My Fault

Billy Childish My Fault (1996)
I first encountered Billy Childish at Maidstone College of Art, late 1984 I think. Traci Emin, who probably doesn't need much of an introduction, was on the printmaking course and had organised a poetry reading in one of the lecture theatres. I had no real interest in poetry, except I'd heard of Childish, having read about his band, the Milkshakes, in Sounds music paper. Sounds seemed to think he was a big deal and this was enough to spike my curiosity. I enjoyed the reading, and Bill Lewis in particular gave a memorable performance. Childish himself seemed less of a showman, and read aloud from his own book as though he was keen to get away or was expecting to be challenged over the quality of his work. He looked as though he was ready for a fight - which wasn't necessary because the quality of his work was astonishing and not even the resentful monotone delivery could diminish its impact. Traci had copies of the recently printed Poems from the Barrier Block for sale after the show so I bought one.

I was nineteen and it was the first time I ever truly connected with anything which had been sold to me as poetry. The words - spelled phonetically without grammar or punctuation, numbers as shorthand, 2 and 4 standing in for to and for - seemed like bursts of rage splattered across the page, but not even rage - more like the numb sensation left in its wake when, confronted with the severity of one's own bullshit, you just have to accept that that's how it is. Like the very best punk rock - to which Billy's writing was clearly a cousin - it seemed simple but wasn't.

Had it been as simple, as raw, and as basic as it looked, everybody would have been doing the same thing, or doing the same thing better than they were.

It turned out that Traci had recently split with Billy - a separation seemingly foreshadowed by the appearance of Kera in Poems from the Barrier Block, presumably referring to Kyra De Coninck - and was thus getting rid of various chapbooks he'd given her, many of them signed. I bought the lot. It seemed like I needed as much of this stuff as I could find.

Five or six years later, I ended up living in Chatham, and being on the dole I spent a lot of time in a cafe on Rochester High Street. The cafe was named Gruts after the Ivor Cutler monologue and was where all the bands hung out, and being in a band, that included me. Billy Childish was also a regular. It took me a while to speak to him because I was awestruck by both his writing and his work ethic, and slightly terrified. He was huge - tall and fiercely handsome. His arrival always silenced the piano player. He kept himself to himself and I was never knew whether his presence represented tranquility or menace. By his own testimony, he'd been through the wars and you could tell. He seemed like he'd be hard to kill. It felt as though the second I opened my mouth I would become painfully aware of my own bullshit, the existence of which was beyond question.

Anyway, as the weeks passed, I realised Billy had enough of his own thing going on to care too deeply about whatever the rest of us were selling. We eventually talked to pass the time, we joked, and we even played chess - although it took him about three minutes to wipe me off the board. Against expectation, I found him surprisingly amiable and very, very funny.

I met him in passing years later at Highbury & Islington Tube. He didn't remember me but conceded your face looks familiar, I must admit. That was good enough for me, should it seem as though I'm trying to sell anyone on the idea of my old pal.

The point of this preamble is to illustrate why I probably lack objectivity when it comes to My Fault, Billy's autobiographical debut novel; also to underscore that while I don't actually know the guy and never really did, it feels as though I've spent time at the periphery of something that was quite important in its own way, and still is quite important - at least moreso than my occasionally having crossed the orbit of Trace Emin - and it's important because of its honesty, which I would argue borders on unique in the year 2025 through the subtle distinction of a man trying to make a living by it, rather than selling you something.

My Fault is roughly the first twenty years of Billy's existence, much of it miserable for reasons which will be familiar to a few of us. It succeeds because the author is interested only in the truth, including the bits he'd made up, which are made up so as to better illustrate the truth. He was never concerned with painting himself as a victim of circumstance, or even as necessarily sympathetic, but neither is there any suggestion of ticking the usual bad boy boxes, because that would be as much about bullshit as any of the forces busily going at it with the slings and arrows. Shitty schools, shitty father when he's even there, disease, poverty, bullying, bad teeth, rape, sodomy, kiddy fiddling, booze, ciggies, endless disappointment, the long shadow of the second world war, failure to learn how to read and write - it's all there in unflinching detail, occasionally thrown into sharp relief with flashes of sunlight, although it's mostly rain. My Fault is unmistakably the author of those poems getting to grips with the written word, joining the gaps and filling out the picture. The influence of Céline is tangible, although much of it may simply be the Childish cultural DNA being so steeped in post-war cultural austerity; and it reminds me a little of Genet but for being more direct, and frankly just plain more interesting.

I'm doubtless biased, being familiar with a few of the names, places and even pubs herein, but I feel there's something universal here, some fairly profound insight into our lives at this end of the twentieth century, regardless of how much of this we have ourselves experienced. I hesitate to claim My Fault as the greatest novel ever written, because that would be ridiculous, but I've a feeling it sort of might be.

