Fear based,
an animal type god.
Primitive man
lost in the undergrowth
The ladder had fully extended halfway up the slope, feet already slipping on the basalt its cumbersome weight added an extra dimension of ‘taking the piss’ to an already steadily ridiculous time. Come the top, already knackered I gazed down the track and took my breath for a moment, 12ft of ladder dragging behind me. Lights in the distance, some static but some quivering and quickly getting larger, the worst thing you can expect to see.
Realising last minute it was actually just round the corner I took myself off faster than you can think, the full weight of the ladder now hitting every step as I struggled to cross the bridge and dive down the following embankment. Body rolled in branches and pressed into thorns as that thunderous sound that stretches on forever went by metres away.
I stood up and promptly fell down the rest of it certain I had been seen, one of them where the only audible sound is your heartbeat and the only thing you can feel is the pulsing in your throat, your mind jumping between staying and going.
This in reality is the feeling that lies at the end of it all, a maxim of emotion that enables you to tell a story later but at the time is terrifying.
And there lay the wall, towering above me.
Before all this mind i’d been sat back reading an old ‘interview’ I had conducted with Australian graff writer Lush years ago, he’d been painting pieces that were real critical to graffiti culture (‘cos kill your masters n all that) and I thought they were funny. He got bored of my questioning and tapped out, leaving only this fragment, the humour of its words lost on me at this moment:
“Ayo! I’m Cope3 from the bronx. Yo I had shit on smash subways to streets b. Got started in them yards my son. Crushing the lines my jabroni. Trucks, buses, airplanes, taco stands and even homeless people my chicken saute.
The Dalai Lama in his infinite wisdom and divine light has influenced me to become who I’am within this mortal realm…but not really, mostly I’ve stolen from Revs, Espo, Ice T ( The rapper, not the tasty beverage.), Bolt Thrower, Matt Groening and Doug Stanhope. ‘Art’ and ‘Graffiti’ are better when it’s funny. How could you take either serious?”
Graffiti does suffer from the crime of being too serious, you get used to having one eye in the back of your head so don’t have much time to laugh. Anything that becomes too serious though becomes worthy of humor as it fixes forms and actions and things become stale, humour is found in highlighting fault. Ironically the best thing about ‘style’ is the individual faults and quirks that make it up. I was once told a story about hiding in bushes on the tracks and throwing stones at the workers down the line just to see what the reaction would be and Lush now spends his time painting memes to antagonize celebrities. If they’re not pure examples of the inherent humour in this stupid game then I don’t know what is.
Running away from trains and laughing to myself.
I stamped some bushes down and rattled about as quietly as I could, jumping from the ladder every now and then to hide in another sharp bush as freights are wild beasts and will roar past you well into the night from adjoining lines.
I hadn’t expected that but come the 3am rainfall I was packed up and feeling grateful, body aching.
“Process? I use a pen to write nonsense and lazily ink the drawings related to it. Just regurgitated shit from my own past experience or others experiences I’ve heard about while doing graffiti.”
– Lush
Treading the same ground, climbing the same fences.
Different answers to the same questions.
Pitter patter as I walked down the track
Got back, did DMT in a flat.
Words by @somekindofbible
Photographs by @pm.user
Props to @lushsux
