I feel as if I had a day off yesterday, if one can have a day off. I mean, if one subscribes to the view that art and life are the same thing then is there such a thing as a day off? Anyhow, it felt like a day off as I didn’t go near the computer and it was the first ‘Christmas event’ of the year – no actually the second as the DAD Watermark http://www.dadonline.eu/node/5 production team was invited to join over 160 ex-papermill employees at their Christmas reunion last week. A real privilege to be included and a testament to the way in which an arts project really can reunite communities and create new social connections.
So anyway, yesterday was a family Christmas event and preparations for it kept me away from work, though really the cooking and all that is just another form of work, where the word work is not a negative one.
So no day off then – but a welcome and enjoyable change to the every day routine, that in itself is also part of that ‘everday’, where routine and repetition acquire significance through being recorded, reflected on, remembered and shared; where the personal celebration is also part of the collective cultural performance that is Christmas.