about his healing and the care he had from friends and strangers there, showing me a bracelet made of tiny knots in single strand cotton thread. Each one is a day his friend fasted and prayed for him. 

It's a personal story he told me and I feel like I pried. I joke he's a cyborg now (though technically he is). He smiles and chats but there seems to be sadness under there. 

I think about robots and taking on someone else's pain selflessly. Would machines do that for us? I remember the eastern art which is all over the place, and draw a golden robot on a lotus. 

For an hour I'm lost in sepia markers and watercolour, and people tell me what I'm doing is good. Normally my art is private, because who would be interested to see it? But here they can look if the want, and apparently they do. Raven likes it so I cut it out of my sketchbook and give it to him. 

A funny sort of gift; feels like it was never really mine anyway. A product of the dust.

I like to think of it on his wall in Ireland, a piece of me in a place I've never been. 

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"Those are the most beautiful toilets we've ever had. They're like us - pretty on the outside, but underneath seriously fucked up."

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There's a bearded cowboy sat on the living room art car I like the look of, so I climb on up and pounce on him. He seems happy about that, and he's in assless chaps and goes by 'assless chaps' as a name, so that's easy. On his other side is the Weimar styled cabaret host I spent the early evening appreciating. who regaled us with his opus 'baby shark' earlier. 

Balloons fly over us, tethered to the car and buffeted into our faces by the wind. 

Arkem starts up 'balls in my face, balls in my face' and the rhythm is like a nursery rhyme or a train.. Balls in my face, I join in, and we chant it out over the dark desert filled with revellers like stumbling glow worms.

Balls in my face all over the place running out of space it's a disgrace all these balls in my balls in my balls in my face

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I'm dressed as a fusion of warriors from across the world, in a chain mail bikini with my body painted in blue swirls like Celtic woad, my face in moko, my hair in a Mohican. This is how I want to look.

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SCARING IS CARING 

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Nicholas Immaculate, resident camp king of decor, is having difficulty with his headpiece - it won't adhere because of the heat, and he can't possibly be seen without something dramatic on his head. To avoid having an undecorated head, he asks me if I'll do his face paint  as I 'am the only one he'll trust with it', concerned about being attacked by floral hippy designs.

I am insanely flattered, but also nervous, because this man has taste.

 He sits on the floor and I paint his head in candy neon stripes and swirls - he enjoys the feeling of the brush on his head and we talk about his house and boyfriend and upcoming moves.

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I'm drinking cappuccino made by Martin outside his camp's cottage, discussing alternative financial methods for government funding beyond the issuing of bonds. Martin is trying earnestly to stop making coffee for people, but cannot say no to a pretty young man.

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I didn't know Joey, but I fucking hope that if I go before my friends, they write my name on everyone, drink to me, and insist that my favourite song gets played 3 times in every set.

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WELL COME ON

Nowhere Notimes (part 2)

The pirates have taken their ship and their cannon and gone raiding. I'm in the kitchen washing potatoes but I see them go, and I also see one of the guys from babysham pulling an Elmer Fudd and sneaking along with the signs from their camp while they left it unguarded.
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 I'm talking to a drag queen called Jessica behind the Italian camp's luxury. I say I don't know what a lapdance actually involved, and she says she's never given one, so we rectify that.
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The pirates get back and a big roar goes up when they realise their signs are missing. I come out just in time to see a tricorned and gilded posse advancing with their ship towards the Pervy Whims cottage, now boldly displaying the Pillage Village sign and with its garden filled with gay men, exuberantly breasted women, and sympathisers swinging their handbags menacingly before launching them in a volley.
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A couple are saying their wedding vows under the main stage in the Middle of Nowhere. This community means a lot to people. I sit near the back with my new friend Jack. #I could never get married', I say to him. He asks why and I say I was in a relationship for five years and I was so happy, and I thought it was great and perfect.. and it ended and I'd been so wrong about the whole of it. And I cry quietly and my voice breaks up and I'm apologising as he says 'Come here, you', pulls me over for a hug and holds me until it's bearable again.
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 The pirates get past the wall of handbags and discover that the happiest camp in the world are pretty good with their tools and have screwed their stolen signs to their territory. They are a bit nonplussed until they remember they came armed and make with a shower of ballpool balls, cutlasses and jets of water.
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 I'm feeling the heat and ask for easy, shaded work in the afternoon. Chris leads me to the gate where Natalie is painting, and says I can cut her stencils. She sketches some evil grinning little sperm and I cut them from tetrapaks so we can spray them on. The gate is designed by Ellen and spreads like a red cone, opening as a square-fronted temple and tapering to purple and pink drapery. The theme of the event is Rebirth Earth, and the gate will begin like Indian temple and finish as a vulva.

