The last time I posted a blog was September last year, and I was putting this off so I could get some photos together, but I think it's probably best that I just blog now and follow up with the photos another time. Time's hard to find, but there really ought to be photos of my work, all things considered.
So, back in September 2013 I was pretty low. My life was falling apart, and everything I'd ever valued about myself seemed to be slipping away. I didn't know who I was, I certainly didn't know who I wanted to be.
I got smart young, and it made me an outcast. Other kids found my world too confusing, and I found theirs too dull. I was an unsafe investment for friends, and a neon sign for bullies. By age 10, pretty much all of my social authority was gone, and I had no choice but to be defined by what others saw: my curiosity and acadaemic prowess. Yet, as I got older, I seemed to drift away from that. Maybe it was the way it was taught, maybe it was the way the courses got narrower and more focused, maybe it was the way exams were marked more on how you described things than what you actually knew. Maybe it's down to any one of the other psychological factors holding me back at the time (because by
God I had no shortage of those). Maybe I was just always lazy and never noticed until I was in deep enough that I needed more than my wits to get by. At any rate, by the time I was 17 my grades started slipping and I went from an A* student to a C/D student in the space of two years. I left school with sub-par grades and few friends. I'd long abandoned any hope of popularity for the sake of being who I really was - a nerd - and reached the end of the line with nothing to show for it. I wasn't cool, or funny, or talented; I'd always been The Smart Guy, and now I wasn't very smart any more. I was... nobody.
Feeling pretty disillusioned with acadaemia, I took the year off - a luxury I'll always be grateful for - and did little of note. I stayed with Wil for a week
(I think that was 2013?). I met Joe in Birmingham. I did some charity work at a bookshop and discovered how Zen shelf arrangement can be. Other than that, I just kind of... existed. I attempted a few projects; writing, drawing, coding, skinning, overambitious game design; all of which went well when I actually made the time. Invariably, though, something would steal my attention and they'd get dropped into a folder on my PC, left in limbo to await that mythical day when I simultaneously have nothing important to do, don't feel like playing video games, and don't find anything distracting on the internet. That last one is the real danger. During that year, I would habitually stay up for more than 30 hours doing... stuff. Not even dirty stuff, necessarily. Just reading, thinking, watching, and generally consuming information. Maybe I was trying to make sense of my place in the world, or just the world in general. In any case, though, that was my life. Eat, sleep, consume.
By the time September 2014 rolled around, I was pretty set in that pattern, or lack thereof. My social skills had atrophied, and I was so incapable of regulating my own sleep that I couldn't hold a job. It was therefore with some trepidation that I left for my first day at Stroud College of Arts.
Stroud, as much as anything, was a failsafe. I'd left school with no set plan other than
not being a parentally-dependent loser for the rest of my life. In a rare burst of proactivity during that year out, I'd applied, assembled a portfolio and gone to the interview, which I passed fairly easily. I like art, and for all my confusion, I knew that I'd need something to get me out of bed in the mornings if I still felt aimless when my year-long amnesty was over. There are worse ways to spend your time, I reasoned, and apparently you got Fridays off. How hard could it be?
That first day was terrifying. I was nervous, insecure and my stomach felt hollow and heavy. I remember filling out the little questionnaire they gave me, and ticking the boxes for
"This doesn't feel like the right option for me" and
"I don't feel confident about my potential on this course". They put me in a room with the rest of Group C, I picked a table, and everyone got out the basis of their first project (a box of personally significant objects). In smaller groups, everyone started talking the other now-students through their box, and slowly, slowly, I started to relax. I'm not so great with attention, but I like to discuss things. People interest me, and ideas interest me, and perhaps, I thought, if this year is going to be mainly sharing ideas, with people, I could have a... good... time?
The best year of my fucking life, as it's turned out.
The guys at my table liked my box (they were all things I'd had nightmares about as a child), and it only got better from there. I tried a dozen different forms of art, and enjoyed every one. I tried lots of different styles, and found one that I could tentatively call my own. When I did well, tutors and students alike took an interest. When I ran into problems, I could go to staff who actually liked getting involved with students' work. I've looked at artwork from across the world, and started to understand what it actually is about art that interests me, and how it pertains to what engages me in general, even what I live for. And through it all, college has fostered in me an awareness of the conceptual and the philosophical; the really poncy beret-and-chardonnay questions that I've had to supress for so long finally have an outlet and an eager audience. It's not been non-stop success; that year of inactivity cast a long shadow, and I am
massively behind in my development documentation, but I think, for the first time in a very long time, I'm genuinely happy where I am, and with that kind of base to stand on I might actually be able to roll up my sleeves and sort myself out.
