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You can only go with that gut feeling can’t you?

In the studio, with the making, things aren’t going well. Everything either looks twee and stupid, or contrived and derivative of someone else, something else, or a re-hash of what has gone before. I’m not getting that tingling in my fingers that tells me to stitch faster because I’m onto something. Four garments hang against the wall, stitched, but mocking me: “Is this all you can come up with?”

Meanwhile in another part of my head, words swim about and get scribbled onto the page as fast as they can. Emotional concepts derive links from overheard conversations and common memories. The workings of other people’s minds are puzzled over and speculated upon and the rumblings end up as barely legible scrawl in my songwriting notebook. Sometimes they crowd me out, getting themselves from my brain to the page without thought until I discover them there later,  like the outpourings of someone possessed. Some of this scribble, is, of course, absolute bollocks. But occasionally, there’s a seedling amongst the manure.

Meanwhile in another part of my world, I had another performance last night. I puzzle over this too. It was received well, very well actually… I had comments and compliments about my words, and my singing. I hesitate to take it to heart, as I feel a huge part of how I am received is the fact I have Dan sat next to me. He has a quiet brilliance, a presence that I am sure rubs off on me, and that I have learned from. I bask in reflected glory. He is also validation: “If Dan Whitehouse is playing with her she must be good!” This is much like “If the Arts Council gave her the money, it must be good!”

I am cautious to be swayed too much by this… but… this is where the buzz is coming from lately…

Have I been bitten by the bug of instant gratification – an audience that claps and cheers (and whistles! Dear God!) immediately the final note is sung?

The thing is… the reason I want to go to the studio tomorrow is to record, not to stitch or draw. So I should follow that. I always tidy my studio desk and put things away and clean up before I come home. Despite my house being a tip, my studio is really tidy. This surprised me from day 1. I had always presumed that if I had a studio “It would be great because I could leave things out and pick up the next day”… what I have found is that it isn’t like this AT ALL…. and it never has been. What happens is, I want to go into the studio every day with the excitement of the fact that I would NOT feel duty bound, beholden, guilty. I want to go into the studio every day with the excitement of the fact that ANYTHING is possible… and that MUST be the case every day I walk through the door…

So, the garments that mock me will stay hung on the wall, and I shall ignore them. I’m going to plug the mic in. I’m going to sing, and write and record.

Meanwhile, in another part of my house, there are pieces of work, throughout my creative life, that have been unceremoniously abandoned. There was the half made dress… The elaborate stump work embroidery, the dragonfly tapestry… the half quilted quilt… they were just dumped, in favour of the idea that followed, never to be returned to. My obsession with songwriting and recording and singing could quite possibly herald another such sea-change… I can smell salt in the air…

I won’t have any idea if this is the case until it has happened, until maybe a year on… when the garment hanging on the wall is covered in dust, or I have thrown it in a corner and pinned lyrics to the wall instead…

 

 

 WATER

I stared at the bottom of the boat I just fell from

Could see the tree dappled sunlight

Saw the pink cloud expand

My blood drifted in rings round the ends of the willow boughs

I could see the shouting

Movement slowed by the screen of the surface

I felt calm and peaceful and wanted to stay

They pulled me from the quiet water like a second birth

The sound slapped me as I rejoined the world

 

I stay away from the water now, because it calls me back

I won’t trust myself to not dive back in

to find peace again.

 

Well this is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been talking about isn’t it? The affect one person has on another, and the different ways to express that.
Spoons.
Some people are “spoon neutral” in that they don’t rub off on you in any way. Some people use up all your spoons in a very short time. Negativity has to be guarded against. Deflect it with spoons!
Some people give you more. In their company you relax. Your mind is stimulated. Ideas flow. Connections are made.
It’s not difficult to understand why I went straight into the studio and made a little something on Tuesday.

On Tuesday I met Sonia Boué for the first time after about a year of online conversation and mutual blog reading, and subsequent discussion.
Sonia’s post about the meeting can be found here….

Sonia Boué is the sort of person who puts me in a positive spoon situation.

(Spoon theory, one of the topics of our conversation, can be found here if you’re not familiar with it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory)

I didn’t feel I had to put on the mask, or try to be something I’m not. Probably because of online discussions and reading about her work with neurodiversity, I went in knowing that she would accept whatever I was. I don’t want to make that sound like I’m a difficult person to get on with, I don’t think I am. But knowing that someone is accepting of difference means that you don’t need to shut the weird stuff away until you know them better. There was always the risk I suppose that we wouldn’t get on. But I also felt, going into this long anticipated meeting, that that eventuality would be accepted too, without animosity.
And that is a gift.

It was funny we ordered the same food and the same tea. It was funny we both pulled a face at the discarded gherkin!

We laughed. We talked about some serious stuff. We made connections in our thoughts. Talking about your thoughts on your art is the best way to move it forward. Finding ways to express yourself out loud gives rise to clearer understanding.

