Further Suede thoughts

This I wrote in a the comments section of my other blog, accidentally leaking out the thought I was trying to save for later:

'A funny part of the charm of Suede is that they WEREN'T 'originals'... they were hailed as heroes precisely because they did fit a journalist's idea of a great band, being a bit Smiths and a Bit Bowie and all that, androgyny was totally old hat, it was partly nostalgia that made the hype. BUT though they fit a pre existing mould, they did it really nicely. And sometimes it's not the originals who move you...

I think being pregnant makes me think more of the culture I've lived through, especially in my formative years, rather than going back to the 'original' stuff from before I was born. I am interested in what people do in the time and the times that they're given. And thinking by extension about what culture my child will be exposed to (crumbs!).

The Smiths were great, but Suede were mine, at exactly the right time. That music burrowed deeply into my mind, which is no small thing.' - Me

....

Original - no - maybe

Also, perhaps looking for true or total originality is a bit of a red herring, very few things are totally original, and anyway, it wouldn't necessarily make them good if they were.

It's good to know what the sources are, but I was moved by the things I was moved by, Suede had intangibles for me, like some wrestlers do.

I think it's OK to sort of hone and mesh existing tropes.

An idea I've come up against in the art world is that striving after something new and therefore 'important', which is usually about people pompously claiming importance for things that perhaps don't deserve it, but no one can prove that of course. And that seeking of 'importance' is usually more about people trying to make themselves feel good for being in with the avante garde thing and therefore a little bit important by association. When I never really cared about being new or important anyway, I cared about being good. I also always had the feeling that if you tried to proclaim or imagine grand things for yourself too soon, you'd never have any hope of really reaching them. Don't fake it, I thought.

But the art world's sort of all about people creating delusions and illusions that make them feel super about themselves. Oh well.

Maybe the cockiest do get somewhere in life, but maybe that's not the kind of somewhere I really want to get.

Anyway I'm going off the subject of Suede a bit.

How have my paintings been like Suede without my noticing?
Does it make them difficult?

I've been thinking about my most major formative cultural influences. I mean at age 12/13/14/15... I think before that, there were things that I liked, but when you're a child things are just there in the air, there's no pressure to commit to anything, you don't necessarily have to think about which things you like and which things you don't. From early adolescence, I began to really gain comfort and even bits of identity from these bits of culture that I whole-heartedly affiliated myself with.

And of course then there was school to endure, which I hated, making the allegiances stronger, making things like Suede like little glimmers of light and fun and excitement, something that was mine. And I guess I was more leaning towards being a professed atheist then, I wasn't able to understand that there was much beyond culture.
So I was at the private view for my little exhibition at the Electric Palace in Bridport. Some people came who were unfamiliar with my paintings. I haven't done any big elaborate paintings for a long time, and with everything that's happening, I feel oddly distanced from them. I was thinking that for someone unfamiliar, there's a lot of STUFF in the paintings, it could be bewildering, whether or not they were inclined to like it. A lot of gubbins. I hoped it was nicely presented gubbins, but it's still gubbins.

I acknowledged that some of them were 'a bit dark.'

Bit of a dumb statement.

Then I thought about Suede again. It's possible that I learned from Suede that you can put dark or sordid things in your art then kind of make them beautiful... there's even a woozyness in my paintings that's a bit Suede. I will bash out this song, I will bash out this painting, even if it's a bit imperfect and oddly rhythmed and not as precise as The Smiths, it'll be full of feeling and shape and colour and it will affect you.

That was my feeling with Suede when I was 14, when I knew I was somehow compelled to engage with the sordid things of adulthood (as I said on drawing blog) and Suede were an artful and safe kind of way of doing it. Presenting it as a bit of nicely crafted teasy autumnally shaded pop.

I think that ethos did creep in. I had to learn from somewhere, what it could be all about, I didn't really have teachers as such.

Dang, I've been painting in the tradition of Suede and English indie pop, and never realised it.

or maybe people are OK with that stuff in words in a nice book, but they want paintings for their offices with a couple of clouds in them. Paintings with zero content are popular. Like, a bit like a landscape but less committed. Without shapes or earth.

