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I once overheard someone say that it was impossible to be a serious artist and a mother. The horrified listener asked sarcastically “can I have a cat?” And the answer came “ideally, no”. I am however, many years later, able to see her point.

Now, bear with me, this next bit might sound dreadfully selfish, but I come good in the end, promise!

Last weekend my eldest son got married. In the weeks running up to this I had been berated on a couple of occasions for forgetting. The Mother of The Groom was not supposed to do such things! I was supposed to be thinking of posh frocks and flowers! I did no such thing. I really did buy the first outfit I tried on. Nobody believes me, but I wanted to stop having to think about it as soon as possible. My decision to not wear a hat was made not just out of the fact I look like Margaret Rutherford in a hat, but also because I’d have to find one I liked. I hate shopping. My head was most of the time, elsewhere.
My work at the moment threatens to be all consuming. I long for it to be all consuming. I have days blocked out in my diary saying STUDIO until Mike reminds me I am supposed to be elsewhere, or have an appointment. The solid post-wedding studio week hasn’t happened. Next week is also blocked out, but other things have started to encroach upon it. I’m thinking of telling everyone I’m on holiday in Italy and can’t be reached.

This week, our cat is ill. She is 18 ish years old and can’t keep her food down. We pace and worry. And wait for the vet to visit.

The business of art keeps me away from the work too, to a certain extent, even when I’m at the studio, disturbing my state of mind and equilibrium.

I am an introvert living in the body of an extrovert.

I dream about living in a lighthouse on a rock…

But then what would the work be about?
Real life fuels my work.
The cat, ever skinnier, perches on my husband’s lap, purring loudly as he strokes her. She stares lovingly up into his face as he talks to her.
This man, since retiring, is basically running everything so I can keep my mind as much as possible on “the job”.
My family tell their friends about my work (and even tout me about to get me work). They turn up and cheer.
The wedding last weekend was an amazing event, “curated” by the new Mr and Mrs Thomas as an expression of their life, love, and belief. I, of course, cried. We all did, what the hell, go for it!
Next weekend we have another, smaller, family occasion. I will bake cakes and cook meals and make the tea and chat and be sociable, live in the outward parts of my head.

The conversations I have had, the love and care I give, receive and see around me, even the irritations and conflicts, feed my mind. I am grateful for them. The ideas are stoked up, stacked up.

But the “Holiday in Italy” beckons… Sometime soon these things will spill out, words must be written, things made, stitches and sounds weave their way though. I will make sense of the events and relationships, and through the work, gain perspective and balance.

The resulting work, hopefully, will then become something else. I don’t know what yet. I just have to make it and see what happens.

So, yes, in many respects, not being a wife, sister, mother, mother-in-law, friend and cat owner would enable me to spend more time in the studio. But I have no idea what the work would be about… And I probably wouldn’t like it.

PS Esme (the cat) is much better now, phew!

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(By the way, I know a few people regularly listen rather than read, but would appreciate feedback from anyone new to doing blogs this way – thanks!)

I’m not quite so scared now.
I’ve got the looper up and running. I’ve figured out how to loop, record, overdub. I know how to save and name each project. I have constructed five separate loops to build one song. These are pre-recorded, then I can manipulate them and sing the top line over them. It works well and I now feel that like this, I could independently – after more practice – take it out for solo performances.
I have yet to get myself sharp enough to record the loops live as I go. This requires a lot of concentration, coordination and practice. It would be good to be able to do that, as I think it does add another element to the live performance. But it isn’t crucial at the moment.

I’ve been reading Sonia Boué’s account of her performances. They are very different to mine. She talks of the difference between acting and performance art and the nature of reality in each. I have yet to decide how performance fits with my work. I feel as if I’m still gathering data and skills.
I feel I am collecting the ingredients and practising the craft. I am talking to an audience, weaving a story, attempting to deliver in a way that conveys emotion and enhances the narrative. I am still unsure whether the narrative is purely in the song, or whether I am more of a part of it. Am I presenting the art, or am I part of it? Am I a performance artist, or a singer songwriter? With the recordings done for Nine Women, it was easy to present the sound as part of the installation, it fitted in my head happily. The performance I did for the opening event was more a celebration of what had been done than a piece of performance art. Definitely singer songwriter, definitely not performance artist.

I feel I have not yet collected enough data and ingredients, nor have I practised the skills enough, or done enough performing in order to be the performance artist.

