A Day In The Life Of An Everbrown

A huge ball of smoke. A crisp blue sky. The ball of smoke rising, growing. Memories of attack. The ball of smoke now like a raised side parting. I walk across the open space taking photographs. I am on my way into the capital, having finished a short script for someone in the war zone. The artist was toiling away by the wall as I left and her mood was single-minded and self-contained. The sky above me now is like a thick grey blanket, a hellish firmament, and the light darkens as if in preparation for thunder. But I have now learned that the smoke is from a fire that was not created by an attack. It is what you might call an innocent fire. (How we measure our dramas these days has been changed.) I show my photos to the man selling coffee at my station. He has been stuck inside his kiosk unable to get out. I show him the images of rising smoke he has been missing, and the idea of me doing so amuses him so much he refuses to allow me to pay for my coffee. Ten minutes later, as my overland train races into the centre of the capital, I stare at the long and bulbous trail of what now looks like pipesmoke animating the sky. In the center itself I meet with a visitor and tell her of this fire. She is from across the ocean and the friend of a good friend. We compare cultures like car enthusiasts. The light in the centre is rich and autumnal but when we come across a giant evergreen turning a sad brown we don't know what to say. Eventually my visitor friend suggests it is trying to blend in with the others. I say it will turn completely brown and the others will suddenly turn green and say they were only kidding and it will be too late. Later, I pop into the gallery which the artist visited the other day. The gallerist is engaged in conversation with two others, so I refrain from asking why he has not got back. I am glad I say nothing to him in the end. The space is good and the work serious, if a little dated. On the train back home the smoke has disappeared. Inside the flat, the artist has stopped working. And there are pancakes on plates.

Scold the front page

The art world is like a newspaper. It needs a story. It is tabloid by nature. The knickers really matter. The private jet. The number of security men. The banality. Art? What on earth is art? The superficial pedigree of the company the high-profile artist keeps is far more important to the machine invented to follow it than any lit-fest or brain-vain genius. Glib-celeb, that's the new fool by the whirlpool. You can even have a perfectly good artist today whose work bleeds a kind of melancholic significance but whose every story written about them will deliberately ignore the painful subtle truths for the smirk of the sex and regurgitate and concentrate on the cheekily 'sordid' or wackily 'dysfunctional', thereby turning even a potential moment of genuine high art into an easy-story portrayal of trashy low life. It's almost as if no one is listening or watching any more. We have become deaf and blind at the same time. The only thing we can say now is nothing. Anyway, it was on the back of all this that the artist this morning had a sudden loss of nerve and a real moment of doubt swept into the flat and encircled the artist's head like some thin black line of smoke rendered in a visual effects factory. And there was nothing one could say to wave away the pain. In an instant, an earlier piece of work was retrieved from the fourteen others leaning against the wall by the door. This was given its own space briefly in the living room and was aesthetically revisited, challenged, and tried. Instead of the large amount of time spent on all the work being the reason the work is so good, it was now being used as a cosh to beat the artist up with. And it was a good six or so hours later before the situation resolved itself when a golden animator and literary angel visited and saw the work with fresh eyes. In a flash, a kind of self-worth was re-established on the part of the artist and confidence broke like a news story throughout the entire flat.