The longest day

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

A lot can happen in a year

says the ad as I rise out of the bowels of Liverpool Street station. It’s for some green energy provider.

Money off today, it scrolls.

Greener rewards tomorrow.

I take it as a good omen.

—

There are two ambulances with flashing blues parked outside Liverpool Street station. Inside the station someone is having the worst day of their life. Out here in the sun, along the vomit-marked pavement sticky with food waste, everyone tromps past, eyes on phones.

Two girls outside the sushi place sip iced coffees and loudly compare notes on cage-training their dogs.

“At first she whined all the time.”

“Yeah, but now she’s used to it.”

Men in sunglasses and beer-stained shirts bowl past. Outside a pub, the window shutters are flung wide in the heat. There’s a nervy, febrile tension in the air. It’s 24 degrees and England are playing later.¹ The drinking is in full swing in the heart of the City.

At the entrance to the office, before I revolve through the doors, a construction site is busy with clanking chains and swinging girders. Atop the metal frame, behind a wire mesh, a worker in a hard hat stands looking over the precipice.

He sees me taking a picture of him and summons a mate over and the two of them stand looking down.

I’m going to remember everything about this day, I promise myself.

This is the day I start to make a change.

Precipice.

My commute home last night coincided perfectly with the England v Denmark match.

I’m not a rabid football fan but I have a soft spot for the Three Lions. I think it’s their charmingly persistent inability to win a tournament. Either that or the 21-year old striker who is *extremely* easy on the eye and young enough to be my son.

Who can say.

Anyway, I streamed the match on my phone and updated the rest of the train carriage in real time when Kane scored and Denmark equalised.

The match was fraught. Denmark picked up a yellow card. It was tense. At half time, just outside of Oxford, the train manager came on the loudspeaker.

“This train is being held at a red signal. We have no further information at this time.”

Have you guessed the punchline?

There was a red signal because… all the signalmen and the train drivers and the conductors and whoever else it is that makes the trains move ineluctably forward wanted to watch the second half of the match. Obviously. Not a single train in the vicinity of Oxford station—to say nothing of the rest of the country—moved an inch between 45 and 90 minutes (plus three minutes stoppage).

The Euros shut the rail service down more comprehensively than a train strike.

Then, like clockwork, five minutes after the ref blew the final whistle of the match, the train continued on as if nothing had happened.

—

It’s a long cycle after the long train ride but still sunny at 8pm.

I love this time of year. The fields give the impression they might stay dimly lit all night. The cow parsley is too high to see over and nettles blush purple in the shade.

A long bike ride is a great way to join thoughts. I can’t stop thinking about a recent post I saw on Substack agonising over whether to choose art or growth.

Man, that post pissed me off.

I confess I didn’t get through the whole thing because it read like a sophomoric job application strained through a prism of whining entitlement but—really? Art or growth? That’s not a question.

Or rather, it’s not a question that would trouble anyone who is actually an artist. That question has a very obvious answer, if you’re an artist.

If you have to ask, you’ll never know.

The more interesting question, the one artists actually wrestle with, is this: art v Everything Else. Art v obligation. Art v the curtailment of personal freedom that necessarily attends not-art. Family. The ties that bind. Bills. Needing to put food on the table for children.

Those are the things that curtail art. Not pseudo-agony about growth stats.

If you are privileged enough not to have to worry about the important things—bills and food for children, I mean—MAKE ART. What are you waiting for? What are you agonising over? You want to “win”? You want the big number followers? I can’t fathom it. Why would you want to win by being inauthentic?² I’d way rather lose being myself (which, incidentally, is fortunate).

Seriously though: what artist on the planet would choose 5,000 empty followers over making their art?

The real struggle isn’t whether to write War and Peace or clickbait. It’s compromising on things that really matter: the delicate compromise when it comes to art and family and job.

Do you know how the days drag when frustrated ideas sit untouched and that book doesn’t get any closer to written?

They drag, man.

Those days are long and slower than an unmoving train during a footie match.

I have spent ten years—every year of my son’s life—working to build a secure home and future for him. I have compromised a lot, because putting a roof over his head was more important than anything.

But, you know, we’ll be ok.

Art is not the compromise I have to make this year. Something else has to give.

And today, something did.

Happy summer solstice, pals.

1. For my Americans: England v Denmark (final score 1:1) and 75 degrees F.

2. That’s not winning. That’s just another job, servicing the algo.