As me and Natalie talk it becomes clear we have similar phallic, curlicued visions for the temple freize, and we roller and draw the pieces together and they match. It's a novel experience for me to work with anyone artistic, let alone someone whose lines go the way mine do.

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Krampouz, the French camp, are doling out exquisitely thin proper french crepe. I eat mine with chocolate from teh biggest jar of nutella I have ever seen while wearing a leatherman style peaked cap I find around, and they let me borrow it to wear for the evening. So I paint on a moustache and strut around.

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There is a rope bondage jam and I always have more to learn, so I head up to the camp and partner with a beautiful lost boy with orange stripes on his cheeks. He's never been roped before, and he's so young: I tie his arm across his chest like a patriot and his other arm behind him, and check in with him every other knot to see how he's feeling. He seems to like it and his friends laugh in surprise to see him so bound up. I think he looks beautiful, and then I let him tie me.

I hope he keeps exploring.

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Babycham has a cabaret and Megs comes on stage and sings Minnie the Moocher acapella. Her voice is like granulated honey and she stomps and owns that dusty stage.

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I've been drinking and dancing all day but I don't want to stop and so I'm dancing like a mad thing, jumping up and down and climbing platforms and doing some burlesque of pole dancing on a rough squarecut pole. As people wander into camp friendly puppy me goes over and asks them to dance with me, I want to befriend everyone and make them happy. 'Nah,' says one girl,  'It's funny just watching you.'
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I get hold of the laptop and put on the Cramps I've been jonesing for all week. I dance and mouth 'tomorrow we'll fell like we've been hit by a truck'.. He smiles and drags out in a voice like the purr of an engine 'It's sooooo hard to imagine you as a psychobilly fan.'

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Now, I wanna be face-to-face.

Nowhere Notimes (part 1)

 The buses have arrived and I rush down with the crowd to meet them. I don't know what I'm doing but I'm genuinely thrilled to meet a new batch of people who I trust to be cool, show them how excited I am and show them what we have built for them.
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On the ukelele it says 'this machine kills diminuitive fascists'. __________________________________
The firespinning pit is opened up. I've had a few drinks but I've been spinning years, and fire is irresistible.. I pick up a heavy staff and realise The billowing cotton skirt I'm wearing is incompatible with fire, so I strip it off and spin in my pants. The area is surrounded by leds and onlookers chatting and half watching. I step in and let the familiar sensations of shifting weight and momentum, and the zip of roaring fire past my head, take over. I only hit myself in the leg once.
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Ginger Dave *is* hotter than Malaka.
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 After a day at the presses working on the newsheet, Abi is spinning feel-good soul and rock and roll to the Werkhaus. Tristan tells us proudly 'That's my wife. Isn't she something? Go, Abi, go!' Wearing a dust-covered duster, Til (who's been working on lighting all week) takes my hands and we spin out into my best attempt at a swing dance. I don't know the moves but spinning round like kids in a playground and being whirled into twirls and passing over and under and weaving round hands is really fun, and whenever I go the wrong way I just dissolve into laughter, because I can't stop smiling and everything feels golden.

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 "This is exactly the right place in the world for me to be right now", I message home after a first day working until I'm tired with sexy, energetic, practical dreamers, sick, helpful cynics with genuine smiles.
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It's Pride and we take to the playa dust to process after the converted-caravan pirate ship as it bears along the Samba crew, decked out in rainbows for the occasion. I can't say no to the samba beat and I bounce along beside and behind for an hour or so, wearing blue body paint and chainmail. We finish up at Ubertown and a DJ breaks out a mix of mid-nineties cheese from the back of the radio and speaker studded art car. It's golden hour as the sun sets over the rocky mountains surrounding us, and the crowd try to remember the moves to the macarena. Eventually, pirates, post-apocalyptics, dusty freaks and holiday makers wiggle their hips, jump, clap and turn ninety degrees as one, with not a hint of post-modern Shoreditch irony to be seen.

