{"id":607,"date":"2009-11-01T20:10:37","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T20:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=607"},"modified":"2009-11-01T20:10:37","modified_gmt":"2009-11-01T20:10:37","slug":"i-fall-into-despair-but-am-revived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=607","title":{"rendered":"I Fall into Despair But Am Revived"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday 1st<\/sup> November 2009<\/p>\n

In Madrid I\u2019d been thinking, after this stained hotel bathroom at least my own won\u2019t seem so bad. \u00a0As you know bathrooms are a sensitive issue with me, ever since Frankie-Doreen Gunn, in the 80s, withered the one in my old flat, which did have an avocado suite, never replaced in 14 years there. Although the avocado suite wasn\u2019t the issue.<\/p>\n

Besides, so often home is a let-down after hotel.<\/p>\n

But no!\u00a0 On returning, I plunged. In the downstairs bathroom, the shower screen leaking, the plaster work diseased, a definite whiff. What if Frankie-Doreen comes round! And then, everywhere I looked, scuff marks on the walls (in the Museum flat in Prague, Anthony Mottram trolls round with a pot of specially mixed paint, a very rare off-white, touching up where the cleaner has bashed by with the vacuum. And this is someone who claims to despise moisturiser-users), not a piece of furniture unscratched, dented, pieces broken off, lights not working, chipped china…<\/p>\n

Oh for a proper complement of staff!\u00a0 With eight full-time staff you could begin to scratch the surface of the work to be done in a three-bedroom terraced house, such as this one.<\/p>\n

There are always five hundred jobs outstanding in the home, aren\u2019t there?\u00a0 Have you ever counted? No matter how hard you try, the number remains the same.<\/p>\n

With a furniture restorer on site, a builder\/electrician\/plumber, a fabric\/upholstery specialist, an archivist\/secretary, a carpet mender, a picture framer, a trained cleaner, an advanced shopper and sourcer, a gardener, you could at last make progress.<\/p>\n

Then, yesterday, it was Eddie Sedgewick\u2019s talk and launch of his website at The Chelsea Arts Club. It\u2019s famous if you\u2019ve heard of it. Eighty per cent of the members were a dead ringer for Maria Aitken, the actress.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the point. The talk was so inspiring; all my troubles evap.<\/p>\n

Eddie Sedgewick is a successful artist, was at school with Robert Nevil and I have known him since 1977.\u00a0 We saw him briefly the other day when he presented some wonderful fabrics he has designed at Ligne Rosset.\u00a0 \u2018Success\u2019, though, is a paltry notion when you consider what he said, quite irrelevant really. He spoke of how he makes art out of wherever happens to find himself. In the 1970s, that was Railton Road, Brixton, London. If that means nothing to you, take it from me, it was urban deprivation, crime, drugs, racist police, embittered Afro-Caribbean community, truly an awful place. He lived there with Robert Nevil, above a male brothel. They were burgled every day. The Police said they were fools to live \u2018amongst coons\u2019.<\/p>\n

But, as Eddie put it, \u2018I invented the place around me.\u2019 It was the same, years later, when the 7\/7 bus-bomb went off right outside his window, in Tavistock Square. This horror he forged into art. Even in reality, in his view, it became art: \u2018The forensic people, when they had finished their work, wrapped each part in blue plastic. They wrapped all the trees and bushes. I suddenly thought, \u2018It\u2019s a John Christo\u2019. Then I thought, \u2018What an awful thing to say.\u2019 Then I thought again: \u2018No, that\u2019s how it is.\u2019<\/p>\n

This is the essence of Poor Little Rich Gay life. The raw material is re-shaped, transformed into something else. For those of us with a smaller gift for invention than Eddie Sedgewick, it is money that wrenches the life into the desired position. And money, as we know, can give you wings or it can be ruinous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday 1st November 2009 In Madrid I\u2019d been thinking, after this stained hotel bathroom at least my own won\u2019t seem so bad. \u00a0As you know bathrooms are a sensitive issue with me, ever since Frankie-Doreen Gunn, in the 80s, withered the one in my old flat, which did have an avocado suite, never replaced in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}