I have four rats. They breathe constantly. One is slightly yellow. They fight with fists and grins and their actions are perfect. You will never be as good as them. VIM VOM VIM, if you must. Anyway.

I am not an artist.

I have come to this conclusion on the basis that I do not know a great deal about art and I don't really like most of it. Also, I am a terrible painter. In short:

Yet, for reasons I've never bothered to understand, I do care about my actions. All of them, in every direction. From the hat that I wear to the words I write to the company I keep and the things I swear at, I care, I care, I care and you can't stop me. A floating pivot whispers to me that "Artists, whether they are or not, should care less about art and more about their actions for a perfect action is art most vital and a perfect action will win". How right is that pivot! How right it are! My actions are seldom perfect, you must understand this, but in each mediocre thought and movement, each disappointing swivel I strive for nothing less than the perfect and that is what makes me a MAN. A man is obviously not the same as an artist and I am told it is frowned upon to be both, but should you, unlike me, be predisposed to artThinking, artInking, artDoing, vom, etc. then it might go some way to legitimising your so-called art/arts/ramparts/poetry and perhaps cause your legs to growl like incisors. Art requires a perfect action just as art requires anti-. After all, somebody must claim responsibility for the squid smeared upon the floor. I shall be content to mop it up and laugh when they say it's my fault.

Laughter is a perfect action, and a lubricant to many more.

A perfect action is one with the courage to declare itself so. It laughs insolently at its perpetrator, witnesses and all that makes it be. The sound of it delights enough (not too many, not too few) and the look of it indubitably likewise. A perfect action is not beautiful, however. Beauty is dull and predictable and far from satisfying and the perfect action must SATISFY above all. It must make mouths spread wide, bellies chortle and shudder. It must stir the trousers, quicken the pulse, cause minds to splinter and floors revolve. It shall probably be messy, (most good things are messy) and those who are involved shall never forget it. And who is involved? Why, everyone. They who thought it, they who did it, they who saw it, they who talked after (and talk they will), they who read about it long after the dust has settled, they who passed by and chose to ignore, THEY WHO NEVER EXPERIENCED IT AT ALL. All are involved for the action is perfect and it WILL matter whether heshetheyit like it or not. The perfect action is a Post-NeoAbsurdist action for Post-NeoAbsurdism is a product of doing. Post-NeoAbsurdism is not an idea, an ideal, a discussion. It is action, perfect/imperfect/aperfect - THE PERFECT ACTION IS A POST-NEO ACTION FOR IT IS NOW IMPOSSIBLE TO BE ANYTHING BUT A POST-NEOABSURDIST. The perfect action will be your last chance. You shan't need another. It shall happen again and again and again and again and every time it shall look different and every time it will be the same for every time we bludgeon a steak we make the world sound different. A perfect action will, in all probability, not look very perfect. A perfect action is vital.

The art we are taught, those simple actions and the simple debates that surround them, they to which our elders and betters steer us ever-cautiously, is very far from vital. Should our welders and netters ever sniff a vestige of impulse, the tiniest screed of spontaneity or frivolity they will fall upon a number of strategies to instantly disguise and mask it. They will stuff it full of photocopied chapters, talk only of the slimy bits, misappropriate, cough and clatter. Thus, a perfect, or at the very least exciting action, can be dressed as a mundane one and our melders and fetters will MAKE ART BORING. A floating pivot sweats and spits mournfully “I am bored of this game! I am bored of your fancies! I am bored of being bored!”

I am not an artist because I refuse to be bored.

Yet a perfect action makes artDoing a reasonable proposition. A perfect action will, after all, only be boring if the experience of boredom is key to its perfection. A perfect action matches art with futility and thus with breathing, debate, poetry, kite-flying, academia, masturbation, TV, toothache, Brute Salon, pamphlets, music, mythology, heroin addiction, Ronnie Corbett, influenza, ghosts, etc, paint, etc, balls, etc, etc. The promise of a perfect action prompts me to betray my inclinations of humanity, my fear of boredom, my shiny pockets of sense and fundamentally question the severity of my manhood. Perhaps, I chuckle miserably to myself, I am an artist after all. Perhaps I can talk and not be bored. Perhaps I might be permitted this one little lapse… But then I recall my other actions – the imperfect ones, those which do not gleam like silvery breasts. They are a stark reminder that art is not for men or poets. Art is best off in a big, cloudy tank being slowly encircled by three ravenous gulls.