The Sketchbook 4

On Tuesday afternoon the tutor decided that the students must evaluate one another's work, standard procedure. They exchange sketchbooks. After looking through the sketchbook of the person next to you, you have a brief discussion, pointing out what you like and don't like. The student beside me was young, faintly amused by the procedure, but was also conscientious, and seemed to take the task semi-seriously. We sat perched on stools by the easels clustered end to end.
This is to get us into the habit of looking critically at one another's work, as employed also in the art schools. The theory is that one should learn from one's peers, that art should take place in an environment of peers, commenting, suggesting and intervening. Sometimes, though, the practice seems awkward or artificial, and one says the minimum, to avoid hurting the other or shaking him from his complacency or habits. False praise is no doubt given at times, also. Like everything imposed from outside, even the gentlest and most beneficial, they are sometimes experienced with discomfort or disinterest.
And I hand my sketchbook to the student beside me, an echo of the time I handed it over before. I see it once again, my gesture exactly the same, his receipt exactly the same. And now it seems to be his, for a few minutes, but his nonetheless, to judge and pore over. So, this is a gesture that I must repeat: To hand over that which is mine, which I jealously guard, to a stranger, for in this land everyone is a stranger, even my friend. He is only a provisional friend, till the time he reveals himself as a rival. My sketchbook in the hands of another: What if he misuses it, what if he marks it with rough, careless drawings, or subjects the work to rough, careless misunderstandings? He will see it with another eye, his own, different from mine: Like images seen reversed in a mirror, his eye will distort the drawings while they remain the same, and he will fail to understand them. I feel as though he is prising open an oyster to rudely grasp a pearl which is mine, his fingers settling around it. He will misunderstand.
Now Wednesday and life drawing: I am doing a drawing on a big A2 sheet with pastels. The students stand at their easels drawing. I have before me on my stool an open set of pastel crayons. The boy beside me asks if he can borrow a yellow pastel. I hand it over.
The slightly stunted yellow chalk is in his possession, he receives it with a murmur, preoccupied and careless. I say nothing. He adds highlights to his drawing, carelessly and roughly.
Meanwhile the model sits motionless and graceful against the backdrop of a white sheet.
I gave him the sketchbook and he returned it with drawings which I did not like. I did not like having it in his control, wrested away from me. He took a thing belonging to me, I gave it reluctantly. I give away my sketchbook, my chalk, that which is mine. When they touch my things I feel anxious, but cannot intervene; I am too polite, or I strive to be polite. I would like to snatch my object back, like small children do when they have not learned to be dishonest. Like the child, I do not really care about the object, whatever it may be; I merely want to wrench it from another's grasp because it is mine. This idea of "mine" is a triumph and an end in itself.
And in the end I will give all my possessions away, disperse them like seed: I don't care about them.

The Sketchbook 3

Back from a break, in which I went to the toilets, I find my sketchbook abandoned carelessly on a shelf at the side of the room. I pick it up and leaf through it: It is full of his drawings, or rather the marks he has made. With a light pencil. I am not thrilled.
I count the pages he has used, with annoyance: 12 in all, 12 large A3 pieces of clean white cartridge paper. A substantial portion of the book ruined, or will have to be thrown away. My favourite sketchbook, that I was keeping so pristine, so pure and professional. Contaminated by his careless scrawl. He had drawn disconsolately, as though half-asleep, turning pages as soon as a new idea, nebulous and dim, formed in his mind, to be in turn abandoned. Like automatic drawing.
Spurious pencil drawings with a loose line meandering over pages, as though the drawer's hand drifted by itself from page to page, formlessly dancing, allowing the line to wander delicately as the leaves turned. Also, scribbles and doodles, like would be done on a pad by the phone, while the drawer was immersed in a daydream or dull phonecall, or on a beermat or betting slip. Confined to a corner of the paper, or skulking at its lower edge, like rude and futile gestures.
On one page I find he had drawn a series of boxes, like comic panels, suggesting a sequence to be read from  left to right. But depicted inside the little boxes are only what look like stylised depictions of clouds and mist, as might be shown in an old print, obscuring the edges and corners of ambiguous objects. Is this his dream, his vagueness, drawn lightly with a light pencil, did he in fact slumber as he drew? No, he draws like this because he is mysterious, because he is himself a figure from a dream. I find the vagueness contemptible, the cheap pencil, the loose, uncaring line, that commits to nothing. It disgusts me, as though he had marked the paper with dirt.