Strangeland

Tracey Emin Strangeland (2005)
I didn't even know this existed until John Serpico wrote about it on his excellent blog, the Art of Exmouth. To start at the beginning, I attended Maidstone College of Art at the same time as Traci, so I knew her and, seeing as it's the question everybody always asks, no - my name wasn't in the tent and the only thing I have to say on that subject is how surprised I was by the name embroidered in the largest letters, which was that of a quiet, vaguely lumpy looking bloke from the sculpture department. I met Traci through my friend Carl, and her first words to me were in't your 'air 'orrible? delivered with a caustic scowl, although to be fair my 'air was indeed pretty 'orrible at the time. She set up a reading event in one of the lecture theatres for herself, Sexton Ming, Billy Childish, and Bill Lewis. I don't recall much of what she read but it may well have included some of the material reprinted in the first part of this collection. I'd actually forgotten she ever wrote this sort of thing. Her delivery was kind of harsh and forceful but I don't remember much else about it. Childish on the other hand was impressive, dark and bitter, painfully honest, and he gave the impression that he really, really, really didn't want to be there. Traci mentioned that she had a few of his books for sale after the show - slim collections of dyslexic poetry he'd published himself. I bought one and was so knocked out by it that I asked if she had any others. She was in the process of breaking up with him at the time and had no problem selling me everything she had, a few of them even signed for Traci love Billy x. I never saw much of her art, at least not until the final year. She had an exhibition in the college gallery of oil paintings done in Amsterdam over the summer, mostly canals, barges and the like, and they were actually pretty great. The last time I saw her was in Rochester High Street, a couple of years after we'd all finished college. She was pushing a supermarket shopping trolley full of junk and said that she'd just married a Turkish fisherman which had proven problematic due to his already being married. Under other circumstances it would have seemed a bit unlikely but I don't recall being particularly surprised.

So that's my Traci Emin story, such as it is. A couple of years later she began turning up on TV as the next big thing. She had apparently reinvented herself, or had at least been through a personal year zero by which all previous work no longer counted, presumably including the Amsterdam paintings. This also pertained to a painting she'd sold to the late Tim Webster for a fiver*, as Tim found out when he attempted to have it valued and was told that she denied having painted it. I was quite fond of Tim (and am still depressed by the fact of his having kicked the bucket back in 2020) so this struck a bit of a sour note for me. I never had any strong feelings about Traci's reinvention as a notionally conceptual artist, beyond enjoying Billy Childish observing that (and I'm paraphrasing here) the difference between my paintings and what Tracey does is that if you chuck my stuff in a skip, it's still art; but I nevertheless got a massive vicarious kick out of her success. It felt as though one of us had broken through, regardless of why it happened, even if she's disowned the rest of us.

Anyway, Strangeland is divided into three main sections dealing with her early life in Margate, then in Turkey, and then everything else. The first two parts are astonishing, vivid, and enough so to leave me hungry for more. Some of it is pretty harrowing, but nevertheless powerfully told because Traci is very, very funny and the horror is contrasted with a surprisingly tender insight. The third section is mostly what came after year zero and feels patchy, barring the chapters dealing with her abortion. David Bowie's private jet gets a mention, as does one of Vivienne's tops, and Billy Childish is written off in a couple of paragraphs without actually being named. Childish himself has admitted that he treated her like shit and the downs and even further downs of their relationship are detailed in unflinchingly brutal terms in those chapbooks Traci sold me back at Maidstone. At the time I recall being told that he was on at least a bottle of whisky a day. All the same, that single scathing paragraph seems a little unfair, truthful though it undoubtedly is, at least given the extent of his influence on her work and by extension presumably even her reinvention. There was a time when she was regarded as more or less an extension of Billy, and his influence is discernible throughout Strangeland. That said, the notion that she was ever truly an extension of Billy is clearly bollocks, and Traci's near relentless burst sewer pipe of hard reality may also serve to explain what drew the two of them together in the first place.

I have a feeling Traci would have ended up either well known or at least notorious for something, and her career in the art world from the nineties onwards would have looked the same or similar had she never met Childish. What you see is what you get, as they say. She has a relentless, near indestructible quality, and the biggest gob in the world, which I state out of admiration. She genuinely seems like she would be hard to kill, as Henry Rollins would put it, and Strangeland captures this in what may be more detail than you need.

I just wish she'd carried on in the vein of the Amsterdam paintings.

*: I remember this as being an actual portrait of Tim himself, but I may be wrong. For what it may be worth, I wrote a memorial to him called Let's Think About Living which can be found here.