this feels strange to me. Strange, plus I’m under pressure.
MILLIE: You know, it’s not like a party trick, it’s not about it coming out easily. I think when there’s struggle that’s what makes it human. This is raw and human, and it doesn’t get more real. It can be disgusting, it can be beautiful, but it’s human. So, however your body reacts to it, if you struggle, if you have snot down your face, that’s all part of it.
I went from tickling my throat to scratching it like a scratchcard. And I was trying to force it out so much, it started to give me a bit of a headache. Millie said I should try bending over a bit more to help it out, but nothing would come. It’s a bit of a worry, really, cos if I ate something poisonous that I had to get out of my system quickly, I’d struggle to do it. Maybe this is the problem that the old woman who swallowed a fly had; she couldn’t sick it up so she had to swallow a spider to kill it.
I was doing little burps but nothing was coming back up. The director was asking me to keep going. Everyone was stood there gawping at me, but there was nothing they could do to help as I battled with my stubborn gut. If nothing else, it proved that it was a kind of performance art as they couldn’t take their eyes off me. I guess it’s similar to people rubbernecking at an accident on the road. We enjoy watching sick people. I mean, a night doesn’t go by when there isn’t some sort of hospital drama on the telly. You’ve got Casualty, Holby City, House, Quincy, St Elsewhere, The Young Doctors – the list is endless. I’m convinced this is why the NHS are saying they’ve not got enough hospital beds to cope with the demand, it’s cos all these TV dramas are using them!
Millie had now drunk another pint of soya milk. This time a beige-coloured vomit hit the canvas. She wasn’t happy, though, as the first colour she had spewed up had not had time to dry. She would normally leave it for a day or two before she even thought about adding a new colour, but cos we were there, she added a second colour and it just all mixed into the first colour and ended up looking like, well, sick. She decided not to waste the canvas so used some kitchen roll to wipe everything off. I decided to stop trying as my head was now banging.
KARL: Cheers for showing me what you do. Sorry I couldn’t do the business for you.
MILLIE: I think it’s kind of better that you didn’t, actually.
KARL: Why’s that, then?
MILLIE: Because it adds that uncomfortable, raw, human, weird tension. For me it came out instantly, but you struggled. It’s performance art and there are no rules to it, either. It’s not like you failed because you couldn’t vomit. The performance is what you make it, and I think that piece worked really well with the struggle that you added into it.
I was saying at the start how it would have been nice to have some art on my wall at home that had me in it, without it just being a straightforward photograph. This would have been ideal if I could have pulled it off. I’m not sure I’d want Millie’s sick on my wall, but if the vomit actually came out of a family member or loved one it makes more sense. You could do it with the whole family. It would be especially good if you are from a bit of an ugly family and you don’t want to have a photo on the wall reminding you how ugly you all are – just get everyone to be sick on the same canvas. Job done. Another thought: if someone is on their deathbed and they’re ill, having their final spew on a canvas is a good way to remember them. It’s no weirder than having their ashes on your mantelpiece, is it?
Once we’d cleaned up the art studio, we all went off to a diner where I had a foot-long hot dog and fries. Millie joined us but this time kept everything down. I gave myself a private show in my toilet that night. Like I said, with me, everything comes out the other end. It was like a Red Arrows display.
FINDING ART IN NATURE
I enjoyed this trip a lot. Even though I didn’t like all of the finished art I was involved in, I did get something out of being part of it and seeing how much the people who made it got out of it. Jamie the director wanted me to show him what my favourite art was. At first I was thinking of maybe a painting I like, or a building or a piece of design, but then I recalled seeing something on the telly that I really wanted to observe in real life. Some would argue that it isn’t really art, but to me it is. I’d say it’s better than any of the performance art that humans do. We headed to Shapwick Nature Reserve in Somerset, where, with some luck, I would witness a murmuration. A murmuration is the name given when a flock of hundreds or even thousands of starlings fly about together before settling down in the reeds for the evening. I’ve watched them on the telly and I’ve clicked on loads of videos of them on YouTube, and they are one of the few things in life that give me goosebumps. I don’t know what your body is telling you when you get goosebumps, but because it doesn’t happen often I’m guessing it’s when you’re witnessing something special.
The reason I like it is that no one is still quite sure why they go through this motion. In a world where almost everything has been answered in life and yet they haven’t come up with a solid answer to this activity, it makes it even more amazing. It’s been said that maybe they do it to protect themselves like shoals of fish do, but I’ve never understood why fish do that. I’ve watched nature programmes where they all bunch together and a whale comes along and gets a right mouthful. Okay, it doesn’t get them all, but it gets enough. I’m pretty sure if they all stayed alone the whale wouldn’t bother chasing any of them as it wouldn’t be worth his while. It’s the equivalent of me grabbing a handful of nuts from a bowl. I wouldn’t bother if there was only one.
The sea is another place I’ll go looking at weird stuff on YouTube. It blows my mind the peculiar stuff you get in the oceans. Just when you think you’ve seen all there is to see, you find something else. I saw a fish called the sheepshead fish, which I thought was a joke that someone had made up as it’s a fish with human teeth! When you’re near wifi, just google ‘sheepshead fish’. I’ve no idea who named it, as it looks bugger all like a sheep. It’s a normal-looking fish but it has the teeth of Miley Cyrus. They could make dentures for old people with them. It’s well weird.
It was a gamble dragging Jamie the director and a camera crew out to Somerset as there was no guarantee we would see a murmuration, and on top of that, there was a chance that even if we did, it might not be as amazing as it looked on the telly. This is the problem with TV coverage. It often shows the best version of something, and if you go and see the thing yourself it never lives up to it. Jamie the director said he wasn’t convinced that it was art, which I thought was a joke when you think we started this trip looking at a bloody shovel in the Museum of Modern Art!
We set off from London at around 7 a.m. It was a damp, grey day with rain forecast. It took about five hours to get there due to the traffic. All the way, I was worrying as I really wanted it to be good and yet the whole thing depended on the starlings showing up and putting on a good show.
We got there and got booted up as it was wet and muddy. It felt like a million miles away from where I started my trip in New York. A nice quiet bit of countryside with clear air. I had no idea if the drizzle would mean the starlings would be a no-show. Surely a drop of rain wouldn’t stop them; it’s not Wimbledon. We made our way closer to the water – this is the place they tend to fly around as there are fewer predators hanging around. There wasn’t a starling in the sky. Just one swan messing about in the water. We waited. And waited some more. It was like going to a Pete Doherty gig.
