THE STRAIGHT HERD

By George Gittoes

The straight herd discriminates against artists as rejects from the ‘normal’. As with other forms of discrimination, there is a hatred toward those perceived to be other, to be different, but in this case, the difference is not in the colour of the skin, sex or religion but in the mind. Artists are non-conformists and from childhood society tries to force them to conform. The most original are accused of madness.

I am here using the term artists for all creatives – painters, musicians, poets, writers, dancers, photographers, actors and filmmakers. The herd has found a way to flog artists and feel ethically superior to them while doing it. They despise artists for their freedom of expression and ability to dazzle. Cancel culture is an insidious attempt to force artists to conform. It is a cruel form of torture inflicted on those who can create by those who can’t.

The motivation is partly envy but mainly the age-old animal impulse to exclude, the ‘strange’. Artists are born the way they are and while what they have is a gift it, is also, a disability. For a child it is very confusing, they can arrive into a family of straights and school can be a nightmare, forced to be surrounded by the living dead – stranded within a tribe of zombies. Zombies that bite! They are adrift in a sea of normality, and many drown, those that survive must fight every day to maintain their sense of inner worth. Every kind of discrimination is frowned upon except discrimination against artists. There is an unspoken agreement, in present day society, that there needs to be “punishment for past wrongs.” The straights have worked out they can feel good about inflicting retribution on artists. By targeting artists, they can divert it away from themselves. Artists are constantly being asked to justify what has sprung from their unconscious as if it had been pre-thought.

No wonder a lot of artists, in order to survive, learn to bend and create products no longer to express themselves, but to please the straights.

Yet the products that humanity is most proud of are the gifts of artists - the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh, music of Mozart and Louis Armstrong, songs of Pattie Smith and Bob Dylan, poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, dancers of the Ballet Russe, writing of Virginia Woolf and the Brontë Sisters, voices of Nina Simone and Pavarotti, photography of Diane Arbus, the films of Federico Fellini and acting of Marilyn Monroe……..

No one wants to pay artists for their time because the straights think ‘Why should artists be paid for enjoying themselves and what they do is not real work!” As a result they see it as OK to exploit the generosity of artists in every way possible. Plumbers, electricians and dentists have no problem putting a value on their services but with artists the question of “What will be seen as too much?” hangs over every transaction. The straights see the purpose of art as giving them pleasure - decorating their spaces and helping them escape the harsher realities of life. They do not like it when we try to lead them away from destroying the natural world and ending wars.

When are the rights of artists going to be respected and when are the straights going to stop punishing them for being different?

Artists are as willing to die to keep their creative freedom as the people of Ukraine are, in opposing Russia’s attempt to destroy their national identity.

- George Gittoes April 2023.

FORTHCOMING EVENT : George Gittoes and Robbi Buck in conversation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney on 31st May 2023, 6pm.

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/whats-on/events/artists-in-conversation-george-gittoes/

The following pages include several stories and experiences from artists, in response to George

Gittoes article Straight Herd.

Brad Evans

Writer and poet based in Cambridge, England. Evans is a resident poet in ARTS ZINE.

The earliest interaction I can recall with poetry involved discipline & punishment. My Year 3 teacher, Mrs Boyd, had lickety-thick flames of red hair who made it clear that she had little time or patience with the little boys in her class. During one lesson, 3B were given the task of writing a poem. I thought this was an easy enough task, so I wrote down something. Eventually, she called me over to her desk. I showed her what I'd written. She shook her head, looked at me gravely and said "I asked you to write a poem. This is not a poem, this is a plagiarised nursery rhyme". I looked down at what I'd written:

HICKORY, DICKORY DOCK!

THE MOUSE RAN UP THE CLOCK ...

When she uttered the word 'plagiarised', she gave me this incriminating look and I felt like I'd committed a heinous crime. I glanced out of the classroom to the quadrangle where the assembly bell was mounted. It reminded me of a scaffold used to hang criminals. Her voice broke my distraction. "I want you to write your own poem. Now go over and sit next to Megan!" Megan was the model pupil in our class. I felt uncomfortable sitting next to Megan. While I sat there, I thought about what Mrs Boyd had asked me to do.

How could I write my own poem? Poems were written by grown ups, not by little boys. Before then, I hadn't even thought that a boy of my age could write his own poem. Despite the humiliation, Mrs Boyd instilled this sense that I was capable of writing something. Something unique. And far from putting me off writing, her adult conviction made me think of the possibility that even I at that young age could write.

That incident didn't trigger my desire to write, that would occur some years later. But it certainly did not put me off the idea…