Thursday, September 13, 2007

Swedish Christmas and fond memories

Well, the little Swedish record label have been in touch again, and I'm going to book some studio time in October to record the Christmas songs. I'm still recruiting for the choir- I want lots of people including the groaners in the back row! It will be easy to sing, you just come along and go 'Ahhh' after I've counted to four. Simple! It's me! ABC! Nothing fancy, no operatics, no twiddly notes, just a loud yawn from time to time.
I'm going to be doing a gig and talk in a little bookshop in October too- sounds perfect to me. I wonder if they will let me sit on a pile of books?
My art history tutor, who I loved dearly, was a chronic shoplifter, and his office was a portakabin in the courtyard of the Art College building in Brighton. We did our tutorials perched on different-sized multi-coloured towers of books. One of the tutor group was a terrifying sculptor with a beard called Roger, or rather ROGER!! (he had a LOUD VOICE) and my tutor, a sweet little gay man, was petrified of him as he was so macho, and trembled under Roger's bellow.
He told us that the Victorians would not be able to understand a thing we say, because we talk so much faster than them, and also use terminology that refers to things that had not been invented so long ago. He also told us that cancer is a romantically beautiful thing, because it grows and flourishes even as it destroys its host.
Stuart, I think, has died. I found this terribly upsetting as he was a very kind man. He loved my pictures (even though my personal tutor, Brendan Neiland, recently sacked under a cloud from the Royal Academy of Arts, I'll have you know, hated them), and once he offered to lend me 50 quid when I was skint after I left college. I used to go and visit him sometimes, and once he told me the warehouse where he'd been storing his stolen books had been burned down. He was amazed at the divine justice that had been meted out to him, but also, I think, a little relieved that he didn't have to bother with them any more.
I think I will go and sit on a pile of books this instant, in memoriam of Stuart Morgan, who to me was a model of how a tutor should behave.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Obituary here

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,783032,00.html

Pete Chrispx