Paintings with just one thing in them are popular, like the kind of things that children are supposed to want, obvious and minimal.

Things with no inner life are popular.

And I've never questioned my urge to present the darker or weirder thoughts in the context of my paintings... where they're safe, where they're totally controllable and contained, but where they can kind of live and gain form. That seems natural to me. I think it is natural and it's in a tradition (in music perhaps), there just aren't so many people doing it in painting...

...Or maybe just not paintings I like. There's that whole 'darque' macabre genre, which interests me little. Like I'm not really interested in Goth or dead art school babies but I did like Suede, I'm talking about a tradition that's maybe a bit more playful and a bit less self-pitying, and certainly not all forced into one mood like those silly monster paintings.

Suede's colours were warm brown and dark green, not so much goth black.

I mean, I guess lately I've wanted to be more Sargent and less Sickert, but maybe the Sickert in me is hard to ignore... (Sickert's very Suede really).

To be continued, I think.

Hello.

I am pregnant, and I haven't got a job any more. I am a pregnant artist, and maybe I'll do some writing.

I have no real obsessions at the moment, I'm a bit emotionally normal, but I have been thinking on the power of memories, not least for making art from.

SUEDE

I want to write about Suede.

I should also draw about Suede.

The writing and drawing could be part of the same project.

I've been finding the youtube clips... There was one of the Wild Ones live at the Phoenix festival '95. I was there. I think I screamed. Brett was wet. He wore a little tie.

I was just remembering a photocopied list of bootlegs that I had. I ordered the cassette of the Phoenix festival concert. I got it, but didn't listen to it, by then I had started to go off them for one reason or another, the post-Bernard songs not turning me on being key. I don't remember the order of things clearly, but there was feelings of disgust and acute embarrassment going down. Wotta palava.

Why write about Suede?

Suuueeeeede

It was the first time I got into being a fan. Specifically.

I was consciously a fan, among warm swarms of other fans, quite happy with that idea, reaching out a clammy hand.

It was a sex-thing that separated me from parents and Hannie. It was culture that was a bit about sexuality and sexuality imagery, though in quite a girl-appealing abstract amorphous way a lot of the time. When sex is all imaginary and potential.

The blue nose poster incident.

I had a cheap black and white poster of Brett that I had probably bought outside one of the concerts. he was sitting on a stool looking straight ahead all intense, pleasing to me but easy to mock, it's easy to see. My sister came in my room with a blue colouring pencil and coloured in his nose. I was seething with outrage. I could have burst with anger. She was cackling with glee. She was a bit younger, but there was a personality issue too, I think she found it all too funny in its earnestness, cruising for a bruising with its floppy hair guitar solo cheekbone nonsense.

All the times I've hated and loved and dismissed them since...

I've revisited Suede a couple of times, but from different times in my life, it's funny how memories and past loves can re-shape themselves and allegiances take on different colours with time. Now I'm going back to it in a blog way, as is my these days thing.

It was liking something that not everyone likes... kinda valuable and stimulating. Not like liking the Beatles. Liking something like that divides, differentiates you, makes you not neutral. Not a floating voter.

I noticed at the original 90s time the hostility to suede and forms it took. A lot of normal straight men didn't get it or found it silly. Though a lot of the normal straight boys at school liked Bernard for his ninja manly guitar shenanigans, and hated Richard Oakes (17 year old replacement Bernard) for being no kind of an aspirational man and not much older than them. Bob doesn't really get it, though he does kind of take my word for it.

Richard Easter on Steve Wright in the afternoon did some sketches mocking Suede and Brett's silly voice, when they were most hyped. I doubt I would find that even on the internet. And apparently there was a spitting image puppet. And I looked for the clip where George Dawes on Shooting Stars dressed up as Brett, which was very funny, but had no luck with that yet either.

