BORING FUCKS
I came here because it was cheap, back when squatters and artists made use of the dilapidated warehouse spaces. Since then I had moved all around the area on a series of short term leases. Over that time the old mills, wharfs and warehouses of the once littered inner city became the bars, galleries and residencies that are the ciphers of the radical transformation of the last 15 years. I passed a parked Lamborghini as I moved into the pristine street carrying three deconstructed cardboard boxes. I saw my reflection in the tinted window and thought about how rough it used to be round here. Not anymore. I felt judged in the presence of the car, perhaps I was the last piece of litter left.
I was returning home to collect the last of my things when I noticed an enormous banner above one of the bars bearing a sonogram that wrapped the entirety of its three storey, formerly squatted, front:
‘Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We disagree.’
I stopped dead when I read the words. Not specifically because of what it declared but because of the context. The banner was neither a promo for a gallery nor some ironic street art, but rather part of a marketing campaign for a company producing vacuum cleaners. As I continued along the street I felt as if the words had subtracted something from me in exchange for nothing. As if some part of myself had been put to work in a factory without walls.
I entered the lobby and took the stairs as the lift was out of order. My flat was a liminal space, like a vacuum where art doesn’t happen. Not anymore at least. I had emptied the place of most of the boxes and there was only a few obscure things remaining. Had I wanted to leave? As a matter of fact, I wasn’t sure. But another matter of fact was that I couldn’t afford it anymore and so at the end of the month I wasn’t going to renew or renegotiate. It was hopeless to attempt to hold on there. There had never been anything particularly special about the flat or the building, but rent had gone up ‘in line with the market’, so I was told. This part of town was a destination now, it was sufficiently ‘cool’ and so it had become expensive as hell. Fuck it, I thought, it had jumped the proverbial shark anyway so good riddance.
I was sipping overpriced coffee when Xora arrived. She owned the café and because it was now doing quite well the prices had been adjusted ‘in line with the market’. Perhaps it was because she was making some decent money that she had moved into a new apartment with two spare rooms, one of which I was going to call home until something else came along. She was in a good mood, she always was. I was sat there with two boxes by my feet.
‘Is that everything?’, she said.
‘No, there’s one more that I couldn’t carry, I replied.
‘Well we better go and get it, you need to be out by tonight right?’
‘Yeah’
‘And you’re coming here tonight as well, for the open mic expo? You gonna sing or perform something?
‘Yeah sure, I’ll think of something’
Xora came with me back to the flat to collect the last box. ‘What about this?’ She shouted from the cupboard in the hallway, ‘yours or the landlord’s?’ She appeared dragging behind her a small vacuum cleaner.
‘Landlord’s’ I said, ‘Hey Xora, did you see that billboard down the street?’
‘Which?’ she said.
‘The enormous one, for a vacuum cleaner’
‘I don’t think I noticed it’, she sad maneuvering the vacuum back into the cupboard.
‘It’s so stupid. Do you ever feel like it’s getting a bit dead around here, a bit quiet?’
‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘The cafes packed all day and night. I’ve never seen this part of town so busy.’
‘Yeah it’s busy, but I mean, there’s no life’
A moment passed and Xora sighed, ‘It’s not like the old days, if that’s what you mean. But it’s not meant to be.’ After another moment of silence she said, ‘When was the last time you performed anyway?’
‘God knows… I suppose we better go.’
With Xora carrying the final box and me the previous two, we made our way down the street and around the corner to her new apartment block. The building had just been refurbished and appeared to me as a premonition of the kind of building my old place would become. I settled my boxes into their new home tetrised against the wall of the decent sized guest room.
‘Jesus Christ, I didn’t know it was en suite’ I said.
‘Ahaha what did you think was in there?’, she asked.
‘I don’t know, another homeless friend maybe’.
Later, between lattes and bands and spoken word poets. I made my way back to my old flat for the last time. It was 10:30pm when Xora looked around for me amongst the flashy customers and the artsy wannabees. ‘Have you seen George?’ she asked some mutual friends, ‘I’ve put him on for a 10:30 slot’. As they all shook their heads, she spotted me emerging from the crowd dragging something heavy. I took my place on stage as the first few rows laughed. I adjusted the microphone and told everyone I had prepared a speech. I had prepared a speech, but no one was going to hear it.
At my feet was the vacuum cleaner. I stomped on the power button as if it was a guitar effects pedal and pointed the nozzle into the microphone. Around me everyone recoiled at the deafening sound of the amplified motor. I mimed out a speech that no one would ever hear and punctuated the performance with dramatized gestures and expressions to the stunned faces of the front row. Most customers were clamping their ears, spilling drinks in the chaos. Allow me, I thought and vacuumed up their spillages. My friends at the back were laughing, this one was for them.
For 3 minutes I held the nozzle to the microphone. I stomped the off switch again when I was satisfied that they had got the idea. In the silence I spoke, ‘Art is not created in a vacuum…. Do you agree?’ There was a stunned silence as the crowd decided whether this was a trick question or not. I pointed again at members of the audience ‘Do you agree?... How about you over there with the turtleneck?’ He looked traumatized as he tried to answer. I picked up the vacuum as the turtleneck shook his turtle head. There were shrieks of polite horror as I smashed the vacuum into the stage and shrapnel tore through the room. I crashed and kicked at the vacuum until it was entirely destroyed. Empty faces looked back at me from the silent crowd. Then, with bouncers pulling at my shoulder and Xora attempting to hold them off, I was dragged to the ground shouting, ‘make some noise you boring fucks!’
by Daniel Harlow
Daniel Harlow is not the author's real name. He is a writer based in the UK and is the founder and contributing editor of Fugitives & Futurists.