I looked up in the sky on my way to the shop on the other side of the road to procure a generic chocolate bar realizing something should be more up than down (my blood sugar). It was a glaswegian summer day & people seemed happy for a change. I tried to smile.

All of a sudden there was a black cloud. It quickly became cold & grey & windy & started to spit rain. A workman chased some neds down Cambridge street with a piece of scaffolding, when seemingly seconds before everything had been beautiful. Summer had turned to shit. Fast.

I looked at the spire & saw the matrix folding in on itself, no longer arsed to keep up it's crap illusion for the establishment. A piece of me died as I saw the whole shitshow spiral in around the spire like so much filthy scummy bathwater going down the drain. And, having just stopped a sectarian attempted murder & felt the full weight of legal aid & criminal injuries compensation authority & crown justices ineptitude, I saw this as a projection of my opinion on the real evil that hides behind the cloak of organised religions.

This got me murmuring the lyrics to 'straighthate' by Sepultura as I went in the peado shop for lion bar salvation. Billy was playing his Little Richard CD again, still no sign of short fat fanny, though. He never knew what I was on about, not really. Fuck sakes. I was jibbering on about 'open up your mind & find your own way' pretending it was all going to be alright, not bothered with small talk in my condition. The Lion bar had taken my last money, pulled me from the coma's teeth & I had to wrap my paintings to get to Cologne first thing in the morning & there was an exhibition that night at the flat I shared with Fi & Laura.

I barricaded myself in my room to get on with the task in hand & tried to be polite to the folk I saw. Smile & nod to win at art club, I kept telling myself. Not now, though. I put Wesley Willis on to drown out the chatter outside as I ran out of tape.

Somehow it all happened. I got to Berlin, met the randoms from the other gallery & got in the van to Cologne. I was falling apart, leaving torn pages of ditched lyrics everywhere. We got in late. I called Rebecca. She'd sussed it all, got my flights, the hotel, everything. But, there was a problem. It was a double bedded room we had to share as "the whole german art scene is in town these next days, don't tell your girlfriend. Ha ha ha". Ha. Eesh. I dumped my gear & greeted her & the other artists & escaped to get a kebab & beer. Fucking love Germany for that. I got back & passed out into a deep, deep sleep with Mondo Generators 'she only owns you' stuck in my head.

I had a day & a half & assistants to help set up, so in the morning we went to Liste where the safer more established & frankly boring work was. It stank of filthy money, but in that shit way that only crap art & polo necked blazer wearing wankers possibly can. I was getting really angry. My insulin was playing up & my blood testing kit was fucked & I needed a coke, but it was 4 euros here & there was nowhere else close by. There MUST be. I walked away to find out. Big mistake.

I woke up in the weirdest hospital. It was beautiful, but a bit like I'd imagine an illuminati nursing home to be like. In bad german, I tried to explain that I had to go right now, but it came out all wrong & I had to call Helga. She explained my case & we got out & I floated back to Liste with her through a strange network of trams & tubes & clean & tidy & polite. It was so unreal.

Hypoglycemia in the painting process

 'The Mellitus Management', oil on board, 2011.

 'Prophet Ron', oil on board 2014.

While making these two paintings, my sweet water condition tried to ruin all my hard work, but the hypoglycemic episodes actually became a part of the making process, although this wasn't intended, it kinda helped, but held up the whole process somewhat.

In painting 'the mellitus management' the hypo's were totally unforgivable, because the painting's about my type 1 diabetes. I did a whole set of paintings based on photo's of myself as a child. My Mum's always saying that I was such a perfect baby & child & thinks that when I moved to Glasgow to attend art school, 'the rot set in', I hung around with mental people who weren't dirt poor & took all the drugs I could get my hands on because of what she views must have been peer pressure, so I tried to explain to her (& myself) in these paintings of the doomed golden child, applying the new learnings to the framework of these "family classic" photo's. 'The Mellitus Management' is based on a photograph taken by a professional who came round to the first house my Mum & I lived in after she escaped her parents when I was 4 to 'an awful council estate in Chichester'. It was weird, she was up before noon that day & I had to wear these clothes that I was shriekily informed were very nice & smart, but despised. A sympathetic neighbour told me to 'do whatever it takes to make her happy' during the short trip to get my appeasement juice from the one stop opposite us, so I did. This is showmance & people don't like the truth, the 4 year old me realised, but not quite so eloquently. "Auntie" Elsie May fucked me up for life by being basic enough to inform me of that. Get them young. 'Smile' she said. 'Bums' I said, before being whisked away.

