Threads

I’m just having a bit of a shaky day. I had a very close near miss on the M6 last night, where without the presence of mind of a couple of other drivers, who slammed their brakes on to give me the space to swerve quickly out of the way, I would have ended up squashed under a truck whose driver had decided at the very last second that he wanted to be on the M6 not the A38M…

Anyway… I was fine last night, a bit tense when I got back, but ok. Today, however, has been decidedly wobbly. I managed to teach all day, but then when the bell rang at 3.30, I went into a swift decline… delayed shock I’m told.

I tell you this (not for sympathy or anything, as these things happen all the time, my plight, sadly, is not unusual) as a background to what I have found I turn to as therapy, because, to the detached, out-of-body being sat on my shoulder observing, this is interesting…

I have come home unable to do much but lie in bed, my legs are too wobbly it seems, to hold me upright. My body cannot get warm. So my MacBook becomes a source of heat. My son and my husband, are caring, but I think bewildered… I’m not like me.

I read old emails that I’ve flagged, kind words from friends about my work. I look at photos of other people’s work: Marion Michell’s, Franny Swann’s, and a piece of film made by my friend Bo Jones. Emotional pieces all of them. Weirdly comforting. I am listening to the new Villagers album, Awayland, again, emotionally deep and varied, disturbing in places too. I listen to recordings that I have made too, stupid bits of domestic machinery, heavy breathing, and buses and trains.

I can’t seem to hold a needle tonight, strange feeling… and I can’t seem to talk to people without bursting into tears. But these glimpses into deep emotion, expressed so beautifully by other people, they are bringing me back, I can feel it. I’ll be ok soon.

Right.

Enough of this.

I’m getting on my own nerves again.

All this navel-gazing arty bollocks.

Just get on with the work woman.

What a whinger!

A certain amount of introspection and self-examination is good, provides insight and clarity.

Then it becomes a pain, debilitating, strangling, confining, stultifying.

I need to count my blessings, of which there are many, and get out there and just bloody do it.

Still thinking about my life as an artist. And also thinking about a friend’s words that 24/7 art would send him to the madhouse. I think I’d like to give it a go, take that risk. It won’t happen anytime very soon, but I’ve started to think about the possibility seriously. A flexible path to income is the key, so opportunities that crop up can be grasped!

With regard to this end…

A phenomena I have encountered recently, is the Artist’s Lie. When it comes to talking among ourselves, we shouldn’t do this, it is misleading. The Artist’s Lie is that thing where you are led to believe a person is supporting themselves SOLELY through their art. The Arts Council et al, and successful sales are paying their mortgage. BUT when you get down to the nitty gritty, they drop into the conversation they are lecturing, working in galleries, doing admin work for the local authority, or shelf stacking under cover of darkness at the weekends. Be honest folks please, don’t perpetuate the myth. We need to have an “income stream” and yes, it would be amazing if it was all totally related to our art. But it more often than not isn’t the case. Yes, I agree, as discussion evolved from the a-n consultation thingy this week, that we should go out and make our own opportunities, and most of us do, in whatever way we can. But these efforts eat into the time when we could be making. Most of us don’t want to spend our time chasing paper, landlords, plumbers, reading the small print, filling in the forms, and many of us don’t personally have the skills to do so. So we band together in little groups, for support, protection and “Front” that gives us confidence.

The downside of this is The Clique. Isolated little bundles of artists, scared to let other people in on it. Establishing an excluding identity, codifying speech so that only those in the know understand.

What is required is the opposite… the Anti-Clique, or perhaps more pertinently Ante-Clique. Be open, include, welcome, smile, don’t take yourself so seriously, speak plain English.

The Ante-Clique is growing… #anteclique

Join up now.

A vocation

A job

A hobby

A state of mind

Cognitive dissonance…

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance )

The ability to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time.

Sharon commented after my last post about art as a “proper” job. I was going to answer her with another comment, but actually feel it is worth more space…

I know I have discussed this before, on this and other people’s blogs… but I do think it worth revisiting when circumstances change, or you see things from a different perspective.

Is being an artist a vocation?

A job?

A hobby?

A state of mind?

I have an art teaching job, but it doesn’t feel like a vocation, just a job where I can wear what I like and keep my hands dirty.

I know that other people feel very strongly that art teaching is a vocation

I know other people who feel that earning a living as an artist is a vocation

For me… it is a state of mind… I am perhaps very fortunate to have the job I have, where I can teach art, yet in doesn’t impinge too much on my own creativity, as I only do it part time, and as I teach in primary, not secondary school, I don’t have the whole exam scenario to deal with.

A state of mind then.

If I was stacking shelves, driving a van, sweeping streets, cleaning toilets, crunching numbers (god forbid!) or shuffling paper around an office, I would STILL be an artist.

So is this where the cognitive dissonance sets in… should I be paid for having a state of mind?

I believe artists should be paid

I believe artists can’t be paid.

I am who I am, my ideas exist whether someone pays me for them or not, I make them, whether somebody pays me or not.

But I work hard at this, so I deserve a decent wage. But where from? Who from?

If someone wants my services as an artist, they should definitely pay me a decent rate of pay, everyone deserves that don’t they? Absolutely.

But they are not paying me to be an artist really, they are paying me, usually, for something slightly different… they pay me to present my work in a particular way… they pay me to engage the public with my work… they are paying me to lend them my work to display… or they are paying me to teach or share my skills and ideas with others.

If they were paying me to be an artist I would pick the cheque up, and stay here playing with bits of fabric and scissors and scribbling in my sketch book and thinking hard into the wee small hours till I fall asleep in the chair and wake up at 4:37 with a crick in my neck.

You know what?

It’s MY work…

I can do what I damn well please!

(Yes, I am obliged to work on the pix project with Bo, but we’ve got till the end of October for that.)

Other than that, the world is my crustacean of choice (another Terry Pratchett quote – who do I think I am? A 15 year old boy?)

If I want to stop making respectable clothes and stop making quilts and stop everything else in order to stitch the lyrics of a song onto a shirt then I will.

So there!

Oh what a happy bunny I am!