As a boy we would catch small fish; minnows and sticklebacks that instead of having a traditional dorsal fin opted for a run of spikes. From memory I think the ones we caught were three spined sticklebacks though I have some deeply buried dream of a fifteen spined version. This may have been a fantasy, an old wives tale shared by prepubescent boys. But the name seemed appropriate as a title for a piece of furniture I made for an exhibition I took part in. Whilst at college I’d made a table that was something of a folly but came from noticing how plants would grow through tarmac. Men plastered down their dull, black tarry pavement in belligerent triumph over nature but we all secretly knew that they didn’t stand a chance. Men may try to freeze a moment and dictate the direction of pedestrians but true paths form in wayward fashion. The collective mind wove intricate, unruly stray lines that were beyond the reason of a single urban planner. Meanwhile the pavements blistered and burst as life took its own initiative and did as it pleased. The table top I made was in oak and had small black shoots of bog oak that mimicked the growth through tarmac. The table top was a rejected idea but a curious diversion from what I saw as a rule to be broken. Of course I was wrong. Tables have flat tops with good reason. Nevertheless, having recognised my folly and being of a contrarian nature I dug in deeper. My girlfriend of the time was working in a hot glass studio and on a weekend she had access to a great facility. I asked her to make me a run of lead crystal spikes ranging from small four inch to larger ones nearly a foot in length. I carved a top from American black walnut that mitred into side panels. Beneath the top I built a maple box that housed a strip light. The glass spikes were housed into holes that allowed the light to travel up through the glass spikes which worked something like a fibre optic. The piece was of no practical use but worked as a light sculpture that glowed quietly. Who can claim that they’ve never been tempted to make a table with lead crystal glowing spikes bursting out of its back. Like a frozen burst of machine gun fire. Looking back I can still recall the impulse to create domestic monsters. Furniture is largely made to comfort yet sometimes the temptation to terrify is an impulse I have been unable to resist.

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mental health

Sometimes I go through periods of time where my anxiety gets very intense and I experience a deep terror of social interaction of any kind. Even with my closest friends. In fact it is particularly with my closest friends that I find the hardest. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s the person I pretend to be becomes a lie. I don’t want people to think that I’m a failure. The person I present as myself proves to be a fake. A construct created and molded to satisfy what I believe the freind would hold in the highest regard. I can remember my father telling lies to big himself up when the man who he was would have more than sufficed. And I have become the same. What I had always been determined not to be. To learn from his mistakes. Yet I have fallen in to being the same duplicitous deceiver. Whether it be financial security that I don’t really have. Whether it be success in my chosen field. Fear that my home is not as impressive as I imagine the freinds expectation might be. Why would anyone lie about who they are? Why does the fear of disappointing people, people that I love, keep me from seeing them.

I tried my best to be good at what I do and maybe I became a competent craftsman. Deep down I know that I have made far more decent furniture than just about any of my peers yet it still feels like I failed. I never had the mental strength to be successful. The more I learn about narcissists and sociopaths the more I see the pomposity of the game I chose as a career. The last stint of work was a five year blast that left me broken. My life is punctuated with periods of intense energy and work that careen out of control and crash into a mental breakdown. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had now. Maybe five. Each time worse than the last. The first serious one came in the years after university. I’d mastered that system and qualified with a first. What a fool I’d been. Competing in a narrow system for three years. Each project we’d see who could score the highest marks. I’d been one of the top in my year. I recall the pompous swagger as I’d strut around, glowing in seeing my name top or close after a project. What a stupid idea to put the marks up like the football league at the end of the workshop. And I remember the excitement that Ian Douglas had when he rang me to let me know that I had a first. I was alone in a cottage in a part of the country where I knew virtually no one. How hollow I felt. Realising how fully I had fallen for a myth. No group any more where this would have any meaning. And I have never been asked what I got by anyone. Admittedly I never got seriously into academia where it might have been of some consequence.

