Matthew Sheret

I usually take a little while to warm into a year. I think everyone does. But it’s a bit disorientating to watch New Year come and go with a slew of resolutions only to feel yourself playing catch up. And then I stumble over something that just kind of works. Last year it was Get Excited and Make Things, this year it’s a little different.

We joined Girl Germs at a night last year, selling ‘zines and comics at a night all about Riot Grrrls and being too young for that first time around. It was fun, but it din’t really work for WAW+P. We wound up trying to keep people away from the stock while they danced to Deceptacon and used the table to keep beers safe. I found out today that the night they ran on Saturday was billed as an anti-Valentines event, and it really grated.

Here’s the thing; if you’re anti-Valentines Day, what does that mean? Does it mean you’re against prescribed ‘Hallmark holidays’, and against the crushing consumerism of the day? Does it mean you hate the idea of being wrapped into events based entirely around forcing unwilling couples together? If you’re a retrogressive attempt to revive a movement that didn’t last very long and revealed just how fractious and confused gender politics is (and should be) then you probably think that’s what it means, but that’s not what the language is about. The women involved are smart enough to know that the language says something else.

To be anti-Valentines Day is to oppose a day that says “Hey, let’s be in love for a bit, let’s allow that to be number one for a change shall we?” It’s to find suspect the entire notion that romance is okay, that love – or steps towards it – can make decisions. Taken a bit further it could be seen as removing the comfort from relationships, reducing them down to something closer to an aggressive, cold behaviour, but that’s probably going a bit far.

I don’t really do Valentines Day. I used to be anti-Valentines Day, and then I found myself having a shit time, hating happiness. I give Valentines, just not on the 14th – it’s too expensive. There are easier days to let love make decisions. This year I held an event called Modern Romance on Valentines Day, a night that acknowledged the ‘holiday’, but didn’t live or die on making the whole thing about love. It was just a friendly space that couples could come to, even get together in, and that was ridiculously rewarding.

See, if I’d chosen to run it as an anti-Valentines Day event then it wouldn’t really have been any different to, say, missing a bus by a few seconds, banging on the bus shelter, calling TFL all the names under the sun and vowing to destroy their petty, broken organisation before getting on the very next bus. Get a fucking bike. Commit. Ignore the thing you hate. Do something new.

Do something new. WAW+P isn’t about cultivating the kind of scene Paul Gravett took part in in the eighties. It would be amazing if it had that impact, but I don’t want to artificially construct that environment*. Look at the incredibly successful Alternative Press Fair that Jimi Gherkin just held. He puts an epic amount of work into an event that celebrates a fresh culture being made in the city. He isn’t trying to force a retro culture on the public, it’s a showcase of the new. It’s great.

I’m not going to use the year to oppose things, because it’s a real waste of time, and I want to keep moving forward.

* (Like the man himself, I want to see what comics does with digital distribution (without ever resorting to the phrase ‘Paper is dead’), and if I can I want to see if apps could hold the key to capturing some of the handmade, bespoke nature of handmade ‘zines. But that’s a different conversation…)