Suede was the kind of thing where the fans felt 'we get it' and though Mark Goodier on Top of the Pops kind of says they're a talked about band, and they were even on Jay Leno once, most people weren't really going to get it by definition, because to really feel it you had to feel it intensely, it was very teenage. They were the perfect thing to like as a teenager. At the actual suede gigs the sweaty wiggling was more uninhibited, we were all friends, kind of. But not really. But it could feel like that. Some euphoric alienated togetherness, bit like with Morrissey, but different. I think Morrissey is much easier for everyone to look at and 'get'.

Bernard does a right weird face before his guitar solo.

What's good about the music. It's wibbly wobbly... like a wobbly tape... people think of it as mannered, but I find it most immediate and affecting of 'britpop'... or that era... like it gets in your guts and it's sex, it's sincere and brave and it's about the extreme things that happen in imagination. people think it's pretentious in its darkness but it's not really dark, it's a certain colour of whimsy. It's what I intuitively always thought art should be, an honest reflection of some decidedly real interior landscape, and honest in that.

It's only british in that it's in a silly british accent and from british minds, it's not all self conscious like Parklife or Oasis. Or about reacting against America or against grunge. In fact it's all international in its scopey wope.

It's successfully its own thing, they created a world to be in. It's completely successful in that. That doesn't score you points for being influential or for 'winning' supposedly important laddish culture-fights, but it's the only thing I care about sometimes. And that created/evoked world isn't for 'escaping' reality, it's for uniquely and eloquently articulating aspects of reality, in time and mind, so you can go there and know what they mean.

Brett was a grownup and I was 15, I didn't want Brett to be my boyfriend. He was an aspirational icon type thing. I think he was alright at being that. He sat on a stool in my bedroom. Even after the blue nose incident.

I probably threw away all my fanzines and posters during one of the times when I thought I hated Suede/ was embarrassed by the ferocity of my former ardour. (I found that stupid phrase coming out of my mouth on the phone to Scott, thought I might as well give it space.)

Being a teenager involved a lot of 'fuck it' committing to things that were potentially embarrassing, then feeling embarrassed a lot when some of the passion fell away.

All my best and most inspired art I feel like has been done when I've been going out on a limb, unsure if I have any support at all, doing something with zero guaranteed audience, but being sure of some ferocious inspiration that was leading me somewhere. Those were the sorts of feelings I had about Suede, just before I truly thought of myself as an artist or knew how to articulate any of this.

I had forgotten how he moved in concerts. The wiggling and the grinning. I always thought his face wrinkled up in a pleasing way. There are a lot of distinct angles and planes on it, I feel I'd have a field day drawing it now. The first concert in Exeter, the bit that stuck in my mind, that grabbed me, was the shape of that haircut at the back of his neck where it was short. It's often specific visual cues like that that are the initial bait for my bigtime cultural crushes/muses. (Paul McCartney's eyebrows in Hard Day's Night, Orton's profile) Of course then I was too young to properly understand the concept of useful muses, and I was frustrated in every way. But now I'm frustrated in less ways, and I can go back and validate the ways in which I WAS onto something. The ways in which I was right.

All the time that's passed... fifteen years or so.... all the things I've been indifferent to in that time. My increasingly 'sophisticated' understanding of where cultural idioms come from, learning about the sixties and all that crap. Repeated suspicions that pop music feels a bit dead, as if it was all one great big living organism that's run out of steam. And that boys in guitar bands feel now especially pointless and stale, people who assume we need boys in bands are indulging in a small 'c' conservatism that I find dogmatic. Not that all boys in bands have to be bad, I just don't like that assumption that they will always now be there. I don't like assumptions that come from a lack of imagination, or a clinging to the familiar, in a medium that's supposed to be about now and about being alive. What if the Decca people had been taken at their word when they said to the Beatles that guitar bands were out? That would be an interesting alternate timestream.

So looking back on Suede I have immense affection for them and for my memories of how it felt. Because then some boys in some bands felt to me like they were trying to say something about right then, and to say it kind of honestly and with integrity, and some musicality too.

It was sweaty and wiggly in those concerts, and there was a great intensity.... I'm glad I bothered to participate, and felt something passionate and hormonal enough to overcome my default shyness, quietness, solitude.

Bernard said he saw colours, brown for he first album, dark green for Dog Man Star. Then those were the colours of the album covers. It feels like he and they were quite visual music makers, which is part of why it was so easy for me to adopt them.

