Or: "How to get the government to pay for you to whinge about your non-existent neuroses by giving you a trip to... oh... Italy'd be nice."
OK, hop aboard. Time to take a cheap pot shot at the whole fucking shabang...
There are two sets of people in this world. First, people who get up on week days and drive or public transport it to work - you know, a standard, pain in the arse job - and get home about 5.30, 6.00 and feel knackered and have a beer on Friday night and thing "thank Christ it's Saturday tomorrow" and pay taxes; and, second, people who get those taxes through the Arts Council to fly to Paris or Italy and whinge about their hard life. The first set of people (by which I mean you and me) pay the Government to redistribute our income to far richer people who hang around coffee shops and wear non-prescription glasses 'cause they feel they've matured and who swan around one another and root each other and lend books to each other and who "discourse" together and do breakfast and worry about the toxins in their system so they go see the Russian naturaopath Justine recommended when she fell ill after Hugo left her for Carman and her exhibition was only two months away. And these people - the THEMS of the world - what is the very worst admission you could make to them? What could they never say about themselves? It's this - "I'm not creative."
[Pause. Stunned silence. The whole coffee shop stills. Victor, the owner, glances up from the cafe nero he's making. All the sculptors, art directors, graphic designers, painters, actors are stock still. Such a sentence has never been heard before in "Les Arsehole d'Picasso", the traditional meeting place of cognoscenti since it opened two and a half days ago.]
That's right, wankers. I'M NOT CREATIVE. Not one original, dynamic, disturbing idea in my body. I'm just one of US - yes us, and other 16.9999 million Australians who getup and go to work and couldn't give a flying fuck for post-modernism.
Photographers. They're the worst. I reckon if you can't be anything else, you become a photographer. (An art one, I mean. Not one who works at a newspaper or anything and has to compromise their creativity by knowing how to focus and stuff like that.) Like, if you can't paint even a little bit - if your acting is so appalling people start laughing during Ibsen - if you're tone deaf and disrythmic - then you become a photographer. Simple. You don't have to do anything - you just press a little button and then blow up the result later and "discourse" about the compositional fragmentation of the black and white shadow play in the foreground. Or background. It don't matter.
Anyway, these people - the THEMS - have all spent time in New York and Paris and the Italianate mountains courtesy of US. 'Cos they gotta get experience and become acquainted with the traditions of Western art and humanist philosophy and you can't be that by being in the Public Service can ya? Nope. You gotta live in some stupid garrett in Tuscany and then write your novel.
And you know what the fucking novels are all about? I mean, all of them. Every Arts Council-sponsored masterwork of poetic sensibility and disturbing street anguish? They're always about the mediocrity of suburban Australian life!! They're all lamenting the cultural desert that is middle class, materialistic Australia and lecturing the blind masses for their stagnant and empty lives.
BUT WE KNOW THAT ALREADY, ARSEHOLES, YOU ARTISTIC LITERARY WANKERS. WE fucking know our lives are a croc of shit and mundane and straightjacketed and lack fulfillment. WE DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING TELL US, so thank fucking Christ no-one but people like you read your shitfull books or attend your shitfull galleries or go to your shitfull theatre productions. WE KNOW we've never been to Italy - but we fucking paid your way, turd, so get the fuck off our backs. We are the cultural desert and we fucking hate it. But we sure as fuck don't want to read or see or hear or experience shitheads like you telling us so.
Get a fucking job. That'll solve all of your angst. Oh, if you're so unhappy and unfulfilled and troubled, it's easy. Don't go to a naturopath. Don't move to New York. Don't do yoga. Get a good ol' nine to five, and when you come home you won't be happy, BUT YOU'LL BE TOO TIRED TO WHINGE ABOUT IT. you'll watch TV and go to bed, like the rest of us... Shitheads.
You still with me hey? I've been saving up this for a while I'm afraid you're gonna have to do like Ian Anderson says that the start of "Thick As A Brick": sit this one out. By the way, TISM are playing soon somewhere... Palace or something, to help RRR; and Sydney; and some underage show - but, Jesus, it's too nice here to talk about that. The window is darkening under the coming storm. The living room sits still, and my desk is at the end. I can see the lights below me in the encroaching evening, and in the haze of evening lassitude, where the dying afternoon and my spinning mind meet, I can see yonder sober pleasant Fieosole. Oops... Sorry. Just practicing for my Arts Council grant. Oh well, back to it:
So who is Frida Kahlo? Here's that point: if you know who Frida Kahlo is, you are one of THEM. And if you've never heard of her, you are one of US. Frida Kahlo is the distinguishing line, the fault line, along which the population is divided. So before I tell you who she is, I'm gonna make you do this little test, to see just exactly where you fit in. The only thing, the THEMS are just as predictable and boring and conventional as the rest of us, so it's fucking obvious who Frida Kahlo is. But anyway, you'll get the point. Good luck. See you in about 2 minutes:
THE "WHO IS FRIDA KAHLO" US OR THEM INDICATOR INDEX
Question One: Occupation
Frida Kahlo was:
a) A post-primary teacher in Croydon
b) A tram conductor.
c) A woman of extreme magnetism and originality whose painting are emblematic of the suffering of the human heart.
