In Defence of Good Ideas : Drink & Draw

A good and supportive friend told me last night (this morning) that I should write down a rant that I delivered (briefly and with precision) as we waited for a taxi. 

I at first thought 'Surely everyone knows this stuff already? And I'm hardly in the first circle - I'm just an eavesdropper and an interested fanboy. The people who were in at the beginning must have already vented their disappointments, and pointed out the true facts, surely?'

But maybe not. People can be too polite to say. And the point was made to me that, increasingly, people just accept every change that happens without criticism & without memory: without choosing to care that something's shifted.

Me, I think it is SHOCKING when good ideas - good, creative, DIY ideas - get rebranded, get claimed and marketed, get the goodness of the idea taken out and get turned into a brand-echo. When the brand is then recirculated aggressively, widely, successfully, it covers up the original good idea. So that people like me who liked the good idea ( & who sometimes originate the good idea), get turned into outsiders who are just critical of reality. So if we want to join in we have to forget our criticisms? How wrong is that?


Sometimes I hate being a radical, being a moaner and a stubborn idealist. I just wanna ride the stream like the rest: join in with some nice creative endeavours, meet some good people to share some time with, experience some music and some moments of magic.

But then if you're 'serious' about being part of a scene, or if you really do love an artform and take it to your heart ... 

If you join an event and talk to people about doing something similar again, then you become the kind of person who can make a good idea happen. And if there are repetitive cycles of cynicism or of mercantile thieving-and-destroying out there, as I believe, then I think those who care about those good ideas need to start putting up a bit of defence. 


So, Drink And Draw.


I am going to write this first, and THEN check on the internet. It will be a nice experiment to test my memory against the recorded facts. But it can also be disempowering to be constantly in thrall to the 'right answer' already being out there on the internet. It stops us having a conversation, of putting our thoughts into words, and of modulating them. So apologies if this IS inaccurate, but here it is nonetheless:


Drink and Draw is a good idea. It is a get-together of people who like drawing comics, and it began in a particular US city at a particular US time. The aim was to create something sociable and inclusive, open and friendly. There were no profit motives and no one was using it as a move up the career ladder (the way that arts graduates in Newcastle are now encouraged to do). It was advertised, all welcome (so long as you were old enough to drink alcohol). The venue was a public space, easy to find, and you paid a small entry fee. The entry fee went on buying a crate or two of beer. And once you had entered, you could help yourself to that beer. No extra costs, no exclusivity, nothing more complicated than getting some fellow drawers and comics fans into a convivial space together. And then some creative stuff happened, according to the interests of those who went. It might have been hosted by a comic shop, or some such hub that the likely people knew.

Fast forward to Newcastle the last couple of years, and the Drink and Draw idea has become an international phrase, much beloved of comics fans and similar folk who like the idea of sharing their art, drawing with friends, and being part of that sort of community of interest. And who like a beer.

The venues: Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle Arts Centre, similar. 

The promoters: not sure, nice people most likely, but in a deal with the venue and maybe also with an 'arts organisation'. 

The door fee:   where does it go? 

The crates of beer:   not present. 

The bar:   charging money. 

The comics artists and drawing people:   only those with spare cash to waste on an entry fee and a charging bar, who don't feel upset or exploited by such a parasitical event drawing on their enthusiasm and their desire to share that convivial creativity together. Punters.


What was a good idea was a DIY, an open, a community-led, a sensible, no strings thing. Something that made sense on its own terms to bring people together and strengthen the community of interest that drew them together. It was given a name to describe it, and thus it spread.


What is now a marketable branding rip-off is deeply depressing in its mundanity. Sometimes it seems like every advertised event is another rip-off: another misuse of words, ideas and interests that we (the community) want to identify with. So we give it a punt and allow a little more exploitation for the sake of being with our fellows (this could be for music, for fanzines, for the environment, for anything, it's certainly not just comics). And maybe we have a good time. But it's a disappointing world, isn't it, that has turned every good idea into another situation like that?

We leave knowing we were there cos we were the punters with some cash in our pockets. And where was that community? I hope it was there somewhere. I always hope it rises above. But it was under attack and it shouldn't be.


Alright, rant done, I'll check the internet later today and add any facts to the comments. See you in a bit.

Googly eyes on some Muppets

As part of the Jim Shaw exhibition at the Baltic and on High Bridge street, loads of us who play with zines, boardgames, comics and other cheap pop culture stuff - with an enthusiastic irreverance - were invited to set up our stalls and do our thing one evening (in fact it was the 17th of January).

One thing I did was set up a chair with a magazine and an invitation on it. I provided googly eyes and glue and then people, at their own pace and according to their own whims, stuck the googly eyes onto some of the pictures inside.

