‘Locked inside The Maddening House’

‘Locked inside The Maddening House’ (2026, mixed media on paper, 190x190cm)

It’s hard not to confuse the sense of life’s potentialities afforded to your younger self with those experienced by a wider collective at the same moment…

For myself, not so long ago, the online communicative space appeared to contain an open-ended if volatile dynamic, which opened up a space within everyday life for another kind of world to feel genuinely believable.

It’s what all of us born, for morally wrong or right, with a sense of the slow triumph of civilisational equality felt was kind of always bound to happen, and previously merely waiting in the dark to be uncovered.

In a sweet spot between succumbing to what Mark Fisher called ‘touch screen capture’ and the post 2008 crash, I encountered a flurry of books and essays all seemingly pregnant with proof that the 21st century we all needed was already here, it just needed arranging properly. And surely we all would want that?

Yet between the mid 2010s and the post-pandemic world such a sense of potential has been replaced with a version of a world with no alternative that feels far more claustrophobic and final than the 2000s that Mark Fisher saw in ‘Capitalist Realism’.

Words and ideas began to feel captured and siloed prior to their conception. The advance of algorithmic culture wars seemed to cancel out even the speculation of something that wasn’t already marked and captured by one of 2 camps. We became prisoners to opposing ‘mind camps’, where dialectical materalism was starved of oxygen, as ideas began to bounce off bunkers harbouring atomised people always expecting the worst.

At the same time, we have never witnessed so much flesh in image form. There’s the ones we produce, as if out of some dictatorial command, of own self-perfection missions (gym pics, body positivity….that is always Only Fans adjacent), and these exists side by side with live stream footage of dead babies, burning flesh – pure nihilistic carnage. Human flesh itself has become the foundational base upon which a new psychosis has emerged,

Art, the will to express, is now in a existential contestation with content creation. Art has always been, at least on a personal level, a contested space between the projection of hope and a projection of despair. And how to navigate both without accidentally endorsing thinking that harms others. I share because only by sharing could whatever I say be acted upon. Yet, in a world of Instagram artists, the potential agency of art often seems asphyxiated by the need for attention, to be seen and validated.

The theorist Franco Baradi (Bifo) spoke of ‘Morphogenesis ‘as opposed to ‘Regenesis’. Regenesis is kind of the expansion of the same, whereas Morphogenesis produces the wholly unexpected. Bifo suggested that we need ‘the poet’, ‘the designer’, and ‘the engineer’ to combine energies to bring the latter about. However, in recent years, since the pandemic, his work has shifted suggesting that the only way to go now is to quit: to perform spiritual, existential and intellectual resignation.

In England, Britain, this is the first year where runaway climate change has felt undeniably and tangibly part of everyday life. Yet, as things stand, we still feel trapped by systems of habits that will continue to make us burn. Old that rhythms, movements that merely reproduce the old hat, become manically charged and, in turn, finally exhaust us. Optimism uses codes that regenerate the bars of the prison.

Many of those books that once gave me so much hope I’ve just simply ripped up, sacrificed in a sense.In this drawing they now occupy the space of other worlds that we can we can no longer reach inside The Maddening House.

We are trapped inside the maddening house. Yet madness may be the only way out

42 years of not trying hard enough (to be normal)

By the end of next week I will know the conclusion of an assesment for a diagnosis.

The amount of little wars I’ve reactivated on myself from years of accumulating theories of doing life wrong.

Many have accused me of having a victim mentality, and there is some evidence. Yet it was and has been at least at times a defence strategy, when I could not adapt to be what I was told I should be….

And to this script, I have done life wrong: I’ve failed on most counts of being a valued adult. It doesn’t matter how much blood and sweat you put into life, if you can’t ascribe it to the script, then you can’t play.

And the majority of my adult life has been a case of watching others do the adult life whilst I could only observe.

In my mind, I have tried my damn hardest to always do the right thing, but the pervasive evidence of the script says I haven’t.

I am not sure what the conclusion of this assessment will be, but the one thing I wish to take away from it is an ability to arrive at some kind of peace with the life I have accrued for myself.