I've always thought of most arts as being plastic arts, material or pseudo-material realms in which to carve out carefully the visions and truths that visit your mind. Like you could squidge music or compose paint. So I guess looked at like that, no arts can die... but people can talk themselves into staleness, and maybe good things and good times should be recognised for what they are. Pockets of somethingness.

Though I'm talking about a kind of 'good' that is only partly about posterity and charts and objective comparisons. It's more about its power in my own memory and imagination. Perhaps this is asking to be subjective, internal music in that way, and loses out in those other earthly competitions.

And some of the lyrics are joyously funny to me now, 'Does your love only come in a Volvo?', 'On the escalator, we shit paracetamol'...'I don't give a shit if your bicycle's in bits'. it feels now like they're meant to be a bit funny. All the best things are at least a BIT funny. Well, that's how I feel at the moment. But I'm trying to figure out how to turn everything into cartoons.

Hello Sarah,   You said to say something about my life just now.  

My job is quite a nice break from the intensities of being an artist and the pressure I put on myself sometimes, and it's nice to be out in the town with the other people and get cups of coffee and see the shops and meet the nice old customers. Other times it's a horrific interruption to my concentration and makes me feel trodden on, and cross with myself for needing to work at this horrendously late stage in the game.  

Also it's messing up my arthritis which is bothering me, because I'm a bit trapped. Maybe not for too much longer.   Sometimes it's nice to be helpful to customers and feel I'm being decent and upstanding, and just being empathetic in small ways.  

And maybe I've learned some lessons about patience and tolerance and all that, but at this stage I'm all... learned that, can I go now.   It is good to not always be letting it all hang out.   Personally I find myself deeply suspicious of the indulgences that seem to be given to artists... though it's often the indulgences people who are self-diagnosed artists give themselves. So that's ironic, that I feel like that. I'm also suspicious of giving myself 'indulgences', I don't feel like it's excusable to get out of my basic responsibilities.   I find myself wanting to tell people 'I'm really good!' Because I do think I'm good at art, I don't think I'm good at many things but being good at art is kind of what I'm hanging things on, so I'm allowed to think that I am. I know that you can be good without being 'recognized' (not that I'm entirely unrecognized) but really to a lot of people recognition is all there is.   But in polite conversation, you can't say that you're good. But you can show off about having a show coming up in a swanky gallery, for peculiar social reasons. I don't have a show coming up in a swanky gallery though. So I can't say very many things.   Swanky galleries have felt a very very long way way from my world, but perhaps it's time to challenge that thought.   I want to be able to say to people that there came a stage when I realised I was an artist, not in any grand way, but just that that was my category. But the word is so abused. It would just make me sound like a twat. Yet in real life it had some meaning to realise that.   I'm also quite aware that my space that I cultivate in which to feel like an authentic artist is quite small and rarefied, and I'm not like pals with lots of other local artists, and maybe I could be, I've nothing against them, neither the good ones nor the bad ones, but it's not a necessity for my feeling productive.

But it might be investing a lot of time and emotional capital in such buddyships that's how a lot of people get along and make things happen. I've always instinctively conserved my art energy for seeking solitude and just trying to filter out distractions, almost fight them off one by one with a sword, recognizing new ones all the time.   And shyness means that putting effort into social networking (other than on the internet) is hugely sickmakingly daunting.   Not that my approach is 'purist' in any traditional way... in any obvious way...   But I do tend to think I am easily distracted... even now... not by drugs and gambling and stuff but bye errant thoughts and too many ideas to actually execute...  I have terrible problems focusing my mind enough to write sometimes...   We have a friend who says that my mind is a thicket.   I have visions of trying to tackle my thicket with a sword.   I want to paint knights with swords on horseback.   I want to paint them slaying lizards.   In elaborate military uniform.   In a world slightly lacking in gravity.   But otherwise quite convincing and alive   I want to paint paintings with innocent motives and sophisticated execution   otherwise what's the point of becoming sophisticated?   And what's the point in having the liberty of artisthood if you can't paint things with simple joy?   Sometimes I feel like I would be a better artist if I NEVER worried about my career.   Instead of what I do do which is worrying about it and beating myself up and not really having one.   I'd like to be in a little pocket apart from time.  

