An email to Banksy

to: faq@banksy.co.uk
date: 11 July 2014 00:08
subject: A tale from Glastonbury 2004, or was it 2005? 2006?!

Hey Banksy,

I have a story from Glastonbury that it's fair to say I've been dining out on for quite a while so I thought I'd share it with you, saying as you're kind of the main protagonist.

It was the year you painted lots of Guantanamo inmates and a few coppers doing The Conga through The Glade. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure you did something on the perimeter fence next to the Stone Circle too. It was a good year. I don't think it rained much either, but my memory has some blank spots. It could have pissed it down all weekend to be honest.

Police line dancing, do not cross.

Having been a fan of your work for quite a while I was pretty chuffed that you were painting Glasto that year. An amateur, I brought a load of paint with the intention of making a mess but didn't really get round to it. Part timer. 

If I think about it, I imagine it was probably quite a nice time for you. A time before celebrities drove lorries of cash to auction houses to buy your paintings. A time before people removed walls so they could sell the render you'd rendered valuable by spraying paint on it. But who am I to know? Lorry loads of cash sound pretty sweet to me.

Anyway, people removing walls bearing your work brings me to the crux of my story. 

That year you also did some rats with Martini glasses and cable-tied them to fences around the 'VIP' camping areas (I swear I'm not a stalker - I just like creative vandalism). While looking at one of these pieces a thought occured to me. 

"It would be fucking awesome to have a Banksy on my bedroom wall at uni. Ok, the rats with Martini glasses are hardly coppers doing The Conga, but all the same, it would look pretty fucking sweet."

Just three cable ties. The only challenge was how I'd get it home.

Now, at the time, not that many people knew who Banksy was. Ok, not that many people know who Banksy is today, but you know what I mean. This was pre-Gaza wall and celebrities with lorry loads of cash. 

Regardless, I had a couple of little black books that were starting to come away at the spine and was quite keen to have a painting by the same person on my wall.

So I was in a quandry. I really wanted this painting, and I had a penknife in my pocket that would have made quick work of the cable-ties. On the other hand, a wheatpaste I'd bodged a couple of months earlier had disappeared wholesale and I was pretty sure someone had peeled it off and taken it home with them.

Brown Paper Plant: My first (and soon to be gone) wheatpaste.

So I'm standing there, stoned and indecisive as ever. I rationalised. Argued with myself. Gave myself a talking to.

"Street art is for the street (or a field in Somerset)," I said to nobody. 

"It's meant to be in the street and should stay in the street. It's not meant to be on my bedroom wall, it's meant to be on this fence around what's probably not actually a VIP camping area at all but a muddy field for the workers to sleep in."

And I walked away. I left the painted board cable-tied to the fence and wandered off.

Needless to say, a couple of years later when I was skint and newspapers were reporting that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt has spent a seven-figure sum on one of your paintings I was pretty pissed.

"Fuck!" I thought. "FUCK!!! What the fucking fuck was I thinking?! Why the fuck did I have to get all rational and moralistic about this. If they paid seven figures, a little rat must be worth at least four or five. BALLS!"

But time heals wounds and dries paint. Stories started appearing of people stealing your work in the middle of the night, and I realised I'd made the right decision. I'm glad I wasn't one of those twats, I'd never have forgiven myself if I'd accidentally put myself in league with the wankers who remove perfectly good walls from perfectly shitty streets and put them in fucking art galleries.

Yes, I'm sure the pile of cash would have made it easy to forget about that, but that's not really the point is it?

Sincerely,

Tom


PS. Having checked through my photos, it would appear that I was wrong about the rain that year.

Note to self: Never camp at the bottom of the hill.