Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an artist. Her work is sensational. Indeed, one of her most famous works, a tent called Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, was a centrepiece of the famous Royal Academy exhibition Sensation in nineteen ninety seven.

Presenter0:43

Two years later she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for work which included My Bed, an evocation of a period of breakdown including stained knickers and used condoms. She attracts critical approval and vitriol, not always in equal measure, and takes, not unreasonably, some delight in the controversy that her art engenders. Much of it is based on her own complicated life. She was raped as an adolescent, became promiscuous and has attempted suicide. Like it or loathe it, the impact of her work is impossible to ignore. Cues form wherever it's shown around the world, and she has a room dedicated to it in Tate Britain. My struggle, she says, has been with my art and my own personal survival, and it's all linked. She is Tracy Emmin. So um how much has your art, Tracy, which is so autobiographical, so confessional, saved you from yourself, if you like. It's been a kind of therapy for you, huh?

Presenter1:40

I think it started off like that.

Presenter1:43

I always say I'm not the best visual artist in the world, and I really mean that.

Presenter1:47

What I like about my art and what's kept me going is the fact that it's about communication and that's where the survival is. While I'm making my art and I'm communicating, then I'm obviously not alone, and that's what's important. But would it have worked for you if it hadn't made such an impact, if you hadn't achieved such fame and indeed such fortune?

Tracey Emin1:56

And that's what's important.

Presenter2:06

Part of it is my ambition as well and my drive, that kind of thing. They go hand in hand. I think most of my life people have said to me, Oh, you can't do this, or you can't do that, or you won't be able to do this, and I've said, Yeah, I can, I can do what I want to do. But it takes a lot of hard work and perseverance and a lot of faith. If you haven't got faith, it's not going to work. You keep mentioning hard work. I mean, I think that's very much part of you, isn't it? People inevitably looking at your work think.

Presenter2:29

There's a kind of I don't know, a kind of lazy person who's going to tell everybody who she's been to bed with and this and the other. But there's a kind of professionalism at work in you at the s at the same time. Yeah, it's really amazing when I work with people like curators aboard abroad in museums or whatever, and they say,

Speaker 22:39

Yeah.

Tracey Emin2:39

Uh

Presenter2:45

You're incredibly professional.

Speaker 22:47

Like someone in German accents, you're incredibly professional.

Presenter2:50

And I said, Yeah, well my name's Tracy Emmin. You don't get here by just being lazy and slack. You have to be professional. It's like everybody in their profession or at the top of it. They didn't get there by being slack. But as you know, people would be surprised to hear that. They'll also be surprised, because it's not the sort of stuff that gets such recognition to recall that across the kind of set from where your bed was in your work for the Turner exhibition, there were some beautiful watercolours on the wall, weren't there?

Tracey Emin3:18

Uh And that

Presenter3:19

Yeah, there wasn't. I didn't and the watercolours, I didn't see them get mentioned anywhere in the press actually. But describe them to me because they were very beautiful, weren't they? They were very tiny watercolours, about four inches by four inches. And they were scenes of myself sitting in a bath, and they were very traditional, very dainty, beautiful little watercolours. And did they give you the same pleasure to do as creating a kind of musked up bed and the detritus of sexual activity?

Tracey Emin3:23

But just scroll

Tracey Emin3:25

They

Presenter3:46

Um

Presenter3:47

When I was making those watercolours I was actually crying at the time.

Presenter3:51

So yeah, comes from the same place, it's an emotional thing.

Presenter3:55

But you wouldn't have achieved what you've achieved and the fame and the recognition if you'd just done watercolours, is that the point?

Presenter4:02

We don't know, do we? We don't know. It's the right answer to that. I'll explain it.

Tracey Emin4:04

Don't know.

