So this week has been a bit of a manic one for me….mostly through my own doing.
In my attempt to bring one of the ideas for my MA series to fruition I started yapping to people on twitter last week and things kind of snowballed. It seems that there are people who “get” my idea and who are willing to strip off in the name of art and awareness of the sexuality of visibly disabled people and I am already accruing the input and help of a motley crew that includes disabled activists, bloggers, journalists/presenters, transgender academics, feminist activists and a charity campaign…. all very exciting stuff. In fact though I am as south coast based as you can get I am making my way up as North on England as you can get in the Spring to shoot people and seem to have quite a lot happening between London and the Midlands.
I also had a meeting last Thursday with a dementia champion. I am working on a piece for a touring exhibition to raise awareness of dementia and bettering our highstreets to help sufferers. I decided it made far more sense to interview someone who had experience of dementia and who lived with it day in day out, than to create a disingenuous piece just to further my own profile. I spent over 3 hours talking with this woman and came out inspired; knowing exactly what I would produce and luckily the charity are excited by my concept too.
The added problem with all of this is of course my own illness and disability; in fact I am writing this very blog post from my sick bed having been forced to leave University after 1 hour yesterday due to the severity of my relapse. Though illness does give you a unique insight it does make life almost unbearable sometimes as it does tend to get in the way of well, having a life and doing what you need to be doing to make use of this gift we were all given: life.
I was meant to be teaching an art course for families where children have developmental disabilities today but my illness has incapacitated me to the extent that I cannot leave my bed and I should not, in truth, really be writing this even. It is depressing when I think about it so I try not to and anyhow I have a meeting with the council tomorrow morning about further art projects I am working on and trying to get their support, a meeting I am sad to say, I cannot postpone: you can’t trust councils it’s taken me 2 months to arrange this meeting.
Still as I always tell myself, there are always people in a worse predicament and to get where you want to go in life you have to be willing to put in that extra work.
