MILLIE: Well, I think different pieces talk to different people, and we’re all unique in different ways, so not everything is going to appeal to us. Some people hate my work and some people love it. There’s not much of an in-between. I love creating art this way. A lot of my performances don’t involve vomit at all, and I’m always doing new work, but I just love this form of painting. It really means something to me and it’s something that I’ve done from the age of seventeen, so it’s like a part of me, I guess.
KARL: So how do I do it?
MILLIE: Use two fingers and start touching the back of your throat, and just keep doing that movement back and forth until you start to gag, then you keep pushing and pushing until its starts to come up.
I’ve never met anyone who was so into being sick. Art is all about doing something you love, and she loves being sick. Most people have to stop doing what they love when they are ill, but Millie doesn’t. In fact, she might create more than normal. I wiggled my two fingers about in the back of my throat, like I do when trying to grab a pound coin that has gone down the sofa. It was making me gag but nothing was coming up. It’s funny, really, as during this trip, especially during the Times Square performance, I found there was something inside me that made me want to perform, but my outside is normally the nervous bit. Yet here was a chance for my insides to show off, and they didn’t want to know!
It was an odd experience to have Millie and the director and cameraman watch me trying to be sick. It’s something that should be done in private.
KARL: You look like your weakest, don’t you, when you’re being sick?
MILLIE: I think that’s the beautiful part about the performance – it’s so vulnerable. It’s something that you would never normally do in public, and it’s strange cos when I’m actually sick, when I’m ill, I don’t want anyone around me, yet making myself sick, I don’t mind doing in front of hundreds of people. Somehow it’s very different to me.
KARL: Yeah, this feels strange to me. Strange, plus I’m under pressure.
MILLIE: You know, it’s not like a party trick, it’s not about it coming out easily. I think when there’s struggle that’s what makes it human. This is raw and human, and it doesn’t get more real. It can be disgusting, it can be beautiful, but it’s human. So, however your body reacts to it, if you struggle, if you have snot down your face, that’s all part of it.
I went from tickling my throat to scratching it like a scratchcard. And I was trying to force it out so much, it started to give me a bit of a headache. Millie said I should try bending over a bit more to help it out, but nothing would come. It’s a bit of a worry, really, cos if I ate something poisonous that I had to get out of my system quickly, I’d struggle to do it. Maybe this is the problem that the old woman who swallowed a fly had; she couldn’t sick it up so she had to swallow a spider to kill it.
I was doing little burps but nothing was coming back up. The director was asking me to keep going. Everyone was stood there gawping at me, but there was nothing they could do to help as I battled with my stubborn gut. If nothing else, it proved that it was a kind of performance art as they couldn’t take their eyes off me. I guess it’s similar to people rubbernecking at an accident on the road. We enjoy watching sick people. I mean, a night doesn’t go by when there isn’t some sort of hospital drama on the telly. You’ve got Casualty, Holby City, House, Quincy, St Elsewhere, The Young Doctors – the list is endless. I’m convinced this is why the NHS are saying they’ve not got enough hospital beds to cope with the demand, it’s cos all these TV dramas are using them!
Millie had now drunk another pint of soya milk. This time a beige-coloured vomit hit the canvas. She wasn’t happy, though, as the first colour she had spewed up had not had time to dry. She would normally leave it for a day or two before she even thought about adding a new colour, but cos we were there, she added a second colour and it just all mixed into the first colour and ended up looking like, well, sick. She decided not to waste the canvas so used some kitchen roll to wipe everything off. I decided to stop trying as my head was now banging.
KARL: Cheers for showing me what you do. Sorry I couldn’t do the business for you.
MILLIE: I think it’s kind of better that you didn’t, actually.
KARL: Why’s that, then?
MILLIE: Because it adds that uncomfortable, raw, human, weird tension. For me it came out instantly, but you struggled. It’s performance art and there are no rules to it, either. It’s not like you failed because you couldn’t vomit. The performance is what you make it, and I think that piece worked really well with the struggle that you added into it.
I was saying at the start how it would have been nice to have some art on my wall at home that had me in it, without it just being a straightforward photograph. This would have been ideal if I could have pulled it off. I’m not sure I’d want Millie’s sick on my wall, but if the vomit actually came out of a family member or loved one it makes more sense. You could do it with the whole family. It would be especially good if you are from a bit of an ugly family and you don’t want to have a photo on the wall reminding you how ugly you all are – just get everyone to be sick on the same canvas. Job done. Another thought: if someone is on their deathbed and they’re ill, having their final spew on a canvas is a good way to remember them. It’s no weirder than having their ashes on your mantelpiece, is it?
Once we’d cleaned up the art studio, we all went off to a diner where I had a foot-long hot dog and fries. Millie joined us but this time kept everything down. I gave myself a private show in my toilet that night. Like I said, with me, everything comes out the other end. It was like a Red Arrows display.
FINDING ART IN NATURE
I enjoyed this trip a lot. Even though I didn’t like all of the finished art I was involved in, I did get something out of being part of it and seeing how much the people who made it got out of it. Jamie the director wanted me to show him what my favourite art was. At first I was thinking of maybe a painting I like, or a building or a piece of design, but then I recalled seeing something on the telly that I really wanted to observe in real life. Some would argue that it isn’t really art, but to me it is. I’d say it’s better than any of the performance art that humans do. We headed to Shapwick Nature Reserve in Somerset, where, with some luck, I would witness a murmuration. A murmuration is the name given when a flock of hundreds or even thousands of starlings fly about together before settling down in the reeds for the evening. I’ve watched them on the telly and I’ve clicked on loads of videos of them on YouTube, and they are one of the few things in life that give me goosebumps. I don’t know what your body is telling you when you get goosebumps, but because it doesn’t happen often I’m guessing it’s when you’re witnessing something special.
The reason I like it is that no one is still quite sure why they go through this motion. In a world where almost everything has been answered in life and yet they haven’t come up with a solid answer to this activity, it makes it even more amazing. It’s been said that maybe they do it to protect themselves like shoals of fish do, but I’ve never understood why fish do that. I’ve watched nature programmes where they all bunch together and a whale comes along and gets a right mouthful. Okay, it doesn’t get them all, but it gets enough. I’m pretty sure if they all stayed alone the whale wouldn’t bother chasing any of them as it wouldn’t be worth his while. It’s the equivalent of me grabbing a handful of nuts from a bowl. I wouldn’t bother if there was only one.