Plato said, “The
first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself
is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.” I presume that, like me, Plato
spent a lot of his day playing himself at snooker to find out which of the two
hims was the best.
I have written
before about my Me1 Vs Me2 Snooker podcast, in which I recreate my lonely
teenage years, by knocking my balls around the old green board inexpertly
commentating on what I am doing. Many people dismiss it as the self-indulgent
ravings of a middle-aged man who has lost his mind, but I argue that it is
performance art demonstrating the futility of existence and our daily
participation in a competition against ourselves which will only end in
stale-mate and death. Only at the end will we realise we have wasted the
precious gift of life.
If you want to
waste some of that gift yourself then there are currently 78 frames to “enjoy”
at https://www.comedy.co.uk/podcasts/richard_herring_snooker/ . I have played
drunk, I have played nude, I have tried to hide what I am doing from my wife
who hates it.
Others say I am
pretentious when I claim the podcast is in fact a representation of the
tripartite nature of the soul and the impossible struggle for control over our
own impulses, exploring the no-man’s land between sanity and madness. They said
what I was doing was rubbish and pointless on every level and (tellingly)
refused to even listen to it. I can only presume out of fear of what it might
say about them.
But I have now
been vindicated. Along with 84 performance and noise artists from around the
world I have been invited to participate in Tempting Failure 2016. It’s an
extreme arts festival that showcases “transgressive and
risk-taking live work”. Many of the artists are doing stuff so dangerous that I had to sign a
waiver saying that I would be responsible if I strangled, electrocuted or
harmed myself during my performance. Given my performance will just consist of
me playing myself at snooker for an hour there is little risk, but snooker is
an unpredictable sport.
I am not sure if
the Tempting Failure team are taking thepiss out of me, or if I am taking the
mickey out of them or whether we were each waiting to see who would blink
first, but no one blinked. This is happening. In the kingdom of transgressive
art where people are cutting themselves or cooking their own effluent, a man
who doggedly plays himself at snooker is actually the most transgressive person
of all.
Check out their
website and come along if you fancy it: http://www.temptingfailure.com/tf2016.
It’s a shame that the cool intro video full of nudity and noise doesn’t
periodically cut to me, alone, playing on a 6ft by 3ft snooker board.
The thing I am
most looking forward to is seeing the kind of weird nerds who enjoy listening
to my podcast (my aim was to have no listeners at all – I started with 30,000,
but over 4000 are clinging on) mingling with fans of transgressive art. I don’t
know which group will be weirder. I do. It will be my fans.
But I am determined
to win the Turner Prize and this is the first step. I am just annoyed that I
haven’t yet had a call from the
World Professional Billiards and Snooker
Association to tell me that they are recognising Self-Playing Snooker as the
superior version of the game and scrapping 2-player snooker and televising my
tournaments instead.
Congratulations to Russell Brand who is going to be a father. After all those
years of trying, shooting countless trillions of gametes into countless
millions of women, at last one plucky sperm has found its way through. It’s a 21st
Century Robert the Bruce lesson on the value of persistence. If at first your
seed does not succeed, then try, try, try, try , try, try, try and try again.