So, in late November last year, exactly more or less a month before Christmas, I trundled off by myself to Birmingham in order to meet Mick Foley.

And I have intended to write an account of it ever since.

It was bitterly cold that morning, and I was slow and arthritic navigating the icy railway bridge with my bare hands at spooky old deserted Dorchester West station.

I don't travel on trains much because it's expensive and I am broke, and I don't go to conventions and big events with crowds much. In fact, much of my life could be described as mole-like. So this was a big break from my routine, my routine of mole things, like for instance digging new mole corridors and eating worms. I was leaving my comfort zone. I was pushing my envelope. I was literally on the outside of my box.

But I felt it was worth it and had a disproportionate determination about achieving it. I had gloriously failed to meet Mick last April in London because I was stupid. That had made me cross.

But he had written me a letter mentioning he was doing this memorabilia fair.

And I wanted to meet Mick, because I wanted to meet him. I had decided that ages ago. In 2004, the year of gradually becoming engrossed with wrestling (engrossed!), Mick's books... helped to engross me. They were one of the pivotal factors. Pivotal!

Actually looking back, the three major hooks were (in chronological order):

1. SPECTACLE: The spectacle of the early 90s video colours be-tassled Hulkamania era stars and their baroque shouting (see: The Ultimate Warrior Sound Board)

2. IMAGINATION: Mick Foley's imagination as immortalised in his autobiographies, coupled with his ability to make wrestling seem a lot more warm and fun and interesting than it might otherwise have seemed.

3. SHAPE: The startling shape of the angry narcissist Randy Orton: I suspect I have discussed this enough and have nothing more to say about it at present.

But of those three things, the Mick books were... the most encouraging, I suppose. Without them I might have ultimately found the whole thing too alien and off-putting to sustain my interest for very long. I would have been less willing to cast aside my doubts. And in Mick I saw someone I could imagine being friends with. First things first: I had stuff to say to him. So I did say it. In a letter. Loads of enthusiastic candy-coloured non-cynical stuff. Back in the heady days of '04. I didn't have stuff to say to other wrestlers. Even ones I was a fan of. I didn't know what to say to them. I had barely come to terms with the idea that they were actual people and not plastic figments of hazy childhood memory. But with Mick there were potential points of contact, I felt. Of course this sort of thing is always a huge stab in the dark leap of faith type of thing.

I didn't have much indication that he got my first long letter until about six months later when he sent me a sort of a half an email, possibly leaning over his disgruntled son at the computer and demonstrating an unconventional typing style, with a maverick approach to spelling and grammar. And then very very gradually we were sort of kind of pen pals.

(I should add that in handwritten letters Mick's spelling and grammar is better than mine, I think it was typing itself that was the obstacle on that occasion.)

Just before the email, I did meet Mick, in March 2005 at an indie wrestling show in Coventry at one of those trestle tables where wrestlers write their names on things for you with a big black pen. It's a peculiar business. I took a couple of my little strange paintings in a little sad box to see if he showed any recognition or had got my letter. On this occasion the greasy and wobbly wristed wrestler man CM Punk asked me 'What's in the box, Sweet Tit?' He wanted me to draw CM Punk next time sweetie. He referred to himself in the third person. That was the most memorable thing. Then Mick defended my honour and said I was a talented lady. But that could have just been being polite, I didn't make much of that. It's best not to get one's hopes up in these matters.

And... well there were Christmas cards and he sent me the Mr. Socko from his match with Ric Flair at Vengeance 2006. That was a nice thing to be given. It is a sports sock that looks like Ric Flair. It even has a spot of Ric Flair's blood on it. The very stuff of Flair. I'm still not sure how one ought to display such a thing. It is rather inherently flaccid and lacks the ability to show pride in itself. But I was so pleased to be given it. It made me feel selected. And I was able to tell the few people in my life who understood what this meant that I had received a sock soiled with the blood of Flair in the post that morning. And between you and me, I think they were impressed.

