Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Incommunicado
- Have you ever thought of wearing a mask or a Burka like those women in Afghanistan and Iraq? Go about incommunicado like?
You know you could hide your creativity under the robe, protect yourself from the personal jibes and misunderstandings that you say people are making about you.
- Are you trying to be funny!
- No, no. You could go onto the streets and yet still at the same time hide away and retain your dignity, that’s all.
- Oh yeah, a cross-racial, cross-dressing introvert with extreme religious beliefs, I’d be shot on the spot!
- True, you would stand out a bit, what about wearing just the hood?
- What, a hoody, Then they’d probably restrain me with a truncheon at my throat first and then they'd shoot me. Anyway I don’t want to become an even bigger object of curiosity; I get enough ridicule as it is.
- Well, er… how can you go into the street expressing your personal ideas without getting shot or manhandled by special police...mmn... you don’t half make life difficult for yourself don't you.
- I think expressing yourself in any way is getting more difficult now.
- Can’t you go out in just your normal bog standard Christio/Capitalist outfit, just once in a while?
- I can’t, I’ve tried, I get too jittery. When I’m confronted by the people I find then I have to rush down into the underground and dive onto an empty train, one that runs to a disused platform, where there are no guards on duty. Then I just sit there and wait for an hour or so, then I step onto the next empty train going back to the surface. Again and again I do this before it becomes so tiring that I stumble off somewhere in Zone four, hours later, exhausted. And so much work time wasted! I know all the stations by now, because You have to know the places, to keep away from those people.
- Well that’s because they know, they know the kind of work that you do. There must be something else you can get involved in like Taxidermy or Military modelling, something practical and inoffensive yet retains some of the same structures and innate impracticalities of what you're doing now.
- Military Modelling!?
- Well OK then…Scrabble, That’s becoming like chess these days, or maybe stamp collecting, that could be a good one - people get really into that now you know.
- Do you realise how hostile you are being to my beliefs, do you? Just don’t understand do you… oh what’s the point, I need to find real people with real interests, who are sympathetic to my work. Maybe I could put an Ad in the paper or something. There must be other people out there with similar beliefs and ideas. Maybe I need to emigrate to a different culture, one that takes their religious beliefs seriously.
- Are you not interested in western culture at all then?
- Of course I am, in some ways.
- Then why do you hold such extreme views? Everybody knows you need to compromise just a little, to get along in life.
- You can't believe only half heartedly in something?
- Yes but you don’t have to spend all day long doing it, like you know, split your time up between doing this and doing something a bit more socially active. You are not going to be able to carry on doing this much longer anyway, where are you going to get the money? Have you ever tried selling some of your work, to see if there genuinely is a market out there for it?
- I suppose you think that I should put myself out on the stock market, and rent myself out in shares so that each person can take a pick at me. This is not simply a commodity that I’m making here; I don’t want my work to be associated with this bloody craze for pragmatism and free racketeering. You have to build your strict set of principles, a set of codes to counter the constant pressures to give up and join in. And anyway I’m not very good at anything else, what do you want me to do meat packing, join a gnome making factory?
- I don’t say give up you beliefs completely, I wish you wouldn't take things so personally, it's just I don’t think that you are doing yourself any good with this self sacrificing lifestyle, it’s just not healthy, you need to think about yourself a bit more.
- Here we go again, this insane culture of the self. That’s what the government relies upon, just think of number one, and of course there is a criteria surrounding your notion of the self, what the self should consist of, what we have to do in order to think of ourselves as valued individuals, independent, a part of the community, respectable, mature, important. All these aspirations pushed onto us so that we feel a little bit included in the world, so that we can feel a little bit a part of society, it's all soul distroying. But if we could resist those pressures, just imagine the possibilities, the creative potential.
- Yes, and the despair and the anxiety?
- Only if you are worried about what people think, you have to be your own boss.
- Well don’t you want your work to be a part of society, aren’t you interested in attracting interest in your work in this terrible society.
- We call it a society but what does it really consist of, what is the glue which holds us together; No religion, no respect from the politicians, no set of values that people can look to and hold up. Politics is increasingly about control and managing the effects of global market forces, what ever works. They've divided us up in order to rule us, each of us in our own little box.
- All the artists that you like are in that market and are propped up by it.
- Yes but they have been able to resist the pressures to sell out and are usually determined people who have held on to there principles in the face of market forces encouraging them to do otherwise. In fact I've joined a group.
- Aren't you going against all your principles?
- This is different, we’re holding a rally in London on Saturday.
- You? Have you forgotten what happened the last time you joined a social gathering?
- Er, Well, We've decided that We're going to act, at last.
- We, what do you mean we? You don’t know anybody.
- There are people, I think. I don’t know who’s going to turn up, but you have to start somewhere. We're hoping for about a thousand people turning up.
- I bet they're just a bunch of extremist outsiders who feel rejected by society so they have to make up some religion that serves their anti social needs.
- Look, we didn't choose this religion, it chose us, I've been talking to some and we all seem to have the same you know, desire.
We've always known that this god existed really, intuitively, subconsciously, but only now has it becoming really clear in our minds. Funny really isn’t it how a person can exist their whole life without realising that some one is out there, watching over you, saying "that George, he has followed my preaching in the truest sense and has sacrificed himself in a way that no other follower has."
- I bet you see yourself as above everybody else, what with your creativity and stuff. One day you are you going to climb down from your mountain or up from out of your deep chasm to join the rest of us?
- Who? You? Rubbish, I can do what I like. You are either with us or you're against us. My fellow believers and I are trying to start a community based upon new economic and social ideas, the details of which I shall let you know of if you wish when I come back from the meeting.
- A meeting?
- God, I've got to get ready for it now actually, the meetings in half an hour, God, I forgot (starts taking clothes out of cupboard).
- So where abouts is this meeting?
- A secret location, somewhere in London, gotta keep stum.
- You're not wearing that are you?
- What's wrong with it, I always wear this into town. It kind of gives me extra protection.
- You're not going to put the zipper up, how are you going to navigate around?
- Oh, you get used to it. It gets a bit hot in the summer in the Tube rush hour but it does the job. I have inserted a webbed grill, see, on the side for looking left and right, it's clever don't you think. Loads of hidden pockets, it's great.
- It looks about four sizes too big, the hem's nearly touching the ground.
- It can get very chilly in the Tube at night.
- You look like you're going to treck across the south pole or something.
- Are you discriminating about my choice of dress? Most people wear such boring stuff, at least I got a bit of imagination. Anyway, got to go, just check the street, hang on...OK, all clear...see you then.
- Bye then. Remember I want full details when you get back.
- Right you are.