My mind went *ping* as I talked about an acquaintance who used up all my spoons, and whose conversation worried away at me and wore holes through the cloth like little beads… I made a pinched up face and rubbed my thumbs and forefingers together…. And this little piece had to be made.

I wrote in the previous post about how the work was feeling way too “nice”…. We talked about what the visual effects of the negative spoon people. We mentioned razor blades. On the way to the studio I thought about sandpaper and cheese graters… Rasps and files… I’ve been very delicately withdrawing threads. It’s time to get nasty!

Thank you for a very wonderful afternoon Sonia… I’m sure it will happen again now we have found this mutual meeting place. While I sat waiting, I thought “we can always walk around the park or look at the exhibition if conversation seems awkward” haha!!!! We didn’t shut up for about three and a half hours!
(We did look at the exhibition, but not out of social necessity)

We also talked about family, education, parenting… Discovered we had similar philosophies. We pulled horrified faces and went “oh no!” At all the right places in each other’s monologues of interpersonal disaster.
Both of us being performers of one sort or another, it feels good to have an appreciative audience for life’s tales. I feel a song coming on ….

Here’s to the next verse!

 

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The plan had been to spend another afternoon and evening in the studio.

When I woke up, the slight snuffle I had assumed to be allergy related turned out to be a cold. I ache all over, but that is more likely due to the upheaval of decorating the kitchen.

I have a performance on September 8th. My voice is not strong at the best of times. So I’ve come over all diva, and I’m staying at home in the hope that someone will look after me (I know, pathetic!)

 

Anyway…

I decided, now all the painting was finished, and the cleaning up done, I could start to reassemble the kitchen.

 

It came as a bit of a revelation during my MA studies: “ The Practice of Everyday Life” by Michel de Certeau… and it took me quite a while to understand and believe it: That my adjustment of the world around me, my acceptance or rejection of certain practices and principles was as much a part of my practice as the choices I make about the garments I work with, the sounds I record, the stitches I stitch.

 

My work is obviously in the domestic, feminine realm. I tried to fight that for a while too. Mostly through a lack of mindful reflection, and understanding, and also a lack of any sort of intellectual rigour of thinking through why I was doing anything. It all, over two years of reading, talking, writing, working, discussing and blustery arguing, gradually seeped in.

I can’t deny who I am. I’m a middle aged woman with a husband and grown up children. White, vaguely middle class, in the middle of England, with a low to middling sort of income. I’m not cutting edge really. I’m soft and cuddly (on the outside at least).

But my everyday life is my practice. Definitely. So, instead of working in the studio, today I have worked in my kitchen. I have been making decisions about what goes back into this clean fresh space. What is used, and how often, and what is not? What do I love, and what do I tolerate because of its usefulness? I have curated my kitchen. There’s a big box of assorted bric a brac for the charity shop, and a pile of stuff for my sons to plunder first, if they want it. Practices are reviewed: where is the best place for the microwave really? Probably next to the hob, but that spoils the aesthetic, so it has gone to the other side, so the eye sweeps across clear surfaces in this narrow space. I put up with slight inconvenience for the look of the thing! Every item returned undergoes such scrutiny. But my decisions are not so simple as the useful/beautiful argument of William Morris et al… Did William Morris have two plates painted by his sons for their father when they were children? Were they garish and lumpy? And actually the wrong size to be useful for much at all? Did he have a drawing of sunflowers inspired by Van Gogh done by a four year old in his first term at school? Probably not. Did William Morris have trouble finding a space for his ironing board? I doubt it!

 

My current thinking in my studio is about all of this. All this nostalgia, affection, love, attachment to things and people. I don’t have knick-knacks as such. I prefer wooden boxes to useless wooden carvings. I much prefer a jug or a tea-pot to a useless figurine. The things remind of the doing previously done – my mum making tea and doling out big slices of cake. The bowls used for christmas puddings. The plates used for a few weeks every year for mince pies… items that contain memory, tradition and ritual, kept and held close. The used item is able to hold more than the item just looked at. The kinaesthetic stronger than the merely visual memory. I am pretty low-maintenance (I keep telling my family) in that I am loyal to things and don’t want them replaced. I am not really into fashion and trend.

When I get back into the studio later this week, I intend to look at what I have been making with similar rigour: What am I keeping and why? What am I looking at? What am I working with?

 

I can also be, in addition to the soft and cuddly, I’m told, rather sinister. (There’s a sharp skewer in the back of the cutlery drawer…) People have told me sometimes my work can be macabre, spooky, and that lying very close to the soft textile surface with loving careful stitches, is a sharp edge, an ugliness disguised. “Domestic” is often used as a synonym for “cosy”. In my experience, it is more, less, different. Domestic cosiness hides the dark underbelly of domestic discomfort. I am currently finding myself a little dissatisfied with the work I am thinking about, and I think it is because I have not yet found the part where I am teetering on the edge of something. At the moment it is all a little safe and nice – god forbid! (comfort blanket! comfort blanket!)

