Why should I be pink and fluffy? The real world aint!

Well I got chided when I submitted an h2g2 entry by my so-called "peers". I should've known. They all said "oh, I'm at art school, its not like that". Well why should I be surprised. Most of the respondents are probably undergrads in the throes of Freshers Week. When the alcohol and party fever has worn off and they have to sit through lectures and seminars, they'll wake up!

The Prof has tried to reassure me yesterday but I'm still not convinced. I'd do something else if I had the ability and/or the cash.

It seems that if I don't unquestionably board the current arty bandwagon I will be disregarded and treated as an outlaw or stupid.

Do I sound embittered? Or realistic?

It was all looking ok yesterday (Tues - 1^st day) at Brighton, the other students were just as nervous and unsure of their abilities, and it looked like the course was going to be manageable, and I thought I’d like to study Aesthetics as I thought (stupidly) it meant something visual I could actually apply to painting, and since the other choice was Mentoring – having someone always looking over your shoulder – I thought this was the better option. How wrong I was. As soon as they put up the book list I knew this was just the same generic prescriptive BS as in the main book list. I did have a few drinks last night as I was so confused and just so unsure I’m doing the right thing. After all, who cares? Its not like being a cardiovascular surgeon and saving peoples lives or anything (not that that would impress my family anyway).

I really do have great reservations about the establishment of education every time I see a book list. I hope that if I stick with this course and choose the Mentoring option they don’t just guide me down the path they decide from the off that is right, not that I want the path of least resistance either, but I would at least like to be able to read the kinds of books that I am interested in and will further my own ideas: call me narcisstic or a coward if you like, but I’d like to think I have something else to offer the art world. When I got the first lot of correspondence (ahead of the letter with the offer of a place) I wrote this:

I may well consider turning my place on an MA course down on the basis that their book-list looks like it hasn’t changed for the last 10 (or 40!) years. Freud? Freud was a nazi to all intents and purposes. He’s currently being used to justify reparative therapy: ie “curing” gays. When he was around people still lived under thatched roofs with outside privies and going to work on horseback. The world’s moved on since then. There are whole new discoveries in neuroscience, and far from wanting to cure people the general mood amongst psychiatrists that is emerging is one that recognizes the chaos and fragility of the human brain and celebrates that diversity. And talking of diversity, the definition of “multi-culturalism” is narrow and misguided as well, concentrating as it does on black and asian people, basically RACE. What about those who experience the world differently because of the difference in how their bodies interact with the world. Does a deaf-blind child have their own culture? Does anyone care?

On the train on the way home yesterday I was pretty sure these ideas will be lost on art academics, as this is a way of thinking that is alien to them, they have been indoctrinated with certain ideas and beliefs and wont budge, and will shoot me down on every turn without even thinking there might be ideas outside their scope in the worlds of science and philosophy that may bisect the world of art and dare I say it CREATIVITY.

In the Moment and trying to get out again...

I just heard a great quote from the late Tony Wilson describing Joy Division in their first show:
"They didn't want to be on stage, it was just that that had this thing inside them and it needed to get out..."
Perfectly describing how I feel about my MA.
I don't think anyone understands my ambivalence about my "performance". How I'm driven. How this stuff means I cant just fuck off and crawl under a rock.

I start Brighton tomorrow. Heaven help me.




(also the Unknown Pleasures album cover "set it apart from business, like it didn't care if you bought it or not.."
"Factory never "released" records, they let them escape.")

The Rise and Fall?

Come September, and I knew that somehow I would have sorted out something to do, whether academia or not. I couldn’t have stood much more of summer. I applied for loads of jobs, MA and Postgrad courses. Something had to work out. And it did. I’d rather have done a full-time MA Printmaking at Camberwell and no job, spending my time making things and getting messy in me jeans and t-shirt, but I’m working in a staff canteen getting messy in my black uniform, and starting a part-time PgDip in Fine Art. So I’ll be like Hong Kong Phooey.. by day, a mild mannered dinner lady..
But I’m glad. Being a normal person in a humble job will be a nice variation from being a pretentious arty intellectual. I’ll need that because the course looks like being highly conceptual. When I had my interview I thought there was no chance of getting in because I like actual painting. I groaned inwardly when he listed the tutors on the course.. “and there’s so-and-so, and he’s a theorist; and whatsisname, and he’s a theorist; and wassername, and she’s also a theorist”… do they actually make work or will they be another Martyn? I reckon people who talk about art without making any are like those people who talk about sex but aren’t getting any – hopelessly dull.