My Weekly Appointment With Mediocrity
My Weekly Appointment With Mediocrity
On life drawing classes, aerial skills and running out of f***s
I seem to be spending most of my life moving from self-induced crisis to self-induced crisis, moved by a desire to curate, edit and post-produce everything I do.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas decorations, an outfit for a random Wednesday morning, or the playlist for a 25-minute trip to the office. If it’s not consistent with The Vision ©, it just has to go.
So it’s no surprise that if you looked into my brain at any given time, you wouldn’t observe any normal decision-making processes, but a one-person editorial meeting where myself and my multiple personalities argue about ideas for the next issue. The jokes write themselves.
Why? It’s the same story as always: everyone around me just seems a tad smarter, hotter, better dressed and positively blessed with some obvious talent that happens to translate exceptionally well on Instagram. So I persevere in my pursuit for self-improvement, fighting off the exhausting ghosts of inadequacy.
Adulthood has taught me that there are only two ways I can successfully drown out the relentlessly self-deprecating demonic chanting in my head (which incidentally sound exactly like the voice of the Co-op self-checkout till): mindless manual activities and the Real Housewives franchise.
Now, I am trying to detox from the Real Housewives because I can clearly feel a principle of necrosis occurring in my prefrontal cortex due to the exposure to all that deliciously dumb entertainment content. I've also cooked every recipe from Nigel Slater’s latest book, rearranged my living room seven times, and considered getting highlights on my hair.
To make a long story short, it was time to find a new hobby.
My friend Camilla suggested aerial skills classes, an activity which Wikipedia describes better than I ever could: “A type of performance in which one or more artists perform aerial acrobatics while hanging from a specialist fabric.”
Imagine! I can already see the Mail Online clickbait headlines advertising the freak accident involving an unnamed Italian man who accidentally hangs himself while dancing to Padam Padam. No thank you.
In short, I needed an activity that wouldn't land me in hospital. So I signed up for life drawing classes instead.
Every Monday night, I jump on my bike and head to Fish Island to spend the evening in a warehouse building (the last one standing at this rate) for my weekly appointment with mediocrity (my own).
It’s not as bad as it sounds. In the Val-Webster dictionary of the English language, mediocrity is far from a bad word – we’ve all read that NYT piece (see below).
I told myself I was just going to go there, do my thing, mind my business, and not make a fuss. I wasn't ready for the moment our teacher, a short man with a kind face and painted nails, asked us to flip our boards to show our masterpiece to the rest of the room.
My first drawing literally looked like someone had picked up a turd off the floor and smeared it over A3 fine art rough paper.
That’s alright, I thought. I have a sense of humour. Let’s just hope the rest of these people do too – they will need it after seeing my take on the assignment (drawing a naked model who hung mid-air in a contorted pose with her legs wrapped in what looked like Wilko’s Dunelle Bottle Green Berlin Thermal Blackout Curtains).
But surely that’s fine, I thought. These people will forget all about it by the time they get to the Overground station, right?
No. The teacher decided to immortalise the moment for posterity. He seemed to take a liking to me, maybe because I have been eager to accumulate participation points by asking questions and engaging with his prompts, maybe because I’m endlessly likeable – either way, it was inevitable.
So he asked me to pose with my drawing so he could use the photo to advertise the event on his social channels, targeting other aspiring artists with pierced earlobes and short mullets.
Everyone was looking at me, and for the 10 seconds it took him to take the photo, I could feel my face melt. My eyes started twitching, each one doing something completely different from the other. To make matters worse, I decided to change my pose mid-photo to reveal a malfunctioning smile a-la Ron De Santis.
I don’t know how to explain this, but I went from living my Picasso fantasy to looking like a Picasso painting. The whole thing was a balls-to-the-wall shitshow. And just as I surrendered to the hot flush of shame coming over me, I managed to establish a connection between my two remaining brain cells and conjured up enough wisdom to ask myself a simple question: No, really, who actually gives a fuck?
I looked around, searched my pockets, rummaged through my bag, and flipped it upside down, but nothing, nada, niente – not a single fuck in sight.
I have exhausted my fucks reserve by extensively worrying about the quality of my writing and journalistic abilities – which makes sense because my livelihood depends on it. Now I’ve got to worry if a room full of strangers thinks I’m good enough at drawing?
The following Monday I contemplated giving up on the class and wasting my evening looking through the MUBI catalogue before falling asleep instead. But I resisted the impulse and went anyway. I showed up, sat down, pulled out my black chalk, and went to town on that piece of paper.
And guess what? It was still rubbish.
But a little bit less rubbish than the time before. And I had fun. The teacher kept repeating it’s not about the product but the process. Clichés are rooted in truth, so I forced myself to enjoy the process while mentally separating it from the worth I assigned to the final product. I just resigned myself to the reality that my Tate Modern ambitions will just have to wait.
The cycle has been well and truly broken, stamped on, reduced to a pulp. The fantasy has been restored. I can tell you with 100% certainty that of the 30 odd people in that room that night, no one had as good a time as me. I was vibing with my surroundings, the model, the boobs, the music and the ugly fluorescent lights.
And I managed to achieve that just by abandoning any claim to decency in the craft of life drawing. I was just doing it for the hell of it. Long live mediocrity! It will save us from shame. Brené Brown, eat your heart out.
This inevitably turned into a self-fabricated life lesson. What if I exported this attitude to other areas of life, and I generally started giving a little bit less of a fuck?
I know a bunch of generic, angry-sounding self-help books have been written on the topic. I may even have read some of them. But the enlightenment came from a piece of paper with shaky lines, black fingerprints, and the outline of something that only vaguely resembled a person.
In drawing as in life, I don’t care what people think. They’re not my target audience, you see. I’m still out here doing my thing, wearing green, staying lean, and keeping ’em keen.
VAL’S FOOD GUIDE 🍖
Ariana Restaurant - Mile End
I seriously thought about gatekeeping this but in my role as community icon I feel it is incumbent upon me to support local businesses, so here goes. Affordable Afghan/Persian cuisine just nestled in a corner of Mile End Park. Unassuming mountain farmhouse vibe with lovely staff, and an unlikely combination of ingredients that will get carnivores and vegetarians together to eat at the same table. It’s also BYOD, so make sure you pack a bottle of La Gioiosa before you set off.
The true highlight for me, perhaps controversially, was the Albalouw Palouw (Rice with Morello Cherries served with boneless chicken). You just had to be there.
READING LIST 📚
In Praise of Mediocrity, The New York Times
This is an oldie, but one I keep going back to. To stay on theme with today’s newsletter - read about the ways in which “the pursuit of excellence has infiltrated and corrupted the world of leisure”. Full article here.
People Watching Diary
I am planning to relaunch my People Watching Diary soon, because judging people is the only thing that’s still free in this bloody city. Here’s a link to an old example, just so you know what’s coming! ;)
VAL’S JUKEBOX 🎧
The Hype, Sigrid
This is Classic Sigrid. Fresh, young, and skandipop. Fair to say her latest release definitely lives up to the hype.
Falling, HAIM
I saw them live at All Points East a couple of days ago and let me tell you, the Haim sisters did not come to make friends. They’re wild, hot and rock’n roll - and unlike other artists, they genuinely looked like they wanted to be there. Here’s a little throwback to remind you - you’ll catch yourself falling for them all over again.