You know when a young student produces a drawing of a person, and then says “it’s like a Picasso” in order (so they think) to excuse the proportions and lack of skill? Well, I think, if I were to label what happened between me and an audience at the moment as “performance art”, it would be like that. Picasso had great skill and knowledge and chose from that great range of experience to paint how he did in later years. I am collecting what I need in order to make those decisions, and I’m not there yet.

Where I am, actually, is brilliant. I am playing with my friends, I am learning from their experience. I am writing and singing and acquiring many new abilities… And lots of expensive equipment. I’m getting feedback and advice on technical stuff, and the musical elements, of which I know little. I feel like a sponge, soaking it all up.

I have confidence in the fact that this will affect my work. It is already affecting the quality of my writing and recording. So I am sure that at some point, I will have a piece of work that requires me to use this new stuff in my head. The new stuff in my head will affect the output. It’s just a matter of how and when. In the meantime, keep watching…

There might be a few gigs happening soon…

and maybe an album…

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Through process, thought, talking…. The dust motes of ideas become dust bunnies… Become more tangible… Workable… Visible…
All the time, underground, the rhizomes grow and spread and make connections… And then, suddenly, under the right conditions, they sprout.

A couple of posts ago I wrote that I was showing people my sketchbook. Some people got selected, photographic highlights, and indeed I posted a few pages here. The edited highlights returned nothing. What did yield wonderful things though, was handing two current books over to Dan, for him to read, comment upon, draw things together….. Things he saw that connected… Not just in my head but his. He made connections I hadn’t seen, right under my nose. He also sent me music, made comments of his own thoughts and memories prompted. Obviously then, to make sense of anything enough to make a response, you probably need the whole lot, as a thing in your hands, not just a photo…
I had wondered when I had this idea, whether it was a bit like handing in a book to a teacher to be marked. But no, the books were treated with respect and thoughtfulness, and seriousness and honesty… And the occasional joke…

Dan apologised for keeping the books for a while, but I found that because he had them, when they did return I could look at them with fresh eyes, and look more objectively at his comments.

I had been worried that I couldn’t see a way forward. But actually, all the ingredients were there.

I recall also, a chunk of Sonia Boué’s blog The Museum of Object Research dated 6th November 2014 – wow – a year ago!

“Flann O’Brien wrote that the policeman’s bicycle seat in “The Third Policeman” had exchanged molecules over the years he had ridden it to the extent that the bicycle had become part policeman and the policeman part bicycle. The laws of physics are challenged by quantum theorist’s discovery of the slippery nature of matter that is so surprisingly empty and tenuous that the absurdity of O’Brien’s bike becomes almost believable…”

This short passage has stuck in my head. We rub off on each other, things rub off on us, and we rub off on things. We are intermingling around our edges.

The materials of my work are fabric, thread, and found objects – made objects – the hand of the maker and appropriator evident in the work. That’s how I operate.

The concept is that rubbing off and on… The memory of the effect we have on each other… The permanence or impermanence of those effects, and how they are tempered by what happened before and after.

The manner in which they come into being, my process, is that journey from “crazed frustration” (Dan’s expression) to a “State of Grace” (mine). This isn’t necessarily a total resolution, but a temporary, even fleeting, quieting of the soul.

Having redefined, restated and reorganised these three factors, what the work actually might LOOK like is easier. I don’t know what I was worried about!

Let the making begin!

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The psychology of Elena Thomas is endlessly fascinating – to Elena Thomas at least.

I spent an hour in Fair Deal Music this morning. I planned to buy a looper. I was meeting Dan for moral and technical support, but when I arrived he wasn’t there. This meant until he arrived I was stood in this alien land not knowing what to do with myself, my body, my eyes, my hands. So I played with my phone and lurked, embarrassed. If I could play an instrument I would have done. But I can’t. What good is a shop full of instruments to someone who can’t play them?

I’ve met Jamie before, when I bought my mic and interface. He is great: knowledgable, and kind. Never at any point then, or today, once I got talking to him, did I feel stupid. This is clever, because actually, I know very little. I had done some research, and of course I am an expert in Me. This is how I was treated. Jamie asked the pertinent questions, and I am very clear about what I want to be able to do. I had done some research on the looper in question (BOSS RC-505 Loop Station,

“For the Avant Garde looper” it says on the box, for those interested in the specifics). We had a go at a couple of alternatives, but actually they were designed as pedals for use by guitarists rather than vocalists. I didn’t want to use my feet, or bend down. I wanted buttons. Also, the flexibility of performance use for some of these things, for the type of thing I wanted to do, wasn’t really appropriate. There are all sorts of practical use, logistical and technical reasons for me choosing this model over others.

