Seven Years with Banksy (8 page)

I imagined kids being arrested by the police as they painted, only to tell the good officer, ‘But it’s an official graffiti area!’ and the cops having to let the little tykes
go.

I had been gallivanting around, spending every spare penny on travelling to see Johanna in Stockholm, doing clubs, some building, some gardening, whatever I
could pick up. The nights were drawing in, the millennium was fast approaching. I hadn’t seen Robin for a stretch and I didn’t expect to particularly. He was busy, moving in his circles
and manifesting his plan for world domination.

Then one night, quite late, I was sloping up one of Bristol’s hills, coming out of Montpelier into St Andrews. It was gloomy, wet and cold, you could hear the sound of trains from the main
track nearby. The hazy light from street lamps reflected up at me dimly from the puddles on the pavement. I bumped into a gaggle of boys and young men moving solemnly and swiftly along the road.
One of them was Robin. I’d never seen him with these people before but I knew one of them slightly. I immediately got the feeling that something was wrong. Robin
hardly
acknowledged me, he had a backpack on and wasn’t speaking. The guy I knew told me in hushed tones that they had just left a funeral and wake for a guy from a Bristol collective band called
the Moonflowers. The young lad had taken his own life.

The Moonflowers were a sort of hippy-punk crossover band. They lived in a big shared house up in St Andrews. I never knew them well but I went up there a couple of times with a Spanish girl who
hung out with them. It was a creative space with lots of musicians and artists from all over. A real bohemian scene, peaceful and lacking pretensions. They had it going on for a while and were
making noises on the underground. When they broke up they fragmented into many creative pieces. But standing there, hearing this news was a tragic moment.

I could see Robin was in pain, shoulders hunched; he was shocked, dejected and confused as to the dark reasons for this loss, and it made me feel sad too. I wanted
to say
something, to make a difference, but there was nothing. I asked him if he was in town for long but he was en route to Temple Meads station to catch a train, London-bound. I stood aside and let the
group pass and watched them go down the hill, their slouched, silent forms moving off and blending in with the murk. I turned, walked to the top of the hill and stopped. I had forgotten where I was
going and why.

I had never seen Robin looking so forlorn. I felt for him.

The millennium arrived but nobody really knew what they were celebrating or why. It felt pretty vacuous but it gave us all the right to get gloriously trashed. So plans were set, ideas mooted
until my mate Fabbie, who ran clubs, decided to have a riotous party of bands, DJs and movies with all the added extras he was renowned for. I was asked to do the door to keep the uninvited out
– not to mention the psychos who would duly show up with nowhere else to go, just
as Big Ben would be ringing out. It suited me, I actually didn’t want to get
alcohol poisoning like everybody else. A mouthful of champagne would suffice while I kept an eye on proceedings, and maybe a joint.

The venue was to be ‘The Cube’, a multimedia complex around King’s Square. I spent a fair amount of my spare time there due to its eclectic underground avant-garde programme.
It was a place of constant enjoyment for the likes of me who prefer their culture raw, straight up and independent.

All the preparations were done and the big night arrived. I was pleased to have this refuge to shelter in while the rest of the city would be losing its collective mind. Ours was a ticket-only
extravaganza and I would be surrounded by the most splendid of Bristol’s freaks, nutters and artists. It was not a bad place to be on the eve of the new millennium.

Everything was sorted out when I arrived at around eight o’clock in the evening. I spoke
to some people and picked up the buzzing vibe then I took my place at the door
and waited. It was quiet despite everything, as nobody had turned up as yet.

The next thing I noticed was a lone figure moving up the hallway. The gait was Robin’s. He was alone, dressed in black and hunched up. He looked up once or twice not without grace as he
floated along. Things went sort of quiet, people were absent. It slowed down and I had a chance to observe him. He was a little feline, swift. I can see him even now moving along. And then, bosh,
he was there – standing in front of me, looking. I think he was wearing a backpack but that wouldn’t be unusual; he was probably set to run some black-ops on the eve, a perfect
opportunity to make art while the town went rampant.

