As part of our learning in retirement goal, specifically our watch a TV documentary a day activity, we saw a programme yesterday about a man called ‘Chewing Gum Ben (Wilson)’ – you can Google him. He’s much more famous than we imagined but then we’d never heard of him. That’s him above in action. We just thought, intriguing title, we’ll give it a go.
Intriguing and accurate as it turned out. This chap created very small works of art on the discarded and flattened chewing gum on the pavements of London. He painted an undercoat on the found gum, painted many different kinds of image on the hence sealed but otherwise unaltered discarded gum, and then varnished / sealed / hardened once more the ‘painting’ with a small gas lighter / blow torch. Ingenious we thought.
Sometimes these images were from his own imagination and others were kind of requests, often commerative to people who had died. Sometimes abstract and others ‘realistic’. He painted loads of them throughout London, hundreds probably. He also did very small ceramic tiles which he attached to the walls of Underground stations. But that’s another story.
I liked his work on a number of levels. I liked the fact he argued that small-minded councils and policemen (who’d arrested him quite roughly, he said) couldn’t stop him because he wasn’t breaking any laws as the chewing gum was technically not a part of the pavement and hence not subject to any by-laws ‘they’ might wish to impose upon him.
I liked the sheer originality of his project and the discomfort he endured to paint his images (lying flat on the pavement while bemused passers-by walked past and almost over him). But most of all I liked this project because it was imo a brilliant example of positive reframing. Chewing gum on pavements is not quite my number one hate. Those I reserve for graffiti and litter.
But what he had done was take a negative and turn it into a positive. On the grounds that what you can’t change you can turn to your advantage, Ben had achieved this with the chewing gum. It did make me wonder whether it might be possible to do the same with litter and graffiti.
I suppose you might just about make a case that graffiti artists, like Banksy who’s our next documentary watch, perhaps have done this. Hmm, not sure about this but it’s a point of view. However trying to positively reframe the role of litter in our lives is altogether more difficult, perhaps impossible.
I did once take a photograph of a can of Pepsi in the foreground of what I thought was a powerful shot of Shiprock in New Mexico (see below). The rock and scenery were in black and white and the can was in colour. It made an interesting photo and could perhaps be repeated under different conditions elsewhere. But that’s pretty thin as a reason we should be glad litter exists. There is a theory that much great art (whatever that is) comes from the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly. That it’s the contrast that makes a work of art at least interesting and maybe more. But again I’m not making the case for litter, am I?
Which brings me to lockdown. I certainly think, unlike litter, I can make a case for this as the basis of a positive reframing exercise. As its existence seems to stretch towards eternity I think there’s definitely a case to be made for making a positive from this negative.
Which brings me back neatly to where I started this retirement blog, to lockdown – an increased opportunity for continued learning if we’re stuck at home. And I know I’m assuming that the basics, health and finance and family circumstances are all under control, but I am assuming this. Then we have the opportunity to continue to learn. Whether you think that this retirement blog has made a case for seeing lockdown in this way, I will have to wait and see, or then again, maybe not.
