Ben the chewing gum man is a fixture around the streets of Muswell Hill where I live. I often encounter him lying down on the pavement in his neon jacket creating gorgeous designs with his small case of bottles of acrylic paint and I stop to chat. As do other people. Apparently it’s an offense to paint on the pavement, but not an offense to paint on chewing gum that’s stuck to the pavement. Weird, huh? Anyway, Ben will paint to commission - free, because he’s generous and amazing really - so I asked him to do a little design for my daughter Melissa (and her dog Lola) and the picture above shows the result. It’s about the size of a 50p piece.

 

Makes me think about art really, who it’s for, who makes it and why. There is something amazing about seeing this man out on the pavements in all weathers making something beautiful out of chewing gum for goodness sake. He must love doing it. Why else? Of course it does get him an audience and most people who make art of any sort wants one of those. Why else would poets risk potential humiliation at open mics, or painters submit for the Royal Academy summer exhibition? Why would unsigned bands put up with being shouted at when they support signed ones? My son Jacob’s band just won a competition where they beat 236 other bands to support the American band ‘Less than Jake’ (yes, his name’s Jacob but that’s just a coincidence). Being the support is not a lot of fun. Nobody’s come to see you, have they, and they’re all just waiting for the band they HAVE come to see. Still, off they went, Jacob and The Blankheads to get shouted at by the roadies and management, just for the sake of being heard.

 

I am certainly not in the business of writing into the void. I want to be paid attention to. I want to communicate. I guess most people have things they want to say, it just depends on how pressing the need is to express those things and to tell people. I know many people are closet poets, closet writers, sitting in their - yes, closets - scribbling away just for the sake of it. My mother was one of those.

 

But coming out of the ... ahem ... closet - and saying ‘here I am, this is what I’ve done and it’s worth listening to, or looking at’ - well that’s a different story. Having a website of course is another way of making your art public. A blog like this is another branch of the ‘hear me’ tree. It takes some courage just to admit you want to be heard, but once you know someone’s actually listening, that’s when it becomes addictive.

 

Go Ben, the chewing gum man I say. At-a-boy. Show us what you can do.