My life swings violently between extremes. Like if today was the first day you had ever met me, you’d probably be vaguely disappointed with what you saw; rolled up sweatpants, dirty Nikes and 100 yard stare peeking out from behind next-level eyebags, slowly stalking around used videogame shops for a cheap copy of Guitar Hero 3. Then later I managed to get up the energy to sit in front of the TV and watch the entire run down of The Offspring’s 50 Rock Videos You Have To Download. You might describe me as a lazy bum, and for that day you’d be right. Had you bumped into me on Monday though, oooof sir, you’d have a different story to tell. Well except for the Nikes.

Monday morning began at 6am. It is no exaggeration here that the only times I ever see 6am are if I’m catching a flight to the US or I’m getting the bus back from town after an ill-advised session at Satan’s. I have maybe 2 hours to get to Manchester to meet with Vic from NOISE Festival and do my interview spot on BBC Radio Manchester and then later paint a live portrait of Chancellor Alistair Darling to launch the NOISE Dream Jobs for 2008. Already stressed by this fairly weighty responsibility after only 5 minutes of being awake I decide to burn off the tension on the ole ‘AT Cruiser’, or the exercise bike to you guys. Then it’s into the shower and on to the bus where I listen to various musical classics from the Fall Out Boy ouvre in an effort to kickstart my personality.

I don’t like to be cocky, even though I am the best at it, but those of you who happened to catch the interview witnessed maybe the most sublime 3 minutes of 2hands based, Noise Festival pimping you’re ever going to hear on the radio. But my press-juggernaut couldn’t stay parked as it’s on to prepare for the main event; the arrival of Chancellor Darling. Even though there was hours of preparation and waiting and fuss the time limit I had to paint him in turned out to only be 30 minutes, so yeah, no time for love Dr Jones. With game-time approaching I figured a hungry artist is not a happy artist so I ran off to remedy this while final preparations were being made. If you learn nothing else from this blog do not ever eat at Subway before a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Three words; Bad. Jalapeno. Experience.

So anyway, the D-Boy rolls up with his press people and entourage. Furious painting of eyebrows is happening at the same time as talking and TV filming and pens falling out of my hat at inopportune moments and canvasses wobbling around on McGuyvered-up easels, although between the struggle to maintain art-focus and the jalapenos destroying my insides I really couldn’t tell you much in the way of specifics. Apparently there were some gypsies? And there might have been a secret service guy in the corner acting like Solid Snake? All I know is that despite the pressure my art jutsu was strong and there’s gonna be an extra painting on the walls at Downing Street, you feel me?

So Captain Eyebrows leaves and everyone collapses from exhaustion and breathes a collective sigh of relief, except for me who realises my toes have clearly been sticking out a hole in the side of my right shoe the entire time. Then I summoned some more personality for another newspaper interview and answer more questions about my life and style and 2hands alter-ego, which by this time is all starting to feel a little Bruce Wayne/Vicky Vale.

What am I trying to get at here? I’m saying that thanks to Noise Festival I had another first class day with members of the British Government. I’m also saying that this press shindig is some hardass, grindcore work. Not like working in a mine work, more like completing a mental concentration marathon, but still you wouldn’t believe how much sleep I needed afterwards. So next time you see me fumbling around Stockport looking like a slovenly tramp please give me a break, cause chances are I just finished rocking your world somewhere and you don’t even know about it yet.

-2hands

It’s very early :AM on Wednesday 27th February and I can’t sleep. I have trouble switching off at the best of times but tonight my head is especially busy. So I’m lying there not sleeping, listening to John Williams film scores, playing through images from the day before in my head trying to process what just happened to me…

12 hours earlier on Tuesday I’m in Trafalga Square and I’m bear hugging Sam Fisher. He’s one of the other artists from Noise Festival’s 2006 showcase and we’re lined up in Noise hoodies with the other ‘all-stars’ holding placards of our artwork for a photo shoot to promote the 2008 campaign. We’ve got a lot to get through before our launch party starts at Number 11 Downing Street so we should be focusing but all the two of us can do is chat raw comedy and perve on hot tourist girls. We’ll be at this all day in different locations; security guards will keep harassing us, the photographer’s frustration with London red tape will grow and I’ll keep getting hit in the face with my wooden placard because the wind is strong and I’m not.

Now I’m outside the black gates of Downing Street catching up with Annabel, the woman who first got me to submit my work to Noise and I’m losing my cool. I thought I’d be all aloof and unaffected by it all, I thought I’d remain fashionably cynical but history is coming off the walls and seeping through my parka. I’m about to go as an invited guest into a place that has literally decided the fate of the world, probably on more occasions than any of us will really know and I don’t know what to do with myself.

