Sketch: Who are your Friends?

Am I really the first person to comment on this in more than two-and-a-half years? Well I suppose everyone else left their words written in ones and zeros long before I even found your gallery.

This painting reminds me somewhat of David Bowie's 9-minute epic Cygnet Committee from his 1969 self-titled album. It speaks very strongly of people posing as friends of a certain thinking person only to abandon him and use his ideas of a better world to create a totalitarian dystopia initially inspired by but eventually far removed from the thinking man's original ideas.

At the time he wrote this, Bowie was deeply involved with the hippie counterculture of the late 60s, and he and his then-wife Angie had set up the Beckenham Arts Lab to promote the creation and sharing of these countercultural ideologies of peace and love in art. But as he carried on with this club, he eventually realised that far from being their own creative entrepreneurs, the kids who turned up there simply wanted to leech off of Bowie and his own ideals. This discordance between himself and the hippie 'revolution' is the genesis of Cygnet Committee - and would later go on to inspire much of his work in the 70s - and it's this portrayal of betrayal and subsequent damnation which makes me connect this song so strongly with this painting.

"I bless you madly,
Sadly as I tie my shoes.
I love you badly,
Just in time, at times I guess.
Because of you I need to rest,
Because it's you that sets the test."

There are three main protagonists in this song: Bowie himself (or at least an omniscient narrator); a philosopher, and finally his mob of compatriots. In the first part of the song, Bowie expresses how much he wants to love his fellow brothers and sisters, but how difficult it is to do so due to humanity's inherently selfish and greedy nature. The rest of humanity sets his love of them to the test with every crime, every war, every instance of corruption, bigotry and sin - so much so to the point where he sometimes needs to take a moment to distance himself from the rest of humanity to avoid their bouts of hatred and aggression. But ultimately it saddens him to do so because he still wants to love and believes the nature of humanity is ultimately to love and be loved - but his own love is foiled time and again before it has a chance to become whole and complete.

"So much has gone and little is new,
And as the sparrow sings
Dawn chorus for someone else to hear,
The Thinker sits alone,
Growing older and so bitter..."

Here, Bowie introduces the second protagonist - a man who was born into a world dominated by war, hatred and bigotry; in effect, the things that constantly keep Bowie from loving humanity unconditionally no matter how hard he tries. This man is a visionary; a philosopher. He dreams of a world completely free of all those bad things mentioned before, a world where fellow humans embraced each other in unconditional and boundless love and optimism. These are the ideals of the original hippie countercultural movement.

 

However, this Thinker’s greatest mistake is in believing that humanity will always act in both its own interests and the interests of each other, and that these interests will coincide in a harmonious whole. This folly of his, along with his friends, eventually comes to betray him. So much change transpires – but in the end, little really has changed in the wake of the coming revolution. The things the revolution sought to end, such as racism, sexism, classism and any other discriminatory or hateful ism you can imagine, are all still in place, but they point in different directions now; and compared to how things were before, it all seems wrongfully good – a form of payback, if you will. The pyramid has been turned upside down; but in the end, it’s still just an upside-down pyramid.

 

The sparrow singing dawn chorus is singing for a sun rising on a world very different to the world the Thinker dreamed of; and as such he cannot hear the chirping of the sparrow’s cheerful song as his mind is entangled in unrepentant thoughts of bitterness, betrayal and self-pity:

 

“I gave Them life, I gave Them all,

They drained my very soul… dry.

I crushed my heart to ease Their pains.

No thought for me remains there.

Nothing can They spare – what of me?

Who praised Their efforts to be free?

Words of strength and care and sympathy,

I opened doors that would have blocked Their way.

I braved Their cause to guide, for little pay.

I ravaged at my finance just for Those;

Those whose claims were steeped in peace, tranquillity.

Those who said a new world, new ways ever free,

Those whose promises stretched in hope and grace for me.”

