So a new blog then.
Originally, my other blog ‘Threads’ contained everything. Occasionally I’d branch out for specific projects, for a specific time, returning to ‘Threads’ afterwards (Nine Women, Shedding and the a-n bursary blog ‘Time and Space’).
In recent months I have come to see that perhaps to give the sound work the attention it deserves, I need a different space for it.
It might be an idea to give a potted history to this, rather than refer people to wade through archive postings on ‘Threads’.
Sometimes it seems a lifetime away, sometimes it seems like yesterday… in 2010 I started a Masters in Arts Practice and Education at Birmingham City University’ School of Art in Margaret St… you might know this wonderful building, and it’s history… anyway… I started… with a severe case of imposter syndrome. It took me two years part time, during which things changed dramatically. I look back and see a different woman, and certainly a different artist!
I was working on themes of relationships between children and adults/parents, overprotection, parenting and of course teaching, which was why I chose that particular strand of study. I was working in a primary school, as an artist teacher. I made a series of garments and items that explore the connections between protection and constraint. I made a straitjacket which was quilted and embroidered, a child’s jacket with mittens on strings that wrapped around the child, A mother’s coat with the baby-pocket on the inside, and a child’s rocking chair that had arm and leg restraints, and wedges to stop it rocking. You get the message I’m sure.
This was about half way through the course and I installed these pieces in the studios for assessment and decided that I would like to have some music playing, something child-like perhaps… nursery rhymes, musical box, or a lullaby maybe… I searched the internet but could find nothing that fitted. One day I moaned to my new friend Dan Whitehouse about it, and asked him if perhaps he had something I could use. He definitely rolled his eyes and said “Write your own!”
It had never occurred to me that I could!
But I did. I wrote the words. Dan sent me a recording of some guitar chords over which I tentatively sang a melody. After much work and loads of help, I had my Lullaby. My first song, age 50.
It’s here if you want to hear it.
For my final show installation I wrote another. Called ‘Keep Calm’ which played continuously over the balcony haunting the foyer exhibition space. I even performed it live for the assessors. Nerve-wracking!
Moving things on a few years, I wrote more, some poems and some lyrics, and joined Dan’s songwriting circle. There I met loads of wonderful people who helped me work out what I was doing. This gave me confidence to perform, to look at ways to create music as a non-musician, and to collaborate. It was the collaboration aspect that was definitely the catalyst for change.
Dan put me in a room with fellow circlers: Ian Sutherland, Andy Jenkins and Dave Sutherland. We wrote a song, very quickly, and it was good. And then we wrote a few more. Then when we had about six, we decided it would be good to let them out into the world and do a few open mic nights. Talk about new territory… I was terrified on a regular basis.
And then I wasn’t.
Then, gradually, I discovered I loved it . The whole thing. Writing lyrics, sending them to Andy, Ian and Dave (although not Dave later on) and them writing music for the words, and then working out arrangements and vocals and harmonies… all of it.
This band The Sitting Room has been writing and gigging since January 2016. We are still at it, and we now have a rhythm section with Lloyd McKenzie and John Kirkman. We have an eclectic range of influences between us, which gives us a unique sound I think. We have recorded an EP, and are in the process of deciding what to record next, as we now have around 30 songs.
Alongside this ran my Nine Women project. I wrote and co-wrote 11 songs (couldn’t decide which two to cut) and a variety of small intersecting sound pieces to play with the installation of nine embroidered old bras,
I am still writing with the band on a regular basis, but I have heaps of lyrics that are not really appropriate for the band, and a bigger heap of recorded sounds, some of which have been manipulated into percussive loops to use in songwriting. This heap is getting more unwieldly, and I have decided it is time to work on a solo music project.
It is all to easy to go into the studio to draw. Less easy to write music as a non-musician. I have tricks and what have you, (the old dog has learned a few) but the process doesn’t come easy.
So I have a new table in the studio, with all music related paraphernalia. And although I don’t do new year’s resolutions, this is sort of what I’m planning.
Concerted effort.
And the inauguration of a new blog space will hopefully keep me on track, critical, reflective…