Presenter4:08

As an artist, to get some kind of notoriety or some kind of credit or fame, then you have to make a seminal piece of work. Or you have to change the face of what people understand as art or as contemporary art. I've done that with two pieces of work. I've done it with my tent and I've done it with my bed. Most artists, no matter how successful they are, and even if they own a really good living, majority of them don't make anything seminal in their life. I've done that with two things. Whether people think it's good or bad or rubbish, I have done it. That's what the difference is. Picasso did it with Pecubism. That's what the difference is. Tell me about your first record. And so, as we're talking about art, my first record's John Holt and it's Riding for a Fall. This one in particular, I have it because it's a soundtrack from one of my films. And the film is actually me riding across Margate Beach on a horse. It's like Lady Cadiver Goes Home. You weren't naked at the time. No, I wasn't actually, but I did have my shirt undone. I had a cow got a Stetson hat on. And I showed it at the Turner Prize with the Riding for a Fall soundtrack because even in my heart of heart, I knew no matter if I was nominated, I knew no way was I ever going to win that prize. So I'd set myself up for this big thing and I knew I was going to be let down. But life's like that, isn't it?

Speaker 45:20

Go away and have your funder.

Speaker 45:28

Cause you know I'm still in love with you, girl.

Speaker 45:35

Oh my head!

Speaker 45:37

Pay now.

Speaker 45:40

A ball

Speaker 45:45

Yeah.

Presenter5:46

Uh Uh

Speaker 45:46

Right.

Presenter5:46

John Holt and Riding for a Fall, which Tracy Emmin used on a film of herself riding across Margate Beach, Margate her hometown. Short videos have been part of your artwork. You made another one about uh called Why I Never Became a Dancer, um which is presumably what you originally wanted to be, is it? A dancer.

Presenter6:08

I think, yeah, when I was about fourteen I would have liked to have been a dancer, definitely. And why did you never become a dancer?

Presenter6:14

In Margate the best dancers were men, and there was a lot of p pressure from them, older men.

Presenter6:20

In fact I had slept with most of them.

Presenter6:22

Just wasn't conducive to the whole idea of being a dancer. This is speaking in metaphors. I was pushed off the dance floor, that's for sure. And in a way, there was a lot of unhealthiness about the sex thing and all that kind of stuff, but actually the dancing was pretty good, you know. We weren't going around smashing things up.

Presenter6:38

breaking into houses, we were dancing and having sex. It wasn't the most unhealthy thing in the whole world really when I look back on it. And now you've made a feature film, a full length film called Top Spot, which is named after the nightclub, I think, that you went to in Margaret. No, the thing about Top Spot is

Speaker 46:51

Uh Uh

Tracey Emin6:51

But it were two in mark.

Presenter6:54

Top spot was actually teenage disco. This is when I was even younger. This is what the the disco that twelve, thirteen year olds would go to. So the girls in the film that you've made are are round about your kinds of age then, are they fourteen, fifteen, sixteen? Yeah, the girls in the film are supposed to be about fourteen, fifteen. And it's autobiographical. It's kind of autobiographical. The fact is I've got six girls playing out six different

Tracey Emin7:06

Yeah, because

Tracey Emin7:08

And it's autobiographical.

Presenter7:15

facets of a personality. Give me the setting first of all. This is Margate. This is Margate looking feeling bleak. No, Margate looking absolutely beautiful, funnily enough.

Tracey Emin7:18

Give me the setting first.

Tracey Emin7:20

Blanche.

Presenter7:26

I tried to make Margot look like a superstar. But an underage girl gets raped, which is what happened to you, yeah. Yeah. There must be loads of people out there that know this expression. I I was raped. I had sex against my will, but it was called being broken into.

Presenter7:41

You were broken into. You went to school the next day and you said, I was broken into last night. You didn't complain. You didn't go to the police. It just carried on and on and on. So you sort of expected it to happen at some point. Yeah, you kind of think that you know that it could happen. You kind of expect it to happen because that's what happens. Just par for the course. Happens to all. It happens to a lot of girls, yeah. But it's somebody they know. Yeah, I think there's quite a few no-no-nos involved and please don't do that and and a bit of pushing.

Tracey Emin7:49

That's what I'm saying.

Tracey Emin7:51

An example

Tracey Emin7:57

Happened to all of us.

