Art-icle: An Article about Articles or The Art of the Article
When one writes an article for a magazine in its infancy (issue no. 3) and the brief is that there is no brief, the possibilities are endless. When the only ask is to ‘write about something you’re passionate about’, this presents a major problem: my passions are my own. Who in Bristol would persevere with an article of 800-1500 words on the triumphs, tragedies and traumas of Barnsley Football Club and see it out to the end? Would it resonate? Would the passion seeping through the page maintain the article’s pull? Or would the geographical conundrum of such an article, and the fact that only a microscopic proportion of the national population outside of Barnsley actually cares about Barnsley Football Club, deem it worthless? Would it be an article fit only for the scrapheap, resigned to the quagmire of forgotten articles, unread by the many, started and unfinished by the few?
Analysing one’s passions is a bit like going for a job interview: from day-to-day your passions simmer under the surface of your life, present but unspoken, occasionally rising up and presenting themselves to the world in glorious, untamed manifestations of self-expressionism. The interview adds pressure - how will it land? Will my passions translate across the divide? And the article: what more do people want in this era of social media showboating and oven-ready information at the drop of a couple of words in an internet search engine? Do people want happy or sad, angry or reflective, informative, poetic? I could have gone with sad: my best friend was admitted to hospital last week (previously a full bill of health) to endure the pain and panic of several nights on a ward and the revelation that she has a large blood clot on her lung; happy: my best friend has been released from hospital and has begun her small-step road to recovery; angry: British politics; informative: Barnsley Football Club. Or I could start it and see where it leads, a fitting approach for these uncouth, spontaneous, alienating times of disorder - how thoroughly modern. How dangerous. Oscar Wilde, besides having nothing to declare but his genius, declared that ‘nothing is so dangerous as being too modern’. Oscar Wilde was rarely wrong.
I could have written an erotic fantasy thriller - a fantasy in every sense of the word, to mirror my non-existent love life; a forced tête-à-tête between writer and reader, in which the reader has no option but to listen to the drone of the single, 21st-century thirty-something bachelor despairing from the confines of his centrally-heated shared-house bachelor pad. I could have chosen current affairs, easily. I wouldn’t describe our current political predicament as a ‘passion’ per se, but it is impossible to ignore. The red ring around Bristol, one of the last remaining labour heartlands, is a reassuring affirmation that the people I walk amongst on a daily basis are similarly-minded. But when it comes to politics people don’t want to read about what went well in your community when it is annexed like an unwanted rebel from the widespread Tory euphoria going on in the rest of the British Isles (edit: apologies to Scotland, Northern Ireland, and most of South Wales). Rephrase: people don’t want to read about your community when it is annexed from the widespread Tory euphoria going on across most of England. The article would have resulted in a passionate diatribe against the nation, which I was not prepared to write. Life goes on, and the country becomes stranger, but good people continue to contribute in their own, simple, everyday way, and this means more - these simple daily acts of kindness - than the smug, self-satisfying gesticulations of our dear elected leader, who seemingly has nothing nice to say to or about anyone, other than to declare that we must get something done (an article on that topic was never in question).
There is always a message. Through all the doom and squalor and despair; through all the resentment at family gatherings when certain topics are raised because the generational divide politically is now so great that loved ones can’t make eye contact and talk sensibly about them; through the rising levels of homelessness and food banks; through the resurgence of racism and the self-prescribed licences that certain ‘first-borns’ of this country have given themselves - a licence that seems to give them the right to say whatever they want in the belief that they are superior in every way, with the same pathetic gabble of Draco Malfoy a la ‘mudbloods’ and the intelligence of a concussed pigeon; through class wars and social divide; rising nationalism; the selfishness of private lives that are richly lived at the misfortune of others; the message should always endure: to love one another and show kindness. Is there a reasonable argument against these two basic yet vital human conditions? They are a choice, but easy ones to make.
I could have written one of those articles that has the indefatigable air of pomposity about it, one that gives the impression that it isn’t really an article at all and cannot be pinned down or labelled as such, one that strives unabashed for the upper echelons of High Art. It would be littered with political sound bites resulting from post-election fatigue - sound bites that offered hope, grief and torture in the hearts and minds of the country for the last few weeks. I can see it now in print quoting Oscar Wilde, telling people to love one another, going off on tangents and really saying nothing much at all. It would stand proud like a Roman emperor satisfied yet deeply drained at the conclusion of a long, drawn-out war that nobody wanted. It would have no denouement. It would have an outrageously poor pun for a title. It would have 1000 words precisely. It would go by the name Art-icle.
Written by Luke Whewall
Luke is a thirty-something living in exile on the Bedminster/Southville border. Luke was born in Barnsley. His grandfather was a miner. Luke was born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s, and reached some form of adulthood in the 00s. Luke graduated in English. His passions include (but are not limited to): dogs; books; Barnsley Football Club; hedgehogs (RIP Winona; 2016-2019); Italy; coffee; pizza; the NHS; anything ever recorded by Bradford J. Cox.