THROW THE BOOK AT ME


Nothingness, 2008


I never started out to write a book, it’s just something that happened to me on the way to the grave, to partly paraphrase one of Mr. Quentin Crisp’s more well known quips . And probably the fact that I never really had a major passion to write a book, will annoy some people who consider themselves real writers, whatever that may be, those who live for getting a book deal, putting one out, recieving hoards of adoration, pats on the back, etcetera. I for one am not sure what denotes a real writer, but some people may argue that a real writer is trained, qualified and very practiced at the craft, all things I’m definitely not. I’m not a real writer then. But I have written enough to qualify, and it's good enough. So throw the book at me.

I figure if someone like Geri Halliwell can can get someone else to write and put out two autobiographies, or rather squeeze them out like nuggets, then so could I – at least one time around. God knows I have produced plenty of shit in my time. Next step: A Yoga video. The fact that I don’t know anything about Yoga, doesn’t seem to matter, nor would it necessarily stop me.

Another question I was briefly discussing with my friend Amanda Van Gils recently , is that it’s amazing how many people we know who are artists, but also write, and not only that they are very good at both. It’s a very interesting question to ponder. Personally, I put it down to Synaesthesia.

Synaesthesia is a is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second one.
I’ve always seen very strong visual images prompted by letters and especially words. Somehow I am able to reverse channel this process back to turn visuals into evocative words and sentences.
I guess it's why I was so good at design, starting with a brief, which can straight away be the nail in the coffin for a lot of would-be graphic artists, stylists, illustrators or whatever . Some client would babble " For this ad, I want a hat that looks like a breadstick!" And I knew exactly what they meant straight away even if I thought it was stupid and I could do it, whereas other people would just eventually break down and cry. Somehow I'm able to take other people's semi-retarded fuckery and make it work. More fool me I often think.
I’ve always as long as I can remember seen colors as taste, and also flavours and colours as words. That's some loco shit going down right there!
In fact I was quoted in a press article as early as 1992 talking about how I paint with flavours. Although it was part of the schtick for my image to promote an exhibition I was having at the time, Trashland, , I wasn’t actually inventing it – it’s for real, and it’s called Grapheme.

Any kind of continual writing means most importantly constantly finding material, and I think that, well in my opinion, pretty much anything qualifies as such. It’s a very pop concept, that in a Warholian gathering of information, anything, is valuable and interesting enough to qualify as stuff that can be harnessed and used or in my case, often used as ammunition. So it becomes all-consuming, I become totally sucked into it, everything else in my life is abandoned, Lizards run through the house and eat dropped chips off the carpet and I ignore it.

It becomes so intense that everything I think, see and do becomes part of my writing work, just the same as everything becomes part of my painting or drawing or photography work when I am doing that, and there's no room to really think of anything else.
I have the odd moment where I fear writing will impinge on my art work, but I try not to let it bother me when my mind goes over to that thought, that's just frippery.
Basically what is happening is that I moved from mostly working with simply images , to working with one word or slogan with images, to pieces of writing combined with images.
Where do I go from here? I think that I will go back to simply images, but the text will be the title only. It will be interesting to see what comes next, and that said, this year is already bringing some very interesting possibilities.