Why “Monty Oxymoron”

To name oneself as an act: why to chose to be “a contradiction”?

I am called Laurence Burrow (in French they say: “I call myself”, yet a name is “given” and so what relationship does one have to a name? As a child it really didn’t matter much to me: my name simply “was”; I was pleased that not many other children had the same name: “Laurence” wasn’t so popular, but as I got older and entered the terrible domain of adolescence it became more IMPORTANT. The Psychoanalyst Jaques Lacan spoke of us being in three realms (and I find that idea very useful in untangling some of our contemporary cultural “knots”): the Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Our “real” relates to our physical situation and constitution; our “imaginary” to how we think of ourselves and the “symbolic” to the attributions and accoutrements that our culture hoists upon us (at least that’s how I understand his terms.) So: my NAME…is very much part of the symbolic order and it has been given me by my parents: it is a cultural signifier…so it MATTERS!

After realising that other people’s views “matter” and that I might have to consider how I am perceived I noticed my name might be a problem. For me, words were no mere “signifiers” (at least not in the pure Sausurean sense.) The SOUND of them was equally significant to their purpose as merely pointing towards a meaning. Thus “Laur” was a reasonably good start: it had some strength to it, but the “ence” seemed somehow to “fizzle out”. The root meaning ‘ain’t bad: Laurence been related to laurel-wreaths and hence a victory: not for no reason did Stan choose the word Laurel as his sur-moniker and it’s hint of success followed him to the end.

Yet somehow it wasn’t “sound” enough for me: it seemed to lack the strength I desperately felt I needed. (I have a strange relationship with how words sound: “Excuuuuuse me” sounds to me like having to squeeze a cold dirty sponge or dish-cloth:yuk! I’m not against manners, but is there a less nauseating way to get someone’s attention?) So much for the realm of the real and the symbolic, but on the imaginary level I recall my first girlfriend Sally saying it reminded her is a character out of “Abigail’s Party”! A little middle class, and pretentious, perhaps! As for abbreviations: I knew I wasn’t a “Larry” somehow though I didn’t mind my musician friend Chris calling me “Lol” so much (after all: they’re was the great Lol Coxhill to emulate!) But there again lies the rub: “Laurence Burrow” is not a “Rock’n’Roll” name, a jazz name perhaps, but I was soon to get into Rock music: what could be done?

“Needs more confidence!”: this observation flowed me right through my learning journey, from school to art college and then through nurse training to art psychotherapy training. It dogged my every activity! Why so? Well I have some theories, and those relate to psychoanalysis, to one parent’s insecurity and another’s obsessive instructions as to how BAD it was to be “big-headed”. Tell that to someone already drowning in a pool of adolescent insecurity and extreme social phobia: I NEEDED just a little healthy narcissism to cope!

At one point I realised that I’d spent most of my life in a constant state of anxiety: I’d only felt relaxed when alone and then I felt anxious if I thought about tying to deal with other people, let alone get what I needed from anyone; also my loneliness began to feel like a fog or a dense dark field that enveloped me. When I was a child I was happy enough most of the time as long as I was left to my imagination or stimulated with interesting stuff: suddenly an ever deepening sense of NEED arose within me: I was insubstantial, insecure and vulnerable; overly sensitive to cruel sayings and prematurely “thrown” into a hideous world that was totally alien to me: I could not understand “the others”, the game they played, the sadism, the scape-goating, the ostracism, the exclusion. Dating, was simply impossible (until I was nearly 30!)

I was quite good at one thing: art. So I put this to use drawing comic books about myself and my hang-ups; this gave me a way of self-expression along with a certain “distancing” of myself from myself (or what though and felt the burden of my self to be.) I had already enjoyed drawing stuff with my uncle Damien and we had created between ourselves a universe surrounding the activities of my plastic monster collection. When I was younger this had proved a fantastic and fun arena to act out all kinds of manic aggressive phantasies. The “Monster’s Planet” was a realm of pure wild craziness and imaginative extremism beyond any restraint or control: yet it was safely “contained” within the enactment and the images we created of it.

So WHO is MONTY?

