The Art of Derek Dohren

So, who am I? What am I proud or ashamed of? Well, not my birthplace, not my race or my colour, not my sexuality, not my natural abilities or any lack of them. All of these things are given to us without any say so. We are what we are.

So how can you be proud to be black, or ashamed to be disabled, if that was they way you were born?

I am proud of things I've achieved, and ashamed of things I've done or not done, but these things are personal and known only to me. They will forever remain so.

Suffice to say the finest moments in life come down to the mundane; a helpful word offered, an act of kindness performed, being in the right place at the right time, buying a cool pair of shoes, watching a sunset on a frozen beach. The low points are not the accidents and the illnesses, the bad rolls of the dice we all suffer, they are those times when we show a mean spirit, act selfishly, direct cruel words at those who don't deserve it.

In my life I have had many such moments of pride and shame.

How do I wish to be remembered when I'm gone? Considerations of how one is viewed by future generations seems to me to be an utterly pointless preoccupation. We can look at the past and learn from it and we can look at the future and make our plans but when push comes to shove all that actually matters is that which is happening now.

If pressed then I'd say the best option is to be utterly forgotten when I'm dead. If you think about those long dead, the people whose names and reputations survive them, it seems to me we often grant them their places in history because during their lives they did unspeakably awful things. Not all of them of course, but more than enough. Even the alleged great and the good, the high achievers of our world, often reach the heights at the expense of those they've trampled on.

Furthermore history often distorts, distills and repackages to such an extent that the 'memories' of those who've gone before us are often reduced to single phrases or sentences. Often those labels we stick on people are not even accurate or truly representative of real achievements.

Thus Andy Warhol is famous only for that 15 minutes of fame throwaway remark or his Campbell's soup tin reproductions. His avant garde art movement is irrelevant. Everyone knows Vincent van Gogh chopped off his ear but do people ever ask why? Charlie Chaplin was probably the most famous human being on the planet less than a hundred years ago. He is remembered now as merely the tramp with the funny walk. Did his life amount to nothing more than a few pieces of scratchy black and white silent film? 

Would any of those three have wished to be remembered with such dismissive brevity?

This tendency to compact a lifetime of achievement into bite sized chunks doesn't just start and end with those involved in the arts of course. Think about all those famous dead people you've read about and list how many things you know about their lives. How many of them can you run to more than two sentences on?

Far better to be mourned briefly by a circle of immediate friends and family and then consigned to everlasting anonymity - the sure sign of a life well lived.

Here lies Derek Dohren. Who the Hell was he then?