Besides his accomplishments in songwriting and poetry (he was included in Faber's collection of Scottish verse, edited by Douglas Dunn), Cutler also engaged in quasi-performance art. He was wont to carry chalk to draw circle faces around dog excrement on the pavement, and would hand out gold sticky labels inscribed with such legends as "Made of dust", "True happiness is knowing you're a hypocrite" and "Changing your pants is like taking a clean plate".Although he often took a stern demeanour with strangers, and insisted on them addressing him as Mr Cutler, it was in many ways a front. In less public company, his face would readily break into a grin, and sometimes he would remove his fez or hat to reveal a bald pate, about which he once remarked: "Sur le volcan ne pousse pas l'herbe" (Grass does not grow on a volcano).
Why don’t you sit down and go away?
You can’t sit down and go away.
Yes you can, I said, and sat down and went away.
She was too shocked to follow me
Wow, I thought, now I can get rid of all my stupid boring friends.
So I did.
What makes Cutler a proper eccentric, rather than simply being maladjusted or a show off, was the fact that he assumed extra layers of eccentricity over time. His notions were responses to genuine experience. He grew them like barnacles. He earned them, in short. Sitwell could have put him in English Eccentrics, if she wasn't dead and he wasn't Scottish.
I don’t intend to do anything much in that line myself. My ambitions are limited to sitting in the pub all day with a fat dog that drinks beer from an ashtray and leaves yellow stains behind when it gets up off the floor.
Of course, by that time there won’t be any ashtrays in pubs. Curse you, Blair.
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