The Banalization of Liverpool

The Banalization of Liverpool

By Paul Robinson

In all facets of the city (and I imagine in all cities of the country) banality is demonstrated, conformity is rampant, there is no new milieu, just the reclassification of old principles. People are still scared to leave plates in the bedroom for fear of what other people might say. In the surge toward cosmopolitanism, we forgot to watch our backs as tedium crept up and snatched our wallets.

                                    ***
The new build sought only to conglomerate existing structures, not to threaten. The new tenements, espousing inner city living, are bland reconfigurations of brick and mortar, indemnifying the unity of the moneyed. No architectural rebellion, no challenge to the skyline or the eyeline has been implemented. No Liverpool revolution, only dash renovation to make room for transportation of citizens in and out of the city. The city must be rejected, it's edifices denounced.
                                                                                    ***
There has been no significant artistic movement for over half a century. The Merseybeat legacy has jammed new pathways in music and poetry: in music we look to continental Europe and America for inspiration, bringing back mere imitation; in poetry we pack no unified punch, no “wah! wah!” or hand jive, no imprisonment, none willing to commit poetic crime. Creativity frequently requires penury: contentment strangles creativity, reducing artistic purpose to a diversion, pastime or hobby. Investment is not a requisite for creativity. Where is the avant-garde Liverpool breathing artistic fire? A vision we must will to transpire, otherwise the monotony of reality will lock us up and throw away the key. The artist must reject the city.
                                                                                    ***
Originality is confined to subterranean hideouts, radicalism is a shop, protest is the new spectacle, no adventure or defiance stands-up in the crowd, no artistic infection that can revolutionise our town. Flash clubs and bars act as fashion parades, places for courtship serenades, the weekend providing destructive escape from the working days gone, and those to come, that mash us into the ground.
                                                                                    ***
Klimt cannot reclaim the city for “artists, lovers and poets”, nor continental tender, nor transmutation, be it lamb or banana, nor movement or scene be reared on gossamer dress, yet the throng will tread in ignorance sublime, ploughing through reactivate buildings assembled from hurried cement.
                                                                                    ***
A new expression must be seeded, a new artistic ideology needed, the old guard thrown aside, the sewers and the backyards opened to see what can be found. No care should be given to national trend, we should cut our own path through the earth, wear what we want, think what we want, create the profound, a new subterranean art that eschews pound, terrifies the classes and reclaims a Liverpool lost to contaminated investment.
                                                                                    ***
Let starved cars choke the roads, pedestrian streets be deserted, let litter festoon retail doorways, window displays wither until dead: the emphasis must be shifted. Let Liverpool create it's own masterpiece, let the domestic screams of Grafton street be condensed into artful streams of consciousness, let the river drown the town hall and absolve the Capital enshrouding our culture. Within a few years Liverpool can become a hub of progressive chaotic excellence saturated with artists, poets, musicians and lovers, reclaimed from the dull misery that we have been intravenously fed. The city must be rejected.


Paul Robinson Poetry http://www.paulrobinsonpoetry.co.uk/