The Sketchbook 2

Someone told me the guy is just out of prison. I am afraid of him. His large, intimidating mouth, powerful and uncaring, brooding. His eyes focused on things beyond or above me, never seeing me. What was he in jail for?
While there, no doubt, he developed an interest in art. There was some room, there was an easel, there were paints. Then at night he went back to the room where he was confined and the lights were put out. This, his cell, became his kingdom: There he drew and painted. On release, he said in broad tongue he wanted to continue: And so he came here. He is large and moody, a past life of sorrow and difficulty.
The middle class is unknown to him, and exists on a different plane. The working class is unknown to them. And yet he sits in their midst. In dole offices I had seen his type, waiting to be seen, conversing amongst themselves loudly: Used to it. There too I was afraid of him. He lounges relaxed in a big chair,  such as is used by staff, large and loutish, his scarred and tatooed hands open the sketchbook and find a blank page. His feet in white trainers. His short glossy hair, somehow intimidating. Legs open, confident. Lips pouting.
I despise and am jealous of the middle classes. I despise and am disgusted by the working classes. I am working class. I hate them all secretly and timidly, never allowing it to show. I pretend instead that I have found my place in the hierarchy. But my eyes see too much, they see it all and I recognise myself. I compare myself to them. I want to be middle class, and yet I hate them. I know I am working class, and yet I hate them.
Can I be a republic of one? No; I am working class, first, second and last.

The Sketchbook 1

I was an art student and every day in the week I would get up and go to the bus station. From there I would get on a bus that took me to the city, taking with me a bag containing art materials: Pens, ink, brushes and paints. I would walk to a building and ascend the stairs to a room where other art students had gathered,  this being the requisite place for our gathering. The room was large and bright with large windows, and contained the following: Drawing boards, easels, and stools, with space for the large drawing boards in shelves. The easels would be gathered in a corner at the end of the class.
But one day a new guy appeared in this room which was used for life drawing, a late enroller on the course it seemed.
He approaches me carelessly, his eyes averted, as though uninterested in me, dismissive of me, his mind on other things. He is not looking at me. If I knew him I would think he disliked me. He seems aggressive and tough, not like an art student, who are sensitive, effeminate, classy; from middle class homes and with refined airs. And he says have you got a spare page in your sketchbook, mouth loose and hanging, eyes not looking at me, as though I were unworthy to look at. He is a ned.
My prize beloved sketchbook, big and plush-black, A3, which is a good size, substantial. Got it with other art materials given free in a pack at the start of the semester. We descended the stairs to a room and, on signing a piece of paper, were given the packs containing drawing implements, sketchbooks, and a small watercolour set. But this is my favourite sketchbook, I'm proud of how professional it looks, I lug it around with me. My pride: For the black cover, the glossy frontsheet, the sturdy cartridge paper.
I am reluctant to hand it to him but do so out of an effort to be polite, to be thought of as generous, gracious. What would these other students do? I emulate them. They have grace, coolness, looks, money. From middle class homes. They have not had to strive, sweat and suffer. They laugh softly and easily, their loves come easily and they mix with one another easily. Sure, I say, handing it to him. It's one page. I can always tear it out.

Philosophy Class

I show up ten twenty minutes late for Philosophy class, which is held in a sort of basement room reached through confusing and windowless corridors. And crashing in the door puffing and tired, but also ruddy and confident, I breezily announce that I got lost. This is a big statement, fresh in the stale, confined atmosphere of the windowless seminar room.
The room is divided into two sections, where two groups of tables have been placed and discussions are already under way, but loose and desultory discussions, with bored and non-compliant students.
I'm glanced at semi-irritably by the tutors for showing up late. The main tutor is Alice, in charge of the whole programme and school,  an American lady in her forties, very bright, open and positive, Californian to a fault. She calls me by my Christian name and, observing social niceties, introduces the other tutors and tries to get me settled into a discussion group. A level of discipline beginning to gather under the tone of an old hippy.
But the other tutors are peculiar and must be recent graduates or trainees. Young and louche and non-committal, they lounge at their tables, barely looking me in the eye. One is a semi-goth and has a light sprinkling of kohl around his eyes, which makes them look bruised.
Also in the class is a black-headed goth girl, who sits motionless in a mask of make-up, her arms in a web of lace, frivolous plastic trinkets at her neck. The other tutor has a mop of brown hair in his eyes and is monolouging on his travels in the west of Ireland, slowly and laboriously, in a boring brogue.
But I see, amongst the detritus beneath the table, the edges of a photograph, torn from a newspaper, downloaded or scanned or photocopied: It shows a snub-nosed blonde girl, grinning for the photo, in a première frock, busty and vacant. Strange to see these little scraps of glamour in brown philosophy rooms, the grin of the glamour model, one of those girls who achieve a sort of notoriety on those latenight shows.

