A Brief Diatribe About Art

I am at my most human when it’s late at night and I begin to feel sorry for myself. Which is why I have to beg your forgiveness for my last pitiful excuse for a post. As somebody recently told me, I simply have to try harder. Even a year into this blogging exercise, my fingers still haven’t found the pulse of you, my deeply intelligent and selective audience. I’ve failed to understand what makes any of you come back. Clearly, Hughie Green is far from the top of that list.

Judy often tells me that I should abandon my light-hearted attempts at biography. In her opinion, I should join in with the greater fraternity of bloggers dealing with the important issues of the day.

Gordon Brown arrived at the G8 summit with some hard words for world leaders. Robert Mugabe remains in power in Zimbabwe and it’s clear that South African president Thabo Mbeki is not providing the kind of leadership that Africa needs at this present moment. Clearly Brown is... is...

Nope. Sorry. Can’t keep that going. It’s a ‘will to live’ thing. I keep losing it.

But that’s exactly what’s wrong with me. I can be horrendously temperamental when I’m writing and my mood was made doubly bad last night because I had spent a couple of hours browsing the web to research a book I’m trying to finish.

As you know, I’m a man of many talents. There may be books coming out from the Richard&Judy stable written by real writers, but I like to keep plodding along doing my own unprofitable thing. My autobiography is coming along well and I also have a novel which is very slowly amassing chapters. A theme of that novel is contemporary art and my recent browsing habits have been restricted to sites dedicated to promoting the arts in the UK.

It was while I was going through an Arts Council website last night, that I found footage of some nameless old colleagues of mine who happen to work in a field tangential to my own. Neither of them are particularly creative but they are both fanatical about commentating on the work of others. You might describe them as ‘critics’. Different national bodies seem to always send funds their way from for projects they initiate. They are both themselves in charge of some additional funds, or know the people who control those funds, which they can also ‘tap into’ to help promote their cockeyed schemes, meant to promote the arts but only really functioning as a rather squalid form of social work.

The footage was part of a current scheme they are running and was advertised as a celebration of the work of a well known artist. Basically, it was a five minute video of my friends enjoying themselves on a recent holiday in Spain. They looked out over the Med, made a few comments about the artist, and then shared a bottle of wine. While I’m pretty sure that the holiday would have been paid for out of their own pockets, those pockets are filled by their work promoting the arts.

I couldn’t help but feel a little piqued.

Maybe it was always so but we seem to be living at a point in our cultural development when we have some very fundamental problems with art. Government policy is generally to throw money at projects that are either sickeningly contemporary or involve the regeneration of our inner cities. Money goes into youth projects in urban settings. Graffiti is encouraged while the fine arts are diminished.

Naturally, I have a vested interest as I know friends who are comic novelists on the breadline while ‘socially aware’ poets get funds to travel around to schools and talk to children about ‘issues’. A recent visitor to a local school charged £500 for the day. I don’t begrudge any writer money, from whatever the source, but I do find it frustrating that the only people to really succeed in the current climate seem to be social workers and critics. And I suppose that’s why I was feeling so utterly dispirited last night and this morning. My two friends, the critics, sit enjoying their sangria on the beach while I’m still facing another long day at the keyboard.

I’m off to write something more uplifting to cheer us all up.

Back soon.

Obituary: My Novel (May 2007-July 2008)

I had already written an interesting and incident-packed post for today but I’m putting it on hold for a couple of hours out of respect for an old friend of ours.

You might not be aware but this is a dark day in the Madeley calendar and, quite frankly, I don’t know how I’m going to cope.

Those of you who are regular readers might want to bow your heads at noon today in an act of remembrance for a friend that never stood a chance. I want you all to take a moment out of your busy lives to remember our old dear friend, ‘My Novel’.

My Novel was due to be published today. It was going to be a day of great celebration. Judy was going to go to the local bookshop and try to buy a copy of my book and get me to sign it. I was going to pose next to the bookshelf while Judy took snaps for the blog. I would have then come on here and encouraged you all to go out and buy it. It would have been the best £7.99 you would have spent all year.

Alas, it was never to be. Due to the buyout of one publisher by another, my book was cancelled. The cover was designed, the proofs read, and many of you were listed at the back in my acknowledgements. It’s still listed on Amazon. It just doesn’t exist in the real world. I think it’s every writer’s nightmare to have an ISBN number for a non-existent book. It’s much worse than never getting published. You can’t know how bad I’m feeling this morning.

