This week so far has been a week of extremes, beautiful spring sunshine and now sleet and snow, I think really that sums me up, one day the sun shines and all is well and then it’s cold, grey and wet, weather nobody wants to tolerate.
The week started off in quite an artist way, I spent me first day doing voluntary work and had a really good day. Such a good time engrossed in what I was doing I was more or less tic free, supporting a young man with learning disabilities with his painting. Art was one of the subjects at school I enjoyed and did well at, I did for a while toy with the idea of going to Carmarthen Art College to do a foundation course. Whilst I was teaching art rooms did have a certain pull for me, full of artwork, materials, art books and a mass of found objects, my art teacher at St John Lloyds was no exception, Meurig Evans, who is sadly no longer with us, which is very sad as he’s the same age as my dad, he was in the same year at Gwendreath Grammar, if he was still alive he’d be 63. He was a keen beach comber and his room was filled with stuff that he’d found, one day he told us that he’d found a sheep which he took home with him and buried in his garden and was going to bring the skeleton into school. Art was one of the lessons where my tics weren’t an issue, I was busy and enjoying myself so I wasn’t trying had to concentrate on anything that seemed difficult to me. There was also quite an interesting programe on TV on Monday also, channel4.com/programmes/dam... however I still think that Damien Hirst is still overrated but it was interesting to see what’s behind his work…not a lot actually. The programme was basically Hirst guiding Noel Fielding (yes, Noel Fielding) around his soon to open exhibition. It seems like an odd combination as Hirst’s work is very precise and Noel’s work (art-wise) is exuberant, spontaneous and full of colour (see picture) and like his comedy is full of references from his childhood and the world around him. (But what has this got to do with TS? You ask) Like Noel I’m a walking archive of childhood memories from the world around me as I grew up, be that music, television anything really. It doesn’t take much to bring up a snippet from the past, let me demonstrate, let me just find out what Tourette’s Hero’s touretteshero.com/ been tweeting. “Its take your wheelchair to work day.” My ticcy brain turns that back into “its take your dog to work day”, you know that day that encourages people to take their dog into work with them. Going back to Damien Hirst and Noel Fielding, I thought that there would deeper means behind his work, rather like the dance students at Coventry University whilst I was there “This is about my struggle with my sexuality within an …….etc…etc…blah..blahh…blahhh” Hirst’s work (rather like my music and my fellow music students work) was merely often playing with colour and form and just the mad idea of “what if…..” so perhaps a lot of serious contemporary art is like many of my compositions, playing with colour, form and texture like the young man I was supporting on Monday, some of the paintings that he had previously had done were layer upon layer of acrylic paint, one was done over a poster of Bourneville College in Birmingham and some of the layers scraped away to show the building beneath, I quite liked it.
The other side of the coin this week is my on-going worry about what the government is up to next, beneath the cover of taxing pasties and people panic-buying petrol the NHS reforms became law. This is heart-breaking considering so many people were against these reforms, me included. I live in fear of what could happen and how it’s going to impact on us. The condemns also want to bring in a full-scale “1984” style spying programme, not content with the amount of personal information they’ll have about us on their database in India for the purpose of administrating the Universal Credits they also want to monitor our internet use, they want to read our emails and have a good look at your school pictures on Facebook (“haha, look at your glasses, remember Evs Art when he caught you smoking, pmsl”) really, is there anywhere left where they’re not watching us? They say this is to protect us from terrorism, but we all know otherwise…..If you have a bit of spare time look for “The Artist Taxi Driver” he’s upset, he’s angry, he’s a cabbie and I know where he’s coming from, it’s just that illustrates my sentiments with more colorful language – hence the lack of link, he’s swears more than me. I also have in my possession the MOST patronizing letter I have ever read, it’s to my MP Dan Byles, is response to a few questions I put to him when I saw him last tourettes-action.healthunlo... The letter in question was from Chris Grayling dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti... just seeing his picture makes my blood boil ! I would love him to live with my TS and co-morbidities for just a month, let’s see how much work he can get done. Back to the letter, I can’t really say what I really think about it here, but as well as being patronizing to myself it was patronizing to my MP, we may be both blonde but any fool who has read any of the papers relating to the Personal Independence Payment would recognize great big chunks of text that have been copied and pasted. Really, I could do better and I’m the one with the Tourette’s and Mental Health problems. Also with regards to the Personal Independence Payment, there are rumors floating around that, Serco, a company banned from Norway for being “unethical” will be doing the face-to-face assessments. Oh, joy.
I’m not sure what the stats are this week, but back in 1981 perennial Brummie favorites UB40 (that was the card/booklet you had to sign on, I’m not sure what it is now, UB??) 1 in 10 were unemployed. Apt lyrics.
