I began this blog at the beginning of 2010 as a kind of thinkdump for the process of being an artist and how it differs radically from my intentions, how domestic reality constantly interferes with the creative. In writing this blog I am trying to embrace these interstitial episodes as being the creative.

the links below are anxillary to this theme

http://wintodaylosetomorrow.blogspot.com/

http://ididntgetaroundtoit.blogspot.com/

Endgame (1957)

Nell: Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.
Nagg: Oh?
Nell: Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.

Saturday, 18 December 2010

deliberate failure

Yesterday while I was not around in the house I depended on my other half to let in the plumber to deal with (hopefully) the final adjustments to the disastrous plumbing and to make the bathroom usable on the eve of the house having extra people in it and more demands on our only working bathroom; but he failed to let the plumber in. Now this may have been a genuine mistake ... or was it deliberate? Was it a deliberate refusal to have a man/professional in the house to do a skilfull job because it's a challenge to male pride? Whilst I can't seriously accuse him of this kind of paranoid suspicion, nonetheless my justification is my father's behaviour which was the same: if my mother called someone in to get something done my father would give them hell, and her as well for "wasting money" when he could do it himself. My father did most things around the house until eventually it looked entirely botched from top to bottom. Our house is beginning to acquire this hallmark. I used to do a lot of DIY but I have run out of energy; I physically can't do the things I would once have tackled and my other half is just no good at them, he doesn't have a natural facility with materials and spaces. Over the years I have really come to not trust any DIY job being done by him; I have learnt to silently adjust things after he has "finished" - or there are ones I can do nothing about, like the ethernet cable that was strung across the bathtub and out of the window for two years, snipping it would have put paid to work communications; every time I dried myself and swung the towel over my shoulders it would snag on the cable. Doing anything together is beyond awful because I am not allowed to say anything, even pointing out the unsafeness of how he usually organises ladders. This is an epic area of domestic tragedy that runs and runs. As possibly also the water that continues to leak in the bathroom; I've no confidence that we can all use the bathroom over xmas without it leaking.

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