Misunderstood?

I hate when people delight in producing obscure and confusing pieces of amateur art believing that what they're doing is so difficult to understand and so "wacky" that it can't be critically reviewed or understood. It's cowardly. It is not interesting. Art is the communication of an idea. If the so called artwork is only "understood" by the "artist" it cannot truly be art. It's just a thing, or stuff.

I'm not saying art has to be easy to understand by the masses. I don't get hip-hop or poems, but I'm pretty sure that they're an art form. Could you say the same for someone who intentionally aims to be difficult to understand?...in this case I suppose you could say that this is the idea that they're trying to express. Their expression is the exploration of the language of art...but I think I'm giving them too much credit.

I guess most modern art comes into this category. We're told that it's no longer the artist's role to put meaning to the art, that the meaning comes from the beholder....and the role of the artistic object, be it a painting or installation is to inspire the thought, whatever it may be.....but if that's the case then why do we have to pay. Surely if anything Damien Hurst should have to go 50-50 with the millions he earns from his art to us poor saps who have to make something of it.

No...in most cases it's just another form of zany, wackiness......a crappy prank, a joke no one gets and a very expensive retelling of the emperor's new clothes.

Dread Poets Society

Last night I went to a poetry evening in Covent Garden to support a friend of mine who has a desire to become a poet and was about to read his work for the first time in public.

Now before I get started, I'm have to admit I'm not the biggest fan of poetry, it seems like the least practical way of getting an idea across. Song lyrics I can understand because you have a melody to carry the mood but a simple poem usually leaves me cold and bored. The great American comedian Doug Stanhope once compared poems to looking at other people's baby photos - "They're beautiful....to their creator....but to other people they're silly and fucking irritating".

However I think I know good writing when I hear it (and my friend writes some good stuff) so I went along, by way of the pub to reward myself for the 'culture' I was to endure.

I actually ended up arriving late....my friend was already halfway through his "set" when I came in. I squeezed my way to the back of the hot, packed basement room as if I was pushing my way through a Northern Line tube at rush hour, trying to find a small spot I could stand without having someones middle aged arse rubbing against my crotch. By the time I reached the back of the room my friend was onto his 2nd or 3rd piece....As I already knew the poems he was planning on reciting I concentrated on his delivery. It was actually pretty good and I later remarked to him that he has a cool poets stance....sort of a half-slanted lean at the microphone stand, a cheeky sideways grin relishing every filthy line in his verse.

I looked around the room and noticed that everyone in the room had a notebook, or some piece of paper. It dawned on me I must have been the only one who wasn't actually reading something that night.

The poems came thin and fast. The group could be roughly split into 3 categories; First I noticed the middle aged Hampstead art crowd who probably are livelong "Friends of the NFT", perfectly nice people, all in their 40's with money, large houses with bookcases full of important leather bound books, peppermint tea drinkers, dressed in baggy clothes, longing for the 70's.

Second were the posh art school graduates, trained in how to make something empty look like it has content, fresh out of college or universities and having to work as waitresses in expensive Bloomsbury cafes, probably back from travelling around Nepal or India with boyfriends called Ramsey, Finnegan or Rollo.

The third group was by far the most interesting. These were the 'true' artists. Desperate to show how 'raw' and 'precise' their genius was. Aggressive and desperate for everyone to understand that they were the only true poets in the room.

The first example I saw was a guy wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, with a shaved head and an ear-ring who read a poem about a boy who (I believe) stabbed another boy or man on a disused railway line either before or after being gang raped....I'm not sure really as the verse was fucking muddled and the guy could hardly read two lines without shouting things like "Yeah you fucking listening", "You better be fucking listening, or I'll fucking wipe that grin off your fucking face" to the poor listeners in the frint row.

After he finished he stormed to the back of the room saying loudly "What happened to doing it for the fucking art? This is bullshit" whilst wearing the cliche's of a dead man on his chest.

Then there was the utter loser sitting on the table next to us....he was especially hilarious. He was wearing sunglasses in doors, muttering and shuffling about constantly, clearly playing the heroin addict or gonzo poet, loudly whispering his uninformed two cents on every single poem to anyone who made eye contact with him and conspicuously checking out every female poet as if he was some Russell Brand-esq Lothario just because he had wankers facial hair and an alcoholics complexion.

He couldn't wait for his 5 minutes of ego inflating superiority, his moment on the stage reading his profound thoughts to the room. Rocking back and forth, standing up, then sitting down, he looked like a dog locked in a kitchen desperate for a shit in the garden.