 

So… prompted by thoughts engendered by curating my kitchen, I go back into the studio, prepared to push myself much more… leap off something… crash… dive headlong… do something vile and disgusting… repellant and violent and ugly… play with it…. and then….

 

…back off very very slightly so people can get up really close to the pretty, before encountering the nastiness within…

 

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I had a conversation with a colleague about spirituality and my work. How I’ve lost religion and a certain type of faith, but through my own art work, I have discovered something that suits me better. Two days later, I discover a student of mine has had a similar thought about how the two connect. I can’t speak for anyone else of course, but… We take our enlightenment where we can get it? The student has talked of being “switched on”. Some people are greatly disturbed by me thinking of art like this – art as “religion” a highly contentious issue – heresy even…

You can call it what you like. I don’t do that any more, I do this instead. It fits me better. It isn’t hypocritical any more.

I wrote on the nine women blog about my post-exhibition slump. It is still with me I’m afraid. This morning I was at my usual life drawing session and felt distinctly stroppy, antisocial, possibly even antagonistic. I apologise unreservedly. I withdrew to my headphones when we started drawing. I tried in vain to find an album with no gaps between the tracks. I didn’t want any speech to encroach upon my consciousness. I was successful for about four minutes at a time.

Something else: I was checking my diary, and discovered to my horror, that unless I use a Sunday, or the bank holiday Monday, it will be something like September 9th before I get a whole day on my own in the studio.

The above statements might seem unconnected, but they are not. I can feel myself going under. I need to be careful. I need to tend to myself. I need to have an extended period of untimed solitude in order to redress the balance here. I’m going to be horrible to be with. The slump will get worse. I will get no work done. The spiritual qualities of my product and my process are vital to my mental health. Quiet contemplation and uninterrupted hard work will reconnect me to myself, and in turn, with those around me. The burgeoning spitefulness will only dissipate with a period of calm self-preservation. The inter-connectedness in the work and my life I posted about last week. This self-created spiritual box of art. Fortunately I have retained insight and awareness of what’s slipped. So I can put it right as soon as possible. September 9th isn’t soon enough. I need to get back to the diary and shuffle stuff around, and fast.

 

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The work feels best when it intersects with life – for me anyway. Those moments when I suddenly find that my response to real life has an impact on my practice and ultimately the concepts behind it.

There have been a couple of incidents lately where people have exploded into my little art bubble. My self constructed mental and physical space where I can work and think uninterrupted was invaded.

I live in a precariously balanced place where I need to interact with people, but also shut myself away from them. I am not always able to control how this happens although I do try.

A particularly emotional interruption a couple of weeks ago left me angry, and I felt invaded. I brooded upon it, and stomped around, trying to find a way to prevent it happening again (during which time it did happen again).

Then it occurred to me that this is exactly what my work is about, that rubbing up against each other, in a non-physical way. Touch without touching.

Emotional intelligence and literacy… recognising emotion in yourself and others. To a certain extent you can, once it is recognised, deflect it. Otherwise you stand no chance, and everyone else’s anger and hurt rub off on you.

I am notoriously bad at deflecting. I am hugely affected by the emotions of others. Sometimes to my downfall. I try, if I am aware, when I feel in a bad mood, sad, angry, to try to work out why, so if I discover it is because of someone else, I can let it go. And conversely, if I do the same when I am happy, I quickly discover which people have which effects! So I try to step back from those who consistently have a negative affect on my own moods, which are pretty swingy at the best of times!

“My demeanour betrays my mood”… I embroidered this phrase on an old chemise thing over a year ago.

So the encounter left a smudge upon me, which I have since managed to brush off. It isn’t always that easy. First you have to notice. If you feel the pigeon poop land on your shoulder, you can wash it off before it leaves a mark. Sometimes circumstances mean you can’t always get rid of it immediately, even if you have noticed.

Other people sort of leech themselves into you, slowly, imperceptibly. This can be for good or bad. Realisation may not ever happen. I recently recalled an old conversation with my mother, which had happened when I was about 15. I can’t remember it ever sinking into me. But clearly it did, because I found myself repeating the same sentence, almost word for word. I had to sit down. I realised that a great chunk of my adult behaviour had been ruled by that conversation. It had become part of who I am, a big part of how I operate and interact with other people. Scary. Hit me like a sledgehammer!

So my current work has been steered again, by chance encounter, and subsequent analysis. Those bits of “extra” from other people, making a mark on me. I need to work out whether the short term and the long term are the same thing. Short term: smiling at strangers… other people’s angry outpourings… Long term: the effects of family tradition, philosophy, genetic disposition…

I’m feeling close to something… but I still don’t know what it looks like.

In the meantime, I am dismantling one item of children’s clothing in order to harvest unwoven threads to stitch into an adult dress… I am creating a smudge. There are no knots, the threads are loose, and because of this, sit loosely in the linen of the dress. They could stay, unnoticed, or could be gently pulled and removed. Their removal might leave holes. The holes might close up upon laundering… Sometimes we choose to keep the stain.