(I will get around to photographing the Flair sock. But not tonight.)

So.... returning to the day I arrived at the NEC space station in Birmingham...

I was so frickin' tired. I hadn't slept much, not exactly out of nerves, but just because of having non-mole type stuff to do and having to get up early. But at least I was sleeping in my dad's therapy-dispensing room, packed full of books about how to not be mental, which would always see me through if mentalism struck in the night.

So I got to the NEC, which is like a giant white future star trek place. Then I saw some imperial stormtroopers in the corridor and guessed I was walking in the right direction.

And so then I was in the right hall. I asked the chaps at the wrestling figurines stall if they knew where Mick was, because I thought they might know. They sort of knew only vaguely. (Maybe they were only in the second-hand wrestling figurines business for the money.)

I wasn't sure if he'd be under 'sports' or 'TV'. Anyway, I found him, sort of waved like a nervous mole-woman... (actually I felt oddly like Paddington Bear on a particularly unsexy day), and there was a comparatively massive queue and audience for him, and he came over and hugged me in front of the large crowd. So that was kinda nice but by that time I felt like I might faint from exhaustion, and it was all a bit much for a mole out of water. I hope he won't mind me saying, Mick is a uniquely shaped individual, thus hugging him is a unique experience.

So then I was offered a position at the Foley desk, so I sat next to Mick and watched people get their stuff signed for money and tell him all nice things about him. It was quite fascinating actually. But I was rather inert, rather uncharismatic for one reason and another. In some ways it was a strange circumstance in which to meet a person. And yet it was representative of his life as an already famous person, with the privilege of having people regard him as a sort of birthday treat of a father christmas of an action muppet of a person, worth at least a month's pocket money. But together with that went the responsibility of never not being famous, and always being patient and polite with everyone. As far as I can tell, not all famoes keep this side of the bargain, but Mick was quite principled about it... not only that, he made people feel included and made it fun, which is quite awe inspiringly skilful to a mere mole.

This is what Mick basically looked like from where I was sitting.

His nose is quite strikingly unique in real life, both in its shape and its relative scale.

At one point Mick fed me a protein bar, which was some kind of sweetened stick of stuff with peanuts glued to it, rather agreeable actually, especially to a hungry person with low blood sugar and anaemia. It also had the advantage of being a non-messy food, so I was able to maintain my ladylike demeanour.

Indeed the times we went to the green room for lunch type breaks, I only felt able to consume satsumas, for fear that the cast of Red Dwarf might otherwise witness me squirting mashed tuna across the room. Also because my stomach didn't feel normal and I don't like tuna sandwiches much in the first place.

Here is a minimalist illustration of the satsuma such as the ones I favoured in the green room.

I was concerned also that I'd shunned Craig Charles, as I never went and got the free photo that I'd been offered by him, due to my general terror at seeing myself in photographs, smiling for photographs, and generally the advent of photography.

Mick was one of the most popular 'exhibits' at the whole blasted place, if not literally the most popular. Over at the Dr. Who stand, by contrast, national icon Roger Lloyd Pack was exclaiming 'I'll sign anything!'

Whereas even more treasured and iconic national icon treasure Leslie Philips looked rather small at his little table, hoping to sign copies of his autobiography, 'Hello!'.

I got a bit worried at various points that Mick found me disappointing in comparison to my myspace picture. He said I looked or was different than it. 'Softer' or something. I didn't know if that was in a good or a bad way. I wondered if he had expected some kind of sturdy warrior art goddess, rather than an arthritic pale paddington bear mole. His face is decidedly difficult to read. When I arrived, I didn't quite imagine I'd be given such a privileged spot and be looked after in the way I was. I can't remember now what I had expected. I felt guilty for not being more amazing.