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YOU CAN'T *MAKE* ME STOP DANCING, I write on whatever I can find. ___________________________________
 I'm delivering the paper to smiling, welcoming faces at each camp I visit in a desert-blow parody of surburbia. 'We don't have paper boys and girls, we have paper freaks' comments someone.. it hadn't even occurred to me that my outfit was outlandish. Pinstripe shorts, red fishnet stockings, boots, 10cm long spike collar and a cargo-net top is what I'd wear normally, given free choice.
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 All is full of dust and love.
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The last day starts with a hot mess served by an unnaturally cheery Nurse and a team with pink facepaint lipstick smeared round their mouths. It's lush and accompanied by whiskey and Annika declaiming 'First proper food I've had all week. I don't know who's running this kitchen but they're shit. Proper food at last.'

Annika runs the kitchen. She raids our ice freezer for bottles of booze people have stored there and declares them destined for punch.

'It's not stealing, it's non-consensual sharing!'

She aims the judge at unsuspecting mouths.

 'Do you consent to this punch?'

'Yes...?'

'NO! THIS IS NON-CONSENSUAL PUNCH.'

And whatever, we drink, and the punch keeps being racked up, and Werkhaus has a party going with vodka and juice on ice at fucking 10 o clock on the last day because we can. And also because we can we hijack the music and put on some non-electronic music. Those of us who love our rock smile as the real instruments make the air shake just like they did when they were recorded.

'I didn't realise how much I missed guitars', says Natalie. Fuck it's good to hear guitars again.

You've gotta FIGHT. for your RIGHT. to PAAAAAAAAAAAAAR-TAY!

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I lose my heart on the burning sand.

Love is a packed lunch

My rucksack is smallish and black and has everything I need for the moment. It's not much.  In the back, wrapped in a bag from Marks and Spencer's, there is a parcel of food for me that my mum made. A small prepacked salad, a Tupperware container, an apple, and a small foil- shrink-wrapped chocolate bar trying to be healthy. I open the Tupperware and the sandwich inside has been cut into a tangram so it fits under the protection of the plastic box. Two large slides of soft whole meal bread, hand sliced lettuCe, soft cheese and cheddar -  product of careful knife work and considered selection.

My mother continues her 26 years of care for me, much of it involving food preparation and her lifetime of serving for a family as cook and more. She doesn't think about it anymore - half custom, half duty - but I feel loved by the care she puts into preparing a perfect little meal for me.  She's been feeding me fruit since I was little, but it's been more important since my dad died of bowel cancer. My odds on getting it too aren't great, but are improved by fruit and veg.

Filling someone's basic needs, the small things that don't rank respect or recognition, the incremental preventatives rather than the grand cures - taking the time to do the things that go unnoticed, that is love.

Small town living. Part of an occasional series.

Great things about my home town, pop 75k, thinking pop, approx 35 The cathedral toilets are twinned with a latrine in burundi. Not the cathedral, just the toilets - not with other toilets, just a latrine. There is a photo and a plaque the commemorate the cultural exchange. Shops consider 3-5.30 wednesday thru Friday to be acceptable opening hours for a business. Shops selling vertiginous sequinned union jack platforms, no less. There is an asparagus festival. It features gus the asparagus man making visits, a demonstration of asparagus tying, an asparagus crown - and for those who can't make it to the festival, there is the portable asparabus. 

Are you depressed?

(a non-exhaustive checklist)

Is there a big fucking lump of inability wedged just behind your voice box?

Are your tear reservoirs always dangerously close to running over?

Do you have to rack your brain to think of things you like, or things you would like?

Speaking of that, is the future any more than something to be got on with?

Are you sleeping to avoid being conscious?

Have you taken your medication?

Then congratulations, this is just how your life is.