And I think that's the problem with these places, they sustain a self-created delusion for people who want to put themselves in the outside role of the genius artist, not yet understood and appreciated. In the basement of a small cafe off Covent Garden they turn up week after week believing that they're actually saying something important, paying their £4 for 5 minutes of attention to their pretension...knowing as soon as they step outside they're just another replaceable, insignificant and pointless bag of guts stumbling about this steaming, rotting vagina we call London.

100% Juice and 100% Twats

Ok so I was a bit hungover this morning.

This was my flatmates fault.

I want to make that clear first.

He has a problem and I just drink with him to make him feel that he's not alone.

On my reluctant way to the train station this morning I thought I should buy a drink of orange juice. For some reason I was running early. This doesn't usually happen, which makes me think that I operate better hungover.

I went into the shop. Looked at the selection of drinks. Remembering it was still morning, and I had to go to work, I ignored the large selection of wines and beers and went for something that looked healthy. Hmmmm.....how about Just Juice! (the exclamation mark is compulsory) Made from 100% oranges! As if that's some kind of impressive claim. It's meant to be, the clues in the fucking name. Anyway, I couldn't find anything else that looked healthy so I bought it....it was 100% of £1.50.

I left the shop and read the label of the bottle of the Juice! as if it was a fine wine. Where had I seen that label and that ugly bottle before. Then it hit me.

A few years ago in the summer, I think while I was still at university, I ended up working in a factory. This factory made all the Del Monte orange juice (including Just Juice!) distributed in the UK. To cut to the point, the job was shit, the people were wankers and I quit after 2 miserable weeks. Also I saw how the orange juice was made. It came to the factory in large barrels. This was apparently the concentrate. It had the appearance of napalm and the stench of stale urine. It also burnt the skin, teeth and eyes of anyone unfortunately to walk within 10 metres of the vile stuff. It was poured into huge vats, and mixed with soapy looking water and large sacks of citric acid. This was then poured into the hideous bottles and sent out to our children to get fat on and burn holes into their mouths with the 100% sugary acid goodness. After two weeks, my job was to pick up bottles that had fallen on the grimy floor and then put them back in the conveyor belt. I did 12 hour shifts, slowly losing my mind.

Obviously times have moved on and we now have highly educated foreigners to abandon their school classes, medical practices and ministerial posts to do these jobs for us. Ah, isn't market capitalism great! I mean it's 100% great!

Anyway, back to this morning. I tried to drink the Juice!.....it was fucking horrible and made me feel worse. Also the bottle said "Just Drink it! Then bin it!" (with a picture of a bin for those thick enough not to get the reference) which is a wonderfully exciting and distracting way of saying, "This bottle is not recyclable".

I walked down the steps to the platform. I was still running early. The train wouldn't arrive for another 5 minutes so I could take my time and.....then I got a tap on my shoulder.

I turned and took my earplugs out. This was probably just a mugging I thought. Apparently they're happening all the time and I've been in London way too long and not been a victim of crime.....'maybe it's going to be one of those stabbing or gun crime things I've read so much about, how exciting!'. Maybe I could get Elton John to play at my funeral.

"Could you hurry up or get out of the way!" a rude and rather ugly woman snapped. I moved aside. Was I really moving that slowly? I think I'd have to describe my motion as ambling or maybe even strolling. Either way I believe that's officially acceptable.

More people push past me and ran to the platform. Had I got the train time wrong. I checked the electronic notice board....nope. I still had 3 minutes to walk the remaining 5 metres to the platform edge. The running people pushed past an old man ahead of me. I turned the corner at the bottom of the platform to see the delightful lady who had bothered me a few seconds before standing on the virtually empty platform. She was reading one of the shit papers handed out free in London. Where was her hurry. She was either dressed for work or a funeral. Where was the hurry?

Anyway. The train arrived. I made sure I got on the same carriage so I could give her evils but she was too engrossed in reading about Kerry Katona's new flap clamps or something.

The train arrived at Finsbury Park. From there it takes another 5 minutes to get into King's Cross, the last station on the route. People barged onto the train. Rushing for the spare seats like a game of musical chairs....only instead of music there was the beeping warning that precedes the closing of the train doors and in place of children there were twats in suits.

Again. Why bother rushing for a seat? It's 5 minutes. Can you not stand for that that long? OK it makes sense if you're old, fat and/or pregnant but these were the same people who spend hours in the gym, sweating and stretching and farting and running.

We pulled into Kings Cross. The doors opened and a flock of suits surrounded me, pushing and sighing and squeeze and all of them 100% pure, straight from concentrate, unrecyclable twats.