The Art Opening

Last night I went to a party on a Peckham car park rooftop.
Everyone was there.
It was an art exhibition opening you see,
And it was a perfect evening: the sun bore down on all of us,
blessed ones.
The Champagne and Campari was overflowing and
a Charlie Parker inspired band strummed in the corner,
setting the mood.

All the boys wore stripy t-shirts, and
boating shoes with rolled-up slacks.
And when I looked around all I could see was
face upon face with
cool dark shades attached.
A sea of Ray-bans;
those glasses from another time,
another politics,
an earlier life.

Everyone was looking at everyone else,
like a mass of pigeons brooding and
pecking at one another,
but like birds their movements
were slow and semi-static,
as though from the side.
Taking me in, and me taking them in.
Until suddenly you realised the undercurrent.
Of disdain, of disinterest, of self-interest.
No one was good enough to look at for too long.

Girls strutted and tossed their messy hair
from side to side,
emaciated and tanned from a diet of
cigarettes, gin and expensive holidays.

A little later,
and Martin Creed (remember? The Turner prize winner)
and his band took to the stage.
They sang a song whose only lyrics
were every number from one to
one hundred.
This was followed by another linguistic feat:
called 'Fuck You'.

A cool evening breeze descended upon us all,
drunk but still clucking, still preening,
still talking nonsense.

A girl, possibly the curator,
made a speech over the tenoy about how lucky
they were to have their corporate sponsors,
and how important it was to use such diverse spaces
for the display of art.
Good for 'culture' in London.

And then I thought of what was going on down below.
About Peckham Rye High Street:
the smell of the yams and the giant snails
being sold in the yards of bare-windowed shops.
The African braids lying straggling and
abandoned on the pavement.
I thought of their realness,
their struggles, but then our superficiality:
only a stone's throw away.
Our pretense to the past.
To 'cool'.

Earlier we had gone into MacDonalds'
to use the loo.
Hundreds of black families filled the tables
eating supper.
Whilst at the top of their local multi-storey
Nicholas Serota and Jay Joplin
ate free salmon canapes and quenched
their thirst on Campari,
so genorously donated
by our corporate sponsors.