I have now scanned the results (although I will redo it cos it's loaded a bit wrong), which can be browsed through here.

Here are some of my favourite images, with a few more on flickr.

 

The other thing I did that night will also get scanned and shared at some point in the future. It involved tippex.

 

Interfaith Week Sketches

These are really rather overdue.

They are from back in November, when I asked if I could attend the lunchtime talks organised by Newcastle University's Chaplaincy. These were to provide an opportunity to learn more about the smaller faiths present on campus : those which were not widespread enough to have their own dedicated week.

I found each of these faiths, and each of these talks, both stimulating and sympathetic.

The sort of person from a religious faith group who is willing to turn up to listen to those from other (rival?) faiths is often the best sort of person from a religious faith group. The opposite of a bigot. So I put my own beliefs aside for an hour each day and doodled the speaker.

Monday: Baha'ai

Tuesday: Ismaili

Wednesday: Jewish, Christian & Muslim

 Thursday: Sikh

Friday: Pagan

Pictish Mail Art, Viking Mail Art

Mail Art is a poncey term for a great idea: something both inclusive and boundless in its possibility.

When travelling, I always buy the local newspaper - the more local the better. It gives you an insight into what's actually happening in real places, which national papers simply do not do. In 2013, I have discovered, the local papers show the real consequences of the cuts agenda to people's hometowns : things being sold off in Dundee, schools shutting in Aberdeen, the waiting room at the bus station being closed in Lerwick. 

(I really hate this millionnaire's government that we have right now. It's so brutally toff-ish and evil that it seems like we're living through a pantomime, hard to take seriously. But that's not the topic of this post):

I was in Dundee and I found this cutting. 

Great! Today! I have an hour before meeting my friend (& host), now where the hell's this weird-sounding college? I asked around and got some very friendly guides hopelessly pointing me in the right direction, right building, right door, wrong floor, over the internal bridge, down a floor, 


"hello?" 

"I'm er just looking for ..."

"oh you're doing a mail art project too?" 

"No this one's by school children?" 

"Oh that way, great"

"thanks" 


- and so sweaty and bewildered I found it, in one of the nice old wooden-lined corridors they have in that old arts building. I'd never have spotted it if I was just rushing past. It is lovely when you find a gem in the middle of an unfamiliar warren like this.

 I had to be speedy by this point but I loved the range; the expression; the colour; the sense of experimentation - and the fact that they had broken out of their own little circle of friends; their own familiar school; their own instruction & sketchpad and risked throwing out their attempts at whatever 'art' is meant to be, to strangers. 

And then I had to run 


"which way's the door?"

"thanks!"

"oh also - what's your address so i can send you a postcard?"


And so I had an address to add, to my collection of people who I'd asked if they fancied a postcard from Shetland (half of them people I'd not met before). I'm still to send half of these now I'm home, and up in Lerwick I also ran out of time to draw or ink over the envelopes (this is because I spent all my time drawing my diary, which I will scan and share a bit later). 

I found some bargain-bin greetings cards half the price of postcards, added them to some naked shetland ones I'd picked up in a knick-nack shop, got given a couple more that my travelling companions found funny, and amongst the scrawls I did, is one very quick sketch of my legs (on the beach at St Ninians isle) that is actually one of my favourite drawings that I have ever done. Here it is :

 

I would never have rushed out such a quick clean sketch if if weren't for racing to make things to post. In fact I couldn't even bear to part with it fully, so I ended up sending that card to my mum and dad, optimistic that they would keep hold of it, for me to reclaim in future months!

So in this way I have ducked out of perhaps the greatest challenge and risk that (hypocritically) I think is the best thing about mail art - that it HAS to go through the postal system and risk the smudging, creasing, stamping, wetting and getting lost that that journey involves. Putting it in an envelope, as I (partly) and several of the schoolkids did, is a bit of a cop-out that I am not, in this case, ashamed to make public!

Unfinished lists.

I was going to make a big list of all the ideas, projects, works-in-progress and promised things that I haven't finished or got round to yet.

But then I didn't get round to it. 

One more for the list.

The end of the Geordie Monsters

It's been a week of endings, so in this spirit let me announce : I'm finishing the most regular & longest-running of my fanzines.

Opinionated Geordie Monsters Review the Local Band Scene will have reached issue 10, a nice round number to move on to something new.

I started it as a way to record my thoughts about the gigs I went to, and because my memory is awful and I was constantly saying 'did I go to that gig?', 'have I seen them before? 

Previously I used to sketch local bands playing, for the same kind of reason (to fix the memory in my mind), but I sometimes felt that was a bit offputting to some performers. Also people look over your shoulder & I don't like being watched drawing something badly (being watched, in fact, tends to make me go wrong). 

