Holes

The question of separating art from artist came up again, and one gloriously up itself comment on a friend's FB wall got my attention;

I dont think its entirely 100% right to seperate problematic artists from their work - there are hundreds if not thousands of people who are not problematic out there producing work that doesnt get a look in. Open the door a bit wider and take a look at some of the alternatives maybe?

Questions I would like to ask this utter prig person include how do you know these non-problematic artists are indeed non-problematic? Checked all their backgrounds have you? Read their diaries? Whose definition of non-problematic are you using and why? How do you know they won't be problematic in, say 10 or 20 years time? How do you know you won't be problematic in 10 or 20 years time?


Mediocre, selective, indulgent, tribe approval seeking claptrap. Bloody well everywhere too.

Due to my friend being of peaceful nature, I didn't start a flame war. And to a very minor extent I do kind of get where the purity thing comes from. This is a generation seeing all the traditional values being shown up as gloss; cheats do prosper, parents do vote for crooks and stand by those choices, poor black men do get killed on national TV, rich white men do get away with stuff as do their sons. A desire for a Superman style world of clearly defined good and bad is obviously appealing in such a situation. I feel it myself.

But the desire for it doesn't make it true. And a lot of this is little more than umbrage fuelled craving for community too gentle to judge the errant self, but wolfish in unity against the wrongdoer. Same mob, different outsider.

**

He doesn't know how he did it and neither do we.

Friend and son stayed over, they're having almost unimaginably hard times. The adults shared some alcohol, Q mate going to bed, stumbling, and somehow breaking the wall, looks as though his elbow/knee/fist went through. He's a very broad, thick-set man with a non functioning knee, who has to fight hard to get up off sofas. Being excellent he offered to fix it himself, but I'm not having that. He wanted to pay for it being fixed, and gave us a hundred. We took it, though it won't cover the whole cost (the price towards the cost of getting in professionals is £170.)

But tbh, our odd jobs man is pretty splendid, and is dealing with the problem now. Added to which, he's a trained plumber so is going to sort out two leaks that have developed, paint over the stains that have just developed due to them, and then fix us a new ventilator fan. He's from Poland, the place from where we get all our wonderpeople who just do things well and ask a fair price. Apparently we should eschew these folk and pay 'our own' to do the same work potentially badly and natch for more money. The wisdom of Brexit! I tried reaching 6 plumbers last week, only one got back to me and his waiting time is a fortnight. Huh.