The Final Battleground of Thatcherism

“The Final Battleground of Thatcherism” (160x100cm)

It’s been a very long time, recalibrating after a personal milestone of an exhibition. Reconsidering what affect art in an age where image bombardment has the same impact as a climatic shift. But also realise you must keep going.

This work’s title came from one of my last conversations I had with my former art tutor Garry Sykes, before he passed away 2 years ago. His verdict on Social Media was that is was the ‘final battleground of thatcherism’. I have been working on trying to use that as a title for years now, and this is the visual outcome.

Thanks.

Daily writing prompt
What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?
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NEVER BULLY ANYONE.

…and if you feel drawn in. If you feel that desire to get ‘one over’ someone in a more vulnerable position to you, stop and walk away!

I was sat on the 20:45 bus home this evening. The warmth in the UK atm is wierd (weird but also worringly the new normal) and there is a wierd smell, the kind of smells that warmer countries are either used to or know how to prevent.

The heatwaves have traditionally produced our worst behaviours here in the UK.

Although I am 42, I am still the kind of person who makes no trouble, keeps themselves safe from harm. But if there is something that triggers pure rage in me it is being a witness to bullying.

A group of young, attractive and confident teenage males, were spread out at the back of the 95A bus out of Barnsley. When they started shouting ‘bender!’ again and again.

In front of me was a youngish looking man, who I am convinced has learning disabilities because he is normally with a personal assistant.

He always wears a face mask, probably has done since it was mandatory back in the Covid 19 pandemic. He was wearing an black vest that show off your arms.

I overheard somebody speak about ‘skinny, weedy arms’, and me being me, even at 42, I assume they are talking about me. I also look a little odd; I only ever wear shorts when the weather is frightenignly hot, and I already feel vulnerable.

But it turns out they weren’t on about me. They were clearly picking on this young man in a vest and with a face mask, as I saw him stressfully react as another ‘bender’ slur was aimed his way.

In between overheard accusations of him abusing a girl, I still knew that this man was vulnerable; a man with learning disabilities left exposed to the whims of lads showing off to the young women on the bus.

I couldn’t help it. Even in my silly prescription sunglasses, I kept looking back at behind me, trying to make them aware that I am aware what they are doing.

At one point I saw this young man hold is head in his hands in despair, and then aplogised to the person behind him for accidentally kicking their back. This was a deeply vulernable person.

I HATE BULLIES.

I hope I haven’t been a bully, but I probably have at least ALLOWED others to bully someone at my expense.

I have been bullied more than I recognise. There is nothing nice to say as I know that I still would be bullied if I put myself in those environments.

Yet seeing others being bullied makes me want blood; i’m sorry to speak like that, I just hate bullying so much.

Maybe the little pricks on the bus will grow up and be decent people, but I know so many people who have gone on that path, whilst their victims never recovered.

The best I could do, after trying to stare with disaproval, was to submit a complaints form to the Stagecoach company.

Daily writing prompt
What is something you wish you could tell your 20-year-old self?
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I think my 20 year old self may have a lot to tell me tbh…

As somebody who is slowly but surely coming to terms with realising he most likely has a neurodiverse mind, I would most likely find a version of myself more commited to celebrating difference than at any other point in his life.

Aged 20 I did not want to fit in at all. However, the following decades would slowly beat it out of me, convincing me that the ony way I could actually live in this world was to work my socks off to do things ‘normal’ adults achieved.

I’d tell my 20 year old self to keep going as he was.

The Return of Nasty

Of late I’ve come to embrace the term ‘hot take’.

Always too scattered in mind and physical movement to be academic, I love a term that is short-form for “this might be a mad idea, but…’ – and it sits more comfortably with the creative minded.

A couple of years ago Novara Media did a very interesting Podcast called The Nasty Noughties. A decade still revolving around the attitudes and norms of the 1990s had lost it’s optimism, public spiritedness and resorted to a downward-punching mentality.

The downward-punching wasn’t a straightforward top-to-bottom class-based exercise, but one that was far more nuanced,  based on picking up on any vulnerability wherever spotted (although inevitably slanted in favour of the better off).

