Taking Names

Confession: I quite like graffiti. Not that I do it myself - it's one of the many things that I quit doing around the time my voice broke, when I coincidentally discovered far more entertaining activities to occupy my time - but I love seeing it around the place, and I usually make a point of stopping to look who's taken the time to record their presence.

Of course, not everyone likes it; the law considers it to be vandalism, and there are more than enough folks around who seem to think that graffiti artists need locking up/hanging/some kind of limb-amputation. But I can't help but think there's something of a double standard at work with that viewpoint. Not so long ago, the demolition of a building in the city centre revealed a wall that had been hidden since the nineteenth century, absolutely covered in graffiti from that era. Nothing epic or artistic, no impromptu masterpieces etched by Dickens or Wilde, no Banksyesque political statements by wannabe Turners; just the names of men (mostly sailors, I suspect) along with the year of their visit. In other words, the Victorian equivalent of BAZ WOZ ERE 9T8. And guess what? It was hailed as an incredible historical find, an insight into the minds of our antecedents, who were so unlike these sorry little plebs who go around defacing walls these days. Honestly.

Nope, not everyone can creatively write, not everyone can draw or paint, not everyone can photograph. But it doesn't mean they don't feel the urge to stamp their mark on their surroundings, to achieve some level of posterity or permanence in an eminently transient world. As those sailors in bygone days knew, just scratching a simple message into brick or wood could potentially immortalise them long after they'd been claimed by the cannonball of fate.

Alright, I'm not suggesting that every piece of graffiti is automatically a work of intense significance, or that history will look back on a message like DAVEY B HAS A MASSIVE WILLY with rapturous admiration. But for Lucy, Bex A, BJ, Mick K, LM, Webby and Brown, if they should die, there is some corner of England that is forever them. Can you ask for much more than that?