I could be wrong but I had a strange feeling he had come just to see me. I didn’t tell him I was here tonight but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know.

‘All right?’ he said as he looked up, giving a customary nod.

‘Yeah; good to see you,’ I responded. There was a slight air of expectation about him so I perked up and paid attention. We exchanged a few pleasantries and he got down to
business.

‘I’ve got a question for you,’ he says. I knew what he was going to ask. It had been the elephant in the room for some time and it wasn’t going to be my hand in
marriage.

‘Yeah?’

He took a breath in. ‘Do you think I should reveal myself, you know, to the press, tell them who I am, let them know and all that?’

I’d already thought about this so my answer came easily: ‘No, no way,’ I said emphatically. He’d brought the cold in with him and I shivered a little. I offered him a
drink but he declined in an instant so I said, ‘You, you’re the Robin Hood dude. Everybody’s going to know you, know
about you through your work. The papers
are going to love you. You’ve got this Andy Capp appeal, don’t you? From the
Sun
to the
Guardian
, you know. They’ll all be talking about you. For what you’ve
got to say. You’re that good that you’ll be on the tongues and in the minds of the population. You don’t need to reveal yourself. You’re going to be known by all anyway. And
because they don’t know what you look like they’ll always want to know. Won’t they?’

He was as composed as ever, listening, shuffling his feet a bit but didn’t say anything. He obviously knew this stuff anyway. Sometimes you just need someone to confirm your own way of
thinking. I probably wasn’t the only one of whom he asked this question.

I went on talking, for encouragement’s sake, but the main substance was said. ‘Who the hell wants to be famous anyway? All those fuckers breathing down your neck. It would spoil all
the freedom you’ve got.
You wouldn’t be anonymous any more – wouldn’t be able to move around the streets, that would be fucked up. It would stop you.
You can have the best of both worlds: be free and your work be known.’

I looked at him because this occurrence was irregular. He had never asked for my advice before. I could tell he was really listening. That was enough deference, if you could call it that, in the
absence of suitable words. He didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge; the silence of consideration enveloped us and a bubble was around us. We were deep in conversation though we weren’t
talking. To me his rise was inevitable, he was the unique, the authentic; as sure as day follows night he would be known, he was just that good. Like an equation, you know, mathematics.

‘If you make any money you should put some away,’ I added.

He cut me off real quick and became animated again and said, ‘No, nah, that’s not important. I couldn’t care less about that. I
could go back tomorrow to
what I was doing before.’

‘What was that?’ I asked.

‘Working in a slaughterhouse,’ he said.

I tripped out on that. Who the fuck would go back to working in a slaughterhouse given half a chance? But it sounded true; I didn’t doubt it for a second. This comment cut me down and I
thought better of saying more. He was shaking his head. We came back to the room and the goings-on around us. It was the millennium’s eve. Party time. We looked at each other a little. I
smiled. It was good to see him at this juncture, at this impossible moment.

‘Yeah, see you,’ he said.

‘Happy New Year,’ I replied.

‘Yeah, right,’ he said, and then he was gone.

I thought about what he had said for a bit and then the guests started to show and the proceedings began. And what a blast they were! My mum, who came down with
one of my
Australian cousins, was a little nonplussed with the hard-core porn that shockingly came on the screen at midnight and I got magnums of champagne stuck in my face from all comers, but in tiny
corners of my brain I kept rerunning Robin’s appearance and what he said.

Since the New Year I had seen Robin around and about and he began telling me about an event he was organizing in a central part of Bristol – an old dockside warehouse area that had been
trashed and was being developed (sadly) into nondescript offices and generic dwelling spaces in the twenty-first-century fashion. Anyway, for this to happen the developers had to run several
kilometres of high-board fencing round the site and that was obviously prime territory for erstwhile graffiti artists to develop their talents. However, Robin had a plan in place before the fencing
was even up, discussing with the council, under a pseudonym, the possibilities of an exceptional artistic event.