The Arsonist

At the train station early in the evening. Sits a student almost reclining on a bench like a Roman, reading his book.
A dirty shady middleaged thin individual, in a raincoat and with small glasses he peers through, and a grim look, approaches behind him and before the unfortunate student knows it has sloshed him with a quantity of inflammable liquid. The subsequent strong naked flame smartly and quickly applied to the youngster's body immediately starts a raging and healthy conflagration, to whose furious crackling the student adds impromptu screams. The shadowy serial killer moves unconcerned, and unsatisfied, up the deserted platform. He has moved on from murdering the homeless to carrying out quite motiveless attacks.
And when the platform is lighted, when the overhead lights flicker on...
One by one...
And more people show up, thronging the platform, festive and merry, multi-coloured bright-cheeked couples arm in arm, catcalling kids and football supporters...
He retires to a nearby wall and stands in the shadows.
And it's not long till a bunch of neds, or guys, or football supporters, move up to him and surround him...
Maybe they've come from a football match, maybe they're just ordinary guys from a commonplace, ordinary family, but they surround the serial killer threateningly, harsh electric light cast on their faces from the open door of the station café, small flecks of spittle flying through the air and peppering his glasses and jacket...
And if the killer peeped into the station café, what would he have seen? Warm handsome bohemians sitting talking earnestly, supping coffees, relaxed boys n girls in stalls, curly-headed, leaning over to drawl slowly... and behind them, stations kiosks and bookstores, bright magazine racks and colourful comicbooks, bookstalls, and empty, echoing pantheons, all bathed in bright yellow electric light...

(interlude)

In the city to the comicshop thru the highstreet past the crowds behind the shopping centre, a shadowy street.
A huge rack of new comics and fanzines. Daredevil and his affiliations, all the mutant comics which have diversified in response to their popularity, multi-coloured covers choking the display, like a series of  mini-soap operas competing to distract. And I wonder what Captain America's up to these days.
I move into my tiny room in my spacious new flat.
I take with me my duvet and pillow. Or perhaps there's a florid blanket that my flatmate has spread out to dry or hung in the airing cupboard draped over a clothes horse and I won't have to bother. I halt, talking to strangers, confused in the pigeon-infested boulevards. A duvet is the most basic of necessities.
(I remember, in the kitchen, by the fruitbowl, for my sister's amusement I did my impression of "toothless Joe", then, preoccupied, felt my rows of hard, shiny teeth, and posed like for a photo, as though papparazzi'd, the flash of teeth in a blur. Vanity and insecurity.)

From a Night Bus 3

And keep looking, keep a watch on the parade of miscreants.
The young disenchanted-looking girl in a blue-black football strip, or the top thereof, dark blue or pale blue stripes on white.
It's been donned by this dark-haired girl in a dim bedroom dominated by her huge double bed, it's too large for her, she tugs at it disconsolately, sulking, the silky glossy material itches and scratches her.
Another girl, in theory, her counterpart, in a green-striped football top, equally sulky-mouthed and twilit.
Reminds me of once in the empty flat I was looking at my reflection in the tall window, as though measuring myself or posing for a full-length portrait, I turned to the side like in a cop photo, I took in the stubble and scars of shaving nicks, I smiled.
When it's dark outside and the bare lightbulb has been switched on inside, the window reflects like a mirror, you can catch yourself looking tense in it.
And sometimes passing latenight drinkers jeer or hoot at you, or afternoon football fans peer up and in.
The omnipresent corner neds, feeling the strength of their numbers. It's always at least six on one, sometimes for the less brave it's simply the throwing of rocks and bottles, and a bit of jeering. It has to be admitted that the worst perpetrators are the supporters of either of two teams from Glasgow.
They always bring their own special malevolence and violence. And I seem to see their faces reflected in the window, the football fans, shouting, almost intruding into the room, splintering the glass, brazen and ugly. And I imagine... What if I were to crack open the window and partially swing it open, what if I faced the threat? Would I find that the casuals were only two-dimensional cartoons or cardboard cut-outs, insistent but silent? Or they have attached themselves to the pane like amoeba, like the suckers of an octopus, or like a flat-bodied ray, and can be scraped off harmlessly like a pancake.