 

Abandoned to slump on his knees in a corner somewhere, the Thinker wails and laments at the way he was used, abused, cajoled and finally thrown aside by a wave of revolutionaries who turned to him as their messiah. They were leaderless and without direction, and with his wisdom the Thinker, a poor man with little capital to spare, gave them something to aim for. He promised the revolutionaries a vision of a land of unconditional love, fellowship, equality, honesty, justice and harmony. With this image of paradise on Earth forever burned into their brains, they became a close-knit band of brothers and sisters who stood up against the system of hatred and lies they were raised in. In the demagogic Thinker’s eyes, they would create and share art, music and ideas and project them forth into the public to light the spark for a world revolution against the old order. This revolution was to be one of people standing shoulder to shoulder, hugging strangers, finding homes for the homeless, feeding abandoned pets and uniting all outcasts hand-in-hand in a thriving new dynasty of hope and liberty, whose dictionary did not hold words such as war, famine, sexism, rape and murder...

 

And then just like that, he was left in the dust by his revolutionaries as they charged forward with distorted pirate copies of his utopian dream. They got everything they needed from him, and now they unceremoniously threw him off to the side to rot in his own disintegrated dreams as they claw their way to power and eventually become more and more corrupted as they steal more and more power to a point absolute. Were any of them to meet him after the revolution, few of them would even think he was part of it at all, let alone its founder. He has been completely erased from their memories, as they make space in their thinking brains for the establishment of their new State of Love.

 

This is where I come to really attach this song to your painting. There are lots of fragments of you I see in this verse. Inspiring your friends and followers to their own artistic endeavours; helping us find a voice we never had before for our pain by shovelling out the topsoil to the casket of your own buried traumas to let them flood your soul and body with heartcrushing anguish and grief all over again, and again, and again; regurgitating that pain as pixel paint on a virtual canvas; greeting our woes with ‘words of strength and care and sympathy’ whilst ravaging at your finance to keep up your role as an artist, a voice for those who weep alone and silently, a big sister, a mentor, a best friend we never had, for all of us………….. and for what? A few words of commendation written under your paintings or gallery, promises of a greater life and brighter times ahead of you, watchers like me clamouring at you for more paintings and more words of compassion and understanding… draining your very soul dry with our bays for more, or even just our very presence can be threatening enough… And yet, in your desperation to reach out and find friends in fellow sufferers, you cling on to the hope that your paintings are uniting us all together in a band of weary shut-ins who want a better life, a better world… a kinder world… just like you… and it’s that tiny spark that keeps you alive as an artist and keeps you painting and talking with us, no matter how hard the inner demons try to crush that yearning heart…

 

Because in the midst of all this, it’s so easy for us to forget that you are a human being just like us, and you have limits, faults and grievances – just like us. And those of us whose promises stretch in hope and grace for you – how many of us really know and appreciate the obsidian gaffs of darkness that tear up your heart and all its little parts, leaving gashes and scars that will never, ever heal… always bleeding… black blood on the carpet… a darkened room to block out the burning rays of a sun that seethes in eternal, cosmic, thermonuclear rage… It might be hard to believe this, but throughout my day-to-day life, no matter what I’m doing, many burgeoning questions always scratch away at the back of my heart and sometimes make me stop dead in my tracks and double over in heartache…

 

“What of Pai? What if she’s only being used? Am I using her? Who is really willing to help her rather than just stand by and steal her torment as their own? Do they even really comprehend the pain she’s in? Or is she merely a vessel of artistic expression in their eyes; an ever-suffering means to self-assertion, fame and power? Who genuinely wants to free her from the abyss? Who out there wants to actually see her really smile?”

In fact, even by writing such essays as this under your paintings, I feel like I’m only using you to ground my own self-expression into before building it up to a great tower of artistry, leaving you buried under its foundations as a feast for worms and maggots. But at the same time, I fervently want to make you feel like someone out there understands and truly cares, and is willing to put in the time and thought into long comments like this to show that care and understanding… but then when I look back at it all it feels like a self-exaltation (if that’s even a word) at your expense (or maybe I’m just that big-headed enough to think of these walls of text as some form of ‘art’), and it keeps cycling and greying out again and again and again. I’m really, really scared of exploiting you and abandoning you, Pai…

And on that note…

 

"I bless You madly,
Sadly as I tie my shoes.
I love You badly,
Just in time, at times I guess.
Because of You I need to rest, oh yes,
Because it's You that sets the test.”

