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Time for a shuffle about.

 

During the hanging of the latest exhibition at ArtSpace by my life drawing group, all the rubbish, tools, and general detritus – you know the type of stuff I’m sure – has been unceremoniously dumped in my studio.

 

As I sat there this afternoon, turning in my spinny chair, I took stock. There are things there that I moved in with me during the first days and weeks, that actually, I don’t use or need. Things have been put in a space because that is where the space is, but actually, the capacity for their function isn’t very good.

 

So what I need to do is decide what should/shouldn’t be there. Then I probably need to move things out, including furniture maybe. I need to think about what I do in that room, and where the equipment should go in order to enable me to do it without having to shuffle stuff about every damn time!

 

I think I may need Briony Lewis. She is a genius when it comes to these things. And she’s really strong too. And her knees work!

 

I think I basically now need two work areas, one for sound equipment, and one for making. And they need to be set up so that I can sit at whichever one I want, without the clutter from the other getting in the way… hmmmm…..

 

BRIONY!!!!

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It’s not a T-junction or a crossroads. It’s more like that gentle uphill curve in the road that winds around a hill. You can’t see very far ahead. You can’t see where it’s going, what the landscape is other than your immediate surroundings. I was born in Malvern and spent my life with analogies such as these. From my bedroom window I could see the weather roll in over the hills. My mother came to know exactly how much time she had got before she needed to get the washing in… Because she could see it coming. But once you got up there, up close, you had no idea. At certain times of year you could go round a bend and swoop between the trees and suddenly find an isolated patch of fog so thick you couldn’t see the front of your own car. Or a nasty patch of ice the sun couldn’t get to. Or a gap in the trees through which the sun could temporarily blind you.
Analogies that pop back into my head. I can map this period of my life to a journey up, around, through those hills. At the moment I am on that long upward curve. I can’t see very far ahead… But I know the conditions will change. You have to be prepared for anything. Wellies and Sunhat. Kendal mint cake?

I can feel it coming.
I don’t know what to pack.

 

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It’s been a very exciting year… And it’s not over yet!

When I fill in the evaluation form for the Arts Council, does anyone know if there’s a section for Gobsmackery?

I’ve done things this year I never thought I’d do. I’ve been places I never dreamed I’d go. I’ve met people that have rocked my world.

The year has opened doors, introduced new possibilities… I just have to get in the car and drive there…

This weekend sees the launch of my new website. Over the years since I first had a website, the more work I’ve done, the less I have on the site. Each update has meant simplification, deletion, rationalisation, clarity. Each time I have a go at it I get rid of stuff. This latest go is even more brutal. A complete rebuild on a different platform. Leaner meaner fighting machiner!
(For which I must thank Briony Lewis, Life Model and Tech Geek extraordinaire… A talented woman with an unerring skill for spotting the right time to put the kettle on!)

Each update has signified a shift in thinking, a statement that I am more sure of myself. Compared to earlier versions, this one is practically naked. I’ve stripped out most of the text, halved the menu, halved the images. The photos are mostly done now by professionals, not me with my phone. Songs have become more prominent and are embedded. Video is way up there.

Education has disappeared. That’s not to say I don’t teach any more, or I don’t think it’s important: just that this isn’t the place for it. The people who are likely to hire me for educational work already know who I am and where I am. Also, I don’t want to work with children in schools any more. It’s there in my cv/bio. It is important to me that I did it. I am passionate that children get first class art, design and craft education. But I truly believe I’m not the right person to deliver it at the sharp end any more… I’m sure as anything that if, at some point, I get grandchildren, visits to Grandma will be messy. I anticipate baking and paint. Possibly on the same table. Probably at the same time. Stains on floor and walls will be seen as trophies and memories… But 30 children at a time can be someone else’s job.

The quilts have gone too. There were far too many of these, and they skewed emphasis. I have a house full of quilts. That’s what they’re for… Snuggling up under at home. I don’t need them on my website. I’m not making them for anyone else, and to be honest I’m not making them for me any more either. Gone!

In addition to my own launch, my friend Bruford Low and I wrote a song together that is now available on iTunes and Spotify… Go on…. Download it…. I know you want to…
It’s called Jealousy
This is very exciting… Hand trembly – brain fizzy – excuse me while I pop to the loo – exciting!

Next week, three more friends and I have booked time together in my studio to write. As part of the Songwriting Circle agenda, we collaborated and wrote a song. We have decided to do it again. It took a couple of pushes by our esteemed leader, Dan. I think this was almost by way of giving permission… allowing ourselves to do it, valuing the art as it were, giving time to something that could be brilliant!

