Smiling in Slow Motion
Derek Jarman
Century, £16.99, 288pp
Buy it at BOL
Why do visual artists believe they can write? I would not dream of downing typewriter, running off to make a daubing, and then touting it in a public place. Neither would I prance around wielding a camcorder and expect the BFI to fund me. The two types of creative endeavour have absolutely nothing in common; indeed, if you are good at one of them you are likely to be even worse than a non-artist at the other. I can barely draw an Oxo cube, for instance, and most visual people write as though English is their second language - an exception being Tracey Emin, who writes very well.
But if Trace is the exception, then Derek Jarman is the rule - a man with a cauliflower where his ear for language should have been. Undeterred, he churned the books out like a good 'un, this posthumous collection of diaries being his twelfth published book. And while completely without artistic merit, the book will appeal greatly to those of us who have never reconciled themselves to the fact that Diary Of A Nobody had no sequel. A combination of Pooter, Hyacinth Bucket and Victor Meldrew, these diaries do have immense, if unintentional, comic appeal.
Like Pooter, Jarman believes that nothing is so dull that it will not be improved by documentation: "Disturbed by a large owl. Polished the floors", "Shopping at Sainsbury's", "We are expecting rain. The garden could do with it", "Bought a pullover at M&S" and "Spent the afternoon sewing buttons on to shirts" are all worthy of the Grossmiths.
Then there are the exciting Epicurean experiments: "Very good lunch - chops, purple cabbage and semolina" and "I cooked an excellent picnic lunch - new potatoes, ham and salad." Though in his fifties at the time, Jarman exhibits all the blind dedication to his diary of a little girl of eight presented with her very first. At some points things get so desperate you almost expect him to write "wrote in diary" just to break the monotony.
Jarman's attempts at wordplay and wit are invariably clunkers ("Christmas over, thank Bethlehem!"), while his insights would be embarrassing from a 12-year-old: "American TV has sacrificed all channels to profit" - no! "Major is really minor" - wow, that's clever! A cemetery is described as "morbid"- doh!
A queer Meldrew, Jarman's totally justifiable bitterness and anger at catching the big disease with the little name add to his naturally waspish nature to produce a catalogue of hatreds that can be quite bracing in small doses. He doesn't seem to like his fellow friends of Dorothy an awful lot. Simon Callow? "Bumbling old vulgarian." Ruldolf Nureyev? "A sad little man from Siberia." Oscar Wilde? "Infuriating - the life more interesting than the writing." I think we can best illustrate the accuracy of Jarman's judgments by quoting his opinion of Brighton: "It is often violent, and there are no queers there." Spot on, Del.
The book can occasionally be fun in the manner of sitting behind a bitchy old queen on the bus, especially when Jarman is spitting blood at Ian McKellen's knighthood or bemoaning, à la Bucket, "the end of elegance". But the laffs end and the tedium increases as whole swathes of the planet are written off, and not even with originality or wit.
The Blimpishness that Jarman decried in others was well present and correct in himself; people "deserve to be shot" and, elsewhere, he congratulates himself on his "political incorrectness", the boast of the smug saloon-bar bore the world over. "Something to remember about the hetero toads is, because they breed, they never take risks," he writes while puffing his own rampant creative risk-taking, which will certainly come as a surprise to fans of Picasso, Mozart, Jackson Pollock, Douglas Sirk and all those other boring breeders.
But to Jarman, heterosexuals are not quite human, and have no feelings to be hurt: "The onus is on heterosexuals to explain themselves, their behaviour and the evil they have brought us. They need to come out, not us, and face the prosecution. It's they who have warped sexuality, who have murdered and driven innocents to suicide, they who should ask for forgiveness." OK, Del, I admit it - it was me. I did that stuff. Can I go home now?
Londoners are "ever uglier", Germans "thieving sauerkrauts"; Vienna is "just a grand piano - places are no longer of interest to the sophisticated". Strangers on a train are "Thatcher's rat-faced mortgagees, not one brain cell amongst them." Here, if we needed it, is proof of Jarman's complete lack of sensibility: would any true artist, be they writer, painter or filmmaker, see in a rush-hour railway carriage this seething mass of loathsomeness rather than a group of individuals with their thwarted dreams and desires? Most of us are over this kind of cheap misanthropy by the time we're halfway through our teens.
At least they weren't children, who Jarman hates as fervently as any uptight old colonel: "I really do hate children on aeroplanes - they should be banned"; the East End is "full of gangs of sub-human children". Isn't tolerance a wonderful thing? And don't we all breathe a sigh of relief when we're back in the civilised company of Derek's friends, such as Karl, who for kicks - get this - goes around Hampstead Heath collecting used condoms AND EATING THEM! Only the wonderful Neil Tennant emerges with any glory, asking Jarman, who is about to visit Jimmy Somerville, if he can pass on a message. The message? "Piss off, Mary, I'm Head Fairy!" The Neil Tennant diaries - now they would be worth reading.
