A peaceful day compared to yesterday. Might be worth scrolling back over that one as I took my time with it and it’ll provide context. But today was back to a lovely day at Birch. I finished at 4. This will be more swiftly written and therefore likely ruder. I’m tired.
Lou was here so we grabbed a Sunday roast. She had to order it, as I was in the installation and just came out to inhale tasty lamb. I *think* I ran into the troll from yesterday. It’s hard to tell as I really couldn’t see them yesterday with the head on. “What did the troll look like?” I asked Ava. “She looked like so many bitter people.”
There was a woman in the lunch queue. Either she was someone random going through complicated emotions, or she was the troll. She either pantomimed an act of reading my “Joybomb” shirt or she is only capable of reading at primary school level and had to move her head along the words. Then she looked up at my actual non Panda face, made an expression like a cat refusing to eat butter, pointedly turned her back on me and blundered slowly away. Either it was shame (optimal), an attempt at contempt (likely) or someone having a stroke in front of me (unlikely). I didn’t hear her voice but she fit the brief of my expectation.
In other contexts I might have felt sad for the thing I saw. Of course it was hungover, but it looked old and bust, lank hair and body crabbed into a bitter forward bend, worn in the face, not cruel, more disappointed. I don’t think it was that much older than I am in the end, maybe just a decade, but there’s been too many expectations broken. If it was my gran I’d be trying to persuade it to come out and have fun for a change. Maybe yesterday that was it having fun. Fun for it… For … for her. Just as I’m having fun reflecting what it/she did to me. It dehumanised me cos it wanted a carrot. So I’ll dehumanise it.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says “DEAR DIARY, TODAY I’M GOING TO BE A TOTAL ARSEHOLE IN AN ART INSTALLATION!” She didn’t seem like the type that is capable of examining past actions and redirecting energy in this lifetime. There’s no depth to this human being, none. First human incarnation. Well done, I should say. Maybe last time she was a very good pig. Maybe she needed to have watched all that telly she’s basically spent the years consuming in order to learn “human” for future incarnations. In a few thousand years she’ll likely be literate.
It is very much worth me noting towards myself that after the relative restraint I showed yesterday I still feel the need to express that she is an actual real life troll that lives under a bridge. My energy is stuck with hers. I’m enjoying piling into her, but I need to move on now or I’m just as stuck. I’m currently enjoying spending quite a lot of creative energy and verbal ingenuity telling you that shit stinks. I’m literally going to do some woowoo stuff once I’m done writing to sever the last tendrils of connection to her and her ilk.
My tenacity in entrolling her is because of the dissonance she brought, you see.
SIMPLY: It’s an installation about nothing more than JOY. It’s not trying to be clever or political. It’s a delight, if you look at the heart of it and why it was made. You need to be extra specially douchey to decide that Joybomb is the place you are going to draw your battle lines and start being horrible. But she and the other people in her group, having decided they would just be negative energy radiators, were stalking about all day today as well, slow dripping their pompous distaste whenever they needed a wee. (They had to walk past us to eructate their hair of the dog prosecco). Hungover, yes. Guilty? Maybe some of them felt it. Whatever the reason, they all turned their entire bodies away whenever they passed, like kids in the playground shunning us cos we got sent to Coventry.
In the installation today I just… played with all the lovely bullshit they had brought me. The narrative in there will inevitably develop as the responses do. Panda is now very protective of his inflatable veg. With full artist permission I found myself telling someone today: “If you try to take my carrots I will cut your fucking arms off.” It led to a few minutes of absolutely delightful play where he played at trying to steal my carrot while I chased him with a chainsaw until Lou happened to come in wondering what was happening and we both used it as an excuse to stop running around. But it was a fun moment for all in the installation and given to us by trollface. In quiet times I took pretend phone calls from her, and she was still trying to extort carrots from me. It amused me to bring her into the narrative as a joke.
Joy. Bomb. Where’s the joy? In you, or not in you. It’s always only in you if its anywhere. You either prioritise it or you don’t. Every day you can choose to say yes or no to joy. Just say yes. Fuck it. It’s never too late to stop being that hen party. Even for the thoughtless entitled members of that hen party, there is hope. I’d dream that one of them might find this, but if they do they won’t have read this far.
I’ve had a bloody marvelous time here. That’s the thing to remember. We went to the lido and I hit a sunset hammock and I’m on the COSTA DEL CROYDON and somehow I’ve just spent my precious blog about some reincarnated piggy.
Four hours ago I was here:
AlBarclay 