So, all dressed up in smart clothes that I couldn't be my real feral self in, couldn't draw or play with cars in, the photographer arrived late & set up his background stand & lights & I'd been having a shit time in this outfit for what seemed like hours. Hated that clip on tie. All dressed up like a functional, as fully aware as a 4 year old can be that it was farce. Should've been a ceo of some shit by now if I hadn't had that bad first reaction to dressing up for show, which made me take like a duck to water as a brown tight wearing rat in the school production of Pied Piper of Hamlyn a year later.  We were left with the photograph that formed the basis of this painting (& several more), which on this, I painted a sad close up of a pancreas fucking me up because of sweets, cheap food, my largely unknown father's dna & agenda 21.

I'm a very slow "fast" painter. Normally the process takes months, sometimes years, but there's always this instinct that faster is better, partly because it's got to be sustainable, no-one's REALLY going to pay attention & folk are largely morons anyway. So, in what should've been the last session on 'The Mellitus Management', after about the 14th hour, the hallucinations started. It was amazing & I went along with them, unaware my blood sugar was dangerously low. I was drooling (hypersalivation is a symptom of hypoglycemia) on rags & gently mopping & dabbing at the painting for what must've been hours, after starting the session with "proper" painting. You can see elements of this in the face. Suddenly, there was all this noise (the CD of Ministry's 'land of rape & honey' album had finished ages ago), & Sophie, Jayne & Tim arrived back at unity studios. By this point I was wearing a cooking pot with filthy turps on my head, but the painting was really starting to sing to my soul. Sugary water drinking attempt & paramedics. Shit, not again. My face & scalp were stinging from the chemical mixture on my skin, I felt like I was dissolving into elements & was at one with the universe. It felt beautiful. The sugar, shots, shouting & stinging brought me back. I had to put my head in the sink for about half an hour. Went for a cigarette outside with Jayne & Sophie. Went back the next day, got a fat masonry brush & dragged it through my childish face. Life is cheap & not here long. A bit of tidying up & the painting was done. That seemed quite poetic & functional & helped, despite the obvious health risk. The enormous dandruff from the turps headwash was a hellish reminder. 

'Prophet Ron' is based on the back cover photograph of the author of '2008; God's final witness', looking all serious. Check out Ronald Weinland. It's terrifying, like the news is terrifying, but scarier because there's real money behind him in order to freely circulate these books. Much like the news with crisis actors for the agenda. God spoke to him in 1997 & now he's out to save all the souls he can. Or something. But, you wouldn't look like that on the back cover of your book if that was your intent, surely..? Hence this painting. There's never enough space to properly paint on this expensive wee fuckin' island, especially if you're 6'8", need to go 'expanded field' to see all you need to properly perform the task in hand & broke, so at my old studio, I used other people's spaces because they were never there. Ever. I'd just discovered 'oiling in' with boiled linseed oil. Greasy.

Anyway, having nearly got this painting finished in my former studio in Govan, propped up on someone else's desk, while working on 3 more at the same time with all these curtains & crap walls in the way, after a really long successful session,  I tried to move something, then had to save the curtain falling into wet paint, went to prevent this accident, Prophet Ron fell on his greasy face on the filthy studio floor. The bloodsugar must've been dangerously low, and I comically demolished the whole studio. Shit. Bad scene. 