Mick's fans were a jolly nice bunch. They were a jolly diverse bunch, too. It was very nice to sit and watch them all be a bit starstruck and happy. Some ladies in the late autumn of their lives were avid followers of WWE's Attitude Era, it turns out. And some little children who weren't born when Mick was in his peak wrestling years were aficionados of his career through the miracle of the DVD. One lady who chose the bloodiest of the the available photographs to be autographed turned out to be a 'gorelesque' performer, mixing burlesque and blood and bloodyness and general blooding. Mick sad he often wondered about the fans who chose the bloody picture. Then again, he was the person doing the original and iconically copious bleeding.

My friend Scott, who has ME, wanted me to try to get a signed picture of Joe Frazier for him. He gave me some money for the purpose. I found Joe Frazier a bit less than approachable-seeming. He was wearing a gold suit and a crazy face and charging quite a lot for his signed pictures. I dithered. I was feeling quite shy. Mick noticed how shy I was in real life. In the end he helped me out with the Frazier situation. He sent a note to Joe explaining that Scott was ill and mentioning magic secret celebrity codewords. The upshot was that we scored a free quite large signed picture of Joe Frazier, and it even said 'Get well soon Scott' on it. When I did give the picture to Scott at his house later that day, he was quite pleased with it. In fact he behaved as though it was the best thing anyone had ever been given in the history of gift giving.

Here's the Joe Frazier picture in pride of place above Scott's bed.

I guess that incident was pretty unremarkable from Mick's point of view among the rich anecdote-bearing tapestry of his life in show-business. But it did mean so much to us.

I took some photos but my sister might have deleted them. It doesn't matter, because I've probably got enough of the point across in words and drawings. Also I went to meet Mick, not to take photos.

So this is me recreating the time Superman posed for me. (Somewhere near the great sky-satsuma, evidently.)

When I had to finally leave on the second day, Mick walked me to the escalator, following a mooch round a quite disappointing Christmas Fayre with Sandra the playboy lady but without mulled wine or much that was Christmassy. I had mentioned something about people hanging intestines up on trees in Pagan times. Mick thought I was making it up. I'm sure I heard that somewhere. That was a little burst of improbable disgustingness that broke my general pattern of shy cautiousness in the conversations we'd managed. Mick was constantly being stopped to pose for photographs, so conversations were interrupted. I wasn't accustomed to this. In fact this happened at the very moment I ascended the escalator, possibly with my arse too much on display.

Maybe I'll think of other stories from this adventure which are suitable for mass consumption, but I've written enough for now.

So following on from the last one... I suddenly realised it was quite ironic me being all cynical about the elevation of obsession as an arbiter of value, because my work, and my arting mind, is pretty consistently obsessive. Even if I'm not 100% obsessive in life as far as it exists outside of art, I positively nurture my obsessions, and nurture a mindset of obsessiveness in the very fibre of my scribbling and daubing.

Of frenzied mapping and groping...

And my other thought was that of course secular art culture elevates obsession, because in the absence of absolute values and absolute truth you're kind of left with your own whims, and obsessions are like the strongest kind of whims. The kind of whims that compell one to plough a sort of blinkered furrow, and temporarily restrain one from becoming too fickle and flitting to the next thing. Disconcertingly, worringly, chaotically flitting. Obsessions at least create their own kind of discipline, their own kind of order, for a while. A false absolute to cling onto? Or just a route to something real... I've clung to the latter theory...

And I think I've thought things through enough to make my natural obsessing not conflict with perennial strivings for truth beauty and goodness. I think I almost try to achieve these things by 'feel'... maybe more on this later...

But I got this message on myspace which made me wonder (I hope the sender doesn't mind my reproducing it):

'Absolutely fantastic, inspired...

...art work, Chloe.

When I've completed my book, I'll be hoping you'll agree to illustrate it.

Your art is reminiscent of the best I've ever seen - i.e. Kafka's 'The Trial'.

Those illustrations exude pure psychological terror and isolation. As all good art should! As yours does.

I'm glad for the add...'

I was obviously pleased to receive such high praise from a clearly thoughtful chap. In fact I woulnd't try to deny the truth of his observations, that my work may sometimes have those properties, of 'terror and isolation'. That's the problem. I believe him, that's why this actually makes me concerned about myself and about the habits of my imagination. It makes me concerned simply that I've forced myself into too claustrophobic a space, mentally and perhaps physically. Even the 'pure psychological' bit could be bothersome. I don't want it to be just my frenzied mind reflecting off its own insides. Yuck! I hope I am connected to something more spacious. Or at least that I will be.

