While the arts centre was shut it seemed like a good idea to take the opportunity to give our little office a lick of paint and get the floor sanded.
After all, having been shut since March, it’s hardly as if there’s a queue of people knocking on the box office door asking for tickets. With nothing on, there’s nothing on sale, nothing to buy, nothing on stage, nothing planned and nothing to clear up afterwards.
As the Killer himself, Jerry Lee Lewis, might say, Whole Lotta Nothin’ Goin’ On. Only in his case he was Shakin’. How very vulgar Jerry. I hope your mother knows about it. She’d have something to say I’m sure. If she wasn’t dead.
We’ve all been working at home, so the arts centre has been deserted. It’s almost as if our once busy and bustling little venue is like an old cartoon mine. Closed down with two old planks nailed across the entrance door.
Let’s get the decorators in, came the collective cry from across the digital airways at our scintillating online staff meeting. And thus it was duly arranged.
I’ll nip in on Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours and put my stuff in boxes, I said.
I really thought that was all that was necessary. Whatever that thing in your brain is, the thing that makes you blind to the quite astonishingly colossal amount of complete and utterly useless rubbish you accumulate around yourself, whatever that is, I think I must have two of them.
A couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon? A little fanciful, I fear. Three full days of sweat and stress later the removal team came and cleared all the boxes away.
And I was left in a completely empty room. Shorn of all offending clutter, all furniture removed, all the pictures gone from the walls, all the filing cabinets, shelving, paper, absolutely everything gone. Just me and the walls. And boy did that feel good.
I was reminded of the art work performed by the artist Michael Landy entitled Break Down. In this piece Landy systematically and publicly destroyed every one of his earthly possessions. He first assembled and catalogued all 7,227 items, and then, with a small team and a conveyor belt, the whole lot was stripped, shredded, crushed, dismantled, or otherwise destroyed.
When they had finished, the artist owned nothing at all, apart from the blue boiler suit he had been wearing throughout.
Landy later described the experience as the happiest two weeks of his life. Standing in the now vacant room, feeling elated and refreshed, I suddenly felt he had a point.
After all, we are all eventually separated from everything we’ve ever owned anyway. The only difference is that it is the owners (through death) and not the possessions that are removed. Boxed up and taken away.
This way round feels more like beating death to the punch.
So, thought I, why stop at just the office? Inspired by Landy and drunk with the sense of release from the continuous cycle of accumulation, storage and tidying, why I could clear out everything! Everything! Even, yes, even the garden shed wouldn’t be safe from the cleansing zeal of the new convert to purification.
Why do we need all this stuff anyway? What the hell is it all for? What’s the point of it all? While I was pondering this, there was a knock at the door. The rare collector’s Dad’s Army jigsaw I’d ordered from eBay had just arrived. I popped it on the shelf.
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