I don't regret that year off in the slightest, even though it ended up costing me more than £2,000. All of the Stroud students from my year at school came and went, leaving me with exactly what I needed: A blank slate. My unpopularity, my nerdiness, the rise and fall of my grades - none of it mattered any more. I was thrown into a room with 80 strangers to sink or swim based on who I was right now. And, as it happened, they liked me.
I'm still not cool, or attractive, or even particularly
good relative to the inflated standard of an art community. I still don't get invited to most things, and I doubt people talk about me when I'm not there to remind them I exist. In fact, I still feel thoroughly out of place a lot of the time, surrounded by cliques I don't identify with and gangs with a depth of history I can't compete with. But they are, down to a man, happy to have me and usually happier for having had me, and by Lucifer that's a start.
Then Rome happened.
Out of place, perhaps, but welcomed nonetheless.
If Stroud Art College is the best year of my life, then our study trip to Rome was the best week, and that Friday was the best night. Monday is a bit of a blur - we'd spent the day travelling and transferring, so I just flopped into my room with the two dudes I was sharing with (When the sleeping arrangements were pinned up, I pencilled my name into an empty room, rather curious as to who would voluntarily put theirs next to it. The Two Dudes deserve a mention, since they've stuck with me pretty much since day one despite me largely neglecting them in favour of chasing skirt. We don't have a whole lot in common, but I respect them both a lot). Guy A's girlfriend poked her head in the door to say that she was going to get dinner with her friends if he wanted to tag along, me and Guy B tagged along with him, and I somehow ended up drinking Prosecco with a table of beautiful women. I spent the rest of the week with them; spending my days taking in the rich air of Rome, seeing the masterworks of the Rennaissance first-hand, and exploring the avant-garde in the contemporary circuit; and my nights eating reasonably-priced pasta and/or pizza in funny little restaurants, playing Cards Against Humanity, and sitting on other peoples' beds while drinking cheap amaretto out of the bottle. We drew in the shadow of the Pantheon. We stood at the top of Spanish Steps at midnight and saw the Roman skyline lit up like a moonlit ocean. We even did that dumb thing where everyone piles into a tiny photo booth together. They liked me, respected me, appreciated me, enjoyed my company, valued my opinion and oh God am I going to cry no I don't think so.
Friday... a lot happened on that Friday, most of which was entirely novel to me. I doubt I remember everything, but it included: Vodka, Coke, Jaegerbombs, Bailey's, sambuca, feeling attractive, talking a lot, "clicking", nice bartenders, creepy shirtless Germans, kissing girls, being kissed by girls, getting crepes, overanalysing the experience of being drunk, being told how great I am, vaulting benches, falling into fountains, refusing to kiss girls on the lips because they're drunk and I'm actually kind of principled, holding hands with girls, comparing homoerotic childhood experiences, singing The Beatles'
I Wanna Hold Your Hand while dodging traffic, girls stroking my beard, someone throwing up on some priceless mosaics, moonwalking, getting everyone back to the hotel safe through good delegation, feeling invincible, talking/hugging a girl out of an existential crisis via drunken opining on the nature of life and my own struggles with depression, being buried in shoes, and swapping coats with a green-haired lesbian who thought I looked like Doctor Who.
Saturday was my first "morning after", and was actually fairly pleasant (the photo on the right is from Saturday) apart from my lack of sex appeal returning to me with the subtlety of a freight truck. Then we all made the long trip home. I cried a little when I finally got back to my empty room.
Since then, college has been much better. I've quietly distanced myself from the guys I hung around with before, not that we ever did much apart from go to the pub once. They're nice, but they didn't really have any need for me, a figurative hole for me to fit into. With the Rome girls, I actually feel... significant. Also, their workroom is closer than the other one. There's still a fucktonne of things I wish were better; about me, and about my life, but progress is progress and this feels like progress to me.
I've recently been to parties at two of their respective homes, with another coming up, and I actually managed to not have a terrible time while clubbing with them last Thursday. Last night (Saturday) my parents were out so I had a few of them over, and spent the evening watching movies while buried under varying combinations of young women. They stayed the night, and one of them bunked on the sofa with me, so I guess I can technically claim to have slept with a girl? Not that slowly waking up in the warm embrace of a beautiful lady is a modest achievement; no, as far as I'm concerned it's living the dream, and I told her as much.
It's a shame it's all going to end so soon. The course ends in ten weeks, and the year not long after that. Frankly, I hate thinking about it, so I'm not going to.
Over the last few weeks I've been going to universities around the UK, all of whom were impressed by me and my portfolio (Photos soon, I promise). I'll be enrolling for a three-year degree course in Fine Art at my favourite. I still have no idea what I'll do when those three years are up, but for now, I'm on a roll, and once I finish mourning my friendships at Stroud I'll be raring for take two.
Still don't have a girlfriend, though.
