Bostin News - A Cough Or A Question by Tim Brinkhurst
From above, the motorways are a complicated necklace of serpents, decorating and damning the people who live within their tangled patterns. Harmony’s curse. Families, friends, out in their gardens and the parks when the hot pollution of a million cars and lorries and vans clashes in the sky with a lost, cold and miserable rain cloud and the positive and negative energies rub themselves up the wrong way and the sparks create electricity, drawn to earth to create mischief among humans as the scrap rages up above.
We run for cover.
Disturbed from our own thoughts. Even as we drive and curse drivers, even as we talk, watch screens, carve, paint, write, tap buttons, strum and blow, our inner chat, the back and forth of voices and ideas is the comforting hum of our existence. Until a loud noise reminds us just how easy it would be to be blown from north to south by elemental events beyond our control. It could be a revolution, weather patterns, a cough or a question.
Why do you do that? And why do you do it like that?
Art and anxiety go together. Nervous energy drives creation. In the midst of the healthy production and sickly consumption of what passes for normal life there are people who find it hard to relax, who examine themselves neurotically for a living. Of course, anyone can live too deeply in their own thoughts, and the raw edges of mental pain are available for anyone to approach and cut themselves on. But artists make a deliberate choice to open themselves up, to open the door and let the question in, interrogating themselves, imprisoned by an irrational need.
If you ask for an explanation or a reason as to why an artist does what they do and why they do it like that, the response can be inarticulate, or ordinary. The explanations are often in the work that is produced and words won’t get close to the thoughts released by images or sounds or shapes or textures or locations. The answer could be the way a shadow falls or in the grains or grades of the random web of wood fibres that make up a sheet of paper. But delve a little deeper and the answer always returns to the question the artist is asking herself, deliberately creating a disturbance, a disharmony in their thoughts.
There is nothing special about artists. We don’t have more profound thoughts than Father Barry as he wakes to another day doubting God’s existence, or Raj as she contemplates the pulse of her baby’s brow as it feeds just below her chin. If you work in a shop a tragedy can cause you to consider the detail of your life like a Buddhist monk contemplating a leaf. A taxi-driver will notice the drop in serotonin in his brain, registering less pleasure in his day because his customers now wear masks. We all miss smiles. But the artist harvests the disharmony, soaks it up like trees digest pollution, and then coughs up beauty and mystery, intrigue and joy, entertainment for the senses.
The question can cause disruption in all of our lives. We all notice it. The moment we become aware that we are born to die. A sudden realisation that we are more horrifically unique and alone than we ever thought possible when in the middle of living’s swirl. A pause. A moment. Months alone without a hug. A week contemplating familiar walls. Distractions losing their power to distract. Enormous sadness, so deep it’s as if we are submerged. Normal loses meaning. Time changes meaning. Right there is where and when you meet the artist’s world. A cough, a distraction. How do you respond? Can you use the unfamiliar feelings flowing through you to jump-start creativity? Or will you succumb for a while and hope it doesn’t last too long, numb yourself with lorazepam or a stiff drink and feast on a box set or three?
Anyone can be an artist. You can make art. It’s the answer to the question. And the question is the answer.
Why do you do that? And why do you do it like that?
Sound artist and producer Tim Brinkhurst has produced 5 sound pieces for Bostin News that speak of and share creativity.
Words, sound and images - Tim Brinkhurst
Commissioned for Bostin News Summer 2020