{"id":2336,"date":"2020-05-16T19:00:48","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T18:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gravityisahat.com\/?p=2336"},"modified":"2020-05-16T19:04:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T18:04:02","slug":"dream-amplifiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gravityisahat.co.uk\/index.php\/dream-amplifiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Dream amplifiers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Slightly tortuous week as the university tries to plan an autumn trimester of virtual teaching … so lots of reading and writing of multicoloured spreadsheets. I am not very good at it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henceforth when I say \u2018Today\u2019 I really mean a week ago. I started this post a week ago, or was it two. Really, I am not sure. I have been pretty busy (see above and below). The lockdown has smudged time don\u2019t you think? There are no significant markers like there used to be. No going to Tesco for cheap petrol, no treats like visiting a garden centre caf\u00e9 and having to have the banana cake cos they have run out of all the edible cakes. So treat the word \u2018today\u2019 like Captain Kirk might treat the word when passing through a worm hole – as a meaningless indicator of some time other than now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today we received a food parcel from the government despite me filling in a form saying no thanks. Makes the whole situation feel much more drastic and you feel much needier when you get free potatoes and bread without asking for it. I expected a turnip, some powdered egg and some lard but no \u2013 there was a tin of meatballs, some rice pudding and mushy peas along with quite a collection of boring stuff. The accompanying letter tells Nonna and I to stay at home till the end of June, which other than forcing us to cancel the skiing holiday we were planning, fits in nicely with our plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Update \u2013 we ate the meatballs. They were disgusting even when mixed with the jar of free pasta sauce that came out like fluorescent ketchup! The tinned peas were not mushy but they were also very fluorescent green and minty and big. Actually very Yum. However Maria and I have to agree, and this is a secret, that the sliced bread was delicious. After years of outstandingly delicious homemade bread it\u2019s great to have bread that tastes like the old British Rail sandwich bread (texture like damp rubber roofing tiles) and fits in your toaster effortlessly where it steams rather than toasts. The other bread in the box was Italian long life and weirdly dry, like the slimming bread of the 1960\u2019s. (Update to the update \u2013 we got another food box today \u2013 (update to the update to the update – yesterday) I tried to give it back to the driver but he said it could all end up being thrown away. It\u2019s more or less the same stuff plus the biggest onion ever. Now we have enough tins of rice pudding to run a 1950\u2019s hospital canteen or the House of Lords Nanny’s nursery tea shop. I have filled the no thank you form in again. Stay tuned for box number three apparently it takes weeks to filter through the system).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my last post I planned to talk through some of my thoughts on making and completing projects in lockdown. It was preoccupying me then and even more so now. So this time I had better get it off my chest before I am driven bonkers with the intense pressure I feel to make art or prepare for making art before this lockdown ends (I know it\u2019s pretentious and selfish but it\u2019s true). It competes with an equal and opposite pressure to abandon doing art and instead do something kind and useful and social. This pointless anxiety has been significantly inflated in lock down. While I should be enjoying the freedom to play and explore and make my soul available to the sustaining natural planetary forces of sun and fresh air I am actually beset by a drive to sit on my arse, stare at a screen and complete something so stupid that at best will satisfy only me and at worst won\u2019t even do that. I admit that all my life has seen a pattern of  similar struggles. Some would last a matter of hours before being abandoned  because I couldn\u2019t do whatever it was (probably because I was too lazy or stupid), many would last months, and a few would last years. I remember building a sit-in aeroplane out of a ladder. It was nothing just bits of scrap wood and old blankets, but inside I would peruse the Observers Book of Aircraft (recently recovered the self same copy from EBay) looking for additional design features that could be added with the judicious use of some hose pipe and an abandoned electrical socket. No exaggeration that project lasted months and in my head it flew. A vintage car project \u2018the Silver Streak\u2019, actually the bottom of an old pram, lasted a year. I painted out every spot of rust with silver paint, more than once, so it must have been a year or more. I never even got it to steer. If you didn\u2019t want to go straight you were stuffed. Still, in my head I completed the Monte-Carlo rally in that vehicle, it probably flew as well. The feature all these projects share is that they end up going nowhere. I use them as dream amplifiers they translate my simple need to do something amazing into something superficially tangible but that eventually amounts to absolutely zilch. My aeroplane went back to being a ladder and the Silver Streak went back to the jumble sale it came from, supplemented with lots of silver paint spots. I write this because today (last week) was a milestone day in the evolution of phonebox art. I completed the technical stuff pretty much to my satisfaction. (Update 18:48 today Saturday, I haven\u2019t). This milestone emerged from an embarrassing two days spent trying to solve a logic problem not dissimilar to those I would not have been able to solve had I ever sat the 11plus. It really wasn\u2019t that difficult but I just couldn\u2019t do it. My brain was like the lard I had hoped to find in the food parcel, thick and brick like. In the end I had to embarrass myself by posting the problem on a nerd site where it was gleefully solved and I was presented with a downloadable working example in less than an hour. I really resent not being good at something that I really like doing. Anyway along with this milestone moment came another epiphany when I realised that in all probability no one will ever go in the phone box other than me and a reluctant Maria. With its mouthpiece frosted in secondhand spit it and the handset greased  with the grime of dog walkers paws, chocolate crusted kids and the god knows what of bored teenagers (yes they do nip in from time to time) it might as well be proclaiming \u201cbeware the plague is in here.\u201d It is now a symbol of the dereliction brought about by the virus and represents five years of my creative life wasted when I could have been sculpting my Dave to rival Michelangelo\u2019s  \u2018David.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ha nonsense. What an opportunity!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. It is the perfect PPE \u2013 not exactly portable granted, however it\u2019s built to last<\/li>
  2. Flinging open its red framed glass doors to a queue of punters, come the eventual arrival of the vaccine, will make a magnificent first night launch metaphor for the ‘restoration of service’<\/li>
  3. Meanwhile it\u2019s egocentricity is magnified, such that the piece is not only just about me it\u2019s only for me. Perfect.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    So now I am experimenting with some ideas to make it yet more exclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    First let me set out it\u2019s key features many of which are new to this incarnation of the technology. Brace yourselves. Actually I know none of you will read this but I want it recorded for posterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n