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THE TORTURED ARTISTS DINNER PARTY

The myth of the Tortured Artist is just that. Tortured Artists are, fundamentally, neither interesting to experience or be around. Trust me on this, for a while, I styled myself as one. Not long mind you, just long enough to realise that is not what I wanted to do or be.

Name those famously tortured artists, your Kurt Cobains, your Tracey Emins, and what do you have? We have only what we know on the battered pages of newsprint, the ancient press reports and fan accounts. The fishbowl lens of the media bends and distorts the light so much so that all we see, all we know, is some kind of vague, perverse shorthand, where people are reduced, like cartoons, to their component parts.

An easy blue print of this would be Kurt Cobain. One part junkie, one part misfit self-pitying depressive, one part genius with a dash of lank blond hair, it�s easy to see how you can construct an identikit poster boy for the Generation X by resorting to media shorthand. You can do this with anyone you encounter ; the broad brushstrokes that reduce a person to their most easily identifiable, exaggerated characteristics.

In fact I was talking to a former member of Nirvana about this, about seven or eight months ago, and even they, from inside the whale of this lens, and perhaps even more than anyone, were not able to necessarily see this effect as it took place. The public persona, who you think someone is, be it Kurt Cobain, Tracey Emin, or me, is so far removed from the complexities of personality we all have, the person you think you are, there is no choice but to recognise that Who We Think We Are is not Who They Think We Are. And who is they? Anyone who is not me.

Imagine if you will, a dinner party of Tortured Artists. Kurt Cobain in the corner, drawing enormous pictures of skeletal foetuses emerging from diseased vaginas, whilst jacking up occasionally. Ian Curtis reading about mental illness whilst listening to Iggy Pop. Tracey Emin talking about her self-self-self and about how she is too lazy to clean up because, chaos is like, so natural. Or whatever. And making a tent with the names of everyone she�s ever met in it. Whilst having an orgy with a cigarette sandwich.

These are the Tortured Artists. The dull, the boring, the pure. A tortured artist, living only in a vacuum, ceases to be of relevance to anyone or anything but themselves in the end. Michael Jackson is one of these � cosseted by being super-rich, lacking fundamentally in experience of anything apart from being Michael Jackson, his �art� existing solely as a reflection of a bizarre lifestyle that only he could relate to, the Tortured Artist, expressing his inner Scream the only way he knows how (that is, by filming a video in which he plays interplanetary baseball with his equally plastic sister), becomes only relevant to himself, and irrelevant to everyone else in the world.

This is the Tortured Artist : lost in a maze of the self � surrounded by Yes Men � unable to see the reality of the world in which they live. Obsessed by their neurosis, addicted to their misery, because without it, they too, might become nothing, they too might cease to exist, lose their vision.

Self-disgust is self-obsession, honey, and I do what I please. The tortured artists sit around, nursing their depressions, unable to see beyond the self-self-self, boring everyone around them as they run in their own insular circles. These one trick ponies, easily reduced by the lens of the media, and sometimes by their own inability to be anything but a self-parody, disappear slowly into a world of neurotic irrelevancy.

Is it any wonder, tormented by the loss of the muse and it�s attendant popularity, cosseted in a world of indulgence and self-reverence, that the Tortured Artists of this world suddenly believe the hype? Like Michael Jackson believing he is being awarded Artist Of The Millenium at the MTV Awards, Mariah Carey�s odd self-belief that she, like Jesus, can walk on plates unharmed (as deluded as it is dangerous), Celine Dion�s multi-million retreat into pantomime in Vegas, these people are as far removed from reality as one can be and not actually be stamped Insane. Reality, as PM Dawn said, used to be a friend of mine. And when you�re in a situation like that, you don�try to dig you way out of irrelevancy, you keep digging, hope to keep finding gold in the meantime. Sure every discovery brings slightly less god, a slightly smaller plunder. The laws of diminishing retruns. You can play a washed up cop who still breaks the rules when you�re 56 and bald, but you can�t beat the law of Diminishing Returns.

Because as the movies tell us, you break the laws, and you will get caught. By men in bad 80�s hairdos in screechy cars and pop-rock sax solo soundtrack. You have been warned!

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