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Saturday, 22 April 2023

Foto / Non-readers



So the man outside the shop nods towards the vacant shop over the road and says an artist he knows wanted to buy it as a studio but it costs too much - well whadda surprise! I tell him my room is my studio because I'm an amateur who works small and besides doesn't have room to store paintings, well JP's paintings are already slid into a compartment (shelf) we suspended on the skirting boards of a cupboard and the living room door and if we store them near the window (where they used to be) they get mould growing on them because we live in a damp, semi-basement cave and the paint on the walls in my room near the window is peeling away, which is funny because I tried painting on some printing paper yesterday and having rolled it a few times the surface of that paper started coming away exposing the second white layer, which looked crap and couldn't be remedied to my satisfaction.

A man comes in the shop and asks if he we sell street maps, like the old A to Z books we all used before smart phones - what are we, a fucking post office?! Look around you'll see clues everyhwere - we're a bookshop! Ha-ha-ha.

People come in for cards. We do sell a few. One wanted a birthday card - what are we, a fucking card shop? Ha-ha-ha.

Some come in and only buy cards. What's wrong with them? Don't they read? Well, surprise, surprise, not everyone does.

So I stand outside having a fag watching all the people walk past thinking 'Don't they like books?' How can anyone walk past a secondhand bookshop? But they do. Most of them do. Most of them have more important things to do than browse a selection of Art, Photography, Philosophy, Fiction and History. So I smoke some more and wonder what can be more important than that. I can't think of anything. Then I get cynical and start cursing them all (not out loud) for being useless blobs with nothing more interesting to occupy their minds aside from child care, shopping for food, watching Netflix...or...or...what? I don't know what people do or think about most of the time. people are a mystery. I look in their windows walking down the street and wonder what their lives are about, really, what does everyone do? They watch Netflix. They watch sport. They watch films featuring superheroes smashing up evil enemies - or something. They don't make Art. I don't blame them. It's either in you or it ain't. It's not a lofty pursuit. It's nothing at all to most people.

This week-end I console myself with the knowledge that Chelsea cannot lose. They're not playing. 

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