Month: August 2012

On Saturday, at the Hayward Gallery's Invisible show, I saw one of the most incredible works of art I've ever seen.

'Invisible' displayed works of art dealing with the unseen. Tom Friedman's 1000 hour stare was hung in a room with several works, all of which were blank white sheets of paper of different dimensions. I once read about an imaginary exhibition of red squares that would draw attention to their subtle differences. This room did something similar with what appeared to be (and was sometimes physically indistinguishable from) empty sheets of paper.

Out of the works on show, the one that moved me most was Friedman's. The information for the work described the medium as "Stare on paper" with dimensions of 82.6 x 82.6. It had been carried out between 1992 and 1997.

The work is part of a series of works Friedman carried out on 'the invisible'. His work, A Curse, also in the show, is a spherical space above a pillar that has been cursed by a witch. According to Friedman, "one's knowledge of the history behind something affects one's thinking about that thing." Does this knowledge transform empty space, or a blank sheet of paper? 

A thousand hours is a long time to spend doing anything. Had the labour Friedman put into staring at this paper changed it? Unless the handling and storage of the paper over the five years of the work had changed or damaged it, a scientist could not distinguish between this work of art and another blank sheet. If I took the work from the wall, put it into a pile of similarly sized paper, it would be lost forever, all that work wasted. In what way had Friedman changed this one particular piece of paper?

And then there was the claim that Friedman had actually had performed that magical thousand hours of staring at this sheet. To put things on crass economic terms, was this sheet now worth a thousand hours of an artist's time? If I hired someone to reproduce it, paying minimum wages for every hour of their time, it would cost £6080. Yet the resulting 'work' would still be little different to any other piece of paper.

Or maybe Friedman was lying. The artist explicitly decided not to document the process, because of the tension that added to the work. Was he lying or not? Did it matter to me or not?

I stared at the work myself, trying to puzzle it out. Which raised the question of how the stares of the passing visitors affected the work. If I stared at it too long, maybe came back day after day, would I taint it in some way? Would my stare somehow be mixed in with Friedman's?

I'm certainly no expert in art theory, but I found 1000 Hour Stare provocative and approachable. It raised obvious questions and was also, in its own way, very moving. There was something incredible about the thought of the artist coming back to this blank sheet day after day. Or that he might have lied to me. All this, from what appeared to be a blank sheet of paper. Whether Friedman had put a thousand hours into the work or not, he had done something magical, transforming the empty paper into 'art'.

Via a tweet from @piratemoon I found a fascinating interview with Will Self. As the final question, Self is asked "What do you feel a writer should use his twenties for?" His reply is strident:

"Just read a lot of books. I certainly did, and still do. Do anything, really. Anything which brings you into contact with the world. The big crisis for literature today is creative writing [courses], which is ludicrous at every level. It’s like these cunts like Cameron, who have never done anything but be a politician. And there isn’t a market for these creative writing graduates’ in most cases mediocre lucubrations. You are educating people to be writers who can’t make a living, who will go on to teach more writers who can’t make a living."

It's a great end to an interview but Self's rant has an interesting contradiction, claiming that creative writing is a "crisis for literature" while "there isn’t a market for these creative writing graduates". I think the crisis produced by creative writing courses is mostly confined to the field of creative writing courses. I've spoken about this a little in other blog posts (see, for example Creative Writing is a Pyramid Scheme). Literature seems able to take or leave the ouput of creative writing courses which is why there is no market for them.

Do I regret the creative writing courses I've attended (the CCE Certificate and MA in Creative and Critical Writing at Sussex)? While the professed promises and aims of both courses may be questionable, they have been very worthwhile experiences. Will Self questions the idea of "educating people to be writers who can’t make a living", but this assumes that employment/profit is the only reason to study something. While CCE (in particular their novel-writing stream) made little movement beyond the link between writing and 'success', there should be more to creative writing than publishing.

The Creative and Critical Writing MA frequently questioned the idea of Creative Writing. The course is not to everyone's taste, but I found it exciting and refreshing. How does writing relate to the publishing industry? To people's lives? This was a course that had some very big questions to ask rather than focusing on how one writes a best-selling literary novel. Why not question the meaning of life? Why not read incredibly difficult poetry? 