Having said that, it was good to try the alternatives, even if only to confirm I had made the right choice.

Ok… So I want this piece of kit. I want to use it to write songs, and I want to use it to perform with, on my own, as an alternative to playing with other musicians. It will be a different type of performance to those with a band. It gives me independence too.

At the moment I have spent over £300 on a piece of kit, not knowing if I even have the capability to use it. You need really good timing, and good reflexes and responses.

I have unpacked it, put it on a stand, and have done that task of wiring things together…. Looper to amp, looper to power, looper to microphone. Amp to power… Erm…. The lights light up. I press some buttons, other lights light up. So far so good. I take out the manual and discover that there are different settings, depending on which type of mic I use. At that point, I didn’t know. I have since learned that the mic I originally bought is a condenser mic, great for recording. The looper I’m told works best with a dynamic mic, with not such a wide frequency range as the condenser… ( I think that’s what he said).

So, in the manner of the Elena Thomas known and loved, I unplugged everything and ran away.

I did this when I bought my interface. I had about six abortive attempts to get it working on my own before I actually managed to get all the settings right… Input/output, speakers/ headphones…why the hell am I getting all that feedback? And then I still took a while to become comfortable using it habitually.

So in the corner of my studio stands this new thing I’m scared of. Next time I will plug it in again, and get a little bit further in the process. Because I know which mic I’m using and now know it won’t blow up.

I’ve left it there in the studio and come home with the manual to read as an avoidance technique. (Yes, I know!)

A bit at a time, this shiny black box will become a familiar object. A bit at a time the shiny black box will become my friend. Eventually the shiny black box will become part of the practice, part of my studio landscape.

But we’re not there yet. I circle it, looking at it out of the corner of my eye, I approach it warily.

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But then, on the other hand, there’s only so much courage I can muster. A girl needs a comfort blanket. Mr Jones can raise his eyebrows as much as he likes.

It takes bravery to write lyrics that mean something. That initial start (for me anyway) takes something often quite visceral… personal… emotional… and puts it out there for all to see and hear.
I am so fortunate to have the musicians around me that just take this and go with it. By the time it gets to ears further out, it has been mediated to some degree. Some might call this compromise I suppose. But I still know which bits are me. I keep my fingers crossed that no one spots me hiding in these songs.
It took bravery for me to start reading these words as poetry to an audience. It has taken all that mustered personal determination to then start singing them, first in the songwriting circle, and then in the slightly wider world of the friendly audience.
With these three guys: Andy Jenkins, Ian Sutherland and Dave Sutherland (no relation) I am protected a little as I contemplate tiptoeing out into a wider world. There has been talk of recording an album of these songs we write together. That I can cope with – bring it on! There is also talk, naturally among this lot, of performing them to real people, not just those invited special people, but people who may have walked in off the street and might not be at all kind to a fat middle aged woman who forgets the words.

But I am determined to challenge myself in this way. I sing through metaphorical if not physical gritted teeth. The heart beats faster. I can never remember how these songs start, and there is always barely contained panic… And then I find the opening chords lead me to it and it is fine.

The writing together is a challenge. But that gets the blood pumping too. I might have half a song of lyrics, or even a whole song, but as the music develops, sometimes they don’t scan well… I tend to write first drafts without much rhyme, and sometimes ignore metre too, wanting to get meaning clear. The challenge then is, while three musicians are trying out different chord progressions and time signatures and all that other musical science, I have to change it quickly, before that point where they all stop and look at me. I’m terrified they will stop and look at me, and I’ve got nothing! Adrenalin is my friend.
Adrenalin is not my friend, because after these evening sessions, I stand little chance of getting to sleep before three, or staying asleep if I do!

So, if you don’t mind, I shall take with me whatever comfort blanket I can find. Whether that is a sketchbook, an old bra, a girl’s summer dress… Or an actual blanket. I shall cling onto the corner fiercely, while pushing myself in uncomfortable directions.

I am conscious very time I step up to the mic that everything could go tits up (thank god I brought the bra!)

But with greater risk comes greater reward…