My Novel came into this world on a wave of great optimism. People said that my political satire cheered them up enormously, that it was well written and as funny as hell. Others said ‘mehhh’ but it still found a publisher willing to publish its three hundred pages of artfully crafted nonsense. At noon today I’m going to give it a Viking funeral by burning a copy of the manuscript to commemorate its passing from the publishing world. As I watch it drift out into the middle of the lake in our back garden, I’ll probably shed a few tears as I blow my Nordic hunting horn to tell Stephen Fry to shoot the flaming arrow that will ignite all 90,000 words of my carefully written prose. And when I’m done, I’ll come back here and post something to mark a new phase of my life.

I’m not abandoning my hopes of becoming a writer. It’s just a bit harder to find the words this morning.

My Novel.
“You deserved better.”
(May 2007-July 2008)

My Friend The Blogger

Tonight I've had cause to reflect that some of us are simply too nice. A horrid little word this 'nice'. I hate being nice. Let me be arrogant, deceitful, ambitious and only in business for the quick profit. I despise my own affability, my easy going nature, my reluctance to do harm. Let me make money and damn the consequences. I normally try to see only the best in others. From now on, I want to see lies. I believe everything that people tell me. Let me begin to doubt them. I also believe in the old myths about hard work being rewarded in the long run. I see that it's all folly.

It's not easy to write this evening. The tenses all feel wrong. The first person is far too remote.

You see, this all begins with my friend, another generally affable sort who also writes a blog, putting the finishing touches to a novel. A publisher asks to see his manuscript. Compliments are exchanged. An offer to publish the book is made. A contract arrives. It's far from a generous contract. People who know about these things advise him to send his manuscript elsewhere. I advise him to look for a better publisher. I tell him that the contract is not right right for him. But the writer is an affable sort. He wouldn't do that to the only people who have shown any faith in him. He's loyal, you see. He lives by certain old fashioned principals. I keep telling him are going to ruin him. Yet he's never been adept at putting a price on his own skills. He accepts whatever terms other people offer him. He often works for nothing. So he signs this contract despite the fact that he won't see any money for at least a year. Even then it might not be very much.

All this happens some months ago.

My affable friend finishes writing the book and spends weeks working on the final proofs which he duly sends to the publisher. All this time, he's struggling on very little money, falling deeper into debt. Then it all goes quiet. He hears the occasional bit of news about the book. He learns that an illustrator has been paid to produce a picture for the front cover. The artist earns money from the book. My friend, the writer, doesn't. But he's affable so he doesn't complain.

It all goes quiet again but this affable guy notices that his book is listed on Amazon and that makes him very happy. He rings me. 'It's going to happen,' he tells me. 'Soon.'

Today, my affable friend had a long and not particularly enjoyable day at work. He explained to me that the job is tough because it's mundane. It's slowly destroying the guy's spirit. I share his pain. I know what it's like. As you know, I am in a similar position. Yet he also tells me that he wants so desperately to escape the trap of debt. He's only working to keep up the repayments on the debts he's amassed after a long time studying and writing, neither of which have made him rich. Quite the reverse. He should just take a job, five days a week, and earn £20,000 a year. He's a bright guy. He has good qualifications. Probably better than 99% of the people in the country. But he just wants to write. He wants to make people smile because he truly believes that it is a moral way of living.

But it's still a struggle. He's only getting through the days because he knows that he's got a book coming out. He's not in the 8 to 5 rut because he thinks that he is really a writer. He believes in his own talent. He refuses to become the suit they force him to wear.

Only, tonight, he arrived home to be informed that his book is now not being published. 'It's complicated,' he tells me.

I reply that I should hope that it bloody-well is complicated.

But now he's angry. He's also in tears. Yet he's still affable. He says that he can't hold any of this against the publisher. He argues they were in a difficult position. I agree. I tell him that their business didn't have a sensible business model. I say that I didn't believe in the books they published. He admits that he too had doubts: that if they could publish 'those' books, was his own any better? That's as much conversation as he can take. I come off the phone having shared his agony and having felt his pain. I too shed a few tears before I sit down to write.

Now I am left wondering what he really feels. Disappointment. Anger. Frustration. Despair. Perhaps even relief? I suspect that he is beginning to think what he's always feared: that his book wasn't that good, that he's not that talented a writer, and that he's fooled himself for so many years. I should imagine that he feels embarrassed given that he has told people that he was having a book published.

If I were him, I'd try to stay calm and to use his anger to spur him on. He should write to the publisher and explain how he feels like he's been used. He should tell them that they took his dreams and did the worst thing possible: they made them 'almost' come true.

Tonight I've only managed to write because my friend has fallen silent. How I wish it were so very different.

