I was watching a programme the other day about Francis Bacon, an artist whose work I admire very much. During this thirty-minute vignette of his life the time line jumped back and forth through the years, cherry picking the choice moments from several interviews the painter had given throughout his career. One particular moment from an interview 'Fragments of a Portrait' made for the BBC in 1966 stood out for me. I paused the moment, Francis Bacon stood in his kitchen in his Reece Mews flat with the interviewer David Sylvester. I found myself transfixed with the image, the moment, the snippet of time, the stunningly simple black and white footage bleeding together. Francis in a leather jacket his hair quaffed with penetrating eyes responding curiously to Sylvester who stood rotund like a silverback trusted up in a dark suit, twirling a filterless cigarette through his fingers. 1966 I thought, 1966 what a time, all of the great humans wondering the earth back then. I had been drinking, but was lucid enough to think of all the frontiers and boundaries being pushed, buckled and broken back then. I realised that through the other side of this black and white window most of my artistic, musical and literary idols were still alive. I wonder today what do we have? Whom do we have? Is there really anyone out there willing or able to take the risk, to push things forward, or is this where we are? Is the mediocrity of the short-lived icons of today really all that we have? The next viral sensation, the next piece of tech, the next killer app that will make our day simpler and our free time more fun and ultimately less free, the next season of the next hit TV show, the next gadget not so different from the model of six months ago, the last upgrade will never come. If I'm a dinosaur preaching naive idealism and outmoded nonsense then that's fine, read this finger vomiting session and laugh, rip out my bones and smash a primitive beat on a crude drum fashioned from my skin.
When I look back through that black and white window into that small kitchen of 1966, I am left wondering what the hell are we doing sitting on our hands with our necks craned up like blind chicklets.