This jolt made me aware of the on-coming coma. I was dissolving into conscious particles again & I could hear murmurings from another dimension directing me toward the kitchen sink, sugar & Taxi bars. I was a meat puppet doing something I didn't fully understands bidding. It really felt alien/God like, or rather, a greater will. It wasn't consciously my will. I've always had this theory that agenda 21 & the NWO are a bit like Jack Nicholson's Joker in the 1989 Batman film, with his evil plot at axis chemicals plant. There's internet, phone, gamma waves & rays in the air & we're full of soft & heavy metals if you're on 2 kinds of insulin & various pills, so some people (like me) are probably more attuned to this shit, can probably be manipulated easier. This episode (& others) made me feel like a meat puppet of something else's will. I tidied up as best as I could & nothing was terminal, but I got a cheaper studio, not quite so far out, then Verge closed down. I finished the painting at my current studio at green city studios in dennistoun & again feel that this hypoglycemic episode helped connect me in a deeper way with what I was after with the work. I really do. It was good to drag greasy Ron through the dirt, then patch him up. It makes it a more honest portrait. No more, though.     

One remaining family member was 97 & in hospital, the other one was having an obnoxious bad time about everything. I'd had to get out the crack house some weeks previously then she shows up again, all full of her own problems & psychosis, ignoring the shitshow sprawled before her because it was someone else's misery. And I'm meant to have empathy? Now? Really? I'll try.

I had the garage key to grandma's & liked to take refuge from the screaming, so I did, but then she called me & in a moment of lustful abandon (against my better judgement) I ditched all my plans & headed for the train station. 'I know, it's hideous' I heard myself keep on saying to her, completely out to lunch. When she saw she was losing my attention, her clothes fell off & we rooted most of the afternoon away. At the end I kind of came to my senses, but having only had a bit to eat that rainy day, all the running about & fucking & fuckery were really starting to take their toll. I think I must've said something wrong. My eyes were starting to dart uncontrollably & I couldn't quite focus on the sexy nightmare by the door screaming about how she couldn't be doing with any more of my hypoglycemic episodes. In a fraught state of low blood sugar, all blissed out on one hand, but flat out distraught on the other, I might have given back the kind of chat I was getting, which is never a good idea. The door slammed & she was off.

Pursue! Eyes wildly jerking everywhere but where I needed them, I tried to get up off the heavily sweated & sexed bed, tangled in something, put an arm out to get the last lucozade pill, failed & collapsed in a bad "I do distraught for breakfast" heap like a baby giraffe. Something about the shit carpet activated me into a 2nd attempt to get up. The sideboards were covered in free cd's & dvd's Liz collected from the daily mail, not that she reads it, she claimed, but these were dusty atop of weird smelling towels which I became entangled with, finally managing to procure the elusive tropical lucozade tablet. A small victory. I muttered some curses & prayers for a moment, then threw myself up to my full height, with sweaty shitlocks getting tangled in the beige dangly nylon light fitting, trying to follow me into the storm.

Fuck off I told it. I had my slippers on. The rain had started again I could hear outside, but sweat & tears of multiple origins were pouring out my face. I grabbed the bannister & threw my disgraceful carcass down the stairs, somehow not falling. Bonus!

One jaffa cake left. Shit. Gotta catch her. Explain. Don't be a dick. Leather jacket covers my nudity ok, I thought, before inhaling the jaffa cake & running in the rain down the road after her. Shit, this is romantic, I thought, as all the nice normal mums & dads ferried their fat kids back from school &/or tesco. And those cunts probably need the entertainment.

By the time I'd shambles sprinted to the end of the street, it became clear it was the school run rush hour. All I wanted to do was find her & explain. Everything else was dead to me. A boulder could understand that. Fuck being on the pavement & road, I thought. Get into the bushes. You're pretty much naked in the rain. A big waft of breeze threw some brambles into my face, hooking my darty right eyelid. I had a bit of a fight with the tangled branches, but the blackberry bush wanted me for itself, not chasing her. Another strong waft of breeze blew open my coat & I had foggy notions that I was flashing the school run traffic jam, with brambles hooked into my right eyelid.

