my life as a artist
have you got a light?
Friday 14th December 2007 12:26 AM
My idea of a party these days is being in a room with more than two people and smoking cigarettes. C'mon everybody, let the good times roll! I fought and died in two world wars for this country, and during my time in the trenches, a cigarette was considered a beautiful thing, a small beacon of hope and comfort in that bleak, all-hating world. According to the press, we won both those wars, so why can't I have a fag with my celebratory pint?
My mate Steve, who's dissatisfied and from Yatesbury, was asked not to smoke when he was at Stonehenge, on Salisbury plain, in a force eight gale. I sometimes worry that the suffocating health and safety culture, as promoted by the increasingly authoritarian Whitehall hologramobots, diminishes the potential of human experience. Danger and risk should be welcomed into our lives, for they can often lead to innovation, solidarity, courage, and serious injury.
This morning, in the newsagent, Greg-behind-the-counter was looking particularly grave, the crumpled heaviness of his creased and furrowed frown in marked contrast to the sleek buoyancy of his perfect Anna Wintour power-bob. He said he'd seen this Plato film, about God throwing googlies on the wall with a torch, and had come to the conclusion that the material world was nothing but the shadow of the fourth dimension, and that all these newspapers he was selling, were by extension, nothing but the shadow of the shadow of the fourth dimension.
Even though I hadn't seen the film, I had to agree that most of the newspapers, and especially the tabloids, were distinctly lacking in substance. On the cover of The Star was a picture of a prone David Beckham, naked, except for a brief pair of tight underpants, underneath which he appeared to have a scrunched up Gary Neville. It was the shadow of the shadow of the shadow of the fourth dimension, and at that time in the morning, it was really horrid.
Celebrity bollocks is a deadly foe in the common persons struggle for identity, and me and Greg felt under attack. We both suddenly felt the need for the comfort of something sinuous and soothing, so we left the warm trench of the newsagent and went outside for a fag, into no-man's land.
Comments
there's no smoke without enemy fire
Posted by andrew , on Friday 14th December 2007, 3:46 PM
Add Comment