Presenter8:07

But what it is, is that the girls don't necessarily like me. I didn't go, didn't go to the police, didn't complain. Why didn't you?

Tracey Emin8:12

Why didn't you?

Presenter8:13

Because you didn't in those days. This is like in the seventies, mid seventies. Did you tell your mother? Yeah, I told my mum. And? Well, she had the same had the same attitude. That's what happened. And there's um attempted suicide as well in this film, isn't there? Yeah. But this this one's a a wrist slashing. You what did you do? You jumped off a harbour wall, huh? Yeah, but it's easy to jump off a harbour wall. I'm a really good swimmer.

Presenter8:36

So you knew you weren't really attempting to get it. I could have drowned quite easily.

Tracey Emin8:37

Attempted suicide.

Presenter8:40

Don't get me wrong, if you're really drunk and it's like twelve o'clock at night and you've got all your clothes on, but I've been jumping in this harbour wall since I was nine.

Presenter8:48

My feet went into the sand lock.

Presenter8:52

And then I came back up, like a corpse.

Presenter8:54

And I remember looking up and feeling stupid and really insignificant and really tiny, and there's all the stars. So what could have been a tragedy actually ended up being something beautiful. And I think it's one of the first true times in my life that I understood about nature completely.

Presenter9:12

Record number two. It's the Beach Boys and it's good vibrations and it goes really good with what we're just talking about because this song reminds me of one of the happier times in my life when I was a kid with me and my brother and a whole load of us friends listening to the Beach Boys and actually jumping in the harbour wall and Tubby the fat harbour master running around trying to catch us kids jumping in and then we'd swim across the harbour and then he'd run round the other side of the harbour then we'd swim back again and we used to listen to the beach boys and pretend that Margate was California.

Speaker 49:42

I'm picking up good vibrations She's giving me excitations I'm popping my good vibrations my mind Exciting

Presenter10:11

The Beach Boys and Good Vibrations. I gather that at the end of the film Top Spot Margate gets bombed. Is that how you feel about it still, Tracy? No, it's not I mean, I said I would have had a tidal wave if I could have had one.

Tracey Emin10:19

Uh

Presenter10:24

But it wasn't in the budget. Oh, I think that's

Presenter10:27

The bombing market isn't me bombing market, it's me eradicating the past and saying it's like it's gone now.

Presenter10:34

And actually taking control of it. Tell me about that early past, because in the very beginning when you lived there as a very little girl, you were quite happy, weren't you?

Tracey Emin10:34

So, yeah.

Presenter10:42

No, I don't think I've ever been happy. I thought you were happy. You lived in a big hotel, your family No, uh we had a strange upbringing'cause my dad and mum mum and dad weren't married and my dad lived with his wife three days a week, my mum with my mum three days a week, and we would say one day somewhere else.

Presenter10:56

So

Presenter10:58

Even as a tiny child I was aware that something wasn't quite

Presenter11:01

how it should be. And my mum was very sad a lot of the time as well. So he had another family somewhere else. But they knew about each other, didn't they? Yeah. And probably another family somewhere else. Another family somewhere else another family somewhere else. Yeah, my dad was a bit of a

Tracey Emin11:07

But they knew about it.

Tracey Emin11:10

Yeah.

Tracey Emin11:11

I'm not a hundred.

Presenter11:16

What's the word for it? Um philanderer. Philanderer is the correct word, absolutely, yeah. It begins with f.

Presenter11:25

But eventually the bottom fell out of this world, precarious as it was, because he went but he owned the hotel, didn't he? No, my dad went bankrupt in like 19, I think it was 72, you know, he lost absolutely everything, and with it everything that my mum owned as well. So from one minute having this 100-bedroom hotel and all this staff and all this kind of thing, my friend said this explains the princess and the P factor we're tracing. The next minute we were squatting in a cottage where the staff used to live with absolutely nothing and with no dad around either. Not at all. And a very, very upset, angry, frustrated mum who then had to go out to work every hour God sent so she could provide stuff for us.