Radial screen wipe to me dodging Gordon Brown’s kids (or were they Alistair Darling’s?) on the stairs of Number 11 as I’m geeking out over the vintage wallpaper and the framed political cartoons hanging on them. Then I’m getting my wine on in the State Drawing Room surrounded by expensive suits and ties, torn between admiring the gold and black lacquered antique Chinese cabinets or the don-like cool of Wayne Hemmingway as he cuts through pretension with his speech. He passes the mic on to the Noise Artists. I just about keep myself together through Bradley Philip’s speech but half way through Leah Capaldi’s I freak out. What am I doing here? I’m too short to be in this room! Is this what Frodo felt like at Elrond? Leah finishes and I look around at all the Noise artists applauding along with me and it hits me who they all are; they’re ambassadors, representatives, role-models for creative youth… and I’m one of them. I start to feel a little taller.

The rest of it is a montage of photo opps and handshakes and fantastic shoes, hot solicitors and perfect clutch bags and people I’ve only ever read about in the Guardian over the shoulder of some office worker on the 192 bus. Badly Drawn Boy is showing me pictures his kids drew as we parlay about Stockport’s hat museum while Vengeance Cru spit bare grime lyrics in the corner. You couldn’t write this shit better.

As the party finally comes to an end I sit down for the first time of the night on a chair in the hall of Number 11. I catch myself staring at the collection of mobile phones left for safe-keeping on the front-desk, marveling that none of them have been stolen yet and then I hate myself for being impressed by the absence of petty crime. Badly Drawn Boy leaves by the front door and shouts to me ‘keep up the good work mate!’ ‘Yeah, you too mate!’ I shout back in a voice a few notches too loud because of the free wine and I think… is this my life now?

Jump cut to me and artist Jessica Emmett speeding back to Euston in a taxi with Denise Proctor from Noise Festival and I’m racing my mouth off. I can’t stop talking. I keep thinking of the bike ride at the end of E.T and ‘Champion’ by Kanye West and the rollerbladers from Eastern Bloc countries who send me their friends’ rap songs to make up for not quite knowing the English for ‘thankyou, you inspire me’. I’m looking at London at night speed by, high on the power of Whitehall and the mischievous thrill of wearing a FRSH fitted hat, a hoody and Glow Dunks in front of MPs who already knew me as ‘2hands’. It’s dawning on me that I got here because of pencils, I feel like a hero, none of it will fit in my head and I find myself wanting to know what the plural of ‘epiphany’ is.

So I’m in bed again, now at the beginning of the Superman Theme getting chills from the brass crescendo and then the bed starts shaking. Then the bedside table starts shaking. Then the room joins in. I realise I’m in an earthquake and become sharply aware that there’s a bookshelf above my face and I hope I don’t get 11 volumes of Blade of the Immortal on my head, or one volume of The 3 Musketeers, when something else hits me…

There’s a power in what we do creatively. This isn’t a job, it’s not an easy career choice recommended to us at the benefits office, this is power like steam, or chi or fission; it drives and sustains. It moves people and forces change and keeps us awake at night. It doesn’t come from government quotas or an A Level syllabus we generate it ourselves, we channel it, direct it, focus it and it carries us upwards on a spiral. The people at Noise Festival recognised this in all of us, probably before some of us did ourselves. For the past few years they’ve each worked the hours of two jobs with no help to make sure everyone else in the country recognises it too.

The after shocks fade, my bedroom starts to settle again and as the burglar alarms start to go off down the street I realise why I can’t sleep; it’s the power. A while back I doubted mine, I let people convince me it wasn’t there and slowly I started to forget I ever had it but Noise helped me find it again.

I can’t thank them enough.

-2hands

I ganked the photos from Noise’s Flickr account. Photography by Andy Butterton

I really havn’t had time to process this but I spent tonight as a guest at a launch party for Noise Festival at Number 11 Downing Street. That’s THE Downing Street, the White House of England for all you guys from over-seas. I’ll come back to this when the official press starts rolling in but right now I’m eating ice-cream watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, struggling to come down from an experience that was profound… and surprisingly moving.

-2hands

So at some point this week when I wasn’t knee deep in web design conceptumalisation mode I did this flyer for the highly approved Manchester Comix Collective. The MCC is a community ran and thoughted up by my partner in comic crime and general mischief, Adam Cadwell.

The general thrust of it is for comic artists and writers, those that are and those that want to be can find each other at the website and then get together in person, possibly for collaboration and most likely for drinking. Adam explains it better than me so just go to the site if you think you approve of what I just said.

I like throwback designs. I also like Fab 5 Freddy which is why I went for the ‘Yo MTV RAPS!’ aesthetic. And yes, I just said ‘aesthetic’ which means I’m now OFFICIALLY pretentious.

Look out for these in all good comic shops and other places of intense cool and collect one so that you can walk up to me and Caddie at a con one day and go ‘Please sign my flyer because you’re charming and talented and really really ridiculously good looking!’

-2hands