David Bowie has now pulled the song right back to the start to tell the story afresh. Notice how this time, all second-person pronouns have been capitalised. Remember how all the third-person pronouns were capitalised in the previous verse? Bowie is now addressing his endless cycle of unfulfilled want of love of humanity to the revolutionaries themselves, as an example of the kind of behaviour he sung about right at the start of this song. For such a long song that tells such a changing story, everything is connected. And the Thinker’s desertion is about to come back in and strip him of everything he held dear; including his beliefs. This story is about to take a far darker turn…

“So much has gone and little is new,

And as the sunrise stream

Flickers on me,

My friends talk

Of glory, untold dream,

Where all is God and God is just a word…"

Now Bowie pulls in the revolutionaries themselves as the third protagonist to tell this story of an uprising. Now the true intentions of the rebels are finally revealed (albeit subtly – Bowie never gave everything away) as They clamour to the untold glories and dreams of the Thinker, but merely as a means to an end. Although They too are sick of the system that breathes down Their backs, Their revolution is driven out of hatred of the system itself rather than the people the Thinker wants to save from the system. So They adopt concepts like love and peace as words as empty as They are – save for the black puzzle pieces of forever incomplete, embezzled fragments of the Thinker’s dream. The ultimate deception to attain absolute power.

 

“We had a friend, a talking man

Who spoke of many powers that he had.

Not of the best of men, but Ours.

We used him, We let him use his powers.

We let him fill Our needs,

Now We are strong.”

 

Their friend was not a nobleman, a rich man or a celebrity; just a washed up unknown destitute who wanted to free us from the steel-toed jackboot of oligarchic totalitarianism. They gave him the time of day to spread his ideas and gather a posse to march with him – just as We give you an audience for you to spread your ideas via ink and the written word; letting you empower Us and fill Our own needs… before simply moving on as the grey ones with puzzle pieces in Their heads; leaving you, the only one of true colour and free thought, doubled over and drowning in your own darkness – with only your inner child commiserating you with a gentle petting. Off We march to light the flames of rebellion for a name We can’t even remember…

 

“And the road is coming to its end.

Now the damned have no time to make amends.”

 

A double-meaning here. Firstly that the oligarchs of the old order had their chances to reform their laws to accommodate the outcasts the revolutionaries claim to be fighting for; but now it’s too late. The rebels aren’t in the mood for a compromise of any kind (not even if it would promise greater salvation of Their fellow bros and hoes); in Their eyes, they are already damned (note the capitalisation). And herein lies the second meaning – that They aren’t driven by the original love to Their fellow humans, but by blind hatred of the system They’re revolting against. This hatred of Theirs is already eating Them up.

 

“No purse of token fortune stands in our way.” – They have become so fanatical in their u(dys)topian dream that they won’t ever allow themselves to sell out or be bought out by anyone who claims to support their cause but wants to take it in a less zealous direction. At least they have that kind of integrity, I guess…

 

“The silent guns of love will blast the sky.” – the first explicit use of the word ‘love’ as an empty buzzword to cloud Their true intentions through rose-tinted glasses – but the militarism of this line is self-evident. The gun is a weapon designed to kill – no matter who’s killed by whom for what cause.

 

“We broke the ruptured structure built of age.” – V for Vendetta comes to mind. A system which has exploited countless outcasts over centuries of repression is about to be brought to its knees… but will the outcome really be any better?

 

“Our weapons were the tongues of crying rage.” – again, the earlier songs of love have been replaced by angry, hateful chants of ‘Love’ against the old system.

 

“Where money stood, We planted seeds of rebirth,” – there’s an element of socialism (or even Communism) in this line, which states that money is the enemy; capitalism must be destroyed. The rose-tinted image of this would have you believe you’re witnessing the destruction of greed, class gaps and the elimination of the ‘rich and poor’ – but what we’re really observing is the removal of any form of individual power or freedom from the system in a kind of Marxist state-controlled society where everything is provided by the state and the people have no rights to any possessions of his own. The elimination of individuality.

