CHEWING IT OVER
I have made no greater sacrifice to my art than chewing gum. To me chewing gum has a similar effect to the sound of chalk scraping on a blackboard. Amplify that by a factor of ten and hard wire it into your nervous system and that gives you an idea of how chewing gum effects me. Even seeing other people chewing gum sets my nerves on edge.
I have been working on some of the wall pieces this week and something I wanted to reference was an anecdote told to me by Marion Keene. She had been singing on the same bill as Buddy Holly and the Crickets and, boys being boys, the Crickets had been fooling about backstage. Somehow Buddy Holly’s front tooth got knocked out. Marion apparently used to chew a lot of gum in those days and Mr Holly spotted her chewing backstage.
“Can I have your gum please?” he asked
“I’ll see if I have any more” said Marion
“no the gum you’re chewing will do fine” said Buddy
She passed it to him, slightly bemused, and after a short sculptural interlude he pushed it into the gap – just in time to go onstage.
A small detail but one that adds richness to my back stories. So I made the ultimate sacrifice. In order to re-make history I bought a pack of gum (something I haven’t done since I was a kid). I even chewed it so I could photograph the result, nerves a-tingle. I hope you are impressed.
The video I have been working on this week is themed on Kip Heron’s trumpet. A while back I was allowed to get it out of the glass case in Hartlepool museum and I was impressed by how battered it is. It really shows its use and there is something very evocative about that. Wearing white gloves to handle it seems strangely at odds to the treatment it so obviously had in the past.
This video sequence (apart from the intro on the street near the site of Kip’s cafe) is made from single frames shot on my stills camera. The Hammond Organ is played by a musician called Paul Flush who I interviewed previously and who now lives in Belgium. He reckons he was the youngest person to play the Rink. Bringing two great musicians together who never actually met, albeit in a slightly abstract way, is for me the essence of this project. Re-shaping the past and delivering it into the present >>