So, on the outside it might look like I’ve just updated my website. It has greater significance. I am not that woman any more…

There’s a story told in the Songwriting Circle… And I think it originally came from Bruce Springsteen (not that he’s in the circle, it’s just his story)… That all the different versions of him are all in the same car… But the person he is now is doing the driving. That’s how it should be. The eighteen year old me that I recently posted a photo of on Facebook, she had no idea! So she should definitely not be driving!

(oh how I loved that stripy blazer!)

 

 

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People have said to me “I don’t know how you get time to blog when you are so busy!”

Other bloggers have said to me that when they are busy they have no time to blog, but when they have time to blog they have nothing to say.

I can sort of understand that, but I can also say that it doesn’t quite work that way for me.

My blog has become part of the process. Totally integrated into my practice. It is through writing the blog to a (mostly) unseen audience that I can get things into perspective and make sense of them.

I have mentioned that things aren’t going so well in the studio.They are still not, really, but I’ve been plugging away. I don’t believe in artists’ or writers’ block. You can poo-poo that if you like, its just my opinion. I could sit there feeling sorry for myself, or, I can get on with stuff. By “stuff” I mean I sort the place out, take things off the wall, put things up, make tea, invite other artists and musicians in. I trick the musicians into a collaboration (generally using a combination of beer and baking) and have a jolly time. With the artists we talk about the work and show each other what we are doing, including the work we are stuck on. Usually at some point, during the talking, the enforced stitching, and the tea, a connection is made and off I go again. If I’m up a cul-de-sac, then it’s my responsibility to reverse and try a different way, not someone else’s, or God’s, or Fate. Get on with it and stop making excuses. Of course… if you don’t want to, that’s a different problem, not a “block”!

I’m up a cul-de-sac. There. Admitted.

It has been a little longer than usual between posts. This isn’t because I don’t have anything to write, it’s more about what angle I write from. This is maybe the key for me. A description of my day, my breakfast, or even my work isn’t enough. It isn’t what I want to read in other people’s blogs, and it isn’t what I write in my own because it doesn’t get me anywhere. I wanted to get out of the cul-de-sac I think, before I posted again.

What I want to write about is cause and effect. Events and people, being affected by each other…Up to now, for quite a while now, this is how it has been:

1. I did this today, with x, and y.
2. It made me feel Q
3. I remembered feeling Q about 20 years ago
4. Q is what my mother used to warn me about
5. This dress is like the one she wore.
6. Take it out on the dress.
7. X and Y think it reminds them of something completely different.
8. Conversation ensues, the swapping of stories and memories
9. A group of words lodge themselves in my brain and join up with others.
10. A philosophy forms and attaches itself to existing philosophies
11. A song happens.
12. The song lodges in the ears of A and B
13. A and B sing it in B and Q (but not the Q I mentioned before)
14. C hears it… sings it two hours later without any idea where it came from.
15. Strands of song, story and stitch have had an effect…

 

Of course, I’m not one to follow a recipe. There’s always the possibility that 11 happens somewhere between 4 and 6…

Throw into that mix a coincidence, an opportunity, or too much gluten, and anything can happen.

This week, somewhere between 7 and 10, P wrote a song too!

Which brings me to the Songwriting Circle. Something in one of my rambling blogs sparked a thought and a philosophy for someone else, and she wrote a very beautiful, very moving song. I loved it! Cause and Effect…

But I’ve stalled…

I’m prone to looking at things out of the corner of my eye, because sometimes, sneaking up on something sideways gives you a truer view. Maybe, I’m not really getting into making anything because something else is in the way. An opportunity I should give time and credence to. A while back, during a set-up collaboration session, I got shut in a room with three other songwriters. An hour later we had a really good, fully formed song. We were thrilled with ourselves. It has taken a while, but we have decided we should pursue this relationship. It worked well. We got on well, we all had different things to contribute… so we have made a date. This time, 3 or 4 hours, just to see what happens…

I reverse out of the cul-de-sac….

I clearly still have a chip on my shoulder about not being a “proper” musician. Why on earth would these three experienced writers, performers and excellent musicians want to write with me ffs? Also, I am a visual artist, so who the hell do I think I am writing songs? This is the me that often looks back at me from the mirror.