Presenter12:06

But you ran wild therefore'cause you had no discipline, hm? Yeah, we didn't have much discipline at all. I mean we didn't have much discipline because my dad wasn't there. And my mum, you know, sh it was difficult for her to cope with everything. And but you played truant from school, I mean you just never played truant, I just didn't go to school. It's very different. Playing truant yeah, playing truant is like someone who pretends they're going this is how I see it anyway, pretends they're going to school in the daytime and then comes back.

Tracey Emin12:23

Place.

Presenter12:31

I just said I'm I'm not going. But this is when it all began really, isn't it? Tracy Emin flouting the rules of convention really, just doing what she felt like when she woke up that morning.

Tracey Emin12:33

But this is when

Presenter12:42

Yeah.

Presenter12:43

Yeah, I mean maybe I have a problem with authority or something. Yeah, but also in some ways I was quite mature and I think that's why I started having sex when I was quite young. I felt every time that I slept with someone, I used to call it the springboard effect. I used to think if by sleeping with someone it was like travelling to a new country or to a new world.

Presenter13:01

Is that how it felt?

Presenter13:02

It was yeah, it was good. It was free, you know, it wasn't hurting anyone. It was it was great. What was the problem with it? I suppose one should say there wasn't it hurting you.

Presenter13:12

Uh

Presenter13:14

I think when I look back on it now, 25-year-old men sleeping with a 14-year-old girl, I think it was pretty painful. Yeah, I have to question what their motives were.

Presenter13:22

But then again I wanted to do it, or I thought I wanted to do it.

Tracey Emin13:24

I thought

Tracey Emin13:25

Do it.

Presenter13:25

I'm just not the kind of woman that was going to be a virgin and get married. That just was never going to happen to me.

Presenter13:32

It just never was.

Presenter13:33

It's quite good. The next song I talk about is Donna Summer I Feel Love, because this really reminds me of Margate in nineteen seventy seven at a place called the Ballet High, Disco. All the trendy soul people, all the punks, everyone used to come down to Margate. And I was fourteen and I remember wearing

Presenter13:50

Drainpipe jeans, silver dance shoes and a mohair jumper and I was 14 and I was dancing. You were feeling good. And I was feeling good, yeah.

Presenter14:29

Donna Summer and I Feel Love. Um art uh was going to be your eventual salvation, Tracey, but um difficult to get into it without any qualifications. It was a kind of tortuous route you trod, but eventually you got an interview at Maidstone College of Art.

Presenter14:44

Um, which you ultimately recognized was where you wanted to be. Why did you find it so attractive? What was it? I got to Maidstone at eight o'clock in the morning'cause I had no money and someone had given me a lift.

Presenter14:54

and I sat outside, and the dinner ladies from the canteen were coming in, and they took me in and they made me a cup of tea.

Presenter15:01

And also Maidstone was beautiful because it was in Oakwood Park. So it was great big oak trees and squirrels everywhere. And it was three years that I just my personal life was an absolute mess of course, but I just loved it. Every single day at college, I loved it. I couldn't believe every day, I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get in and get a place there. There's a lecturer who was there then said since that you were the most remarkable student he'd ever taught. He said you were an energetic, enthusiastic, prolific.

Presenter15:30

You know, interesting words. Every day I was happy to be there. And I got a first class honours with a distinction thing, you know. I loved it. I loved every single moment of it. And you were prolific. What kinds of things were you producing? What kind of art and works are you there?

Tracey Emin15:44

Uh

Presenter15:45

few Edward Moncks, a few Egon Schulers, a bit of German Expressionism. Pretty bleak stuff, you'll be. Yeah, it was really bleak. But lots of self-portraits as well. And signing them Miss T K Emin, which is a bit prim. Yeah, but it was also kind of quite

Tracey Emin15:49

Really bleak.

Tracey Emin15:50

Yeah

Tracey Emin15:53

And so

Presenter16:00

I'm German.

Presenter16:03

The English in a way.

