Where is it, that line that divides the things I can talk about in public from the things I can’t? Who sets it? Does it exist outside of me? Recently I was told off, quite gently mind, but told off for crossing it, a written line in a substack breached somebody’s moral boundary and they told me, too. Of course I’m not going to say what or who it was, that would breach my own, but I am going to talk about shutting down something uncomfortable and the instances where having to choose who suffers becomes an imperative. My reply was this – there are times in this process when getting something off my chest becomes more important than protecting the privacy of others. This didn’t go down enormously well, but better than expected. A precedent was set quite a long time ago and it probably came as no surprise that I pushed back. This tap on the wrist was fair enough in terms of their right to say whatever the hell they wanted but it still got under my skin. I’ve always battled this, not in the sense of right speech, but in terms of upholding conspiracies and myths. I can’t stand it. It makes me rage. Nothing causes me to abandon my values and kick the walls down quicker than being told to get back in my box. Aside from salacious confidence breaking, or the incitement of violence or hatred I’m okay with the risk of upsetting people. Artists having been saying it for thousands of years but to hell with it, I’m going to say it again: causing a disturbance is what art is all about. Tip the god damn apple cart. Throw the contents everywhere. Let the rotten ones be strewn about. They’ll only infect the others. And yet I don’t. I am so careful. I think of the Melrose novels and faint at the amount of mess Edward St Aubyn must have left rolling about the place. There are so many stories I don’t tell, so many people I resist from mentioning by name, I have protected so much. And this kind of thing makes me want to fling the doors open. They said at least don’t say these things in public and I replied but that’s the point. The effort and risk and bareness of this is what moves stuff and moving stuff is what this is all about. I’ve avoided the cheap ticket of gratuitous beans a thousand times over. Boy, the deletes, the multitudes of okay, too far I’ve said to myself because the line – and to answer my own question, it’s inside me – the line is set exactly where growth meets indulgence. I know it intimately. I trace its contours every day. But the snarling artist in me says fuck you all and the responsible adult says I hear you and the little girl cries don’t leave me and the shameless teenager has her finger on the files deleted and the god in me says wait.
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"But the snarling artist in me says fuck you all and the responsible adult says I hear you and the little girl cries don’t leave me and the shameless teenager has her finger on the files deleted and the god in me says wait."
Well, that pretty much encompasses it.
Also - is this about the line of Art? Or where the line where Art intersects with Memoir/Journalism/Documentary?