So…
More conversations.
Some, that start out fairly ordinarily, become the subject of a conversation in themselves. Are the stupid text messages and emails I send (and receive) also part of my practice? The things we send each other to cheer, support, and nurture… some, well most, in my case, are silly jokes, rude words sent timed so they have the highest impact. Sending a string of words to a person who is supposed to be doing something serious is juvenile. But I do it anyway. The more serious the situation, the funnier it is. It is their own fault for opening the message.
Some, push the boundaries of taste and decency and become a bit risky. There is a sort of brinkmanship going on. I am even now questioning whether I should be writing this in a blog, in case I get stuck having to bluster and explain myself. I question certainly, how much should go in the blog, how explicit I should be, I wouldn’t want to get myself or anyone else into trouble would I?
But the fact I am again conversing about the conversation makes it interesting, worth talking about. Where does my art practice stop? Would the stupid text messages not be part of my practice if I didn’t start talking about them as such.
The thing is too, I like to think I can be funny. It can be a failing. Sometimes, I’m really not. I think I can say anything I like, as long as it is funny, or “clever”. Sometimes when I do it to people I don’t know very well, it isn’t taken as funny. Sometimes, I make new friends on the basis that they have laughed at something I’ve said that’s thrown them – that explosive, instant, spontaneous laugh is priceless. (I did it to Bo Jones) (Maybe I should be doing stand up? No.) The children I teach, by the middle of the second term, know that if they make me laugh, they can pretty much get away with stuff. (I’m not sure what this says about me as a teacher).
Laughter is important to me. So why is my work so miserable/spooky/macabre? (other people’s words). It is really difficult to make serious art that is funny… why? You can do anything else… love, hate, anger, disgust, why is funny so difficult to take seriously?
The messages themselves haven’t sparked any further work ideas, but in a secondary way, the talking about them has. I have another few pages in my sketch book of rude, occasionally obscene text scribbled onto drawings of respectable clothes.
I like the concept of layers of respectability covering all sorts of goings on… The business suit over the frilly knickers… rude words and insults stitched to the linings…red hat, no drawers…
This blog is twice as long as usual. It is maybe two rolled into one. Funny, and The Conversation. But I won’t make apologies for this, as to me, at the moment, they are indivisible.
