Threads

I think I’m marking time with the work while I’m a little out of action…

I’m waiting to hear from a couple of funding applications that will keep me going for the year, so I don’t want to “go off on one” but need to stay focussed on the work in hand, without getting too carried away until I know how I can progress.

Last time I did “go off on one” it was because I couldn’t work in the usual way because my hands were affected. This time I am still able to sew and draw through my recovery period. I feel less “mad” this time.

So I’m doing a bit of drawing, writing lyrics, getting distracted by the internet – mostly wandering around youtube for music… and spending an inordinate amount of time wrestling with post operative hosiery. I swear, one day I’ll do a project using them… blasted things!

Today, I get to take off one layer of dressing… the enormous layer of padding and bandage… I will be able to get my trousers on! hurray! Maybe I should do something with all that crepe? Perhaps I will just do an interim medical project… ha!

I am a dreadful patient.

Impatient patient.

I don’t really have anything meaningful to write this morning. But, I am going into hospital for a little minor knee surgery this afternoon and felt the need… I am an optimistic sort of person, and have no fear of surgery, but a fatalistic view of general anaesthetics!

I have, optimistically, gathered materials and equipment from the studio to have at hand at home until I am sufficiently recovered to drive/climb extra stairs etc.

This gathering was done with absolutely no sense of order or thought. I seemed unable to make decisions, so grabbed a couple of the bras, a sketchbook, some basic sewing equipment, some pens and pencils. An Elena Thomas Basic Survival Kit if you like… I will have my laptop on my lap probably at all times other than while on the table… Can’t have the surgeon interfering with my social media can I?

So… leaving you with a thought while I’m away, which I’m assured will be less than 24 hours…

Music… have a listen to:

Clem Snide “Bread”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YSV0dUUEd4

Stick it on repeat and I’ll be back soon.

PS. Home now, survived!

The project with the bras and the songs is growing.

Its form is becoming clearer as I work at it. It has a purpose and a focus.

I have written lots of words, some will be discarded along the way, I will make choices. But I think these will stay, these are the lyrics to the song I wrote so quickly with Simon last week. The words came fast too. (They may change a little.) I think because they express my motivation. Middle aged women have power that some of them don’t recognise. Middle age doesn’t stop women being women. It isn’t all about sexuality, but that, self-esteem, self-image, all play their part in making us who we are… determine how we present ourselves to the world and how we perceive it in return.

When I started writing songs, they were a background to the visual… then became a separate strand of the same work… now they are becoming intricately woven with the visual pieces. The women who wear the bras and sing the songs are the same.

I will post a link to a recording when I have one I am happy to share, at the moment it is still a sketch…

Invisibility is not a Super Power

Invisibility is not a super power
It’s the curse of the middle aged woman
I could dye my hair orange and wear silver shoes 
And no one would bat an eye

I’ve never been the sort to turn heads
But at least I was seen when they looked
I might have got a man to gaze in my eyes
At least if he wanted a fuck

I’m not 24 – not any more
I don’t have skin like a peach
I’ve laughed all my wrinkles in place
Touch me – I’m not out of reach

Invisibility is not a super power
But sometimes it helps
I walked this life all on my own
I get a good view from this shelf

You’ve no idea of the power that you have
When you look at me with those blue eyes
The fact that you see me at all makes me shiver
And any resistance just dies

I wrote this a couple of days ago, and have been wondering and pondering whether to post it.

It seems a bit prophetic, rather than my usual “reaction+thoughts” type posts. In the end, it is exactly for that reason I am posting, then if and when it happens, I can be really smug and say, told you so. Or, perhaps, it might prevent it happening in such an uncontrolled way, and allow me to change the pattern….. yeah right…..

It has happened before.

A sort of moment of clarity that shifts everything that’s gone before.

I spent years doing elaborate embroidery. There isn’t anything I haven’t done I don’t think… blackwork, whitework, goldwork, drawn thread, trapunto, stump work, canvas, cross stitch (even made a bit of a living doing cross stitch designs for magazines in the early 90s, and even wrote a book, now available on Amazon, costs 1p, postage £2.80). I couldn’t be doing with quilting, poo-pooed the whole thing – far too much maths going on! But then, suddenly, discovered I could piece the fabric without the involvement of geometry, and went mad. The large piece of canvas embroidery/collage I was in the middle of was unceremoniously abandoned. (And since, was the target for the disembroidery, I unceremoniously cut up the 2ft x 3ft piece into 3in squares!) I made quilts. Loads of them, all sorts of ways. Right up until starting my MA in 2010. Then I stopped. The quilt I was making was also, unceremoniously abandoned. I sit on it in my studio, some of the safety pins still in it. I like it, but can’t really be bothered to finish it. I might one day.

I’ve gone back to all those embroidery skills and I’m full on thinking about these bras, I can see how they will be, and this project will be really satisfying. All the stuff I’ve done up to now seems to be coming out in this project… it’s a bit of a monster really. I’m loving it.

But…

In the back of my head is the thought that a new direction might be looming. I hope to god it isn’t going to happen in the middle of these bras. This one I need to finish properly! But I’ve never predicted the sea-change before, it has always just blown me out of the water.

I suspect it might be musical next time. I suspect I will get to the point where I can’t help myself. I will abandon whatever I am in the middle of and veer off down the chasm of songwriting. It is because it has grabbed me round the throat really…

On Monday this week, at Songwriters’ Circle it was collaboration week (always my favourite). Simon and I sat in a room, me with my notebooks full of songs-in-waiting… just words. Simon had his guitar. I flicked through, and none of the lyrics I had been looking at seemed to fit with him, but I had one lot, that I had just written, the ink was barely dry. I mumbled them to him. I didn’t really know how they felt this time. Usually I do, I have a tempo, an emotion, a feeling, a sound in mind. Not this one.

When I read them, Simon said he thought they might be a bit jazzy, and that he’d been mucking around with a few strummy chords. They weren’t his usual thing, but they were there. He played them. They fitted. It seemed to me we had an instant song, that this piece came together in about 30 seconds flat. In the space of half an hour I had written two more verses, and we had recorded the basic sketch.

I tell you, that is such a buzz – there is nothing like it.

oh dear.

oh deary deary me……