Edible – The Tommy Blank Column









Graffiti.

“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.” (Banksy)

By chance I happened upon some graffiti on the side of a pub in Sheffield this morning, and it got me thinking about the colossal disparity between actual acclaimed graffiti artists (such as Sheffield’s own Phlegm and Kid Acne) who paint intricate murals demonstrating commendable ability and artistic finesse, and the parasitic glue sniffers who stain seemingly haphazard public properties with singular words or tags as they’re known.

To even mention these two very different breeds in the same breath represents an art crime by my estimation, so that’s where the comparison ends. Allow me to make my position absolutely clear; freedom of speech is paramount, perhaps topped only by freedom of expression. But scrawling ‘HACK’ or ‘DANK’ or something equally as non-contextual and moot on the wall of an InterSpar constitutes neither in my book. In short, it’s historically of no practical value or meaning and is the work of a moron seeking all the glamour that goes with street art with none of the aptitude.

The only imagination (and I mean the word loosely) I can attribute to said morons is the selection of their chosen spraylias (add that to the Tommy Blank dictionary; n. A pseudonym adopted by graffiti artists. Portmanteau of spray and alias) and some are certainly better than others.

I’ve gotten used to seeing DENT and BLOODAXE all over the place (I’m told they’re the same feller anyhow), and then there was that witty epidemic a year or so ago of POO appearing around the city centre accompanied by a charming illustration of silhouetted faecal matter. But this morning, the tag that sparked this particular rant was BODYHAMMER.

Bodyhammer? What could this possibly signify or represent? What profound street thinker has coined this urban babble? Full marks for originality I suppose, but he should have perhaps steered clear of potential titles for work out videos from Gladiators’ Wolfman.

Tagging walls with phrases such as these has as much to offer the world of graffiti as N Dubz have to urban music, and without substance it has no significance whatsoever.

In summary, If you haven’t got anything to say, don’t’ fucking say it.