Question Two: Marital Status/Family Life Frida Kahlo:
a) Raised two children, Karen and Joel, to be happy and fulfilled, and, together with her loving husband Gerard, a middle ranking executive in a footwear firm, was contented in a everyday sort of way.
b) Is still looking for the right guy.
c) Had a tempestuous relationship with Diego Rivera, a fat famous Mexican mural painter who rooted everything he could pin under him, including Frida's beloved younger sister Christina.
Question Three: Political Occupation Frida Kahlo:
a) Never much was interested in politics, but liked Bob Hawke.
b) Voted Liberal.
c) Was part of the revolutionary Marxist movement in Mexico pre war, and had it off at one stage with Leon Trotsky.
Question Four: Physical Appearance Frida Kahlo:
a) Had a pleasant sort of face.
b) Got tips, but grew them out.
c) Was hauntingly beautiful, with a savage Mexican countenance that combined both sensuality and fear (and the fact she has a moustache and her eyebrows join just makes her interesting, not a fucking dog, and she's such a strong woman).
Question Five: Leisure Activities.
(Note: choose the activity you feel Frida Kahlo never did.)
Frida Kahlo:
a) Produced a manifesto entitled "My Dress Hangs There", presenting a personal and sardonic view of New York in the Depression years.
b) Wrote prose poems in her diary revealing her idiosyncratic approach to colour.
c) Attended the 1991 1st elimination final between St Kilda and Geelong and thought it a great game.
***
That's enough. She sure foots the bill - communist, Mexican, oppressed, unhappy - the whole glamourous shabang. No wonder the THEMS lap it up like the US's at a John Farnham concert. Only one final act remains before you officially become a THEM. Fill out the below form. See you in Tuscany.
AUSTRALIA COUNCIL OVERSEAS ARTISTIC JUNKET APPLICATION FORM
1) Name:
(No Darren's, Kirsty's, Wayne's etc. Hugo, Manfred, Elektra preferred.)
2) Parents income (per annum):
a) 6,000-20,000 - ineligible to apply.
b) 20,000-35,000 - ineligible to apply.
c) 35,000-45,000 - some chance, but not much: maybe if you're a girl.
d) 45,000-60,000 - getting there.
e) 60,000-80,000 - you're pretty much in.
f) 80,000-above - come by the office, your ticket's booked already.
3) Preferred artistic mode:
a) Painter
b) Writer
c) Video maker
d) Editor
e) Sculptor
f) Actor
g) Crochet
h) Performance poetry
i) Photographer (Note: ability to focus renders you ineligible)
j) Any other clap trap you can dream up
4) You would prefer the suckers whose taxes you are taking to be:
a) Teachers
b) Plumbers
c) Public Servants
d) Accountants
e) Nurses
f) All other entrapped middle class non creative drones.
(The Council guarantees all the above get up early on Monday mornings, and are part of the cultural desert you can scoff at.)
5) You promise to find your experience overseas:
a) Haunting in its cultural dislocation.
b) Traumatic and alienating.
c) Terribly hard, terribly lonely, terribly creative
d) A fucking great lurk. (Note: do not tick d), just think it)
6) What will you produce over there? (state in twenty words or less):
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(Actually, forget this one. No one'll be interested in it anyway. We sure as fuck couldn't care. Our job is to book the tickets.)
7) Look, fuck the questions, I'll meet you down the "Les Arsehole d'Picasso", we'll have a cafe nero and discuss whether Italy or Rome'd be OK...
Hang on. This is one more question I've got to ask you. I'm sure you'll shit it in:
8) Who is Frida Kahlo?
So that is it then. See you on the peak hour train, you non-creative garbage, and we'll look at each other and think "Oh, surely Coleridge has best summed up the wild joy of creativity:
And as that train jolts on, carrying its burden to the bowels of the city, that frantic muse will rise up in us all, and all the commuters and business men and secretaries and stenographers will rise up in that arid cabin and then all will glimpse Coleridge's description of the artist's joy:
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!"
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of paradise.