For a couple of months after this he mentioned the project every time I saw him and I would listen, politely as always, to the next instalment of his unorthodox plans, and,
despite my doubts, as usual, it came together. The event was to be held on a spring weekend and boasted an array of international talent. Robin was excited about it and it had taken considerable
effort on his part to arrive at this point, not least his assuring a suspicious city council of the merit of this endeavour and that it would place the city on the map. I could imagine his boldness
in the council chambers despite the fact that the very same council was after him for years for criminal damage on account of his continuing artistic assault. You had to hand it to him, and his
impudence made me laugh. His escapades were endlessly entertaining.

The event was to go on for the whole weekend, the artists arriving, setting up shop and finishing their pieces on the
Sunday. It was a fresh, breezy weekend and chilly to be
out for a whole day but that meant you could easily wear a hood if you didn’t want to be too visible without it seeming superficial.

I had asked my mum if she wanted to go as I had mentioned Robin to her on several occasions by now. So we both went down quite early on the Saturday and the various artists had begun to set up.
There were local names, other Brits, Europeans and Americans who had flown in at Robin’s behest. He had that kind of reputation by now – movers in that world began to pay him respect
when he called.

We found Robin and he was surprised to meet my mum, who rapidly produced a camera when he began to spray his work. He stopped to talk for some time, talking to my mother like a well-behaved and
polite English boy would, and she was very impressed. He didn’t like the camera but what can you say to someone’s mum?

There began to be an easy party atmosphere as folks started to show and watch the art being created. It was intriguing to see all of these different writers putting up their
long-considered pieces. The quality was exceptional; it was clear for all to see and under normal circumstances you would never catch a glimpse of a graffiti artist at his or her game. Beat-boxes
were sound-clashing all around the block as dozens of painters got into a meditative flow. My mum left and I had to go do some stuff around town, returning later that afternoon.

By now more of the general public had wandered down and all seemed duly impressed. It was difficult not to be. The artists, friends and acquaintances began to refresh themselves with cans of
beer as evening approached and the vibe was in full swing. As darkness fell it became their natural environment and they kept working late into the night. Robin was doing a piece which showed his
tag lying comatose on an
operating table surrounded by white-coated doctors, spooks and scientists dissecting and cutting open his name. It was good but he was busy saying that
it was nowhere near as good when compared with some of the legends who had come to paint and represent. Many of the new pieces going up were unique, indeed, the whole affair was unique and
something to inspire the most humdrum spectator.

Sunday was sunny and balmy and a lot of the works had been completed. The entire area had been transformed. It was a magic gallery of the most intense, uncompromising contemporary art unleashed
anywhere. Photographers and camera crews wandered round. More crowds ambled along, digging the free art. A lot of people were excited by the opportunity to speak directly to the artists. These were
the people who put stuff up overnight, under penalty of the law; the people that make life in a gritty city more liveable through their street art. Spray-cans
of paint
aren’t cheap. What a way to use wasted space. I loved it. I came to sit by an artist from Chicago. He played some sublime beats while finishing his work and I lay back on the tarmac and took
it in, chatting to him about his own streets and his own ideas.

Increasingly I was moving in different circles to Robin. If I wasn’t in Bristol I was in Europe somewhere, along with my motorcycle. And then there was Johanna, up there in Sweden, where I
was spending plenty of time exploring. London was still on my radar and I always enjoyed getting up there to see friends, catch up on the scene, attend demos against the war in Iraq and the like. I
would usually try to hook up with Robin when I was up there. It was a priority of mine to see him, to keep up with him and his ideas. As always, he was worth being around and his floods of plans,
cryptic as they were, delighted me. I always left his presence buzzing from his energy.

And then there were the dreams. He
had entered my dreams like none other and in those dreams our adventures were all the greater magnified.