Consume or become an eccentric hermit

I have chosen to have a difficult life. You have opted to conform and to consume. 
I have chosen a job that does not pay any money, whose only purpose is to contribute thoughts, objects or images to humanity. Nobody asked me to. It means that I lay awake at nights, once the alcohol has worn off, panicking about how I will pay the bills for the things that I have bought to facilitate my integration into conventional society. These things, like food, heating, clothes, mobile phones, computers etc all help me to behave like a normal citizen. Without them I would be an eccentric hermit living in the woods. You have these things in abundance, according to the hours that you dedicate to your chosen employer. The employers' activities make them money, and filter things for us to buy or use into society.  

The pain of everyday life I have to anaesthetise with alcohol or solitude. Having seen through the cracks of reality that have begun to appear in the opiate veils of society, I am trapped by my awareness. It has robbed me of my freedom. I feel for my children sometimes. At better times I pin down the fears of midlife crisis with the thought that my achievement in this world can be measured by the individual thinking or questioning of convention that my offspring are beginning to display. Usually however the guilt and listlessness associated with constant self questioning erode my belief in the chosen path, and I find myself poring over Sainsbury's recruitment pages.

dirty banker

I'll have this whole awful cartoon thing out of my system soon, please bear with me...

The fact is... selfish

Day at the centre today. Somewhat under the influence of Taxali, have produced this little number for the phrase "The fact is you can't live for everyone else, sometimes be selfish just do what you want"

Revelations and revolutions

My mind was racing whilst cranking out my run this morning. I have had the wind up my arse since yesterday, all excited about the new location we have found, about how economical the timber is with which I am building the new floor in the loft, about the wind leaks I am plugging in our decrepit house like the rotten-caulked hulk from a Joseph Conrad novel. So the brilliant sunshine and crunching frost/hail underfoot only augmented my positive outlook, and ripened my mind for an hour of philosophical and creative exploration. I chewed concepts like delicious venison, blood dripping in rivulets of original thinking... I smiled to myself, even giggled out loud as conceptual obstacles were sliced like tragic blonde damsels on the tracks of my unstoppable train of thought. It was a good run.
The iPod chugged out LCD, its rhythms and changes of pace meshing sweetly with the terrain beneath my feet and across my cortex. The images I had been wrestling with over the last few days were tossed around and over each other, their new appearance being tested against and overcoming every challenging cliche I threw in their way. This  is going well, I thought. At last I arrived at the final crossroads, and drew up as with almost comical timing this came over the headphones. I drew in a lungful of sweet, iced morning air that bit at my intercostal muscles, made my ribs ache. Droplets of meltwater were now beginning to catch the low sunlight that precipitated their arrival from the frost on the bare branches. Stillness pervaded all. Silence, but for the Great Release, accompanied the distilled idea that swam to the front of my mind, and rested gently like a piece of burnt white paper at last coming to earth from the bonfire plume. It sat- confidently, quietly and complete.

Greed and Lust are the same thing.

Physical Graffiti

I returned to the C––––––– & S––––––––– site today, having spent a few hours during my insomniac early mornings this week reflecting on what we had found at the factory. The ideas that I had were fairly easy to transform from idle reflection into physical reality, I suppose because I was working within the physical constraints already discovered during our first recce of the location. It was quick to do, yet pretty much fulfilled my expectations of what it would actually look like. I could probably photograph it more effectively with tripods, but made use of broken chairs and girder supports in the walls in their absence.

It is always fatal to term an item 'The first in a series..." - especially if you count the amount of piss up's I have actually managed to get off the ground in various breweries I have come across- but the insomniac hours did present me with that notion. The idea is to create installations utilising the raw materials of a given site, or just paint, in a variety of run down or wasteland areas throughout the D––––––– valley. Once a series of 6-10 is complete. their locations will be publicised as an unofficial art trail, which people can dip in and out of as they see fit. As nearly all the locations will be prohibited or restricted, and health and safety nightmares in their own right, the trail will, like the graffiti itself, be an underground activity. Sniff out these artworks- like people used to sniff out baksy's or invader's back in the day- or don't. The artworks do not depend on an audience. I fucking sick of trying to rouse audiences anyway- if it takes off, then it will do so on its own merit. The stuff is out there, you just have to go see it.

Once a few more are complete, I will facebook a page dedicated to the underground trail with full GPS locations and access tips...


Enjoy!

 

"Portal" (2011) ©Nick Hersey