Presenter16:06

But then it all went downhill again after that, didn't it?'Cause you went to the Royal College of Art to study for an MA, you weren't very happy and

Presenter16:12

Then you had an abortion and so I always say the best thing about the Royal College of Art is that letter saying that you got in. After that it goes downhill. And also I was an appallingly bad painter and I'd got in to do painting. So I'd already it was all very difficult. You're a good drawer though, aren't you? Yeah, I'm a really good drawer. I'm actually quite a good painter now after as well, eighteen years later, slogging away at it.

Tracey Emin16:28

Drawer though, right?

Presenter16:35

But it wasn't just that you weren't getting on at at the RCA. I mean also your personal life was going wrong. Everything went downhill. You had a couple of abortions and one after the other. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty nasty experience. I mean one was really bad.

Tracey Emin16:42

They are one after the other.

Presenter16:48

Yeah, well it didn't work. That's why it was bad. I was pregnant with twins. One of the fetuses had come but the other one hadn't, so it was inside me. You didn't know? And I'd well, I didn't know. Five days later I was delirious, going yellow. A friend come round to see me and then just rushed me to hospital.

Tracey Emin16:56

Yeah.

Presenter17:04

And then I had to have a was it done? Mm, a D and C. Yeah.

Presenter17:08

And also the person who I was with at the time, the reason why I had deportion was because they didn't want to be with me. And all this resulted in you just kind of giving up. You destroyed every bit of art. You did, didn't you? I thought you destroyed all the art you'd ever done. Yeah, but giving up sounds really passive. Oh, I don't think I'll do it anymore. I smashed it all up and I threw it in rubbish bins and I got rid of it all and said, right, art's over. Because after being pregnant, I understood the true essence of creativity for myself.

Tracey Emin17:18

I've never discovered it.

Tracey Emin17:22

Yeah.

Tracey Emin17:31

Right.

Presenter17:37

So then I couldn't justify the art that I was making. It was just more objects filling up the world, more rubbish, more stuff, and I couldn't justify it. So I decided to get rid of it all.

Presenter17:48

Next piece of music, what is it? Okay, it's the it's the clash and it's uh Should I Stay or Should I Go? I'm godmother to Mick Jones's daughter Stella, so I'd like to say hello Stelle. Your name dropping again. Yes, I am.

Speaker 418:03

If you don't want me, set me f

Speaker 418:10

Exactly whom I'm supposed to be

Speaker 418:15

Don't you know which clothes even fit me?

Speaker 418:19

Come on and let me know

Speaker 418:23

Should I cool it or should I blow

Speaker 418:27

Uh

Presenter18:33

A clash and should I stay or should I go?

Presenter18:36

All of that happened at the turn of the decade, Tracy, into the nineties. By nineteen ninety three you had a solo exhibition at the fashionable White Cube Gallery, which you called my major retrospective. There's not a lot to be retrospective about. I haven't destroyed it all but so. But anyway, it was a solo exhibition. It was a big turning point, wasn't it?

Speaker 418:49

Yeah.

Tracey Emin18:49

This

Presenter18:55

In a nutshell, what made the difference? How come suddenly, you know, you could be back on track after all of that? Because I'd become friends with Sarah Lucas, and Sarah and I opened up a shop together and Sarah financed it or put all the money behind it on the condition that I would be there. And because of this, for six months, kind of installed something in me which was very positive. And then I met Jay Joplin and become friends with him. Who owned and ran the YQ? Yeah. Jay had heard that I'd done this thing which was people could pay £10 to invest in my creative potential and for that they'd get three letters. So Jay one night just gave me 10 quid and so I started writing to him. So that was you driving it forward. I mean you being entrepreneurial. Yeah I'm always entrepreneurial.

Tracey Emin19:10

I'm not sure.

Tracey Emin19:17

John.

Tracey Emin19:19

Uh

Tracey Emin19:31

So that was you.

Tracey Emin19:34

Yeah.

Presenter19:37

I had no money. I lived on £12 a week at the time. And so by doing this.

Presenter19:42

Dole office coming to get me. Doing this letter thing for £10. I sent out about 80 letters. You were kind of selling shares in yourself, really? I was, yeah.

Speaker 219:47

You kind of selling shit.

