I continue to turn up at the studio, and today it was nice to not know what I would be doing before I got there. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that I was not already thinking about what I would be doing before I got there. I enjoyed settling in to my day relatively slowly by putting away a few things that I had left out yesterday after leaving to upload some photos that I had promised to send by the end of the week. Recently I have been listening to music in the studio, I have been pulling out CDs from my very modest and random collection, this morning I simply pressed play and listened again to what was still in the stereo – club music from the early 2000s when John and I used to go out and when clubs used to give away CDs. The music must be at least sixteen years old. It is wonderfully familiar and certain tracks take me straight back to sweaty nights on London’s gay club scene. John and I were good at clubbing, John excelled at it and I was quick to pick it up again after years of more alternative and arty nights out. Hearing those familiar beats time collapsed and it didn’t seem so long ago.
When I started this blog I was in my late thirties, now I am in my early fifties. I am in a very different place from where I was then – both literally and metaphorically: I am making and showing more, I have a job (half-time) in the arts, I sit on several art committees, and I have if not the best studio that I have ever had then certainly the largest and most used … I am living and working in Sweden in Swedish! Things have definitely moved on, and yes I can call it progress. It is both exciting and a bit scary that there is still so much more that I want to do. The dreams and ambitions that I have slide and shift between the readily achievable to the fantastically remote and unlikely, some have old and familiar tunes that I know by heart while others are young and immediate. An anniversary is a good time to pay attention to them all, and to acknowledge that some belong to another time and place.
With my year ahead seeming to be more impacted by covid-19 than the previous year it is a perfect opportunity for a ’reboot’. And that is a very exciting prospect!
Many happy returns!