These monsters worshiped dark devilish deities: I was later reminded of them when I came across the “Watchers’” in the Book of Enoch and the Gnostic “Archons”. Indeed as I emerged blinking into the blinding light of the world of “normal people” I began to think that our world was indeed an image of “the Monster’s Planet” with it’s endless excessive pollution, endless warring and inequality: on that planet there were humanoid “victims” who had been given chemicals to dement them and keep them captive for experiments, torment and sacrifice to the evil deities who demanded servitude and sadistic excess. One of the comic-books we drew told the trail of how theses “victims” built a “spaceship” to escape theirs predicament: a shed with a pile of explosives under, it to blow them up into space beyond the Skull-shaped realm. One of those characters was named by Damien: “Monty”…

So it wasn’t from Monty Python (though I did love watching the show with Dad.) I BECAME, “Monty the Moron” and my comics: “The Adventures of Monty the Moron”! These “adventures” consisted mostly of my daily hang-ups at school: “Monty” became a repository for all my feelings of insecurity and inferiority. It was, of course, I kind of therapy (and that later ignited my interest in Art Psychotherapy. By that time I had began experimenting with music as well as visual art: it seemed I needed a moniker for that activity too…

PUNK!

And suddenly: PUNK appeared, with its “ do what you want, do it yerself and to hell with what they think” mentality: PERFECT! It took a little time to adjust from the psychedelic Prog world Damien had initiated me into but it made complete sense: “Monty the Moron” had a domain to fill! “Monty” became my musical performance self and gradually evolved away from a figure of ridicule and self-satire, especially as I became more confident in music making. “Confident”?? Could that ever be so? Well my less confident self remained “Laurence” and thus a kind of deliberate split personally emerged. “Laurence” became a psychiatric nurse in the meantime and that helped his character immensely…yet “confidence” alluded him completely. Even though he passed the course and qualified he remained unconfident: “Do you know what you are doing?”, asked an EN observing my anxiety working in a nursing home in Hove; “Well, yes…but it really doesn’t FEEL like it!” (Was the truth of the matter.)

However, after qualifying Laurence found himself undertaking a BA in “Related Arts” at WISHE in Chichester (just down the road from hospital where he worked.) Suddenly he could BECOME “Monty” and that was a massive relief and a great opportunity to be creative all of the time: what a change! So…”Monty” wasn’t such a “Moron” after all it seemed and I became to realise what the name might signify: “MONT” is a mountain, made of rocks and so he can be “Rock’n’Roll” at last (after having realised a number of albums on Acid Tapes cassette label.) It sounded “solid”; but the split between him and “Laurence” remained. He in the meantime studied Art Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths College London. He enjoyed working one to one with children, but once again in the second year trying to run groups in a therapeutic community in Hove “Laurence” floundered a bit. Still, with his usual tenacity he qualified…

On the course his first year tutor Roger Arguile who worked with children at the special school said: “I want to take “Laurence” and “Monty” and…” he did a gesture as if to thoroughly MIX and mash-up those two in ONE. Yes: THAT was what was needed…

But “Monty” had to change a little: after this he joined the Dr Space Toad Experience with a certain Captain Sensible on bass; then he joined the good Captain’s solo project the “Punk Floyd” , and then finally became keyboard player with…the Damned! (“A very UNLIKELY rock star!” As Captain says.) When it came to the first album release with them: “Monty the Moron”? Hmmm…perhaps even a little silly for the Damned: so…of course, “Monty Oxymoron”!

But why “Oxymoron”? I had a love of all things paradoxical: of ambiguities and unresolvable oppositions and I’d become aware of our inherent inner conflicts: we are ALL “oxymorons” are we not? Good and evil; stupid and ingenious; sadistic and kind; selfish and altruistic: THAT is our nature is it not? So an “evolution”, “involution” (“we are DEVO!”) or just a step to the left: a mutation from stupidity to absurdity: there you have it…”I can’t possibly be what I AM; I can’t possibly be what I’m NOT. I can’t possibility be what I can’t possibly be…so let’s see what on EARTH I have got!”

I AM MONTY OXYMORON

(But ALSO Laurence Burrow, Brighton 2025!)