 

“And stabbed the backs of fathers, sons of dirt.” – what’s one of the first images that comes to mind when you picture a revolution? Well, the murder of the old system’s heads of state and lobbyists, of course. Once again, the true scorching fires of hate are revealed inside the warm haze of Love. And now that They’ve tasted blood, the rebels want more…

 

“Infiltrated business cesspools, hating through Our sleeves.” – the destruction of lobbyists and corporate pressure groups who would meddle with politics in ways such as privately funding politicians, presidential candidates or political parties whose manifestos the lobbyists believe in. Also, the idea of the revolutionaries now wearing Their hate on Their sleeves paints Them even further in the light of supporting the downtrodden peasants bearing the weight of the rest of the pyramid above them, which They now climb not to destroy, but simply to claim the top of the pyramid for Themselves.

 

“Yeah, and We slit the Catholic throat” – The Vatican, the central governing body of the Roman Catholic Church, has often been accused of establishing a New World Order by meddling with political world affairs according to their religious doctrines. Many radical thinkers such as Alex Jones have supported this conspiracy theory and used it to bolster their own campaigns for establishing their own form of governance (usually libertarianism, but to me that just translates to letting corporations get away with whatever they want without any form of government to impose regulations on them). The New World Order is the ultimate enemy of the original hippie ideologies of peace, love and freedom – and yet completely endorses them by masquerading under rose-tinted buzzwords such as world peace, global unity, the United Nations.

 

“Stoned the poor on slogans such as:

‘Wish You Could Hear’

‘Love Is All We Need’

‘Kick Out The Jams’

‘Kick Out Your Mother’

‘Cut Up Your Friend’

‘Screw Up Your Brother, Or He’ll Get You In The End’”

 

The revolutionaries hoodwink the pale and downtrodden, the speechless, the weak and the weary with slogans of the Promised Land, and activist instructions of how to obtain this utopian dream, thereby garnering Them more support and thus more power. The poor people are effectively ‘stoned’ on these phrases; they follow blindly as one might stare blankly into a psychedelic painting whilst high on marijuana. The slogans portray the gradual degeneration of the revolutionaries’ ideals into radical anarchistic doctrines. They start off with wholly innocuous phrases plucked from songs such as All You Need Is Love by the Beatles, before descending through Kick Out The Jams (a song by MC5 which many misinterpreted to mean ‘fuck the rules’ but what the band later explained really meant ‘kick out the other parties’), and finishing up with slogans which parallel Charles Manson’s preaches of a war between black and white people which his followers had to instigate by murdering other white people and then holding black people as suspects, thus causing other whites to turn on the blacks and massacre each other! This shows the levels of fanaticism the revolutionaries have now reached. Any semblance of true love or peace is firmly out of Their minds as They throw Themselves into overthrowing the old order and establishing Their own; not just as a political entity, but as a cultural and, one might dare say, religious state that permeates the minds of all who live within its walls:

 

“And We Know The Flag Of Love Is From Above!”

 

Now the State of Love, the Free State, whatever you want to call it has been firmly established… with its own oligarchic entity; whose role is to convert all human beings under Their sphere of influence to Their rigidly enforced new laws and doctrines. This new committee decree that Their policy was sent to Them from ‘above’; this way of life was bestowed upon Us by God (who, remember, is ‘just a word’), and therefore it is wholly just and right; when in reality it’s all so completely wrong and criminal. It parallels very closely the Sharia law which dominates domestic affairs of radical Islamic societies such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and, most recently, ISIS – they’re still at the revolutionary stage, but are fast approaching statehood. And it is these overlords who give Their name to the very title of this song – the Cygnet Committee.

 

“And We Can Force You To Be Free!

And We Can Force You To Believe!”

 

The ULTIMATE oxymoron – you just cannot force somebody into freedom. That belies the very concept of freedom in the first place. By forcing everyone to accept Their own idea of ‘freedom’, the Cygnet Committee robs the proletariat of any kind of freedom they once might have had. It is a complete about-face of Their original ideologies, but They have become so far removed from those they can’t even remember what they used to stand for.