The working class began to split itself apart in the years after Blair’s government vowed to build on Thatcher’s work. One section began to see its future within the framework of Blair’s “education education education!” mantra and the other half began to exist, by and large, in a process of intergenerational brutalisation. Jock-type uni lads would pick on the ‘chavs’ (not a term I enjoy using) who couldn’t never go to ‘uni’, and the ‘chavs’ in turn would make life hard for those of similar economic status who had nonetheless maintained abstinence from the self-brutalising processes of post-Thatcher in hope that they too could one day use education as a way out.

All in all, the decade that lasted until the student protests and English Riots of the early 2010s, was one where prejudices and outright bullying were disguised as moral missions.

The 2010s were a weird decade, in the fact that although defined by a brutal Tory regime of public sector cuts and much more, saw less bullying and downward-punching in everyday life. This, for me, rather than being caused by the shame of seeing the lads who used to bully you now sleeping rough in town, was mainly due to the fact that we were all now fully online, able to constantly contact and be contacted and to engage with content instantaneously.

Not without serious concerns, this was still relatively novel, and inconclusive as to where it would all end up. Not only this but for the first time you could walk down a street and pass the kind of places where you used to feel intimidated to find nobody is remotely bothered with you because they are staring at their screens. Subcultures also began to merge into one thing offering hybridised fashion styles, and gym culture and personal goals became more important than hating your neighbour.

Move on to the 2020s, and although delayed due to lockdowns and readustments to public life, my hot take is that we are currently witnessing ‘the Return of Nasty’

My hot take is that Nasty has picked up where it left off at the start of the 2010s, but by utilising cultural norms and events of the day: largely the success of far right politics in infiltrating everyday life.

For those who gain power by picking on what they see as a vulnerability, a politics with a pretence of decency so thinly veiled only journalists and news reporters can believe in it simply offers an opportunity to pick on and take their anger out on whoever they please.

Although a white straight man, I’m also somebody who learnt to be vigilant to bullying in my younger years. This often means, by looking out for it (the bullying) I am spotted more easily. Equally, I wear glasses, which sounds so miniscule compared to other visual differences, but trust me, Nasty is fine-tuned to utilise anything for it’s ends.

Sunday has long since been a ‘day of rest’ on this anxious island, and weekends, albeit a time perceived as one for leisure and pleasure, is the time when Nasty is fully on the prowl.

I walked out of the Poundland in my home town earlier, shoving a drinks bottle I’d bought into my rucksack in the anxious manner of someone always fearing judgement. In the corner of my eye I noticed something, that I’ll never fully know the cause of. Whether it was how I looked or how I moved, I had caught the attention of a woman and her daughter (or granddaughter). I couldn’t help but look back and see her staring at me with what seemed to be a look between disgust, hatred and mockery as she said something to her young daughter to make her also oggle me.

Even as I walked on, she was still looking at me in the same manner. I could only put it down to being akin to what was said to a passer by at a Unite The Kingdom rally: “you look left wing”.

I drove home taking a longer route, wanting to enjoy a percieve peace within the grey skys and rich greenery of June. Yet as I approached the crossroads near to home, a BMW full of young men lunged out and into my path, with enough space to avoid any necessary conflict, but close enough for the driver to still choose to spit at me in my car for no apparent reason then a “fuck you, buddy” gesture to a total stranger.

This is a rambling hot take, and probably needed more punch to highlight something I’m genuinely really worried about right now…

Something’s not right. Something about the behaviour of numerous people in the last month, especially since Reform did well in the local council elections, has made me really worried.

We are still in the Final Battlefield of Thatcherism, and who knows when or how this battle may end.

Daily writing prompt
Share a proverb you think is completely wrong and make your case.
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“There’s nowt new under the sun”

Everything is always in a process (long or short-form) of morphogenesis. Even in repetitive movements.

Our perception of repetition misses this because of the trauma capitalist acceleration inflicts on time itself: we constantly feel retrograded, fighting our way out of a mannequin museum dedicated to our own experiences.

OR, as Paulo Virno suggests; we think we feel deja vu, but what we are actually expering is a cognitive short circuit, that unveils our ‘memory of the present’. AND, because capitalist media production increasingly floods our memory with historical artifact in real time, we feel like we have seen ‘everything already’.