Dr. Oddzo's Shotgun Therapy

Maybe Jesus knows where Bill Oddie found a Remington pump action shotgun. It would be wrong of me to speculate. There was just something reassuring about the way the walnut stock kicked bruises into my hip. I was blasting away at some old oil cans I'd thrown out onto the lake sized pond. I'd been drinking Wild Turkey all afternoon, trying to convince myself that the genial man who hosts a tea-time talk show can really be one crazy son-of-a-bitch channelling the spirit of that other crazy son-of-a-bitch, Hunter S. Thompson. My descent into madness was terminal. It was just a matter of figuring out which way the wreckage would lie.

'You know Bill,' I said as I pumped a few more shells into the breach. 'This is so goddamn right after a long week of feeling sorry for myself. Those bastards at Channel 4 don't appreciate me. The craven heathen pigf****rs.'

'Fire away,' said Bill, 'I was told me that it would calm you down after your battle against your black dog.'

'It's been more like a charcoal grey dog,' I said, reaching for my now underweight bottle. 'But it had rabid bloodshot eyes and drool that could eat a hole through sheet metal.' My lips snatched more whisky before I realised what Bill had said. 'Who told you this would cheer me up?' I asked.

'Oh, this was all Stephen's idea,' said Bill.

'Stephen? Stephen?' I repeated, the whisky having dulled my senses as well as my self-pity.

'He rang me this morning from America where he's filming his documentaries. He told me where to find his old shotgun and he said that I'm to let you fire every last shell if it makes you feel better.'

'That beautiful yet crazy son-of-a-bitch,' I said as I turned the weapon on Judy's ornamental garden and took the head off my least favourite dwarf. 'Die you miserable pot bellied dwarf bastard,' I cried as the air filled with plaster dust.

Bill looked hurt.

'No, no, Bill,' I said, taking my bottle from the floor. 'No offence meant. I was talking to the other pot bellied dwarf.'

'None taken,' said Bill but I could see that my words had hurt him where he lives. His face had that same torn expression it had the time I'd accused him of destroying his reputation inside the BBC by selling his cheap plastic herons.

'The thing is, Bill,' I said, resting the shotgun on my hip as I prepared to oil my temper with more liquor. 'I want to do something wild. I want to prove that I'm more than the man tied to a desk or making small talk between five and six every weekday evening. I think we should take a trip.'

'A trip?' asked Bill. 'A trip where?'

'A road trip. A road trip to Blackpool.'

His eyes lit up. 'There's a fantastic RSPB sanctuary up there on the Fylde Coast. This time of year, we might be able to spot a few of the early migratory waders.'

'I'm not looking to go birdwatching,' I said and lowered the gun ready to menace one of the oil cans that had been foolish enough to resurface. 'I'm talking about us having ourselves a wild weekend of excess in the spirit of gonzo. What do you say, Bill? Are you up for “Fear and Loathing in Blackpool”?'

'Does that mean we'll have to take drugs?'

The gun kicked. The can sang its death note.

'Drugs? Sex? Alcohol? I prefer not to name the vices that work for me,' I said. 'But I do know that I don't need illegal drugs to be reckless and slightly insane. My brain chemistry is a rare mutation of genius.'

Bill sank to the floor and picked up a can of Red Bull. There's nothing more wretched than a caffeine addict swollen with that heinous delusion that they are all powerful. The Greeks worshipped Dionysus for a reason. They didn't have the god of the Genus Coffea in their Rolodex.

'We'll need a car,' he said eagerly.

Luckily, I had it covered. 'Terry Gilliam is a good friend. He still has the Caddy from the film. Convertible in bright red. He'll let us use that. We'll hang a flag from the back.'

'The RSPB crest?' suggested Bill.

'The Stars and Stripes,' I yelled. 'It's the only way to go. From this moment, you call me Richard Duke. You can be my faithful assistant, Dr. Oddzo. I won't be happy until we've got ourselves a hotel suite and smuggled a monkey and a midget into our room and pumped them full of Toilet Duck.'

Dr. Oddzo ran a hand through his beard, his eyes now fully dilated as the Red Bull kicked in.

'I'm with you,' he said and pushed himself to his feet. 'We'll tear Blackpool apart!'

I pushed another shell into the gun, preparing to fire it into the lake, but before I could get my finger around the trigger, Dr. Oddzo had snatched the gun from my hands. That crazy bastard. The spirit of his age: a worn down stump of high living on BBC expense accounts yet a beautiful last hymn to the Sixties.

'Head down, Corbett!' he scream as he fired shells into the neighbour's bedroom window. Glass shattered. The shreds of net curtains floated down like confetti.

'Gonzo!' cried Dr. Oddzo, that twisted version of the human prototype as he ran back up to the house.

'Too crazy to live, to rare to die,' I muttered as I followed after him.