 

“And I close my eyes and tighten up my brain

For I once read a book in which the lovers were slain,

For they knew not the words of the Free State’s refrain.”

 

In the midst of all this, the long-forgotten Thinker is confronted by the terrible reality of an apocalypse he inadvertently started. Wracked with abject horror and guilt, he clenches his eyes shut to block it all out before it crushes his mind. No, this wasn’t his doing. It’s all a lie! He only planted the seeds of rebellion in the name of everlasting love, peace and freedom. Or so he wishes (ain’t that just like him?). But before he can shut himself off from it all, his mind becomes plagued by a savagely prophetic memory of a book he read, about such a revolution as this, fabricated on the pretences of love, peace and freedom for all, and whoever did not follow the doctrines and laws of this Free State were persecuted, quite literally, as enemies of the state.

 

“It said:

‘I believe in the Power of Good!

I believe in the State of Love!

I will Fight for the Right to be Right!

I will kill for the Good of the Fight for the Right to be Right!’”

 

Note once again how the refrain starts out with messages of love and goodwill before descending into implorations of killing to uphold the laws of the State of Love. Yet even from the first line, the undertones of autocracy are there – the POWER of Good, the STATE of Love. That last line is effectively the premise of every revolution in a nutshell; especially those of recent years such as Iraq, Libya and Ukraine.

 

“And I open my eyes to look around,

And I see a child laid slain on the ground.”

 

Overwhelmed by the images of wholesale slaughter in his mind, the Thinker opens his eyes again… he might as well have kept them shut, because this is exactly what’s happening around him right now. The Cygnets have reached the ultimate depths of depravity. They are actually sacrificing CHILDREN, no less, in the name of their perverted view of a utopian world of love and freedom. And it was that oh-so-tragic figure of the Thinker who came up with it all from the very beginning…

 

“As a Love machine lumbers through desolation rows,

Ploughing down man, woman, listening to its command

But not hearing anymore, not hearing anymore.”

 

The Cygnet Committee now brutally surge ahead towards Their final goal – the absolute control of all of humanity in the name of love and peace. Unbridled by all but the very weakest resistance, and still shamelessly hiding under those now completely vacuous monikers, the State of Love crushes and obliterates all that stands before it. In an endless blood-splattered Kristallnacht, the Cygnets dominate, devour, and subjugate everything and everyone in Their path.

 

They care absolutely not for the false monikers they hid under all this time anymore; they use them simply to brainwash the masses that this is what love, peace and freedom really looks like. Sound implausible? The Kim dynasty have done just that in North Korea. Most of that country’s (ahem) citizens actually believe their state’s founder is a divine being who fell to Earth from a realm far beyond human comprehension, and that his grandson has been divinely appointed by him to protect the people’s paradise – a paradise of labour camps, gulags and abject poverty. Make of that what you will.

 

“Just the shrieks from the old rich.”

 

Ready for a plot twist? Those ‘old rich’ are the ex-oligarchs of the old order – those were the guys who the Thinker originally blamed for everybody’s woes and oppression in the old days before the revolutionary movement even made any headway. They were the oppressors the Thinker appointed to remove from power so that everyone could finally live in love, peace and freedom (notice how repeating those three words makes them seem stale, boring and without meaning? SeewhatIdidthere?). And now here they are, robbed of their power and shrieking in terror alongside the very people they tyrannised; all of them (not Them, you see) just fodder rubbing shoulders before the instruments of torture and subjugation under the larger-sized steel-toed jackboot of the Cygnet Committee. Oh, the painful irony…

 

“And I want to believe,

In the madness that calls ‘Now’!

And I want to believe,

That a light’s shining through, somehow!”