Then I saw the day glo fuckers & angels in their petro chemical vimahna's. The brambles got more wrapped around me & my slippers were mad slippery in the mud. Fuck it. Fall. Make one with the earth.

Fortunately the ambulance was in front of the pigs in the jam, but the cops were the first to move. As I was drifting away, I murmured something about my disease & what was happening that I was trying to fix. I just wanna see Ssssssssssss..!

6 hours later I came to in A&E. They gave me sweet coffee & injections & a pair of paper trousers to walk home in. The walk home was funny. The railway gates went down to let the last brighton train through & I tried invisibility. It became apparent it didn't work, so instead I found myself eyeballing anyone who looked. Small minded cunts. And we eventually spoke.

 

  

Endless, fruitless & very very close to curtains.

Today I had another bad hypo. I'm sick to death of this shit. Endless testing & monitoring & adjustments don't really mean shit when you've got no on-going financial stability, work in the bullshit hopeium industry of fine art & every job is temporary at best. This world clearly wants me dead. I can't be assertive without being aggressive & the very fact things like this need to be asserted in the first place to anyone, let alone the government, GP's etc...well, a boulder could understand that...surely a finely attuned professional could..? Clearly not. Can they fuck. It won't go very well. They keep starting & stopping working tax credits & housing benefit depending on which way the wind is blowing. No one likes the truth & don't shoot the messenger, but equally let the messenger speak to the correct decision makers & maybe hold them by the throat off a high building. Those cunts don't do bridges. Not anymore. The bitchy schema of compartmentalisation allows wildly distorted shit theory to be acceptable in a few bubbles of "didn't we do well", while allowing something like the georgia guidestones agenda to be played out a one by one basis. Compartmentalisation is the devil. Bubbles are the devil. They both need to walk the plank. Back slapping arse covering box ticking agents of evil. Thinking it's good because of their showmance shitshow. Fucking plankton.

Woke to the sight of my friends & one of my favourite bands feeding me jam & felt quite the tit. They didn't need that. Nothing about today's was in the least bit interesting. Previously they've been comic, flashback flavoured, &, on occassions, mad adventures, but today, I was just putting my boots on to go out & the next thing you know you've got sticky hypersalivation with tesco value strawberry jam mixed up into a mad hair gel. Fuck this. Really. The worst thing is what you see it do to the folk who help you, who're often quite badly shaken, you've recovered, feel fine, but obviously they're still on the shit bit of the human spin cycle of emotions after something shit like that happens, while you're in a face slapping self hate tumble. Only ruined about 10 drawings, so quite light really. No naked heavy sweating over strange distraught ocd women. No turpentine headwash. No praying on the by-pass. No leather jacket over nudity running after someone down the street, only to pass out in a hedge by the school run traffic jam. Didn't get maced or arrested. Didn't have sex with a vending machine, then get crushed by it in a sad & desperate last ditch attempt to get a can of coke after a 12 hour shift in the fray bentos factory doing the meat paste shovel job. No inept slack jawed violence. Could've been worse.

Ange & Owen the paramedics, as always, were brilliant. Hate having them bothered, though. Someone told me it costs the NHS £1000 every time an ambulance is called. There's tons of speculation & truth in what the tories are trying to do to the nhs, but clearly, if you keep fucking up a diabetics cash flow, this tit's gotta operate in an endless system where he "could get paid, one day. IF you're lucky (if the cunts ever fucking get back to you if they can read anything other than fucking sales speak dicks)", but EVERY cut back they make, gets passed on at least 10 fold to the nhs. I'm pretty bad, but there's millions more like me subjected to the same shit & you need to ask if we're the condems unintentional wrecking ball for the nhs. There's obviously a reason I don't know any diabetic artists who're still going. I want my careers advisers head. But then, art is the best therapy, but who really wants to sell their therapy? I do. The world says no, die. I've got a lot of work to do & it's kind of hard to reach out when you're no longer alive. I want to thank all the people who've helped, all the people that bought my work, all my dipshitted scatty employers, all the paramedics. Monitor & adjust & write it down.