Tracey Emin19:48

It was

Presenter19:50

And also at the same time I I did a part-time philosophy course at Birkbeck. Philosophy. Yes. It's like mental gymnastics. My brain, my mind, everything. I was woken up completely. It was amazing. But it's also I mean what you're describing is about becoming professional, isn't it? About having disciplines imposed upon you by your friend Sarah Lucas or by yourself as it were suddenly having to

Presenter20:15

Conform in the best kind of way to to drive yourself forward. Yeah, I I yeah, I had to I had to conform in some ways. Even for respect, through friendship, I had to do that. And it worked. And it worked, yeah, it was good.

Presenter20:28

Record number five. Okay. Record number five, middle of the road. It's choppy, choppy, cheap, cheap. And this reminds me of my mum and this is the kind of

Presenter20:39

song which I think will haunt me.

Presenter20:42

Forever.

Presenter20:43

It sounds silly, but no, I think if I don't ever become a mother, I think I'll be very upset and sad about that when I'm especially when I'm old, but it's looking that way anyway. This reminds me of my mum, and my mum really, really, really, really loves us and really cares about us. I know that she does. So and this just reminds me of when I was little.

Speaker 421:02

Where's your mother gone?

Speaker 421:14

Uh

Speaker 421:22

Morning and my mama is gone. Chopper chopper cheek chi chopa chopper chi chi chop

Presenter21:31

In the middle of the road and chirpy, chirpy, cheap, cheap.

Presenter21:35

All of your work, as we said, was autobiographical and that certainly that first stuff for the White Cube exhibition was even to the point of featuring a crumpled cigarette packet which belonged to your Uncle Colin. Explain that to me. Yeah, my Uncle Colin got killed in a car crash in nineteen eighty two.

Presenter21:51

He was at a traffic lights and a lorry came down and pushed his car underneath a bus and he was about to light a cigarette at the time. So the cigarette packet that he was holding was a Benson Hedges packet, which is gold. And you can see where his imprint of his hand was at the time when he was killed. And have you always kept all of these bits and pieces? I mean there are other things you use and baby's shoes and

Presenter22:15

I don't know, old letters and everything I keep means something to me. It isn't just for how it looks. I can't.

Tracey Emin22:16

Uh

Presenter22:21

I can't just use things that look good or look like they would work. The things have to mean something to me. So it's all genuine, is it? It's all real and it matters that you couldn't you know, sometimes it's said, you know, other people sew for you or not. Of course other people have to sew for me, but

Tracey Emin22:35

Of course that

Presenter22:37

I do the cutting, I do the placing, I do the laying. No one does anything without my say so. And also I believe in the distribution of wealth.

Tracey Emin22:44

ASAF.

Presenter22:46

really strongly. And I think if I'm in a point where I can employ six people, that's really brilliant. I don't see what's wrong with that. I understand that. No, I'm but I'm really talking about the art itself, as to whether it matters, whether it

Tracey Emin22:51

Passion.

Tracey Emin22:52

No, I'm not sure.

Speaker 422:53

But I understand.

Tracey Emin22:53

Uh

Presenter22:57

really was a bit of the blanket that you slept with when you were nine? I I don't know if it matters so much to other people, but it really matters to me, those kind of things. But lots of the things that you produce therefore are to do with things that happened in your life. It means that you still feel as strongly about them as ever.

Presenter23:17

Sometimes they rear their ugly head, trying to come and get me, so I make something out of it and put it to rest again.

Presenter23:26

So it is artist therapy which is where we began.

Presenter23:29

Yeah, but also as I get older I'm not wound up about my tiny little existence. I get wound up about some really big things, you know, and I won't work about that now. I put the news on in the morning.

Presenter23:39

And I've got that. You've made a lot of money out of your tiny little existence.

Tracey Emin23:39

You know, and I've got you work about that.

Presenter23:44

Yeah, I haven't stopped yet, have I? No, it's just the beginning. I'm not a Trust Fund girl. Everything I had I worked for myself. I worked for this. I made this happen. And I want to show other people that they can do that.

