First over Fifty Moment

First over Fifty Moment
I rose at dawn, Dook always wakes me at first light. He has come a long way since we got him. He doesn't snap, bite or attack anyone unless provoked as he was want to do when we first got him. I know of several freinds who have had their dogs stolen whilst tied up outside shops. John, a street person and rough sleeper in Frome I know has spent six months distraught after losing his best freind whilst shopping in asda. So I'm not altogether unhappy that, when tied up outside shops, Dook will bite any pervert who tries to touch him. Since I was five I have known not to approach tied up dogs if you don't know them. They are trapped. They feel scared and when some stranger comes up are prone to try defend themselves. This can lead to a dogs death as the dog can be considered dangerous and euthanised regardless of situation or provocation, a dog must never bite a human. Such is the law. Perhaps this is the only realistic system.
In fact, I also add, don't approach strange dogs unless the owner says you will be safe. 'Is he friendly.', the knowledgable will always ask before touching another's dog.
This morning I tied him outside the paper shop. Some knobhead came in looking emasculated asking if the dog outside was mine. I said he was. He said the dog had nearly bitten him. I said the only time I have known him to bite anyone is if they don't know him and try to touch him. He admitted that he had made to touch Dook, this then said he would have punched me in the face if he had been bitten.
My immediate reaction was to wait outside the shop and batter the lad. I've never taken well to threats and don't like strangers trying to touch my dog. A score of situations from my past flashed through my life where similar threats have resulted in me leaving the threatener lieing spark out on the floor, curled up in a ball apologising or re threatening that once they've got their gang/ dad/ big brother how they are going to find me and ....A score too with me on the floor.
Yet I remembered the last time a similar situation had arisen. I was walking out in my own area when a young lad came round the corner in a car without indicating. I'd seen his approach but as he had not indicated assumed he was to head straight across the roundabout. But he turned, clipped me. I lost my temper and shouted at him through his window. I kicked the side of his car denting the metal. This caused him to leave his car running, to attack me. A full blown fight ensued with both of us on the ground at times. I was aware a few years back I could have knocked him out but he was half my age. Neither of us got the better of each other. A crowd was gathering. Unsure of how the police would take it, and no doubt their unhelpful presence would manifest before too long, I decided to walk away. Weirdly he followed, abandoning his still running car and followed me. The shock of not winning, something I hadn't often had before, not since boxing anyway, was distressing. I knew then my fighting days were over.
This is hard for a man. Perhaps a parallel to the female menopause. That look in the supermarket from a handsome carpenter, the fourth something blushes before realising the look is for her twenty year old daughter. The baton has been passed, silently and despite the mothers approval.
Our days as a champion are done. I had always enjoyed fighting and of course had lost a few. But the few had always had mitigating factors. I'd been stoned or drunk. I'd taken on some skilled fighter. Such runs a mans arrogance. He will find a narrative to support his heroism, despite contrary evidence. But to be unable to equal a normal twenty year old felt demeaning. The beginning of the downward spiral in to the grave.
So today I left it. I hung around, part of me wanted to defend my honour. To defend Dooks honour. The young lad, twenty odd, must have felt emasculated after Dook scared him but there was nothing to be gained by fighting the knobhead. Yes, it can be regarded as ones duty to twat knobheads, the world is full of too many. Still, better to start the day the bigger man. Better to walk away than suffer the ignominy of street defeat to a young boy, stupid cock weasel though he may be.
My last ayuashka experience had run through lost memories. Since my mothers death I had always been fighting. Why and who I don't know. Yet each day has been a battle. To never give in. Never surrender. To die in action.
Perhaps the ayuashka was merely telling me my age. That I could put down my guns now. I thought back to Peters party in Cornwall. He was drunkenly looking for trouble. He was spoiling for a fight. Over any tribal crap he could find. Waking up naked and bloody on the road, perhaps he had found it.
I don't need to fight anymore. That part of my life is over. I have been sufficiently upwardly mobile to escape a world where you fight or get beaten. No more could I care about being successful in business. My successes now are all regarding myself. I, and only I, know when my work is successful on the artistic side. Ironically I seldom felt inadequate on that front. I may have questioned my physical inability to overcome another man in combat. I may have questioned the ill fortune I was dealt in terms of launching out in to what I wanted to do. Choosing fine furniture designer making, ironically a field of practice no longer in the hands of what were often referred to as the artisan class. The hand working class. Now, to a man or woman, it has become the occupation of the middle class. The artisan class has changed meaning. It's members now come from parts of society where economic viability is of less consequence. Most makers find work through family, family freinds, community tribal freinds and acquaintances. Until their business is established, for the foundation two years, most fine craft furniture businesses launch through fortune of birth. The FDMA has a few women, no blacks to my knowledge, and few from the lower eschelons of society. Funnily, I no longer care. No longer feel that shoulder chip. I no longer want to be part of that conservative grouping. I no longer find the work attractive. As though the veil has been lifted, I see an awkward style. There are pieces within the grouping, designer makers whose work I like. But on the whole I now find it a poor branch of the tree of furniture design. Work for the maker. Furniture to please the maker, not the client. Where as art, in all its pomp and obstinate obscurity, at its heart is about communication. The cogniscenti maybe an elitist seeming bunch to the untrained eye, but the core aim has never changed. Fine craft furniture, bar a handful of greats, has become furniture to impress other makers. An inward perversion has grown steadily out of the seventies craft revival.
My own work, at least my exhibition pieces, were never aimed to sit in that grouping. Though finely made it was never targeted to communicate to other makers. I saw the medium as arbitrary. Just as Damien Hirst never aimed his work at impressing butchers or taxidermists, mine has never been aimed at the woodwork fraternity. Sadly, my exhibiting opportunities seldom came from the art world I sought. Fine craftsmanship was its sole connection to the designer makers.
Inevitably i continue to work however I realise now I can not use fine woodwork as my medium. Too easily confused with a category of object of a different family. Photography, painting, writing, three dimensional work now faces a fresh path where anything may be used. Bar my trade skill. Indeed, a trade I fell back on to get by. Some pieces I made could successfully sit alongside the Cheltenham show objects. Look back at my final pieces, the elliptical desk. The maple office in Chelsea. Photographs from my blog from January 2014 show the office. Ironically, it was having inadvertently becomeing successful in this bread and butter work that brought home to me how far I had slid from my objectives.
Today's brush with fighting and my turning my back on my assailant reminded me of the ayuashka message. That I need fight no more. This includes the personal fight I always felt in making commissioned work. Furniture I neither loved nor believed in. My fight is over. Time to be. Time to do as I wish. No more struggle.


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