God bless you Lawrence and here it is. I hope I’ve got nothing wrong

I suppose some artists have loads of imagination but I never did, most of what I make comes from straight observation. A lot of this has taken the form of stalking people around me, I sort of follow and watch and record them. As with all forms of sleuthing, there are dangers involved that are minimised with the application of a few simple rules: the etiquette of creative stalking, if you like.

I’ve done quite a lot of stalking over the course of my career. In my first week at art school, eager to impress, I followed an alcoholic around the streets, secretly drawing him. Eventually he noticed what I was doing and we got talking. He had the most extraordinary story to tell, full of boxing and gangsters and floosies flavoured by the intoxicatingly dark allure of the gutter. I got a bit too involved and invited him back to college where he stayed for a week, getting increasingly drunk and frightening. Eventually a kind girl in the Christian Union invited him to stay at hers where he made a terrible mess and tried to kiss her. She had to hide in the toilet until he left, taking with him an armchair and a pair of knickers, never to be seen again. I had of course broken the first rule of creative stalking, which is to not let the person know you are doing it.  

It was years later that I really learnt this lesson. I was living in Deptford very near to the infamous Carrington House hostel. At that time my work was based around my observations of the characters that lived there. These people were different from the kind you meet on the street these days: dirtier, growlier and yet somehow comfortable in their strange netherworld of methylated ranting. In the one local cafe that allowed them in there was often a customer dressed in a ragged assortment of seventies glam rock gear, soiled white satin and ripped velvet. I was keen for his story, and followed him for a couple of weeks trying to record what he was saying.

Eventually he noticed and approached me in a cafe where I was sat trying to impress a girl. Eyes bulging, he tried to get his hands round my throat and screamed that I’d stolen his woman and one of his songs. I think he thought I was Leo Sayer. After the girl managed to calm him down, we bought him breakfast and got told the story of his life. Hank had been a minor rock star in the seventies and was chewed up and spat out by the music business in a particularly clichéd way. Although understandably bitter, he was also clearly insane, but this didn’t prevent the girl I was with from telling him where I lived.

Hank would follow me home and sleep on my doorstep, demanding breakfast or money or sex. He screamed and yelled and occasionally sang one of his hits. I finally got rid of him when I moved five years later though in many ways he haunts me still. I’ve been performing a piece based on his life for eighteen years now and although it’s really no more than spurious doggerel, I can’t find a way to stop. My punishment for artistic immorality is an eternity of dressing up as Hank. Perhaps I really did steal his song.

Then there’s the bloke I used to see on the bus every morning. Mr Ginge was a ludicrous figure, a bit like Mr Bean, with a crossly furrowed face and shiny flannel trousers six inches too short. Mr Ginge always sat two seats back from the top deck front window, on the right. If anyone got there first he would get very upset, sit as near as possible and move at the next opportunity, I used to deliberately sit there to gauge his reaction. On one occasion I followed him home, and another time to a restaurant to see what he was eating. I was building a detailed picture of his life but when it came to making work out of the material, I transferred it into an eighteenth-century setting. I embellished and invented details, particularly with regard to his sexuality. I always felt guilty for that. I felt I hadn’t been true to my observations, that I’d transgressed the etiquette by inventing and not observing. I used to perform him in an elaborate eighteenth-century dandy costume and turn him into a lonely, unhappy figure, which probably wasn’t true either.

I met Lawrence in a bar in Ireland; he said my partner reminded him of a woman he’d once loved. Lawrence entertained us for five hours with the story of his life and as I was leaving I told him I would go home and write it into a song. He gripped my hand very tightly, looked into my eyes and said: “You will do no such thing. That’s my life that I’ve lived and you’ll leave it to me.“ But I couldn’t help myself. I wrote and recorded the song and one day I will go back and sing it to him.

Lately, I’ve been keeping a weather eye on a person who lives on the street near my house. I talk to him most days and give him money and fags. I’ve got quite a lot of his story down and to date he has provided material for two songs. I realise that I’m breaching my own rules of engagement by getting to know him but somehow, I just can’t help myself.

This piece first appeared in Monika No. 01: The Anon. Monika is a magazine with no masthead and no bylines based in London and now available at the Dossier store in New York.  For a full list of retailers see the magazine’s website.