This week, I have chosen to ignore that version of me. I prefer the opinion of the other me. The other me looks slightly askance at things, the corner of the eye thing…

The other me is rather a show-off. The other me has bought a charity shop blue velvet jacket “to sing in”. The other me writes good songs. The other me is interesting to those other writers because she isn’t a musician. Things come out a little bit wonky, but that can be exciting, different. The other me doesn’t break the rules, because she doesn’t know them. The other me has hundreds of lyrics waiting for music. It is about time, I think, that the chippy me got elbowed out of the way by the velvet-clad singing me. Because that one, at the moment, knows exactly where she’s going.

 

The dead-end is the cause. So a change in direction… don’t know for how long… is the effect.

My ideas lately, formed, but not yet in the visual, have spoken of the effect we have on each other. It seems that instead of illustrating it, I get to live it instead…

 

I should trust the other one to drive for a while.

 

 

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This may well be a bit of a ramble… because until I get writing I am not quite sure where it is going.

If you read or listen to my blog often, you’re probably used to that, so here goes…

 

The interconnectedness of everything… the practice of everyday life as mentioned before. I have been talking to another artist about this again. The trouble is, I tend to forget, if not reminded.

I have a friend who says that my happiness should not be governed by other people. And I agree, up to a point. Our single/couple status should not be a factor in our happiness. Being half a stone lighter shouldn’t. Someone else’s state of mind shouldn’t. All sorts of things shouldn’t. But also, I find that this business of us rubbing off on each other should be a factor in our happiness.

I feel very emotional this week about many things.

The first is the way that so many people have responded to the refugee crisis, while our politicians try to score points. Fuck the points, physically, or metaphorically, grab someone’s hand, pull them out of the water, give them a meal, a blanket, a roof, and help them find their children. It’s a no-brainer, and yet some people seem to think they have to protect their second homes and tell everyone we have no room. Of course there is room for someone this terrified, this much in need. The least we can do, have done, is let those people in power know that it is not acceptable to do nothing. Let the world know that if our politicians do nothing they are not representing us. Since when did kindness become synonymous with weakness?

The second is Jeremy Corbyn. For the first time in so very very long, I see a politician with principles and a moral compass, who says what he means and means what he says. About bloody time. I don’t want any more waxy faced privately educated Oxbridge Tory bullies with only themselves in their heads and no idea of what is going on in the real world. Neither am I interested in Labour politicians pretending to be like them so they get a vote. That’s not how it works. I’ve been longing for socialism. Longing for someone to say no, to say that we need to look after the weakest. The strongest and richest can, and always have, been able to look after themselves. Our status as decent human beings rests on how we treat the homeless, the ill, the poor, and people who have fled their homes to save their children from dreadful atrocity.

We rub off on each other. I am the first generation daughter of immigrant parents. I am proud of how hard they worked to get me to where I am. I’m not rich. But I am so very very fortunate to have  been born in the UK. I have a home, a family, an income, and I’m doing what I love. If you look at just the numbers, we are poor. But I don’t feel it. I feel rich.

 

I call to mind Hundertwasser’s five skins: skin, clothes, home, identity and earth. We wear these five skins, my skin affects your skin, and we all affect the world, and the world affects us.

http://www.hundertwasser.com/skin

(I’m not espousing all of his ideas, but some have a simplistic idealism, and I defend the rights of all of us to think, create and express how the world could be different)

Our home skin is shifting slightly… our elder son is getting married, we welcome a new family member into our lives. Our younger son is shifting rooms, university homes, and prepares for the fact that this time next year, with a bit of luck and lots of hard work, he will have a brand new shiny teaching job. In preparation and celebration, I cut fabric for bunting, I wash and iron bedlinen for a new double bed, I move furniture around the house to reconfigure the sleeping arrangements, while trying to make it as welcoming as possible for everyone, so they feel part of this skin we gather around us.

If we do this on a larger scale, we will gather around us another generation of refugees and immigrants who will enrich us as a nation. This small island is brilliant at welcoming others and shuffling about to accommodate, and rubbing up against so that our food and our clothing and the styles of our homes and the layers of our skin merge and combine.

 

I’m having trouble with my art work at the moment. It encapsulates many of these topics. My unhappiness about the big things affects the small things. While my internal and intrinsic self is happy, there are external stressors which disrupt and undermine it.

My art practice is the work of trying to make sense of it all, to attempt to come to terms with the things I cannot change, whilst rejoicing in those I can. Some days this seems an impossible, ridiculous and stupidly pointless task. Other days it seems like the most important thing anyone can be is an artist.