All To Write My Name (45RPM BabMag Article)

For those who can't wait, here's the latest article I wrote for BabMag on celebrated Bristol based nutter 45RPM.

ALL TO WRITE MY NAME

“This was planned and persistent vandalism designed to show off to others similarly minded, with no regard as to the wider impact” 

- Judge Michael Leeming on the sentencing of SMT Crew.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

How do you unlearn subversion? Once you have been through the fence how do you ignore the gaps? Graffiti is dangerous not only because of it’s inherent ability to put its practitioners in the light of the law but because many of the most memorable moments it gives us are not the action itself, but all those beautiful stupid things that surround it and the wider viewpoint it gives us. The oddballs and addicts, the ways in and over, can you ever make a successful transition to mainstream reality once you understand how to cheat it? Would a 9-5 not ache?

“Once a cleaner walked into our hotel room and started screaming as i’d had a nose bleed in the night and was covered in blood...plus someone had drawn a hammer head shark over my whole body. Another time I woke up upside down on a fence as my trainer had split on its three prongs and I’d fallen on my face and knocked myself out. I have a million of these pieces of rubbish, someone once asked me what I would say to a kid starting out, those are the things I thought of.”

To look at 45RPMS work is to see a sea of colour and humour and to speak to him is to hear nothing but a genuine warmth, a boundless and unadulterated love for this culture but graffiti can will destroy your life if you let it and amongst the daydream haze of adventures he recounted in our conversation, you could sense the twitch of loss and gnaw of time (R.I.P Buzz, Wayne and Ekons) were digging. From funky letterforms to his endless throwup variations to his perfect phrase based characters he is an individual for whom art is everything, an obsessive creative who dedicates most hours to any number of outlets and has done for the best part of two decades. Now living in Bristol his time is spent between graffiti, illustration, photography and until recently getting himself into as many anarchic situations as life will allow.

"I’ve been painting since 1999, i’ve moved cities, i’ve lost girlfriends, good mates and jobs all to write my name on a wall for a handful of people to see. I’m always tired, scared, hungover or nervous, my hands are cut up and my clothes ruined but I’m a positive person, even in the worst moments."

This fascination with new possibilities, the opportunity to find / forge new pathways and curate his own life is at the crux of 45RPMs celebrated work but therein for him (as for many readers I assume) is the core of the problem. There is an absolute and vibrant fascination with language, place, people and the way not only that they are used – but can be used, talking to RPM you get the idea that painting is beyond just putting medium to surface, it is the key to a different world. To get a proper insight into this we need only start with his photography, this predominantly 35mm work may not be the primary outlet of his creativity but it provides perhaps a more illuminating glimpse into it; whilst painting may be a depiction of the hand, photography is surely a depiction of the heart and in his snapshots graffiti meets halloween costume meets street life meets weird tattoos in a 35mm presentation on not what could be (as his painting serves) but what actually is. Little light hearted incidences of importance, the every day hours between action that bleed comedy. Some graffiti photography can be beyond dull but 45RPMs viewpoint is infectiously inviting.

Within these photos lies RPMs letterform variations but more notably that which has bought him to the limelight in the past few years, his characters. These operate around representing in literal terms the little oddities that language births and start life as beautifully clean ink drawings whose influence is taken from either well known pieces of cockney rhyming slang (‘dog & bone’, ‘apple & pears’), subcultural lexicon (‘biter’) or simple unique takes on phrases (‘no fox given’, ‘a pizza the action’). Beneath simply stating your name graffiti is a love for how language functions as an action inherent to our encounter with the world and whilst not all writers take their name directly from slang there are huge similarities between slangs idiomatic, openly metaphorical inventiveness and graffitis stylistic exploration and the spatial possibilities of meaning. A good piece of graffiti is its own poetry and looking at RPMs characters, who not only take directly from slang but add in the visual / spatial element of graffiti you can’t help but feel there is an overwhelming enthusiasm for how we construct and value meaning.

This inventive playfulness acts as a common theme throughout RPMs work, his desire to explore and encounter the world in as many ways as possible shows through even when the form is simplified to pure weaponised style; the throwup. These to 45 are “graffiti at its purest form”; mobile, agile beings able to be executed anywhere to maximum effect in minimal time andtherefore perfect for the natural wanderlust of a writer. Graffiti strives at its heart to uncover, to understand the world in a more unique way and the throwup is one of its strongest weapons, providing immediate access to that adrenaline fuelled existence -  “when I'm painting one I don't think about anything but that throw up, its like a switch is flicked. Its just you and the silence, a hyper awareness to noise and movement that if your lines well enough become a dance”. But again it comes back to pure enjoyment - “how can you can walk past an Oker throwup and not smile?”

It is this utter concentration on the moment, this fleeting escapism of which all writers are aware which is unfortunately, the most troubling – because it is this which is the crux of the problem which so concerns RPM at the moment. The more time you spend in your own world, as all great artists do, the more developed that vision becomes, the more divorced you are from ‘reality’. Adding in softly near the end our chat he remarks “Bukowski said find something you love and let it kill you, I have”.
Bumping into an old friend recently he tells of how he stared blankly when they mentioned their recent BBQ and kids, replying “nothing” when asked what he had been doing with himself because how are you supposed to explain all of this? In the words of writer Buford Youthward “after all, when the sun comes up, graffiti is beyond documentation” The longer you go the more affinity you find yourself having with drug addicts & armed robbers, and what are we if not both of those?

45RPM is an artist who creates passionately and this enjoyment is obvious in all his work, you cant help but laugh with him, but in answer to this question of ‘what happens next’ I would say one word; adapt. Life is a series of chapters, utilise your skills in a different way and make the most of it. To those doubting their path remember it is not the destination but the journey that matters and to me it seems that 45RPMs work is a pure celebration of this idea. Allow yourself a moment of clarity, we are luckier than most.

We could all stand to learn a lot from 45RPM.

“I’m 36, single and without a mortgage but I wouldn't have it any other way, one day i’ll have to calm down so until then i’ll keep burning the candle any way I can.” 

- 45RPM

4:30AM

tonight went to go see the sugarhill gang, didnt like it though, seemed like it was middle age digging at the grave lot going through the motions making money from dead moments
imagine having never grow above something which made you famous in the 80s, imagine vanilla ice sitting at home a legitimate and caring artist but only known for one song
imagine how long those nights mut be, imagine how long and lonely are the one timers, knowing that theyre better than their lime light says.
because respect lost is defeat, you cant crawl back to strong and stable
nah that scars your fable, chris brown will forever be known for violence
what seems may be for now, but what could be should never be shadowed by its cloud
we respect it in our musicians and artists
i cant conceal a fate but i can change my ways and thats important in allowing growth
the ability to be wrong and move on, to change song
forever shedding effects in time and sentience
back to normal static relevance
embibed in the hive mind like resonance, shifting atwist beneath the crowds
a one type billionath of matter in a mind
we aint stopped that feet first ape
no rest for the wicked
for freedom we chase
ran right by god
didnt see him in the twisting turner blinker of a mirror, havent seen him around here
walked upright and straight into error

but i see him every now and then, in a day with too much coincidence or lining enjoyments lingering glare
i sense a certain beauty intransient in here
unexplainable, maybe self confidence in perfect objectivity, a pure state of stillness with the ocean