In the spirit of
Jeff Wall | A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai) | 1993
You know, it’s funny. I’ve often compared (mainly in my head but occasionally out-loud after I’ve had a few drinks and become that lovely, loving, warm person who says things like this out loud) that feeling you get in your stomach and your chest when you’re listening to some really wonderful, perfect music, with the feeling that you get when you’re in love, or when you love someone.
I’m sure that it’s the same feeling, and if it isn’t it is oh-so very similar.
Sometimes - and I feel like I’m making a grand confession here and, thusly, feeling a bit coy about it - but sometimes, I get that same feeling when I look at or read about art.
This is the sound of a bombshell dropping:
Ppppppcccchhhhhhrrrrrrrouuuuhgghghghghhgghghghghghghccchhrrughhccrhhrurhguh.
See, I’ve been reading about Jeff Wall. Man, I love Jeff Wall. His art, I mean. I love it. His photographs. I love them. I really love listening to Wall talk about them, and I really love reading about them. And that’s what I’ve been doing.
I said that already, didn’t I? I’m like some kind of lovesick unicorn.
It is kind of lovely though, isn’t it, that art, those tiny, wonderful moments in an image, that ideas, notions, nuanced art-historical referencing, cleverness… can create this feeling in my chest?
A bit over a week ago I got a piercing in my ear, in the top bit around where that bump in the outer curve of your ear cartilage tends to be, if you have one. It’s quite subtle and nice. I like it. I think it’s pretty.
I mostly did it because I’ve wanted to for ages. For some reason something has always held me back, until one day I realised that if I want a piercing in my ear I should just go right ahead and do it, because this life isn’t a trial-run… this is kind of it.
So the piercing itself has ended up serving two purposes (well, three if you count ‘being badass’): the first one is looking pretty and fulfilling that desire that I’ve had for so long; the second, consequential purpose, is a reminder to myself that I should be doing the things I want to do in life, not just the things I think I should be doing. I shouldn’t be deferring the things I want to do to some abstract, future life that won’t exist.
In the spirit of this, whenever I start worrying that maybe by studying art and spending so much time thinking about it, I’m doing the wrong thing, I force myself to remember that love-like feeling I get from looking at and reading about Wall’s photographs, and I realise that if I care so much about something that it makes me feel like I am in love with it… well, then that is probably what I should be doing.