 

Driven to the brink of insanity by both the chaos in his mind and the chaos surrounding him, the anguished Thinker now effectively comes full circle, and he cries out in desperation against the very system he created. All the bloodshed, all the terror, all the shattered hearts and broken souls and mangled bodies and lacerated minds and destruction and death and hate and violence and brainwashing and broken promises and families torn apart, and dead lovers, and children – he wants to destroy it all and start all over again. The people being stamped on and frogmarched, beggars, outcasts and peasants; he wishes to try saving them all once again, or at least to atone for his sins to them in this, the last thing he wants to give to them before his passing.

 

“And I want to Believe!

And you Want to Believe!

And We Want to Believe!”

 

As he implores the listener to believe and do as him, the Thinker’s pleas gradually turn into slogans akin to those of the very tyrants he now wants to depose. Just like Them, he is growing increasingly blind to the shrieks around him as his vision forms a tunnel centred on his new dream – the original utopian dream he had before the revolution. But in his mind he knows now that it’s all folly. If an enlightened age were miraculously to appear out of this dynasty of hate, some established author may end up writing yet another book about a failed revolution. A book another ‘Thinker’ may read and lose to the ethereal labyrinth of his/her subconscious as he/she rallies followers of his/her/(your?)/(my?) own to create something better… and then another book written… another ‘Thinker’… all in a constant cycle of creation and destruction. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…

 

“And We Want to Live!

Oh, We Want To Live!

We Want To Live!”

 

As his cries become more automated by the sheer will of survival, the Thinker throws the last of his demagogic powers into praying for the Cygnets to spare the lives of the people they’re destroying. They got their dream, they overthrew the old system. That was supposed to be the end. True love was supposed to prevail as a basic human need without the need to politicise and dogmatise it. But what the Thinker failed to realise before all of this is that as humans get something they crave after, they only want more and more and more. More power. More control. More wealth. Greater influence. Because human nature (and indeed life itself) is inherently greedy.

 

“I Want To Live!”

 

As his cries cause greater commotion about him, the Thinker suddenly finds himself in the grip of something he never dared dream. His friends and followers have suddenly come back to him… to silence him forever as an enemy of the State of Love. This is the worst betrayal of all, even worse than his friends deserting him forever in Their own haste to pursue Their own distorted ideas of what They thought the Thinker wanted. But naturally they weren’t to know, because the Thinker couldn’t tell Them otherwise, because They left him to rot. Not out of wanton selfishness, per say, but out of sheer desperation to bring the old order to the ground. And in their haste, their ideals twisted into something beyond all recognition even to the Thinker himself; and now he’s about to pay the ultimate price. To die for Their fucking sins!

 

“Live!

LIVE!!

LIVE!!!”

 

With his fate inscribed on a flat grey slab of tombstone, the Thinker gives it his all to flat out order anyone who can hear him to simply live. To live and hope beyond all hope for what may be a brighter day, or a more apt and informed effort to once again rewrite the future of our comrades… a day the poor old Thinker will now never know…

 

And so the song concludes exactly as it started.

 

So, in an absent-minded effort to wrap all of this up… what are the morals of this magic spell that negotiates our hides? Perhaps, it is simply to keep your friends as close as you possibly can lest they become influenced by something you dream for and race off to try to bring you that dream, only for them to become so entangled in their own haste that their ideas become so heavily distorted that if they return, their idea of your Heaven will really be your own very worst idea of Hell.

 

So, to anyone else who actually feels bothered enough to read through this whole wall of complete and utter bullshit, do as the young girl besides the broken woman in the painting does, try your best to understand her ideas and DON’T FEEL COMPELLED TO RUSH OFF AND TRY TO FORCE THOSE DREAMS INTO REALITY. Rather, stay by her side to keep those dreams alive in her head, and even if they don’t become reality on their own, at least that broken woman will still have someone by her side to gently pet her on the head… sometimes, we only need to pet or hug someone to make them feel like they’re really wanted, even if you won’t ever truly be able to empathise with them or their past.

 

Welp, that’s it. I have completely exhausted all my mental faculties. I shall now leave this up here as a testament both to this artist’s abilities to encourage people to really think things anew with her paintings; and to the psychotic, deranged and woefully uninformed audacity of someone who’s been living in a box for all twenty one years of his life.

Roast me at will! I want you to give me a damn good thrashing!