I am trying so hard to care about anything today that I started to realize how much I miss being a street artist. Truth be told it's a young persons game and I couldn't go back under any circumstance but when I was out there I could always find hope. I sometimes look back at that adventure like this:
I remember standing at a party with a beer in my hand way back at Art College. I was thinking about how I’d spent my entire life to that point in the suburbs where there was little of interest to talk about. No one out there knew who Neil Gaiman or David Cronenberg was, I hadn’t even heard of Chomsky was and if you didn’t play hockey you were likely to get beat up or labeled. This complete lack of interest nearly turned me into a recluse so I ran for the big city, made a bunch of paintings and got involved in the college. I started to get excited.
Here was this giant institute of ideas with professors of the world, controversial courses and critical thinking. I learned about radical behaviour and had many of my concerns regarding consumerist culture and the decline of western civilization validated. I even found hope in the possibility of artwork being used to incite social awareness. I discovered the Dadist’s and learned more about the theatre of the extreme. I read about people who used artistic expression to cause trouble, to educate, to question the state of our unsustainable existence. Marcel Duchamp, Cindy Sherman, and my first exposure to Banski. It actually made sense, we, the artists, were warriors, the last known defender’s of common sense and human decency. This was were I wanted to be. ( Actually I wanted to be Batman but this was as close as I was going to get)
So I was standing there at the art party and saw a circle of classmates forming. Most of them were recognizable as top students and they all had begun to make names for themselves in the scene. In fact if I told you who they were now you’d likely even know of most of them. Their artworks have become reasonably successful and I’ve seen them all in magazines. So I got fairly excited and sort of out of character I shed my recluse and slipped quietly into the circle. I was excited to join the intellectual think tank.
They were talking about Hockey, not theoretically, not conceptually, not critically. They were talking players, goals, fist fights, stats and scandalous behaviour. And I, in my infancy spoke out about something else. I made a remark regarding the negative sociological affects that such fist fights must have on a young audience. Needless to say the circle went silent. In fact not only did this grouping of Artist’s stop their conversing but so did the entire bloody room. Everyone stopped talking and stopped drinking and stopped laughing, the keg let out a whisper, even the DJ stopped mid-groove. I could hear my own heart stuttering. The light directly above me illuminated to an uncomfortable level like it does after a concert so I calmly retreated the discussion and the party resumed. It was as though I’d ceased to exist. This is not where I wanted to be.
It wasn’t until a few years later, after this sort of situation continued ad nauseam, in the classroom, at the galleries and even the museums, that I finally cracked and decided there was no other alternative. I made a big sign, like any respectable derelict, and went to the streets to protest the world. The amazing part of my time there sitting on the side walk was that I’d finally found a place to discuss alternative ideals. People started stopping and my “save the world “ sign kept getting bigger and every single conversation was about problems and solutions and taking actions towards change. I met thousands of people from all over the world and in each individual instance, we were discussing philosophies, growing and learning from each other’s experiences. I was no longer reclusive but in fact quite the opposite and I never had listen to selfishness or meaningless consumerist bullshit out there.
Well I’m old now and my knees hurt and it’s not much fun to sit on the sidewalk, but worse than the physicality is that I’ve found myself back where I began. Without my huge sign I’ve nowhere left to turn for hopeful stimulation. Every where I go people are lapping up the American lifestyle, worrying about cars and sporting events, money and themselves. I can’t seem to find any more sympathizers nor any intellectuals and I miss all those zen marches out on the street.
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