“July 22 1978, Maidstone, Kent. This evening we walked to a glade in Mereworth Woods. We sat on pine logs and waited for the nightjars. As the sun went down, out they flew – whirling and diving about the trees. They seemed processed (sic)…their whirring song filled the air. One flew over our heads as if to say:’Who are you that have come to our haunt?’ Later we saw a barn owl and some deer. I felt that God was in the wood with us. As long as I live I will never forget this night.” From ‘My Journal’ aged 12 years, Jyll Bradley.
Last Saturday, Jyll retraced her steps to Mereworth Woods. A journey back in time – to puberty, the excitement and trepidation of entering the big, dark wood of adulthood. I can remember a similar rite of passage involving some foxes in a clearing (and feeding them Marmite sandwiches). My abiding memory of the day, however, is of spilling my Thermos flask on the floor of the school minibus (in the days when school had such amenities, as opposed to a mobile phone transmitter in the playground emitting Sizewell B levels of radiation). Jyll’s beguiling art happening/school trip was entitled Nightjar, part of Duckie’s Nightbird season - eight and a half alternatives to the gay disco. On Tuesday night, a long time collaborator The Divine David will perform The Divine David on Ice at the glorious Streatham Ice Rink. It will be his last performance as the Divine David, the Black Swan gliding effortlessly across the frozen sea into the flames of Valhalla. Engulfed in his own vermouth-fuelled funeral pyre David plans to destroy his alter ego before the grin-on-a-stick entertainment industry destroys The Divine David.
Fire and ice, self-immolation and rebirth. The Divine David and his mute psychic assistant Jay Cloth have always been a giant send-up of the avant-garde (A Blackpool version of German Expressionism). Hence, they became far more avant-garde than anything they were parodying: battalions of nicely cropped graduates from Hoxton University, recording heavy air for sound-scape installations at the Hayward Gallery.
Sitting on the 38 bus down Rosebery Avenue last week, I thought of Jyll and David when I noticed a piece of graffiti. It reads: LOG OFF LIVE LIFE. I thought of Rosebery Avenue’s illustrious tradition of discreet anarchism. The Anarchy Centre in the mid-80’s not an oxymoron, but a squatted meeting place for artists, bands and bored teenagers clutching Joy Division albums and immaculate suburban skateboards (I saw a band there called The Smiths who everyone said were shit and would never make it). I believe the building is now ‘luxury loft apartments’, just as Streatham Ice Rink will probably soon be a diffusion branch of China White. To my knowledge, this is the first piece of anti-internet graffiti in the western hemisphere. I wish its author well. There is nothing so dull as living through a technological revolution. Death to now and long live the avant-garde. We have nothing to lose but our ice skates.