Presenter23:56

Next piece of music, what is it? Oh, this is a good one. This is Elvis Presley and it's burning up. And the reason why I got this is I was in Istanbul a few years ago and I hadn't had sex for a year and I had a walkman on.

Presenter24:10

And I was listening to Elvis Presley Burning Up again and again and again and again and again because I was burning up. And I made a film with a taxi driver of me looking for a man, any man in Istanbul. And now the taxi driver have done that. The taxi driver actually is incredibly good looking and he has a very, very big mirror. And I only realized after I looked at the film, I thought, wow, he he was the one I used to do. And this guy was right in front of my lens. Too busy looking through the lens and not looking at the man, yeah.

Tracey Emin24:22

Now the

Speaker 424:32

I missed it and there it was in front of me.

Tracey Emin24:34

Friends of mine

Speaker 424:35

I learned

Tracey Emin24:35

Uh

Speaker 424:39

Have mercy on burning my hole where I lay.

Speaker 424:45

Here's a living mind Like a sweet song on fire

Speaker 424:52

Light by morning sky, the burning love

Speaker 424:58

Burn the

Speaker 425:02

Just a humble humble brainless

Speaker 425:05

Just a hunger hunger band

Presenter25:08

Elvis Presley and burning lava, or burning up, as Tracy calls it.

Presenter25:12

Could you imagine having that cloak really loud on the desert island? Booming all across the place. Turn you on. Um, you're forty one years old, are you now? Yes. But I mean, from everything you said, you sound as if you're sort of

Speaker 425:20

Yeah.

Presenter25:24

getting happier as you go.

Presenter25:28

I think I'm getting happier and I am getting happier and then something else happens and I realise that it's still really difficult. We all have our crosses to bear. You know, but you know, money can't buy you love and it can't buy you health, but it can get you really, really good health insurance and it can buy you a round-the-world air ticket at any given moment that you need it. And it can buy you a beautiful house, which you have, don't you? Yes. Tell me quickly about that. I live in a really beautiful Huguenot house in Spitalfields. There's not one straight floor, one straight door, one straight window in my house. It's like living on a drunken ship. But other than that, I'm told it's immaculate.

Tracey Emin25:49

Yeah.

Tracey Emin25:51

I live in

Presenter26:03

Yeah. I like everything in its place. Do you? Yeah. I got stopped at Customs the other day and they wanted to open my case and I said, Oh, please don't. People know who I am. It's going to be really embarrassing. They went, Is it a mess? I said, No, that's just it. It isn't.

Presenter26:18

It's like, it's so tidy. I said, we won't tell anyone, we promise.

Presenter26:23

And you go to the gym and you eat the right food. I swim every day and I'll never eat bad food. The only thing I'll do which is really, really, really negative and bad is I'll drink too much. And I'm going to have to do something seriously about this. Is it a real problem? I mean, you need to go to AA, is that what you say?

Tracey Emin26:37

I mean, can you go to a

Presenter26:40

I stopped smoking on my own after smoking for 27 years last Christmas, Christmas Day, and I want to give myself another gift. I want to be free. I want to break away from the alcohol. I can't stand it. So, I mean, w what all that says is you're conforming, you know, at uh in your middle age. Well, you're forty-one is sort of just about middle age. It is middle age. It is, all right. Well, I was being nice, really. Is there a danger of your turning into a kind of discrete watercolourist? Is that what we're saying here?

Speaker 226:59

There isn't age.

Tracey Emin27:00

It is, all right.

Tracey Emin27:03

I don't think so.

Presenter27:10

Is that where you're heading? I hope so,'cause I want to go I want to go to Rome and make oil paintings. I hope that's exactly where I'm heading. And what about love? Are you looking for love?

Tracey Emin27:11

Yeah.

Presenter27:20

Um

Presenter27:22

We're always all looking for love, aren't we?

Presenter27:25

You'd like.

Presenter27:27

Yeah, I'd like it. And you'd like children. I'd love to have children, yeah. But hey men, out there.