There is a second apparent contradiction in the Will Self interview. "Just read lots of books… [Do] Anything which brings you into contact with the world". How does fiction relate to the real world? The two are not neccessarily in contradiction, although Self's comment here doesn't consider that; but fiction is an important part of many people's real world. Julian Barnes wrote an essay in the guardian about his life as a bibliophile, the ending of which is worth quoting:

The American writer and dilettante Logan Pearsall Smith once said: "Some people think that life is the thing; but I prefer reading." When I first came across this, I thought it witty… The distinction is false… When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life's subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.

Without wishing to sound self-helpy about it, creative writing should be lead its students to become better readers living richer lives. Creative writing offers an opportunity to deepen one's experience of life, regardless of publishing success – education should be about more than vocation. The Oxford philosopher, John Alexander Smith, apparently opened a 1914 lecture course with the following words: "Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – if you work hard and diligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education."

One of the greatest songs ever recorded is You're Not My Babylon by These Animal Men (video on youtube). Released in 1994, it peaked at number 77 in the UK charts.

It makes me sad that some of my favourite songs are almost unknown. Songs from bands like Leicester's Perfume, who I heard a few times on Radio 1, bought a single, and never heard of again. Or Nilon Bombers, a band whose Britpop-era support slots blew me away but never went beyond a first album. And These Animal Men, a Brighton band who wrote one of the greatest songs ever.

The Animal Men were part of the New Wave of New Wave, described by Wikipedia as "a sub-genre of the British alternative rock scene in the early 90s, in which bands displayed punk, post-punk and New Wave influences". It has been cruelly mocked by John Harris as "Britpop without the good bits".

The time before Britpop was fascinating. The British music scene was flooded with American imports but in the background something was happening. The music press were desperate to create a scene and jumped the gun a little when they invented the New Wave of New Wave which roped in bands like Sleeper, Echobelly and Menswear who later successfully jumped ship to Britpop.

At the time the New Wave of New Wave seemed contrived. For a start the name was unwieldy – even the abbreviation NWONW was unwieldy. It might have gone better if New Wave of New Wave had a snappier name – like, say, Britpop. (Or, um, Romo, another synthetic scene that didn't fare at all well but somehow has a much longer wikipedia page than New Wave of New Wave (although, to be fair, history has proved Simon Price right))

(The pre-history of Britpop is more interesting than Britpop itself, filled with characters like Luke Haines who toured with Suede in 1992 and lost the first Mercury prize to them in 1993. By 1995, as the country revelled in fake cockernee celebrations, Haines had moved to darker places. His Christmas 1995 release was an EP featuring songs about child murder, followed by a funk concept album about terrorism. Haines' contempt for commercial opportunity seems heroic).

These Animal Men were one of the bands who failed to move from New Wave of New Wave to Britpop. John Harris's history of Britpop, The Last Party, makes a single mention of the band on page 98, in a section about the retro bands that were around pre-Britpop. In a list of bands it mentions These Animal Men, "whose camp macho poses were redolent of the Clash".

I wasn't a huge fan of These Animal Men as a band. Their interviews were funny but they seemed an example of style over substance. It didn't help that their early single, Speed King, was a tabloid baiting hymn to amphetamine use. Still, they were entertaining enough and I saw them once supporting Carter USM at Sussex University's Mandela Hall. Most of the stage was taken up with Carter's equipment but These Animal Men used the cramped space they had as if they were the Who at Wembley. (Carter's gig was reviewed by Everett True in that week's Melody Maker. True ignored the gig itself in favour of reviewing a discussion he'd had with Carter beforehand about authenticity or something, which seemed a little unfair).

I may not have been a fan of These Animal Men, but I love their single You're Not My Babylon. It tells the story of Billie Frechette, who spent two years in jail for hiding the notorious bank robber John Dillinger. I don't really know the story, and I have no idea what it means to be someone's Babylon, although it sounds epic and important. The lyrics tell a story of last stands, misplaced loyalty and domestic violence, looking back on the past with sadness.  

When I hear the song it brings back a flurry of memories of being younger, with a million futures bursting from every moment. You're Not My Babylon is as great a song as Halleluliah or Hey Jude. It is a greater song than any single track Nirvana ever wrote; a song as great as Hole's Malibu or Le Tigre's Eau de Bedroom Dancing or the Beach Boys singing Wouldn't It Be Nice or Luke Haines singing Bad Reputation. It is one of the greatest records ever made.

The song reached number 77 in the charts. And I wonder how many songs I would love as much as this one if only I'd heard them.

This could be the greatest moment of your life: don't make it your last