I’d seen one part of the myth at my first college. The generation of designer makers who I had admired and aspired to be like were not able to support themselves without a rich family, a rich spouse or a teaching position at one of the universities that perpetuated the myth. So knowing this I tried to become a lecturer. I had various places where I worked; Shrewsbury College, university of Wolverhampton, Buckinghamshire college, Swindon, guest spots at Parnham, Jacob Kramer and others. But I was not good at communicating with people on the whole. I couldn’t sell them a product I did not believe in. And the pressure I felt led to my first serious breakdown. My girlfriend at the time, in who I had put total belief, abandoning my home community to join her. Or so I believed. She bought a derelict cottage that I renovated. She told me that she would be moving there once she had finished the glass course she did after completing her fine art degree. But she never came. I was alone, working on the cottage, making ways to live in an inward looking county that had little interest in incomers. The support of a network of friends and a partner was not there. So I turned to drink. Having no training as a teacher I was asked to be a lecturer at Wolverhampton, I applied for a job at the University of central England and finally the last day was taken up by the only college that I felt even remotely comfortable at Shrewsbury. Five and a half days a week. I was paid more then than I have ever got since. Of course my girlfriend decided to go work in a glass studio instead of coming to live in the cottage she had bought. What ever gave me the idea that she would buy a cottage, have me restore it and come live there.

So I drank until I broke. I ran away down to Somerset where she lived and tried to recover. In the end I was just in the way to her now. I went to work for Fred. He saved me then. Along with Gareth. But I can’t bring myself to see them now.

I managed to compromise on what I would do. A connection I got through my girlfriend’s father became my patron. Other makers I knew thought I had it lucky. Perhaps I did. I found I could make decent quality furniture and make a living at it. But I was still deluded. What I now understand is narcissistic and sociopathic behaviour seduced me. I believed that I had a magic touch. That I was somehow special. There’s a spectrum and perhaps Tracy Emin is at the apex. A belief that you are special. That the emotion you invest into the creation of objects invests them with magic. That an unmade bed is a great work of art. That so important are her feelings, above and beyond the feelings of common people, that any presentation of matter is of great value. Fine furniture may be a few degrees of self delusion below the work of conceptual artists but essentially it is the same thing. To succeed in that world. The world of exhibitions of pure narcissistic sociopathy that the creators of this stuff are exceptional beings. To succeed the artist must have a self belief of complete conviction. They have to be able to talk to collectors fully believing that the objects that they sell are invested with magic.

But I knew deep down, even though I dare not admit it to myself, that I am not special. Further than that, I know too that my peers in that world are also delusional narcissists.

And so again I crumbled. My girlfriend was long gone. I’d followed her, abandoning my home, family and friends till the world I had left had disappeared. Evaporated as all circles of people do after a time. And I found myself stranded. Not really accepted in the world I now found myself in and lost from my home.

From alcohol I drifted off into harder drugs. My business lasted a couple of decades.

In a broken state I gave up on everything. Left only with my trade skills I understood what it means to be working class. Having only your labour to give until you fade away.

A couple of years of mental illness where I was unable to work followed. The only friends I had were the other broken people whose common denominator is drugs and drink.

There’s more. Other bits of work like the museum fitting and more complex drug addictions.

I became a failed artist. Still delusional and narcissistic but with no evidence to support my belief in the magic I had thought was in my touch.

There is another chapter. The humility I faced and became the maker for a much younger boss. I can say how I took his business, through my skills to a new level. How I helped him design his workshop and together we fine tuned his business to create the objects for another narcissistic sociopath who had a greater self belief than either of us. I worked too hard. Continued with some of my own work. Pushed myself until again I broke. This time doctors and mental health professionals told me that I had to stop if I wanted to live much longer.

And in this broken state I have too much pride to admit that it was all for nothing. That I’m isolated and ashamed to talk to my closest friends. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I don’t have the strength of character to show you just how broken I’ve become.

And I think I’m just about done now. I’m sorry for letting you all down.

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