Ok, so I'm going to make an effort today and tomorrow because on Wednesday I'm going Dutch for the rest of the week and I don't think they have blogs in Dutchland.
So we'll do Friday night. Friday night I wanted to be cultured. Friday night the local contemporary art gallery - imaginatively called Nottingham Contemporary - was opening its new exhibition. Call me a snob (I prefer 'cultured snob') but I have always wanted to go to a gallery opening. Anyhow, I found out about the opening, managed to get myself some tickets (it wasn't very difficult - they had created a Facebook event) and bingo: I was all set to go.
Only problem was I had tickets. TicketS. But I didn't have a friend who would have wanted to go. Well, I had one who would have wanted to go but couldn't because of boyfriend commitments, and one who would have wanted to go but couldn't because she was on the other side of the world. Otherwise the only friends I had either wouldn't have wanted to go or were entirely unsuitable to take to an art gallery. I had put an open invite out on my Facebook earlier on in the day asking if anyone wanted to go, and the only sensible response was 'only if there is lots of free drink'. There wasn't - you got one free drink on entry. It's at times like these that I could do with a partner to drag along to these things whereby I get my fill of culture in return for giving said partner sex at the end of the night.
Anyhow, I decided that I didn't need to go with a friend. I can do these things on my own. Yes, I would go on my own. Ordinarily, put me in a contemporary art gallery with a friend and I am a wit. I can understand modern art, but I do find it very pretentious; and I revel in sending up art critics, monologging about the 'juxtaposition of contrasts referencing historical contradictions' or other such nonsense. And because I have the lexicon to go with the situation, and can use hundreds of long words to say absolutely nothing to the entertainment of my companion I do enjoy going with people. But I can cope with these on my own.
The only problem is that it isn't just 'going to an art gallery' - it is 'going to an art gallery opening'. It is a party. It is a full-on social occasion. It isn't really somewhere to be 'seen' on your own. And it's not as though - at 6'4" - that I can't be seen. But then it isn't as though I am there to be seen. I am there because... well, because I had nothing else to do on a Friday night. When I was debating whether or not to go, I did actually say to myself "well, what else would you be doing?" And the truth is, I didn't have anything else planned for Friday night. It was either go to the opening or go home, sit on the sofa on my own and eat fish and chips from the local takeaway whilst watching some rubbish movie.
And the gallery is on my way home, so even if I wasn't enjoying it or felt too out of place I could just 'pop in' and pop back off again - the tickets had been free so I wasn't at any loss. In fact I would be on a benefit because of the one free drink on entry. So I went. And it was actually a really good night which I very much enjoyed. I didn't feel out of place at all, in fact I felt very much at home. And I hardly noticed that I was on my own - there was so much going on that when I wasn't wandering through the exhibition I was downstairs listening to one of the DJs or in the performance space watching the pregnant women grumpily watching their husbands dancing to the band that was on. A very good night.
One ever so slight problem though was that the art gallery was on my way home. This meant that I hadn't had my lonely fish and chips. Or indeed any form of sustenance since lunch. Which, with the free drink on entry, and then the other drinks which I had to have to look sociable and give me something to do with my hands, ended up with me getting rather drunk. Art galleries are even more fun when you are drunk. I just thank goodness that I didn't end up causing a mischief with one of those multi-thousand-pound pieces of art.
I kept myself entertained by people-watching. Spotting the people who usually wouldn't be seen in an art gallery but they wanted to appear cultured (or 'culturally snobby' as I prefer); or the people who were only going because their boy/girlfriend wanted to get their fill of culture and they were on the promise of sex if they went along as company; or the people who for one reason or another only get to go out of an evening once every sixth months. And one of the things I noticed was the lack of brands. I had come straight from dress-down-Friday at work, so was clobbered out in my new Bench jeans and Superdry t-shirt; whilst everyone else was wearing nice, generic plaid or paisley or cordoroys. I really was The Establishment, The Conformer in amongst the artistic rebellion of people shunning societies expectation; and yet in fact I was the person shunning what my peers in the gallery - a government-funded establishment no less - were expecting me to conform to by bypassing the generic, socialist, anti-capitalistic bland uniform of unindividuality. I was distinctive.
I have to say I quite enjoyed the contemporary contrast of my modern attair contradicting with the juxtaposition of the historical references of cordoroy and paisley. Rebel.
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