Perhaps I don't mind that my art conveys these things, if they count as honest and true, a true reflection of something in me that reflects and is read as something universal and humane. And if I have managed to reflect those things in a specific way that could only have found a voice through my shapes. That's OK. But do I wish to be so isolated, if this is true?

And then I had some more thoughts about the nature of the 'life' I'm aiming for in my pictures while watching the end of the Andrew Graham Dixon programme on BBC4 about medieval churches and the Reformation. It was mentioned that even when the protestant image destroyers didn't destroy an image completely, they would at least remove the face, and prioritise the 'blinding' of the eyes. Because it was almost like those images did have their own life and their own power, which is why they seemed such a threat. And it made me think about my recent images and my recent attraction to the idea of carving gargoyles. Of making something with peculiar life. Sometimes I wonder of this life is a little too peculiar. A little inverted, a little demonic.

As I alluded to before with talk of 'feel' and 'mapping' and 'groping'.... I've become aware lately that my drawings have become a lot about touch. They've come closer and closer to being like a process of carving form, through drawing. It's like moving my fingers across a surface as it gradually takes form and all the little facets become increasingly subtle and eventually they sort of.... enmesh. But is this touch-heavy touch-seeing process a little bit like the drawing of a blind person?

Is it like missing the big picture?

Sometimes I yearn for a certain kind of LIGHT...

I suppose.. line drawings are more about form and oil painting is more about light, so maybe I'm asking too much... but I... think I know what I mean... I don't want to be a fungus.

I would rather be a desert flower.

I mean I expect naturally be a sort of quiet English flower that thrives in the damp and shade, but I'd like to at least aspire to be a desert plant of some kind, because I love their manly and way out shapes so much. And I have more urges to bask in the sun than I used to, despite the fact I'm not built for it.

It'll be good to draw on some bigger paper, once I've got past this week's draftswoman's block. My constant A4-ing must make me quite restrained... it's almost like as long as it's still on A4, it's still an idea, a proposition, a doodle, but once it's bigger, it's staking a claim on worldly existence.

I don't think I'm proposing ditching the gropey touchy drawings exactly. I think this must be one of those writing to enhance self awareness jobs. Once gropey touchey drawing is defined as a thing, I can be more aware of when I'm falling into it unthinkingly.

And I can try to make a version of it that bends towards the sun, and tries to be beautiful.

I guess it's a matter of seeing the big macro picture and not getting too het up with all the micro mechanics, I'm not in the lab, I ought to maintain some vision.

It may also be to do with sacrificing some control, sacrificing the idea of drawing in order to gain control, and letting stuff happen more.

****

I've become aware since trying to draw to a unifying concept rather than letting things 'grow' based on preferred reference material of the day/ meditations on nature's visual fruit... Well I've come to see that it is a sort of connection to the actual specific actuality of a subject that often excites me, and creates viable grooves. Not an imposed order. Another way of putting it might be that I often make myself fall in love with my subjects, and I don't necessarily mean fully full blown in love, but some kind of mechanism that's related, or a single dimension of in loveness. Either I choose subjects I've already fallen for, or the very process makes me feel more intimately and positively connected to them. And I have become used to the idea that this connection gives the things I do a little more depth, a sort of interest in penetrating the truth of a subject that's more than just mild interest or quasi-scientific prodding. And this has left me a little befuddled, because...

Well I'm not sure I want to be in love with all my subjects, especially when they're men, it makes things a bit sticky. It's slightly creepy, or spooky or something. Another problem is I'm not sure... I'm not obsessed with anything really specific right now, so there's a lot of dithering going on. I never know who to cling to when the rain sets in. And obviously I didn't plan to start the Jerwood project from this 'meditating on my loves' position, I wanted to do something more calculated, or more directed. But... I like nature, I defer to nature. Including loves, including light. What the heck are my 'ideas' in the face of it.

Maybe I should do like Turner and love mainly the Sun.