From a Night Bus 2

We continue.
If you keep walking up this street you eventually come to the docks, to more grim architecture, to a shiny multi-level shopping centre. But on the next corner the streetlights fail altogether, leaving us utterly in the dark.
And I begin to think, should I leave this girl behind?
Down in the crime-ridden streets, some cops bustle past, shine their powerful torches briefly over our faces and across the brickwork, snarling and impatient.
And I think or imagine the names and faces that are roaming the summit of this street. A paraplegic queen walks with a cane, who may link arms with his buddies, who may embrace them out of a feverish love, who may out of loneliness cry out and knead the bodies of his lovers. To avoid his desperate love you cross the street. When the lights fizz back on you see his body face down in the road, surrendered to oblivion, his cane beside him.
Now the non-commissioned officers drunken out on the town from the naval base, have come tearing down from the city centre. The leading officer, in a white suit covered with garrulous gold brocade, corners a victim. Very handsome but absolutely savage, red-mouthed and drunken, eyes deep and evilly gleaming.
The victim though is a standard soap opera villain. A grubby young man on the lam from prison, and therefore with nothing to lose, an unwashed hooded top, an unshaven chin. Without a moment's hesitation he picks up a length of scaffolding-pipe from an adjacent skip and begins fiercely to reign blows on the head and body of the non-commissioned officer, denting his pristine white suit. So the soap opera prison villain character is proved a hero.
Though the girl begins to emit a high-pitched shriek, which might attract the yellow-jacketed cops.
The soap opera revenge villain in this case is complex, he's in love with a certain girl which embittered him and made him a desperado, fighting on, with his heroic and villainous qualities, the clash of steel ringing in the street.

From a Night Bus 1

But it's back on another bus for me, another nightbus, where I seem to spend my life...
There comes a point on a south-bound dusk bus where one can no longer even sleep, but has to gaze, stupefied, out of the window. All significant loves, hopes, terrors, epiphanies, have happened to me on lonely buses, commuter buses, bridge-crossing buses...
Into the city of melancholy crags, the acropolis enshadowed already, over the steel bridge with the dark water below, and what if the suspension breaks and the bus plummets far below into the sea...
This being a congested commuter link, we get in late into the Metropolis bus station, night it seems is falling.
I'm sitting down near the front. I've struck up a conversation with the girl in front, who I vaguely know. As we get to the bus-station she turns around, asking if I'll be staying the night, smiling politely. A small, plain, blonde girl, common and with a coarse, insipid face, tending to ingratiate. Large anaemic blue eyes. I'm taciturn and awkward- "No, I'll be going back over".
For I have to make two trips. Tedious. So I can't spend long in the city, it's already getting dark. No place to stay anyway as night deepens, except the sister's, who has a warm, welcoming flat in a peripheral suburb.
But at the bus station as I roam over the floor of the huge entrance foyer the blonde girl sidles up alongside me and forces her warm little hand into mine, keeping pace and starting up a bright, breezy chat. Sounds of departure, shuffling feet, dust on pillars and abandoned doorways, buzzing electric light... Shadows.
She wants to go record shopping. But it's closing time. We walk down the long dark street that leads eastwards out of the city, partially gentrified now but once grim and rough, and still containing endless Asian foodstores and halal shops, Greek butchers, Chinese laundries, shops where Turkish cassettes are sold, windows festooned with Bollywood stars in green and red, near tattoo parlours and the smell of Indian meals.
This street is exposed to winds, and on the other side is a closing-down video store, a discreet sex shop, a glass-fronted beauty parlour. A city clock, a traffic island, a dingy basement newsagent where an Asian man stands behind a counter, a picture of the Kaaba pinned up behind him. This street is long and dark. Worries about bus times, I look at the glowing digits on my fat-faced watch. 17:45.
The girl has put up the hood of her sweatshirt but still grasps my hand, leading me onwards determinedly. She halts at an esoteric music store, even though it's closing: The steel shutter is already half-pulled down. She peeps under it and exchanges a few words with the man cleaning up behind the counter, a portly bearded man in white, he smiles slyly, says "Salaam".

Thoughts Before Sleep

Just think, we are on a planet, a ball of rock, that is moving through space which is so vast that we could move through it forever and never see another star. We're clinging to it like ants.
And everything that we do will be obliterated and forgotten about. Everything will be lost, all our doings undone, as though they had never existed.
All this time we have been fooling ourselves, giving names to empty collections of atoms, and thinking that they had substance. In reality, nothing and no-one had a name and our concepts were uncatchable will-o-the-wisps which we willingly allowed to deceive us.
What a frightening pre-sleep thought: That to do was the same as not to do.
I insist and declare therefore that all of us are star-crossed and  must laugh in the face of fate, defying it. To do so is the only heroism.