So, "ANYONE CAN DRAW A MONSTER" I thought, and made the geordie monster zine open to anyone to contribute. I started off pestering the people around me to contribute, and with reluctance, several friends did. Most didn't, for various reasons, one that sticks in my mind being "as a musician, I see reviews as the equivalent to a dog pissing on a lamp-post, bands being the lamp-post". 

Then I kept doing it, printing between 100 & 200 copies every 3 months, well beyond the point that most people thought 'why?' & 'haven't you got anything better to do?

But drawing monsters is fun, and trying to express how you feel about a gig you've been to is a positive challenge. I never make a LOT of effort to describe the sound or experience, it's just whatever comes out of the pen while at the gig or on the day after. I haven't got any better at it either - not gonna become a music journalist!

So in addition to the pleasure of drawing monsters, the satisfaction of recording a memory, and of making an ongoing contribution to free zines and paper culture, there have been two great positive things about doing this fanzine:

- one - stapling a great big pile of paper, often roping in a nearby friend, and seeing this mound of pretty random amateur 'art' or free expression or what-have-you appear. A physical THING that, if I was wandering round the pubs, I would LOVE to find a fellow dweller of the city had produced. No computers or software were used in the production of geordie monsters!

- two - getting monsters through the post, or reviews by email, or these random snippets of strangers' thoughts and experiences sent to me. Thankyou to you wonderful unknown people, you are whatever the opposite to a 'clique' is, and you have one more chance to share a monster review!

Long live the death of the SMS text!

1.1  Apparently the peak of text messaging came and went this year. Other methods are being adopted by most folk, and the days of the SMS are numbered. Fine by me.

1.2  This year I finally got a mobile phone that I didn't then lose within a few weeks. I got the cheapest model in the shop, the cheapest deal. No fancy wotsits, there's something up with the answerphone, my teeth have cracked the screen, I don't know how to turn up the volume and I am thoroughly shit at pressing the buttons to make a text message. But I got a contract too.

1.2.1  Now for the first time - in MY life at least - I find I have a trace of history in the simcard, the memory, the little blueish inch-square screen of a phone. And it struck me that this trace will not be retrievable, will not be archived, will not be possible to share or remember in the way that a letter, a postcard, a photo, even a blog post might be. There will BE no trace: it is NOT history.

1.2.1.1  And this made me sad. Because I love the traces of my passing experience and engagement with this world and I spend a lot of time dwelling upon them - I cut out reviews of bands I've seen, keep flyers in a scrapbook, take photos and write a diary and then re-read, add-to & annotate, occasionally re-share these traces that I have kept.

1.2.1.2  All those conversations will be lost, and fair enough the vast majority of people would never want to know them and even I myself would forget they had ever happened if I didn't dwell on them. But I like the dwelling on them (it helps me learn about myself, ground myself, and think in a reflective way about life). And also, some of these conversations (messages = traces of) are things that I do, did, do, care about. Places I really wanted to go to or sentiments that mattered (& often about me, my contributions, how my company was or how someone's feelings were about me - quite rare and special sentiments that we deserve to hold onto).

1.3  So I have a new project. It will not be made public. It is a small self - to - self art project. A couple of examples are included here, but most will just be printed and collected in my scrapbook-diary. So it can also be seen as yet another take on the diary thing (I keep multiple types of diary, as I have probably blogged about before - this blog is just one form, most are paper-based). 

1.3.1  A photo, of a text, printed out, stuck into my scrapbook-diary. A personal memento.

1.3.1.1  Practically: this allows me to delete those messages that are sitting on my phone and allow me to read new ones! (Yes, I did say it was the cheapest model of phone).

 

2.1  And no, before a helpful technophile suggests it, I don't want a better phone, or a better service than text message SMS oldschool tap-tap-tap. I will never be an 'early adopter' of new technology. I do not wish to be up to date. I only wish to use the things (the useful things) that my ever-more technologically advanced society makes common once they have become unfashionable (or, at least, not-fashionable). Something old people use too. Something that has long-since left the style papers and is no longer subject to big advertising pushes. 

2.1.1  Because as a 'late-adopter' I am also more like a 'bottom-feeder' in my ecological zone, my society : I don't really actively reject what is around me, but I certainly do not give a shit about making it come any faster. I am actually ideologically and emotionally against a lot of this innovation and its social, environmental, psychological ramifications and I do not want to (will not will never) take it to my heart. It is only the use which we (them, you, then me) make of it that makes it valuable, and that is what my little personal project is about. 

3  Thankyou for reading. I hope you don't mind me sharing this with you. But I like recording the things I think, the decisions I make, the traces, and this too is one.