In this sequence of essays, I have written about the transformative capacities of art. I have examined about how art can not only transform space, but how art can also transform us – how art reminds us of our own, human, expressive capacities, of our own abilities to create and communicate and provoke and inspire.
But while Art is a trigger for change – a wonderful, exhilarating trigger – it is only a trigger: no more than that. If art cannot effect something, then it has no purpose.
Thought (Portrait of Camille Claudel) by Auguste Rodin
So – art can transform space: turn rugs into boats, private galleries into public playgrounds, paintings into portals to new and exciting worlds.
I don’t think this goes far enough. I’ll try again.
Art is such a potent force that not only can it transform space, but I believe it can also transform human beings. I believe art can spark a metamorphosis in us making us greater and better than we could ever conceive. And I believe that we must seize this, for we could be much diminished without it.
Some 40 parents and children and I were sitting in the foyer of the National Gallery’s Education Centre. In bounces the human version of Tigger. He is an actor. He starts to sing.
“Come and walk with me, down by the river Seine…
Come and walk with me, down by the river Seine…
Then, to us, arms outstretched – “Your turn!”
… Not a chance, pal.
I have clearly done something wrong.
For the last 5 years, I have been sentenced to suffer in a sustained, systematic, spiteful and merciless manner. I do not know my crime but I know, all too well, the cruelty of my punishment. It is all-too-regularly meted out, administered with blithe brutality. Some of you will not know what I am talking about; some of you already do and have already started sweating clammily; there will be some of you reading who will have this trauma all to look forward to.
I am, of course, talking about children’s soft play centres.
One of my first teaching interviews was with a headmaster who was deaf and bald and swished about in a Harry Potter-style academic gown. Perusing my CV, he said, “So, an MA in Performance. That was rather a waste of time, wasn’t it?” Deciding that you no longer care about the outcome of an interview does give you a greater degree of freedom to speak your mind. So, for several minutes, I hammered into this man a very angry defence of the importance of theatre and drama and the Arts in society.
“Richard Landing at Milford Haven (After Shakespeare)” is a painting by Richard Hamilton, displayed at the John Soanes Museum in London. In 1399, Richard II landed at Milford Haven from Ireland, shortly before his surrender to Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV.
Your faith’s misplaced. I here disown
those expectations you have grown
that tried to make me more than man.
I cannot be but what I am.
I bear your crown. I am alone.
I bent down, picked up the packet of scotch pancakes, and handed them back to the woman. She was in her 70s. I am positive she had dark hair – but I’m not sure. I think she had a red coat on – but I’m not certain about that either. I think her arms were full of breakfast – but I might be making that up too. But I remember the scotch pancakes. I remember her having red cheeks. I remember the wrinkles that crinkled her makeup. I remember the pancakes retaking their precarious foothold in the cradle of her arms.
I met this woman last December, before Christmas. We were about fifth in line at my local Co-op in Skelmanthorpe. From pancake pick-up to goodbye, I knew her for about three minutes. It is not surprising that I cannot recall her as well as I want to: however, it is no less frustrating. She is important to this reading. She is its story.
Were I to have been born a girl, my name would have been Jenny. If my mother had her way, I would have been called André. “Alistar” then is not so bad a name. My mother would call me “anak”, a Filipino term of endearment, when I was good; when I was naughty, my full name would be wheeled out and used like a cannon, a warning shot that precedes the wielded slipper. Even now, at 33, I physically wince when am full-named by my mother and by people who are not my mother, which can be awkward. Now, I am “Ali” and I am happy with this. In order to differentiate me as an “Ali” from my sister Alison, who is also an “Ali”, my brothers call me “George”. My friends call me “Bouch”. To my students, I am “sir” or “Mr Boucher”, though “Bouch” in this context also makes the rounds. With great pride, I am newly known as “daddy”.
Names are important. They carry personal and family histories; names trigger anecdotes, reflect relationships and invoke memories. Continue reading
There is no better way to gain perspective of your true place in the world than by parenting a toddler.
My nearly-4 year old daughter has spent the last 2 years of her life documenting evidence to support her theory that I am, despite my best efforts, not a dominant hierarchical authority-figure worthy of obedience.
All of my instructions – “please finish your breakfast”; “please don’t use your cereal like jewellery”; “please don’t play chicken with that rubbish truck” – are met with an arched eyebrow, followed by a Hollywood “humph”.
What follows is, of course, the action that is the diametric opposite of what I have asked.
My toddler has equated independent bipedal propulsion with total autonomy of all decisions pertaining to her life. My attempts to wrest control back from her monomaniacal clutches are as pesky and as exasperating and as fundamentally futile as a mosquito biting through armour. She knows what I clearly do not: eventually, and inevitably – by open hand or swatter or spray – she will win and I will lose, and the natural order of things will recommence, with her at the pinnacle of my family’s food chain, and me, languishing at its foot. Continue reading
On the Double Double 