Thursday, October 25, 2007

Suffering For One's Art

I feel very sorry for his mum and dad, but really -

A graffiti artist described as 'brilliant' was killed by a midnight express train as he daubed a wall next to the tracks on the East Coast main line to London, an inquest heard today (Oct-24). Paul Stevens, the 29-year-old son of a rail worker, was killed at Bethnal Green railway station in East London after being struck head on by the Southend-to-Liverpool Street train. He was daubing the wall on the railway viaduct in Three Colts Lane about midnight on March 20.

Call me old fashioned, but at 29 one really shouldn't be painting other people's property at midnight, having drink taken, while standing on a railway line. But I guess one of the great achievements of the cultural revolution is to have extended adolescence, which used to be pretty much complete by 20, up into the thirties and beyond.