1981, Volume 195 Number 991/2

Artist's thoughts on the Seventies in words and pictures.

VICTOR WILLING
13 August 1980

Opting out of the rat race, Victor Willing had tried 'to make some silence' around himself, and proceeded to listen.

In the seventies I decided against being an expert. My expertise in a wide range of subjects, economies, places to visit, raising children, hot house plants and so on was acquired by anxiously reading the Sunday papers and following up with recommended paperback books many of which I read entirely. The search was for the Underlying Structures and altogether for the General Plan leading Progressively to the Inevitable Utopia, which was nice to think about. However, I was confused as authorities reversed one another's theories and often their own. I could not find the Plan, the Structures seemed to be fictions of varying persuasiveness. Nothing was ineluctable in the seventies.

Being worldly was harming my self-confidence so I stopped trying to see which way the wind was blowing and instead to make some silence around myself in order to discover whether there was anything outside. This inside was also a fiction but my own.

Having decided that henceforth the sun should revolve around me without any astronomical or cosmological disaster resulting I settled into a cosy megalomania. This has advantages. Explanation becomes irrelevant, as do excuses and protestation. Desire would be for the wrong thing. Rage separates, floating in a balloon. Energy remains for better listening to the inside. Is there honesty without egoism? From my dais in the mud I shall reorganise everything.

Victor Willing, 10 The Pryors, East Heath Road, London NW3