Presenter27:36

Yeah, it's not I'm not sending out the right signals, am I, really, for most men. I'm I'm passionately independent, men don't really like that. I haven't had sex for like seventeen months. Scary, you know. There's all these things which is a complete no-no for most men. It has to be a very big, strong man to be able to take all that on.

Presenter27:53

And um somebody in mind?

Presenter27:56

But a few, yeah.

Presenter27:58

Record number seven.

Tracey Emin28:00

Picture number seven.

Presenter28:02

This is quite good actually preparing what we're talking about. This is Now That We've Found Love. When I was about 14 I started coming nightclubbing in London and dancing was my life then and this song, every time I hear it, it makes me happy and the lyrics are really good because they're kind of half really sexist and kind of vile but also half quite amazing. I think it kind of matches a lot of how my life has been or how I've been treated.

Speaker 428:29

Now that we found her, what are we gonna do?

Speaker 428:35

With the

Speaker 428:37

Now that we found love, what are we gonna do?

Speaker 428:43

Reveal.

Speaker 428:45

Big out the ship, big out the ship, big out the sick, big out the sick, big at the sick, sick, sick, sick. All over the place, I say. Come on, baby, over the physics play yet. Wanna see

Presenter28:57

Third world, and now that we've found love. Um if we're talking castaway here, Tracy, uh there is no doubt you are a survivor, aren't you?

Speaker 429:05

Two.

Presenter29:05

Yeah, it's brilliant. My mum said

Presenter29:07

That if she knew that I was on a flight and she'd heard the plane had crashed and they said there was one person that survived, she said she wouldn't have to look to see who it was. She knows it would be me. How would you like to think that art historians

Presenter29:20

might place you, you know. Let's say they're writing about you fifty years on. What would you like to feel that they would say about your contribution and you?

Presenter29:30

If I was consistent, that would be a good thing. So when I'm eighty or ninety and I'm still making art, you know, they're going to have to rethink the things that they've said about me. And a few of them are starting to rethink it, and they are starting to use words like whether you like it or not, she's still here, she's still around, and I will be for a really long time.

Presenter29:48

Last record.

Presenter29:49

Young Americans, David Bowie. For me, young Americans is about

Presenter29:54

What can happen to us all just in a second, just in a moment?

Presenter29:58

And uh can I name drop? I'm friends with David Enrow so it's really good to have one of his songs on the list.

Speaker 430:06

The golden just behind the bridge he lays her down He frowns Dama life's a funny thing Am I still till young?

Speaker 430:17

He kissed the van there, she took his ring, took his baby's It took him minutes, took her nowhere Never know she's the taken in a brain

Speaker 430:31

She wants a young and very kind

Presenter30:34

David Bowie and Young Americans. Now, Tracy, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Presenter30:44

I think I'd take the David Belly.

Presenter30:46

young Americans, because I can dance to it, I can sing along to it, I could try and remember all the lyrics to it, I could write all the lyrics down and then cut them up and do what David Bowie does, make some other kind of collages and poems out of them. Yeah.

Speaker 431:00

Yeah.

Presenter31:00

Okay. What about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare? You're going to really love this. I don't think I've been pretentious in my choice of music whatsoever, but I might be in my book. I think I'll take Spinoza's Ethics.

Presenter31:11

Why? Why? Because it reads like poetry. Yeah, it's philosophy. It also reads like a kind of guideline for some kind of spiritual enlightenment. So if you're trapped on a desert island on your own, it could be quite lonely. So you'd have to connect with nature in a good way. And Spinoza's ethics would be really good to help you do that without feeling alone. You'd actually start to understand and feel one with everything.

Speaker 231:12

Yeah.

Presenter31:35

And your luxury? Can I have two? No. I only have one.

Tracey Emin31:38

Boop.

Presenter31:40

Well, actually I I know what I could do. I could I want a pen that never runs out.

Presenter31:46

To draw with, to write with. To write and to draw with, definitely. So I wanted a n notebook that never runs out as well, but I could always use the pages from the Shakespeare or whatever.

Presenter31:56

Tracy Emman, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thanks.

Tracey Emin32:07

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Dists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.