Threads

I’m still reading Living, Thinking, Looking (Siri Hustvedt), in particular the essay The Real Story in which she discusses how fiction, as she writes it, must feel true. It’s not a true story, but elements are gleaned from true life and reimagined.

I contemplate my lyric writing in this context. The ones I like the best are the ones that are the most true. And yet they are not. In some aspects my lyrics are autobiographical. The notebooks I have written them in, the ink and paper scribble ones, are the closest to the truth. They’re also vaguely chronological. Vague in that the chronology lies the fact that at age 55 I remembered what it was like to be 7. The song I wrote about being 7 was through the mind of the 55 year old, not the 7 year old. Also, I might have exchanged daisy for buttercup because it scans better.

In my lyrics I recall conversations with my mother. They are conversations when I was 20 and she was 55. But in the lyric, I write as the 55 year old, with greater understanding, and I wish fervently that she was still alive so that I could revisit those conversations and show more empathy towards her.

I write about close encounters. I have met people just once and imagined how we could be friends for a long long time. I think about people I have known for decades and thought about how they make me feel. I whisk us up, Dorothy style, and place the two of us in a different scenario and play out how we would both react. The lyric story feels real because it is rooted in a real relationship and feeling.

The lyrics are often a mixture of nostalgia, false memory, and wishful thinking.

I’ve started to wonder if I could extend the concept to a short story or novel. I could lift the characters from the songs and resituate them… give them a life longer than three minutes and forty five seconds. I wonder if they are strong enough to survive that?

My mind wanders over these real imagined people and places as I draw. Can I flesh them out? … am I drawing them from the inside out?… can I know how their bodies move? … how their minds work?

a) There are times when you are working on a “project” (funded or otherwise) when you wonder what the hell you are doing.

b) There are times when you are working on a “project” (funded or otherwise) when you feel you are flying.

I have had plenty of a) since this time last year… with occasional glimpses of the blue sky. But this week I really feel I could, with a prevailing wind, feel it under my wings and take off!

I need to be brave though, or it won’t happen… I could safely go with what I know… or I could reach out to something new and take a leap of faith…

I truly believe though, at the moment, that safe is not an option. Safe is a step backwards. If I’m going to get anywhere I do need to step out, chin up, take a deep breath…

This week I tentatively sent out some music into the world, to a select few folks I trust to be both kind and honest. What came back has blown me away… I am thrilled with the reception these first few pieces of music have had… and it’s given me a huge boost of confidence to make that bigger step. To think bigger, wider, step closer to the edge, start conversations… and to do so with a real sense of belonging here… as a long term sufferer of Imposter Syndrome, this is a great feeling!

Alarms

Written and produced in collaboration by Elena Thomas and Michael Clarke

It can be hard to judge progress can’t it?

But there is indeed progress.

Every now and then, as well as keeping an eye on the project budget, I also take a look at the original time plan. Now of course, this year, that has had to be flexible. There are things, such as being in a small room with another person for a whole day, that have been impossible… so the plan has had to be nudged. But even allowing for these nudges, things have been done. I’ve been able to tick down the chart. Some of the proposed activity for May have been done, while some of the things for February and March cannot yet. But all in all, a satisfying move forward. Of course, just because I’ve been in the studio doing things, it doesn’t mean that I’m getting anywhere!

Some days have felt like a bit of a slog. Some days I’ve felt like a bit of a slug.

I’m not at the top of the hill exactly, but I have found a place at which to stop slogging, turn around and check out the view.

That bundle of sounds and half baked ideas have now started to resemble a body… it might be a flabby amorphous body, but a body nonetheless! I can cast an eye and an ear over what I (we) have produced and can see it’s shape. I can also see a few outliers, which I am happy to let fall by the wayside. I’m grateful to them, they got me here, but now I can see that some of the drawing ideas, and some of the sound ideas, are now surplus to requirements and can be put away (in a safe place, because you never know, right?)

I have a series of drawings ready for a final decision to be dry-mounted… My April exhibition has been put back to July, so I’m not getting them mounted yet, because I might change my mind about which to show… three months is a long time.

I also have three songs within a couple of tweaks of being able to venture out in a small way to a few trusted listeners for a sort of peer review.

I think this is good timing, because then, by the time MC and I can get into the recording studio together, the weather will be better, the days longer, and that body of songs will be a bit leaner… through that process of feedback, review, and parking for a while to then come back with fresh ears.

I have a small shiver of excitement about releasing Elena Thomas songs into the world…

As part of my Drawing Songs project (funded by Arts Council England), I’d like to set up a Listening Party for interested people to hear and see what I’ve been making so far…

Two questions:
1. Has anyone else done this sort of thing? if so, do you have any hints and tips or cautionary tales about how to go about it?
2. Want to join in?

It occurs to me that I have been in favour of The Backstop Position for quite some time now. Possibly 40 years? Probably since I became responsible for more than just myself. A proper job, a home to pay rent on, bills to pay etc. In my youth this might appeared in the guise of “What is the very least I can get away with?”/laziness… but I have come to realise it’s more complicated than that.

“What is the very least I can get away with?” is actually just a different angle on “What are my responsibilities?” And “Can I do what I have promised?” So what happens is, I make the promise, I take on the responsibility, knowing that it can be fulfilled probably fairly easily. This is the Backstop Position. Not being able to fulfil a promise, meet a deadline, meet a responsibility actually fills me with dread. I find it stressful. I also find it stressful when other people miss.

I used to find it stressful when my sons pushed deadlines for homework.

“Something dreadful might happen and you won’t have anything to hand in!”

I used to even teach to the backstop position, getting my students to just do SOMETHING so they at least had a bare minimum to hand in if some disaster befell them. As if, while under a bus, they’d plead with the paramedics “please… hand in my essay notes…..”

So wind forward a few decades and I’ve just noticed I am doing the same with my Arts Council project. I have promised to deliver the achievable… and now, at the half way point, I am feeling that if the disaster befell me, I could deliver what I promised. I can relax in that knowledge. If they asked for the results tomorrow I could hand in my essay notes, some drawings, some sounds and it would be good. I am a professional… I can hold my head high… self esteem… not letting anyone down… earning respect of my peers… blah blah blah… (for this you can also read in “Don’t get fired!”)

And now this is where the interesting bit happens…

I can do ANYTHING now. This is where the real interesting stuff happens. I have fulfilled the promise, so now my time is my own and I can be the pirate, the revolutionary, the hijacker, the maverick.

NOW I can make it better, and certainly more interesting!

So in some ways THIS is the beginning of the true project that will take things further forward into uncharted territory. THIS is where the fun starts. THIS is where the hard work starts in earnest… so let’s start ripping things up a bit…