A Feral Class Valentine’s Day

Marc Garrett
Valentine's Day. By Marc Garrett, from his book Feral class. 2025.

It was Valentine’s Day, and I was about fifteen. I fancied Lucy North, who was the same age as me at school. We got along quite well and had meaningful conversations. I was getting an urge to be with someone who would appreciate me for who I was. Although, in retrospect, I wasn’t sure what that was. To assume she would know me was a deluded notion. We enjoyed each other’s company and shared a taste for non-commercial, punky, strange music. We especially liked Tubeway Army and Ultravox with John Foxx.

We also shared JG. Ballard books and other dystopian novels. Lucy lent me one book, Behold the Man, by British writer Michael Moorcock. It blew my mind. It’s an existential science fiction novel about a man who goes back in time and finds out that he’s Jesus and gets hung on the cross. Moorcock was the main writer who influenced many of Hawkwind’s songs. Personally, I found Hawkwind and Moorcock a bit too hippy. Yet Behold the Man was definitely a decent book and worth reading.

Because we were getting along well, making Lucy a Valentine’s card would be fun. Plus, we seemed close enough for me to make such a gesture. We were also into the fantasy of humans turning into half-robots and cyborgs. The night before Valentine’s Day, I put much of my artistic energy into creating a large card for her. It was drawn and painted with deep passion—perhaps too much. The image was a self-portrait of me as a robot (or android) pulling my heart out of my chest and offering the visceral, bloody and dripping object to her as a gift, a gesture of my love.

I looked around for her in school before the day’s lessons and found her in the hallway. I gave it to her, and she smiled and responded courteously. She pulled the homemade Valentine’s card from the envelope and looked at the image with some of her friends while I stood there. She went silent for a few seconds, and so did her friends. Then she said it was creepy, and I was sick in the head, so I threw it in the bin. After that day, Lucy never talked to me and ignored me. Perhaps she was right to do so. I wasn’t happy about it at the time.

Valentine’s Day is an extract from my book, Feral Class.
Published by Minor Compositions, 1 Jan. 2026.
https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=1561

A free Valentine’s Day MP3 to accompany the text. Enjoy, it’s feral 🙂

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Published by Marc Garrett

Marc Garrett is co-director and co-founder, with artist Ruth Catlow of the arts collective Furtherfield, beginning on the Internet in 96. Furtherfield has two physical venues, a gallery and a Commons lab, both situated in the park, in Finsbury Park, London. Has curated over 50 contemporary Media Arts exhibitions, projects nationally and internationally. Main editor of the Furtherfield web site. Written for various books and articles about art, technology and social change. Two key Furtherfield publications include co-editing of 'Artists Re:Thinking Games' with Ruth Catlow and Corrado Morgana 2010, and recently on 'Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain' with Ruth Catlow, Nathan Jones and Sam Skinner 2017. Currently in the write up of last year of Phd at the University of London, Birkbeck College. Emerging in the late 80′s from the streets exploring creativity via agit-art tactics. Using unofficial, experimental platforms such as the streets, pirate radio such as the locally popular ‘Savage Yet Tender’ alternative broadcasting 1980′s group, net broadcasts, BBS systems, performance, intervention, events, pamphlets, warehouses and gallery spaces. In the early nineties, was co-sysop (systems operator) with Heath Bunting on Cybercafe BBS with Irational.org. Furtherfield’s mission is to co-create extraordinary art that connects with contemporary audiences providing innovative, engaging and inclusive digital and physical spaces for appreciating and participating in practices in art, technology and social change. As well as finding alternative ways around already dominating hegemonies, thus claiming for ourselves and our peer networks a culturally aware and critical dialogue beyond traditional hierarchical behaviours. Influenced by situationist theory, fluxus, free and open source culture, and processes of self-education and peer learning, in an art, activist and community context.