It’s Saturday night. I’m eating sunflower seeds, listening to the Allman Brothers. The lower half of my right leg is clad in an orthopaedic boot because I have a torn calf muscle - I did it playing basketball a couple of weeks ago.
Since the injury I’ve been unable to walk very far or for very long and my partner has been away for a couple of weeks, so for most part I’ve been alone at home.
This enforced isolation has folded in neatly with an already existing desire to be, as Black American vernacular would have it, ‘out the way’.
Slang is a technology for the conveyance of more feeling, which is to definitively say more meaning through language. We need that.
For example, unlike its direct translation into ‘standard’ English, which is something like ‘In my own space’, ‘Out the way’ conveys a sense of dynamic and merciful avoidance of the various slings and arrows encountered when raising one’s head above the parapet to engage with society and culture. It simultaneously describes the need for space and implies why the space is needed … and it does so with fewer words than its more formal counterpart. That’s good language.
Incidentally, in the same vernacular family as ‘out the way’, exists the excellent ‘miss me with …’ – a way to say, ‘leave me out of’, or, ‘please do not burden me with talk of/action relating to …’ whatever it might be that you’re trying to stay out the way of.
The artist inhabits a paradoxical position within society … He must stay out the way of culture, while at the same time creating it – which, if he is to do a good job of that – necessitates that he be an astute cultural observer. Add to that, he’s probably an artist in the first place because at some point, he fell in love with culture …
Why must the artist stay out the way of culture? Well firstly because a great deal of it is basically radioactive; contact with it decays the body, mind and spirit and you really need all of those things to be in good working order to stand any chance of making decent art.
Of course in this sense, it’s not only the artist, but everyone, who should avoid contact with much of culture. In short, put the phone down.
More than this though, if the artist becomes too enamoured of culture, he can begin to mistake it for what is fundamental, rather than the exquisite, vital and undoubtedly sacred layer of form that rests upon our underlying humanity … and if he does that, he’s lost it, basically.
This is when the artist starts making art that carries only a tinny resonance with a certain group of people who happen to share a narrow set of cultural narratives, values and reference points. This is another way of describing what happens when an artist gets caught up in ‘a scene’.
Personally, I’ve never been interested in being a part of any scene. I’ve talked about this quite a lot over the past few years, but I think it’s an important point. It’s important because I’m aware of how many people delay embarking on their creative journey for fear of not being accepted into the scene or sub-culture which surrounds the art form they’re interested in.
I get it, because all you hear as a young artist is some version of ‘If you want to get anywhere you need to get in with the right people, by any means necessary’.
But, it isn’t true. I’ve been living full time from my art for seven years and I’m not a part of any scene. Money aside,(it’s a shame that so many people need to know that an artist can generate income from their work before they will accept them as such – but that’s just how it is right now) I'm sure that by taking the route that I have, my work is more communicative to more people than it would be if I’d become subsumed by a scene.
My approach has always been to create my own culture around the things I like to do, based on the understanding that art should create an opening that anyone can walk through. Then, I wait to see who walks through … who turns up.
At the same time, I keep my feelers out for others who are creating their own worlds …
I love encountering people like this - it’s extraordinarily inspiring. In this context I’m well reminded of the etymological root of the word ‘inspire’, which means ‘to breath into’ … When I encounter people, whether or not they are artists, who are living out a vision of life that confounds expectation and knows nothing of compromise, I feel that I can breathe more deeply and easily – that more life is being breathed into me and my vision.
This feels like kinship.
This is when world’s collide. This is how movements occur.
The difference between scenes and movements is an important thing to grasp.
Movements are the result of artists going deeper – through the layers of culture to connect with the spirit of human beings and even the spirit of nature itself – to bring back to the surface, ideas that are needed in order for the collective to thrive.
The terms themselves tell a story. A scene is a set – unmoving – in the context of a film or a play, a scene is a contrivance. Scripted. Populated by actors.
A movement is, well, moving … this dynamism makes it difficult to define, it had no boundaries or limitations, it’s just a deeper more powerful thing.
Movements can and often do, occur between artists who are not even consciously aware of one others' existence – movements are non-local – they originate at the level of the field.
If all this sounds grandiose. It is. Art is life and life is a grandiose thing.
Aside from my own example, a look at history makes it clear that the majority of artists who made lasting contributions to culture, did so from the fringes – not just of mainstream culture, but of the sub-cultures they would seem to have been most naturally allied to.
Read ‘Crime and Punishment’, look at some Aboriginal Australian artwork, listen to Flamenco … All of these draw deeply and beautifully upon the particular cultures from which they emerge, and yet in all cases the culture is the well that brings up the water which is common to all … As Fela Kuti says, ‘Water get no enemy’.
Great art makes use of culture, its tools, materials and its most energised symbols, to express something that anyone from any culture has the opportunity to feel. Doesn’t mean that everyone will necessarily like it … but on some level, great art makes everyone more aware of something within themselves that is also in everyone else, regardless of culture.
The result of this inner provocation, which more than anything is something felt – a stirring, a sense of some new mysterious space opening up within – is genuine self-inquiry. Genuine self-enquiry is the beginning of transformation. Transformation, individually and as a collective, is the only thing that can do anything for us.
It’s funny to be talking about movement as I sit, unable to go anywhere. But, that’s how it goes … I'm just here, staying out the way.
The drawings in this post are some of my recent work.
Related Posts
